Tarleton's boys

Since my last blog, the discussions regarding the UK leaving the EU have intensified all over the internet and probably elsewhere too. As a gamer I can accept no responsibility whatsoever for this controversy. Instead, I spent last month in eager anticipation of the Fife and Drum miniatures that Jasper had personally carried across the Atlantic Ocean for me. As you might have heard, there was a gathering of great wargaming souls on the 7th of February this year. Suffice to say that Poldercon has earned its place under the sun and hopefully more editions will follow. That’s even more desirable now that I’ve been cajoled into the organisation . And as should be, the larger part of the who-is-who in Dutch miniature wargaming was there, including Jasper with my Fife and Drum miniatures. Oh joy!

Unpacking them resulted in somewhat mixed emotions, however. It turned out that the Fife and Drum miniatures make the Perry figures look like giants! Obviously, they were not going to fit together in a single unit. On the upside, there was a free miniature of a trumpeter there, actually labelled as such, so no mistakes there. Normally I have no qualms in sticking miniatures from different manufacturers on bases together. As people are of different shapes and sizes, so are the miniatures is my reasoning. I myself am six feet tall, consider myself 25mm, Jasper, at 6’3” will be 28mm and ‘Big Rich’ of Lard Island, somewhere north of Jasper’s height, can be a heroic 30mm figure. Mixed together in a unit of French line or a platoon of German WW2 infantry, this gives a rather nice representation of the diversity of mankind.

But here were two manufacturers’ products, one set in 25mm and the other in 30mm. The pictures will tell you my predicament as there were six Perry miniatures and eight Fife and Drum and they were supposed to make up a single unit of 12, with Banastre being what he’s best at: the dashing command figure. I’m going to solve this by basing the miniatures by manufacturer. There will be two bases of Perry (3 each) and two of Fife and Drums (3 each) and Banastre will take the extra trumpeter to lead the brigade. But anyway, that will be in the next blog as my studies have caught up with me. New semester, new challenge. This one is on genocide, so there something completely different.

In the time I had between the two semesters I managed to almost complete my English force. It now consists of two artillery pieces, two highland battalions and three loyalist battalions. In the Perry leaflet it was mentioned that the Loyalist started the conflict with usually green uniforms.The leaflet doesn’t state which kind of green so I choose a light one, (Vallejo 319 USMC Tankcrew) and Vallejo 70893 US Dark Green. The latter was inspired by the series ‘Turn’ which I borrowed from Patrck “Land of the Free’ Diederiks. They do not depict loyalist forces in green, but most of the civilians wear some sort of green and I envisaged people being called up and use a lot of civilian colours for their uniforms.

I also played a game with Patrick in order for him to practise for Poldercon and for me to get to know the rules a little bit better. As I said earlier, there is a lot of accounting in this ruleset, which I think is a downside, but Patrick’s markers help a lot to ease the process. The game went both ways, but I think one of the defining moments was a well executed fire and advance order which my dark green Loyalists performed to a tee. Their fire at a battalion of continentals forced them to retire. My loyalists followed up by advancing and firing another volley into the already confused ranks of the rebels, forcing them to retreat once more, leaving a wide gap in the continental line. I wasn’t able to follow up as darkness set in and we had to end the game. In other words, it was already past eleven and we had to vacate the premises. Still, a nice game in a good atmosphere, with lots of lessons learned for both sides. The English were of course the moral victors as I commanded them (…)

So, hopefully I’ll get to finish Tarleton and his boys and make a start with the light battalion that is still waiting in order to complete my British force. Rogers’ rangers will have to be added later as I found them inspirational in the series Turn, but that will probably be a purchase to be done at this years’ Crisis in Antwerp. I also managed to buy the big Warlord Pegasus Bridge box on Poldercon with a nice discount…. But that is another story entirely.

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