FIW Civilians

When I sold off my FIW French I agreed with the buyer to paint some Redoubt Miniatures civilians. I've had these in my lead pile for a while and it was nice to finally paint them up even if it was for a commission.

The sculpts are a bit hit and miss to be honest. Some of the heads are comically big and some of the poses look a bit weird. Also, the gun stock on one of the models was slightly miscast. Nevertheless, I think they have a certain charm and they do paint up nicely.

They'll soon be on their way to France (very fittingly), to join the rest of the force.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend everyone!

SOLD! For Sale: Painted FIW French for Muskets and Tomahawks

EDIT: These are now sold!

Dear readers, I have decided to sell my French for the FIW. This is a complete 200 points force for Muskets and Tomahawks consisting of:
10 Compagnies Franches de la Marine
1 Compagnies Franches de la Marine Officer
6 Canadian Milicien (Militia)
5 Huron allies (ie Indians)

22 models in total.

All the models are from Northstar, except the militia which are from Galloping Major. They are painted and based to a high wargaming standard by me. All the models are matt varnished.

I'm looking to sell them for £149 plus shipping from Sweden. Payment through PayPal.

To sweeten the deal I can throw in 12 unpainted FIW armed civilians from Redoubt Miniatures. For an extra cost, I can paint up these civilians to match the already painted miniatures.

Below are some more pictures of the miniatures. Please note, none of the terrain or movement trays in the pictures above or below are part of the deal.

If you're interested, please contact me at: jonas[dot]mockelstrom[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks for looking!

The complete force.

Indians

Compagnies Franches de la Marine

Canadian militia

Muskets&Tomahawks Second Game – AAR

We had our second game of Muskets&Tomahawks on Monday. Once again it was my French against Dalauppror's Mohawks and we used the same forces as last time. The Indians got the Raid mission while the French had another go at Scouting.

This time we added in side plots to maybe even out the game a bit, as our last game was fairly one-sided. Dalauppror rolled "I'll prove my worth" – his Sachem had to charge an enemy unit of at least 3 models, and survive the melee. I got "Usurpation", which meant none of my units could move within 4 inches of my Officer. Tricky stuff indeed.

The board seen from the French side.

Just like last time we both started with all of our units on blinds, which led to some tentative first activations. The Mohawks moved with the majority of their units on their left flank, towards the buildings, and a small detachment was sent to stop the coming French advance on their right flank.

Meanwhile the French more or less mirrored the Mohawks by splitting their forces between both flanks.

The Mohawks set up a couple of units in the deep wood to try to halt the French coming their way, while two units moved out of the woods towards the settlement. The French didn't want to risk anything by revealing themselves before they had a good opportunity to shoot and so stayed in the woods. This meant the Indians arrived unopposed at the settlement and could set fire to the first building.

The Mohawks set fire to the first building ...

... while the Canadian militia opens fire on them.

With the Indians now in the open, the Canadian militia swept round the settlement and traded shots with the Mohawks who had set fire to the building. However, the shooting proved ineffective for both sides.

The compagnie franches de la marine advancing cautiously,
spying some Mohawks (or is it?) up ahead.

Meanwhile the compagnie franches de la marine advanced cautiously on the left flank – they had seen something in the woods up ahead that made them wary to get too close. Finally they decided to move up only to find it had been a bird or an animal (eg it was a dummy blind). Instead they fired off a few shots at the Mohawks near the second building, across the field, but as usual the French shooting was ineffective.

The compagnie franches de la marine true to form – no hits this time either.

The Mohawks now set fire to the second building, which spurred the compagnie franches de la marine to speed up their advance against the fourth and final sector to scout. However, they were keen to stay in cover and so choose the longer way, going around the deep woods.

Back on the other flank the French officer together with the Huron Indians (fashionably late to the party) moved back and forth, scouting the third sector while trying to get a good shot at the Mohawk forces camped in the woods. Some uncoordinated movement while retreating saw the Indians getting too close to the officer, which unfortunately meant the French side plot was spoilt. After some more, largely ineffective shooting by the French, the Mohawks saw their chance and charged their enemies, cutting down most of them.

I now had made a series of mistakes which would cost me the game. Up until now I had had the victory, not within grasp, but certainly within sight. My mistake was not being aggressive enough with my compagnie franches de la marine, while being too aggressive with my other forces. Had I advanced faster up the left flank (although I couldn't know the blind was a dummy, I had superiority in numbers and morale and probably could have stood up well in a fight) and then taken the shorter route in the open it was very likely I would have reached the final quarter of the board to scout. Meanwhile, the Indians and the Officer should have stayed in the safety of the woods and then begun to retreat, together with the militia, to the edge of the board were they could exit when the compagnie franches de la marine had done their scouting work.

It probably wouldn't have been that easy, of course the Mohawks would put up a hard fight and chase my retreating forces, but maybe I could have pulled it off!

Look out boys, the Indians are coming!

Well, it was too late now and instead the Mohawks could hunt the retreating French unopposed – cutting down both the French officer and the last Huron, before closing in on the militia – and also move up to block the advance of the Compagnie Franches de la marine. We had to end the game earlier as the time was up, but it was clear the Mohawks were the winners and the French once again had failed.

The goal in sight!
But those pesky Mohawks will soon thwart the French plans.

This game was much more uncertain than the first, and as such much more fun. Still, there certainly are some things to mull over ... After the game we discussed my force composition. We both felt the Mohawks, who had 2 more units than the French, were a more flexible force. It's possible I could take better advantage of the large 10 man squad of the compagnie franches de la marine, but I'm now looking at alternative forces which would give me more but smaller units. I haven't cracked that one yet though ...

We will take a break from Muskets&Tomahawks for a while now – our next scheduled game will be another playtest of Lion Rampant. Dan has done some significant revisions of the rules, and I'm looking forward to see how they change the game.

Finally, a warm welcome to the new followers Dave B and Rodger. I hope you'll like my blog!

Muskets&Tomahawks First Game – AAR and Some Thoughts

So I played my first game of Muskets&Tomahawks against Dalauppror's Mohawks on Monday night. It was both a fun and a little frustrating experience. This is a short AAR, unfortunately with just one picture as I was too busy playing the game to remember taking photos, and some general thoughts on the game at the end.

We started by setting up the terrain according to the rules. After some discussion we decided that all areas – except some which we clearly defined – not covered by terrain were "light wood" and counted as difficult terrain. This would have no effect on the movement of our troops as all units had the Scout trait, but they would of course still benefit from the cover.

We then rolled for Missions: the Mohawks got the Slaughter mission and the French a Scouting mission. This meant we had to scour up some civilians for me to defend. I then made a stupid mistake when choosing which table edge to deploy on (or rather enter from) and this more or less cost me the game. The civilians were deployed behind one of the buildings, as far away from the indians' edge as possible. Unfortunately, this meant I had to place them on the edge of the forest with the only clear area on the other side of the building (nearer the indians).

As this was our first game, and we were concentrating on learning the basics, we didn't include weather or side plots.

All units started on blinds which lead to a very tentative first activations. The only unit without a blind were the civilians who tried to flee into the forest. Well, that didn't go too well as the -2 penalty to movement in difficult terrain meant they could move just 1 inch each activation.

Here is picture of the board after a few activations. The French entered from the left and the Mohawks deployed on the right table edge. The civilians started just to left of the building in the center. The inside of the area marked in red counted as open (except of course the field and the buildings), everything else was either light or dense wood, or difficult terrain. Instead of blinds markers we used single models and put stickers under the bases to show if they were units or dummys.

The battlefield. Click on the picture for a larger view.

The indians in the bottom of the picture moved silently and swiftly through the woods, charged the slow moving civilians and slaughtered every last one of them before the French could stop the Mohawks. Here we struggled a bit with the rules, as it's not very clear how you handle the end of a melee with troops still alive on both sides.

Looking at the remaining number of cards it was now clear that the French had no chance of winning the game, but we played on anyway. I was keen to at least get my troops into some action, as they effectively had yet done nothing but move.

The Compagnies Franches de la marine were forced off their blind and then opened fire on the indians. However, a rather disorganized placement meant the shooting was quite ineffective – and made worse by my bad dice rolling.

The Mohawks answered by charging the nearby militia unit and again cutting down all of their enemies without getting so much as a scratch in return. My bad dice rolling continued, and this was beginning to get very frustrating.

The saviours of the French honour came in form of the allied Hurons. On the left flank (top left in the picture above) they had crept up silently and now opened fire on their hated foe the Mohawks, a group of which was lurking in the forest ahead of them. And at last the dice were with me – one Mohawk fell down dead.

And that was the end of the game.

So in summary, an interesting game but very frustrating – first the misstake in deployment and then the very bad dice rolling. Still, some good lessons to ponder for future games, and some questions about the rules.

• Deployment! Think carefully about how you deploy and if you can choose which side to deploy on, choose wisely.
• Do not get into melee with indians. Better to stand back and shoot as they will break rather easily when shot at.
• Placement within the unit is very important as friendly miniatures block line of fire. Or so was our understanding of the rules anyway. Can anyone please confirm this?
• The 180 degree "seeing arc" means it's pretty easy to spot and get a line of sight to the enemy and therefore (or so it was in this game at least) facing is less important than placement within the unit.
• Despite re-reading the rules, it's still not clear how you handle the end of melees when there are miniatures left on both sides. The general view on the M&T forum seems to be that the melee ends if the side forced to take a reaction test gets a Flight or Recoil result.
• One other thing which isn't clear in the rules is if Officers are a blind on their own or if they "hang on" to another unit. As they normally count as unit by themselves this would indicate they are on their own blind (this is how we played it), but a confirmation would be nice.

After some reading on the forum, it seems this particular combination of missions (Slaughter vs Scouting) can lead to some very one-sided games, just as we experienced.

Anyway, we have our next game planned for tomorrow and hopefully it will be a more even match this time. And I'll try to take some more pictures this time.

Finally, a warm welcome to the new followers David and Monty. I hope you'll like my blog!

FIW French

As promised, here is a group shot and some detail pictures "in character" of the entire 200 points French FIW force for Muskets&Tomahawks. For more closeups, take a look at the earlier posts.

Huron Indians ready for the dirty work.
Miniatures from North Star.

The log cabin is a prepainted model from Pegasus. Prepainted? Yeah, to make a long story short, I ordered one of the unpainted Pegasus kits along with some other stuff from a certain pretty well-known Internet retailer. The other stuff arrived after a while, though some of it was out of stock and took more than a while to arrive. However, the log cabin was nowhere to be seen. After a long, long, looong wait (and a couple of gentle reminders) they finally sent me this. I couldn't be bothered to send it back so I kept it. I will probably repaint it at some time – those blue windows are pretty hideous – and make a new roof.

Compagnie franches de la marine with an officer lurking in the background.
Miniatures from North Star.

Canadian militia.
Miniatures from Galloping Major.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this bunch. Hopefully they'll perform nicely on the tabletop as well.

Have a great weekend everyone!

FIW French 8

Well, here they are – the final (at least for now!) unit for my French FIW force for Muskets&Tomahawks.

I struggled a bit with the war paintings, trying a couple of different patterns and redoing some before settling on the ones you see here. At first I wasn't too pleased with them but now I think they turned out alright. The Hurons apparently used purple, as well as red and black, for their war paintings but I saved that colour for potential future reinforcements ...

Anyway, here is a shot of the group from behind.

The miniatures are all from North Star.

As always it's very satisfying to complete a project, even a small one such as this. I have some work left on the movement trays, although these are a bonus and not really part of this project. When those are finished, I'll take some snaps of the assembled force.

Our first game is booked for Monday the 18th – I'm looking forward to the French's first outing!

FIW French 7

I had hoped to have the indians for my French force finished by this weekend, but as real life have been very hectic this was not to be. Some progress have been made though, as you can see. What's left to do are highlighting the clothing, the wood parts, some details (straps, bags, knifes etc) and of course the war paints.

My aim is to have them done by next weekend. Barring any unforseen interruptions this shouldn't be a problem. I hope ...

It will be good to have this project finished as it's been dragging on a bit too long due to illness and whatnot. Now I'm itching to get started on my Novgorod force for the Baltic Crusade project. We've already played a couple of games with Dalauppror's excellent crusaders and heathens, and I feel the heathens could use some heavy cavalry support in the form of Novgorodian druzhinas to match those Swedish knights.

Oh, and of course we should get some games of Muskets&Tomahawks going!

FIW French 6

Just when I'd beaten the stomach flu last week, I got hit with another cold that left me knocked-out for a couple of days. This sure is turning out to be a winter of sickness.

Consequently I've not made much progress on the indians for my French force for FIW. As you can see, only the bases have been drybrushed and the skin parts have had their first layer painted on. Models are all from North Star.

Let's hope I'm back in the saddle for real this time, and will be able to press on with these models in the coming week. Then hopefully they will be finished (or mostly finished anyway) by next weekend. Fingers crossed and all that ...

Have a great weekend everyone!

FIW French 5

This is the second unit for my French FIW force to be finished — the Canadian militia. The milicien were tough fighters who saw a lot of action due to the shortage of regular troops in New France. The red caps would have them originating from Quebec, although this coordinated system wasn't in place until 1759, when the war was all but over. But mainly, I just picked a colour that looked good and would make them easier to recognize on the gaming table! Four of them are dressed for cold weather in capotes — hooded coats made of thick wool, typical of this area and era.

I said in my last post I found the miniatures from Galloping Major a bit lacking, and as you can see they are not as finely detailed as the ones from North Star, but with some paint on them they turned out all right.

Here are some close-ups:

I experimented a bit more on the bases of these miniatures, adding some extra details, which I think looks quite good but I'm not "there" just yet. The movement tray in the top photo is a work in progress; I will add a bit more details to it. I also did some more detailing on the bases of the Compagnie franches de la marine unit, to bring them up to the same standard (sorry for the slightly blurry photo):

Now it's just the indians to do! I'm really looking forward to painting them, and to try my hand at some war paintings.

FIW French 4

Finally I've made some real headway on the canadian militia/milicien for FIW. There's still quite a lot of work to be done, but I've started on the highlighting – the flesh areas and the red caps are done – so I'm getting there.

The miniatures are all from Galloping Major Wargames and I have to say they are unfortunately not as good as the ones from North Star: the poses and proportions are a bit odd to my eye. However, it's the faces that are the biggest problems, they lack in details and just look ... weird. As the miniatures are not exactly cheap this was quite disappointing to be honest. Still, with a little paint on them, I think they'll come out good enough. The plan is to have them all done by the next weekend, then it's on to the indians ("At last!" I hear you say).

Finally a warm welcome to my new followers: Grimsi Grogs, James Brewerton and MiniMike. I hope you'll like the blog.

Have a great week everyone!

FIW French 3

This will be a short update without pictures I'm afraid, as this past week has not been very good hobby-wise due to both me and my son coming down with the flu. As a result I've not gotten very far on the unit of canadian militia, just priming them and drybrushing the bases. Although to be honest, the priming was done last weekend while waiting for the varnish to dry on the compagnie franches de la marines.

I've also drybrushed six of these nifty irregular movement trays from Warbases. Originally I planned to use them for Dux Britanniarum, but thought they looked good when Dalauppror used them for his Mohawks and I've also seen a couple of battle reports were they were used for Muskets and Tomahawks, so I thought I'd give them a go.

Now that I'm feeling better, it's back to the militia. Hopefully I'll be back with a new update during the weekend, this time with pictures.

FIW French 2

I've finally finished my first unit for the French and Indian War project, the Compagnie Franches de la Marine. As I spent some extra time on these, adding three highlights (or rather a re-applying of the basecoat and then two highlights) after the washes was applied, coupled with the many fiddly details, they sure took their time. I went for a new approach with the bases, giving them a little more attention than usual, to make them look more forest-like.

Both the miniatures and the bases came out quite nice I think, so in the end it was worth the extra time spent on them. I'm particulary pleased with the whites and off-whites on the shirts and capotes, even if there are always ways to improve my painting. I'll also keep experimenting with the bases as they still could use some extra details to make them look even better.

Anyway, here are some closeups.

 

All miniatures are from North Star Minis.

Now it's on to the next unit – the miliciens.

And finally, a warm welcome to my new follower CLAM. Thanks for joining up!

FIW French 1

Right, that's all the fun and games over with for now – it's time to get back to business.

As I wrote in my Projects for 2013 post, I will be doing a 200 points starter force for the French and Indian War rules Muskets and Tomahawks. After some back and forth, I settled on the following list:
10 Compagnies Franches de la Marine
1 Compagnies Franches de la Marine Officer
6 Canadian Milicien
5 Huron allies (ie Indians)

This is a (not very good) WIP shot of the first unit for project, The Compagnies Franches de la Marine.

The miniatures are all from North Star.

The "de la Marines" were, contrary to what the name might have you think, not marines, but rather colonial infantry troops under the command of the Naval department, tasked with protecting the fur trade and the civilians of New France. They were experienced in the small scale, guerilla like warfare, first practiced by their more local brethren the Canadian militias (milicien). These tactics were initially very successful against the numerously superior British troops, who used tactics more suited to the open battlefields of Europe, and gave the French the upper hand in the beginning of the war.

When posted in the wilderness, the de la Marines often discarded their impractical uniforms and instead adopted the dress of the colonists and of the native Americans of the area.

As you can see these are really nice miniatures, with a great ragtag look. To get some sort of unity, all the headgears are painted blue (except for the officer's tricorne). The only problem with the models are the details – there are so many of them it takes a good while to paint them all! I've also decided that since there are so few miniatures in the starter force, I will spend a little extra time on them and do an additional highlight or two, which of course takes even more time. To be honest, I'm beginning to get a little frustrated with the slow pace of this project – as I've now gone back to work I have to fit in my hobby time on the evenings. This is not helped by the fact that my opponent Dalauppror seems to churn out those Mohawk warriors like there's no tomorrow. But still, if I continue at this speed I should be able to have all the miniatures ready by our mutual deadline of the end of February.

Finally, let me welcome my new followers: Baconfat, Ellie Great, Justin Penwith, Lee Hadley, MrJ, Schrumpfkopf, TamsinP and Tony. Thanks for joining up! I hope you'll like the blog and drop by for a comment or two from time to time.