Happy New War!

 The Trossian War campaign offers a lot of possibilities for narrative fun and complications, but I repeat myself.  It uses Featherstonian "Chance" cards to add a level of...uh, chance...to the proceedings, some of which offer the possibility of adding third party elements to your forces.  Painted up in the Imperial purple, these bases can also be used as rebellious militia, or even an expeditionary force from outside the Trossian continent!

It's not a large force, worth only around 20AP, but that's half the size of a normal army used in a bog-standard non-campaign game of 2x2 Napoleonics.  Three line infantry and one each of grenadiers, light infantry, heavy and light cavalry, and one HQ.

The left over pieces of the army groups provided enough material to create a small wagon train (left) and a military HQ.  These will be nice if the events of the campaign lead to a raid on a supply train or a 'capture the general' style battle.

The set includes one final little 'capture the flag' marker.  Below you can see the square fields surrounded by hedges.  Irregular sells those hedges in line, but they are very small and perfectly sized to create a pair of small pastures.  Can't have a pasture without livestock, so I bought a flock of sheep from Irregular, based it, and now they are penned up next to the HQ in the photo below.  A pasture will make for a nice little fortified area for the armies, and a nice little wrinkle to add to any battlefield.

Make sure you check the Trossian War blog for updates on the conduct of the festivities.

Scattered Shots and Thoughts

 Time to make a scene!

Can't fight for the throne of the Trossian Empire if you don't have a continent of Tros to fight on.  So let's take a look at some of that scatter  This is all 2mm terrain from either Irregular Miniatures or PicoArmor.

Irregular trees on the right and, believe it
or not, hills on the left.
Very low hills.

Some water features, all from PicoArmor.

Not sure that I have a use for the coastal fortress or the light house, but the boat will make for a fine objective.  And even if they don't have a use, they add a touch of scenery.

Towns and such from Irregular

Now that I've got these painted, I can map out and paint up a few 'drop cloths'.  With the colors in pace and the river and widths established, we can move on to the next step.

PicoArmor churches, with a variety of extra steeples,
so you could make all these Orthodox if you want.
Figures for scale.

One thing to note on this, Irregular makes a much larger cathedral that includes the stone walkway you see in the center.  That cast wasn't very good, and it was way too big to fit into my storage, so the centerpiece didn't make the final cut.  I still used the stone base for a PicoArmor building, to...mixed results.  Looks great, but:

Now the church doesn't fit into my storage box.  The colored boxes are 4" by 6" photo storage boxes that fit neatly into a carrything case.  That courtyard makes the cathedral just a little too big.  So I snapped off the steeple and now when I want to use there is some assebly required.  Gotta roll with those punches.

A 2mm Primer

With three full armies of these tiny little blokes under my belt, I'm finally ready to share some experience with you, dear reader.  By no means an expert, the best I can offer is my experience working with this incredibly small scale.

First up, when you spray coat them, use a very light touch.  As you can see, a light dusting provides highlights to the raised areas, and a bit of shadow in the deep crevices.  As smaller figures, you don't even need to use the black primer, white drybrush method with them - the shadows arise naturally.

I've mounted my primed figures on small tongue depressors or craft sticks for ease of handling.  No chance to handle these figs any other way!

Painting was a breeze.  Using nothing more than the usual washes and a little dry brushing it is a simple matter to pick out just enough detail to get these guys looking like a proper army.  You want to use bright primary colors, just as one does with 6mm figures, and a little light drybrush to lighten them up one more notch and you're good.

Here you can see what a simple schema of yellow on white can do to make these guys look good.  The horses are a mix of colors hit with a unifying wash of dark ink.

The next issue is, of course, basing.  I've opted for simple 1-inch square bases for my figures as they can be used individually or combined to create larger formations - depending on the ruleset.

These craft squares are only a nickel each, and while they are a bit thick compared to the units...they provide a better handle for the unit than the figures.  They have a nice rounded corner, making them pleasing to the eye, and only cost about five cents each from Jeff Bezos' Crazy Internet Emporium of Goods and More Goods.

Next comes the ground cover.  A simple fine sand affixed with PVA glue (unthinned) holds both the sand and the figures in place.  The material I use has a nice unsorted character, with the larger coral pieces making for nice big boulders to break up the green monotony.  

This is old school basing, and very traditional.  It's traditional because it works, particularly at this scale where static grass just isn't an option.  Even the smallest grass would look like massive vines!

And finally comes the painting of the grass.  Here you can see what each step looks like with the base color on the bottom row, a light green highlight, and then a very faint touch of mustard yellow to dull the contrast and give them a bright, summery feeling.  The top row has a few boulders picked out in dark gray, if you can make them out.

With the fields in place, the red uniforms really jump right out, giving these British figures the characteristic color for which they earned the moniker "Redcoats".

Tomorrow, we'll look at a comparison of the three uniform colors done to date.

 

Back to the History Books

Behold, the first teaser image of the Totally Not the Austrian faction for the Wars of the Trossian Succession.

Horse, foot, and guns.

It feels darn good to jump back into the historical saddle after a too long hiatus.  Yeah yeah, imagi-nations are barely historical but whatever.  Let me walk you through some of the process.

This project involves a whole lot of first times.  It's my first foray into 2mm gaming.  It's my first venture into a umpiring a grand-strategic game designed to generate tabletop battles.  It's my first toe-dip into the black powder era.  That's a whole lot of uncertainty to deal with in a project.

To help ease into things, I've had to make a lot of concessions to gaming.  Irregular Miniatures, God Bless 'Em, sell pre-made army packs for use with their black powder rulesets.  It looks like the army packs have been designed with Irregular's house rules in mind.  At this point it is too early to know whether that composition would have worked for my preferred ruleset.  At the same time, it is too late to ever know, because I've swapped out a few strips of figures here and there.

For example, my Totally Not French army comes with very little in the way of cavalry.  Very little.  Which might work for a Marlburnian game, but would leave them at a distinct disadvantage in a battle set closer to the Napoleonic era.  Fortunately, the 2mm soldiers are enough like each other that you can swap strips around fairly easily.  Provided your rank and file blocks are the same size, they can be swapped around with impunity.  This allowed me to achieve a more reasonable balance between and among the various nations.  The Not-French are still a little light in the Cavalry department, and the Not-Russians have very little heavy cavalry on hand.  

Which brings us back around to the NotAustrians.  My first ever 2mm army, they turned out pretty good.  Yellow on white with a bit of red thrown in for flare, they stand out against the light green bases and stand together as a unified team.  Sure, they are a bit monolithic, with no variety in and among the regiments, but at this scale that is of little matter.  The figures could easily be painted with more variety if one were looking to recreate a specific battle, it just isn't appropriate for Tros.

Of course, it's easy to distinguish armies when you only have one.  Check back in a week or so to see how these units compare to the NotRussians.

Irregular Army Packs

Bust my buttons, I'd done all my planning for Napoleonic wargaming, then went and ordered Seven Years War figures like a complete and utter plank!

No worries.  My next big project is a campaign set in the imagi-nation of the Trossian Empire, specifically to help account for my own blundering inexperience with the horse and musket era.  We, like the best generals, shall roll with the punches, self-inflicted though they may be.  What this means is that the Trossian Empire campaign takes place in an alternate 1775, where the big battalions are gaining steam, but horse artillery has yet to see effective battlefield use.  We're in that odd transition between SYW and Napoleon, and fighting decidedly ahistoric fights with as much of a nod toward the real world as possible.

My loss is your gain.  Let us make wargaming gold from my mis-ordered straw.  Here then for those of you who may be considering a purchase of Irregular Miniatures "Marlburian Army Packs", a reasonably accurate accounting of the contents of each nation-specific army pack. 

(Figure Code) x (Number in the pack): Description of the code

Some of these may be a bit off.  When providing my census, it took me some time to really settle into the differences between some of these codes.  At this small of a scale a few mm either way can make a difference, that my untrained eyes didn't track.  Consider all these lists ballpark numbers and don't blame Irregular if I got any of them wrong. The hand-written notes in each photo are my first stab at it, the typed rosters may have a few changes made on further review.  And if you've got any corrections, drop a comment and I'll change them as needed.

If you want a much better census of what each specific code represents and what it looks like, check out the Tiny Tin Troops website.  It has many nice photos of each, plus a reasonably full accounting of the 2mm terrain items on offer over at Irregular.

Austrian

BG1 x 8: Foot in two ranks of ten

BG3 x 3: Foot in skirmish, five figures

BG4 x 8: Lancers in loose order, one rank of six figures

BG5 x 20: Cavalry in one close order rank of eight

BG6 x 6: Artillery and caissons

BG7 x 3: Mounted trio of generals

BG13 x 6: Pair of mounted brigade commanders

BG14 x 36: Foot in three ranks of eight

BG23 x 6: Foot in loose order, ten figures

BG130 x 1: Army HQ

 

British

BG1 x 42: Foot in two ranks of ten

BG2 x 27: Foot in three ranks of eight

BG3 x 3: Foot in skirmish, five figures

BG4 x 10: Lancers in loose order, six figures

BG5 x 29: Cavalry in one rank of eight

BG6 x 6: Artillery and caissons (missing one caisson)

BG7 x 3: Mounted trio of generals

BG8 x 1:  Horses and minders

BG10 x 6: Cavalry, lancers, six figures

BG13 x 8: Pair of mounted brigade commanders

 

French

BG2 x 60: Foot in three ranks of eight

BG6 x 8: Artillery and caissons

BG7 x 6: Mounted trio of generals

BG8 x 1:  Horses and minders

BG10 x 6: Lancers in loose order, six figures

BG13 x 6: Pair of mounted brigade commanders

BG14 x 30: Foot in two ranks of thirteen figures

 

Prussian

BG1 x 48: Foot in two ranks of ten

BG3 x 6: Foot in skirmish line, five figures

BG4 x 16: Lancers in loose order, six figures

BG5 x 30: Cavalry in one rank of eight

BG6 x 6: Artillery and caissons

BG7 x 3: Mounted trio of generals

BG8 x 1:  Horses and minders

BG13 x 6: Pair of mounted brigade commanders

 

Russian

BG1 x 40: Foot in two ranks of ten

BG5 x 20: Cavalry in one rank of eight

BG6 x 8: Artillery and caissons

BG7 x 3: Mounted trio of generals

BG4 x 6: Lancers in loose order, six figures

BG13 x 6: Pair of mounted brigade commanders

BG18 x 8: Mounted Cossacks in loose order, five figures

BG23 x 4: Foot in loose order, ten figures

BG130 x 1: Army HQ

 

The Wars of the Trossian Succession

Got a new blog that you might be interested in checking out: The Wars of the Trossian Succession.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my current big project involves a bit of the old toe dipping into Napoleonics.  And by toe-dipping, I mean taking a headlong plunge from the top of the cliffs into water I can only hope is at high tide!  Rather than stitch together a string of scenarios using some thin narrative connective tissue, I wanted to run a map-based, grand scale strategic game to generate battles with a lot more meaning to them.

To cut down on the research, I drew the map of a fictional black powder continent called Tros.  To cut down on the creative work I very cleverly drafted some friends into running five nations that march to war across that continent.  The death of the Trossian Emperor has left the land in turmoil and without his leadership the old enmities have sprung back into play.  Some fight for liberty, some fight for the Emperor's Throne, and some fight for love of the game.

It's a fairly big project, and deserves its own home on the internet.  The blog will stand as a sort of war journal, or complete record of the campaign at one central location.  Anything more general - figure prep and painting, rule considerations, and overall backstage maunderings will show up here.  As will irregular and brief updates to the campaign status.  Naturally, the battles fought across my kitchen table will feature heavily on The Joy of Wargaming, but for the most detailed and up-to-date action on the bloody fields of Tros, add a pointer to The Wars of the Trossian Succession.