Pontoon bridge Terrain 32 and some Bavarian chevaulegers WIP

 Here are some elderly airfix pontoons I came across in a box from the loft that I'd forgotten I had and some spare Rendra pontoons. Inspired by Aly's (relatively) recent engineering post I thought I'd build a few  pontoon bridges from them, the first one had the bridge boards from the warfayre pontoon set (it was spare as I'm using the pontoons on their carriages, so they were redundant but waste not want not!) the second set of bridge boards were scratch built from card, balsa, matchsticks and mostly the ever present coffee stirrers, mostly cut in the car!

With my 100 years war figure for scale. I think Im going to need some wider river sections!

The third set uses the spare Rendra pontoons and scratch built boards as before, I've added vertical posts with rope on them at the end of the bridges which I've seen in some illustrations and gives a bit of lift I think.

With added cavalry for scale.

Primed in Halfords brown,a bit darker than the Army painter leather brown and finished with a bit of emulsion, I think they'll do for a number of periods,  I know they're 1/72 WW2 but they're probably going to see action from at least the Great Italian Wars  onwards (mainly for the Spanish) and possibly earlier, all in glorious 28mm! 

Oh and for Chris some WIP shots of my snide Bavarian chevaulegers, Perry French post Bardin chasseurs with Victrix heads on Warlord ECW horses with portmanteas from wargames factory WAS cavalry ( very dissapointing horses, couldnt mount Austrian dragoons on them, might do as Spanish mounts or end up pulling carts!) Oh and light cavalry horse heads courtesy of Perry British light dragoons, theres a couple of warlord chasseurs/ lancer bodies in the mix  there too!

And finally, at last,I've got something done for Daves summer of scenery!

All the best 

Iain 

Valour and Fortitude Napoleonic 91

 With the new Valour and Fortitude rules we decided to have a Napoleonic battle, with the British trying to prevent the French from leaving the table, loosley based on a peninsular battle . We set up with two brigades apeace with the French advancing up the track and the British in line.

The British cavalry arrive on Des's left flank on the second turn

So in the new version of the rules the French need to reform into line before attacking the Brits, meaning theyre in musket range for a go before they can attack, not great against British disciplined musketry!

You can no longer shoot and then assault, which makes sense I think.

The order of photos got mixed up Im afraid, the whole photo upload thing was a pain in the backside, it had just been updated, which is always fun?

The infantry slugged it out, Des's cavalry appeared and we had a swirling melee that ended with most of his cavalry being eliminated, the impetious nature of the British cavalry wasnt particularily helpful for them, if they won a melee they had to attack the next unit,with an additional penalty. 

Having lost a brigade and reaching our declared end time, Des conceded,the French had also lost less units so were ahead on victory points.

The new rules worked well I thought and its just great to spend an evening pushing figures around,rolling dice and talking nonsence!

Still trying to get some terrain finished but precious little hobby time happenig at the moment!

All the best

Iain

Battle of Barletta 1503 Valour and Fortitude AAR Great Italian Wars 57

 Des came over and we had a go at a battle from Peter Sides Renaissance battles, although it only seems to be in his book?

 Every where else its a siege and a challenge/tournament between 13 Italian men at arms and 13 French. Still it gave us a nice excuse to get a Spanish army and a French army out on the table. The Spanish defended and the Swiss came on in waves , the French Gendarmes destroyed the jinets and hit a landsknecht pike block in the flank and the Swiss chewed through everything else!

We didnt have any stats for Spanish jinets, which I think is an oversight and the barrier didnt favour the Spanish enough as the shot range has been reduced so the Spanish only got a closing fire/melee bonus which wasnt anyware near enough . The Swiss are also almost twice as good as the landsknechts which also seems a little excessive, not to Des of course and he was quite happy that his French Gendarmes were miles ahead of everyone else too, I think we should have had only one or two Gendarme units and the others as men at arms, but first go and all that, it was great fun and Valour and Fortitude worked well for the period, I just think we might come up with a few house rules to make it more historical, unless Im playing the French in which case Ill keep them as written! Only joking, theres a new, apparently the last version of Valour and Fortitude out at least on the facebook group and we have had an entertaing French versus Brits that Ill post in due course.

All the best 

Iain