Cheapo Risk Update

The three main protagonists of my Risk Napoleonic enterprise are more or less done. These are the French, Austrian and Russian armies. If you follow the main blog you might know I'm not a fan of the Peninsular War, and if I touched on the subject earlier I always did the Spaniards instead of the usual Brit/Portugal forces.

This means I'm through six of the ten army boxes that came with the two games. It is time to decide the fate of the rest.

I also ordered some Warlord Epic commanders and cavalry, which are sort of in scale.

Risk:

The remainder is about 160 infantry and 48 cavalry. I'm using eight infantry and four cavalry figures per base and units of two bases per default, so this is 20 bases (10 units) of infantry and 12 (6) of cavalry. I don't really care about the artillery because there is an ample amount of guns for each faction (eight per box, I won't be using all of those).

After doing some calculation I'm omitting the Brits entirely and adding other colours instead.

6 bases infantry in full white - Saxon, Italian allies, Austrian extras (I have figures in green painted as Russians, these can be Württemberger in other theaters for example)

6 bases in cornflower blue - Bavarian and other German allies (or young/middle guard if you squint hard enough)

6 bases in brown - Grenzer, Landwehr, Portuguese, Russian Opolcheniye etc.

2 bases in red - Swiss or core Brit

4 bases cavalry in cornflower blue - allied German cav

4 bases in brown - Cossack, other irregular light cav

4 bases in red - Guard Cossack

Warlord figs:

1 sprue of French Light cav (20 horse), 1 sprue of Prussian Cav (18 horse), 2 sprues of French heavy cav (20 horse), not counting the Prussian jäger and the guns which I'll use somehow.

French heavy cav:

12x carabiniers - 3 bases of Russian, Saxon or Austrian cuirassiers (I'll paint on the front plates only)

12x dragoons - 3 bases of French dragoons

16x cuirassiers - 4 bases of French cuirassiers

French light cav:

I'll do some head swaps and conclude with 2 bases of French/Polish lancers, 2 bases of Russian dragoons and 4 commanders.

Prussian light cav:

2 bases of Austrian uhlans, 2 bases of whatever light cavalry and 2 officers.

5 French officers - I'll copy and recast a few more for Austrians/Russians.

Cheapo Risk Purchases

As you may or may not know, I have a half complete 6mm Napoleonic project, for which I purchased a big bunch of figures from Commission Figurines (see the relevant tag).

Now I got kind of fed up with that project, one because some items were missing from the big order and had not been since replaced, and two because I kind of lost momentum painting everything else. I have some Austrian infantry and cavalry and French GAC table ready, but the rest is not even primed.

I was looking out for something less complicated, and found two boxes of an old edition of the Risk boardgame, with appropriate figures. Now the cavalry in that box is not so good (they are hussar like figures with firearms instead of swords), but the rest is okay and I can deal with that (hat and cuirass conversions inbound).

There are five armies in each box, with 12 cavalry, 8 cannon and 40-odd infantry, so around six hundred figures total, good enough for large-ish armies. I'll base them with 4 cav, 2 cannon and 8 inf per base, while the bases themselves are going to be either 20x40mm or 25x50mm size. 

I think I'll make the major Napoleonic combatants out of them, starting with France, Austria and Russia. At this scale and complexity some of the figures will, of course, be interchangeable. The best thing is I can use the pre-coloured plastic to differentiate between armies until I paint them.

6mm Terrain List - Updated v2 17 December

I have completed my 6mm armies for my Schultze-Böhnstadt setting. That is a big word, more than twelve hundred 6mm figures, which makes a steady average of a hundred figures per month, considering I bought the first lot in October 2024.

Now that the figures are complete, I considered terrain, and I have to make a post to organize things and keep track of my progress. These all should be Western European themed, and I'm probably going to expand the line of buildings later to Mediterranean ones for my Formaggian Succession Wars campaign.

I try to more or less conform to terrain types defined in Maurice, but I divided the terrain to "blotchy" and "linear" sections because this makes things easier in the long run. My units are 75x25mm sized and I equate 1BW to 1"/25mm for easier calculation, so I have to take the footprint of terrain pieces into such considerations.

Blotchy terrain

The goal here is to replace the paperwork stand-ins with properly built ones.

- 1x 50x100mm footprint walled town (able to be garrisoned by one unit) - about half a dozen buildings

- 1x 75x75mm footprint walled town (able to be garrisoned by one unit) - similarly, about half a dozen buildings

Update: I'm thinking of making my towns a bit more modular, with one central piece (such as a schloss or church) and a few surrounding buildings).

Update2: one old fortress on a hill WIP, one church tile completed; one town tile WIP (requires one more painted house) and one complete.

Further, I have built some fortifications (some trench lines with gabions and chevaux-de-frise, and a large redoubt to complement the old fort - this would represent Schloss Rosenheim)

- A few inns, hamlets and other small built-in scenic pieces that are not to be garrisoned (one test piece mostly complete)

Update: this would include a windmill and a river mill.

Update2: have assembled a walled hamlet and started painting the two mills.

- 1x large wooden patch with paper mache trees (WIP)

- 2x series of paper mache trees on 25mm and 35mm round bases, two to three trees per base, two dozen in total

Update: completed

- I hope I can score some un-snowed pine trees come Christmas, last year Flying Tiger Copenhagen had some which I could butcher, I mean trim to smaller ones

Update: I made eight sections with three pine trees each.

- about half a dozen ploughed fields and grown crops, most likely 75x50 or 75x75mm footprint

Update: four yellow wheat and six green wheat fields are complete, ploughed fields should be easy to complete

- a pair of lakes and/or marshes (or marshy lakes)

Update2: still required

Linear terrain

My table is 110x70cm, so I'm going to make 110cm length of each terrain feature, in 6x5cm and 8x10cm sections unless stated otherwise. No particular reason, just to be precise about it. I'll use bases with a concave/rounded end so they could fit better.

- Brick walls, as described above

    Update: eight sections complete, won't do more for now.

- Rivers, as described above, plus one or two river bends.

Update2: five sections require gloss varnish and flocking. Five require drybrushing the river waves, varnish and flocking. 

- Roads, as described above (perhaps a bit more)

    Update: ten sections are complete, perhaps a few more bends to do.

- Paper mache hedgerows, 70cm total, 4x5cm and 5x10cm sections

    Update: Completed

- Small streams, 70cm total, 4x5cm and 5x10cm sections

    Update: completed, might require some flocking.

Word on Buildings

I'm working on a series of masters for town houses which I plan to recast with a Blue Stuff mould and a hot glue gun. Each town shall have two or three different types of houses, and perhaps a more distinct feature such as a church or market hall. I'm doing the masters from plasticard and the roof from epoxy clay to shape the roof tiles.

Project Napoleon and a Basing Conundrum

If there is a single period that lends itself to the 'grand manner' type of game, it is the times of Napoleon. I've had large and mostly complete armies in 1/72 for the period and enjoyed playing with them before I traded them off. I also refought some historical battles using makeshift 2mm match stick armies, and the virtual tabletop.

Now I'm at a point where I should start rebuilding my collection, this time in 6mm. Commission Figurines are the perfect choice for me as I can get loads of figures on the cheap and they are rather easy to paint.

My dilemma is that I already have about a thousand Commission Figurines troopers based for my SYW ImagiNations, on 75x25mm bases, and would like to be able to use them for Napoleonics as well. In this scale a dude in a bright uniform and a bicorne could be early Spanish, 1806 Saxon etc., similarly a dude in a bicorne and a blue uniform could be Revwar French, 1806 Prussian, the list goes on. 

While the more linear warfare of the SYW period favours narrow bases, for Napoleonics I'd like to perhaps increase the scale and pack my bases more thickly, so I was thinking about 60x30mm bases with infantry in 3x8 ranks and cavalry in 2x5 ranks. This of course would mean that the two collections cannot be mixed. I would also like to get some Ottomans, which could be used for both periods, so to have an army in both basing styles would mean doubling the figure count. And then Napoleonic Austrians could be used for the 1848-49 Hungarian war as well, meaning I only have to build the Hungarians and Russians...

So this is where I'm at now, planning to make a large-ish purchase in the near future with Walt at Commission F., but kind of at odds with the basing style. In the end I might just go with 75x25mm for the Napoleonics as well and double up the bases when needed. Blücher for example uses a 'stock' unit base size of 75x50mm. What I most certainly will not do is rebase my SYW figures.

This then raises the question whether I'll have enough table space to field units of that size as I currently only own a 110x70cm coffee table and I worry that the unit footprint would be too great.

Numbers, numbers...