Wednesday, May 20, 2009


A mule by Frederic Remington.

In the run up to the exams, even the tiny amount of wargaming related stuff that I have been doing of late has had to go by the board. But I took delivery yesterday of a small package from Irregular miniatures yesterday that cheered me up in immensely. According to Charge! an infantry battalion should be accompanied by at least two baggage animals and a vivandiere. I have gathered together quite a collection of camp followers, but I needed some more baggage animals and Ian Kay of Irregular Miniatures was able to provide.

I have no camera with me, otherwise I'd post a proper picture, but the figures themselves are very nice, well proportioned, relatively clean of flash and a varied enough to be interesting without being so differant as to be difficult to paint. I've always used Irregular 6mm and 2mm figures before and found them very good and this standard has been maintained in their 20mm range. I also picked up from dead/wounded British soldiers for use with En Avant! and while such figures are never going to inspire fondness, they look well for what they are and will do the job.

Baggage for the artillery will obviously consist of caissons and such, though I'm a little lost as to what cavalry baggage would consist of.

More to follow exams permitting.

4 comments:

  1. I suspect that "cavalry baggage" would be things like tents, food and other supplies . . . and would be on mules . . . but that's just a guess.


    -- Jeff

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  2. You're probably right. Which means I should assemble two baggage animals for the regiments of Horse as well for as the Foot. The British apparently made extensive use of ox drawn carts in the Peninsula, I'll have to see if anybody makes them in 20mm.

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  3. Cavalry train was probably similar to that of infantry. The theoretical drawings of (Lace Wars) camps on the 'Nec Pluribus Impar' site for instance show the same vehicles. Probably not different by Napoleonic times.
    (Btw I have thus doubts when wargamers give mounted troops a longer *strategical* move: regular heavy cavalry at least was tied to the same army train as the infantry).

    Then 'just for the look' you may give cavalry pack horses rather than mules (perhaps even with a mounted 'driver'?). Not 'Napoleonic', but Frederick's infantry used pack ponies rather than mules, for instance.

    Again perhaps not 'Napoleonic' but by the 18th C. at least the 'army mules' had elabotared harnesses (looking rather than a team horse's collar) with tinkerbells, feathers...

    'Decorative' types-wise, cavalry is badly treated in Old School rules: in 'Charge!' while infantry is given a pioneer, cavalry is deprived of (potentially colorful) farrier -and of vivandiere. And in 'The War Game' the cavalry does'nt even has a trumpeter... I suspect P. Young was influenced by the listing of 'Willie' 30mm from Tradition, which includes infantry pioneer and vivandiere, but neither mounted farrier nor vivandiere...

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  4. Hey Eamon,

    Good "talking" to you on Facebook a while ago. How about updating us on the planned October game? It would be fun to learn more about it. Loved your sense of humor by the way!

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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