The idea was that my regular wargaming opponent and I were going to refight the battles of the Franco-Prussian War on or about their 150th anniversaries.
As I explained in a follow-up post, this was a toy-soldier project in that the battles were to be refought using 54mm plastic figures.
That prompted further posts, starting here, on how to paint plastic soldiers - not as easy as it might seem.
Converting such figures proved even trickier ... until I discovered Tricky Stick.
I then had to decide on suitable rules, finally settling on a set I adapted from Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame, but with a big assist from Neil Thomas's Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe.
We tested the rules on a 14x11 5in square-grid in the Battle of Colonieblanche, and I adjusted them slightly before we began our refights with the Battle of Wissembourg/Weissenburg.
Both battles, we felt, showed the rules worked well, but unfortunately covid intervened, and the project went onto the backburner, with the battles' anniversaries passing in (relatively) quick succession, but unmarked by us.
However, the time feels right to start up again, and that means refighting the Battle of Spicheren, which requires, among other things, a lot of trees.
These proved harder to source than expected, especially as I did not want to spend a small fortune.
I had no luck on eBay or amazon.co.uk, but eventually found two suitable-looking bags of 12 trees each at amazon.com, which came to £38.93, including postage.
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| At first I thought the bags were identical, but on further inspection the contents are slightly different |
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| Bag One - looking good, despite a fair amount of foliage breaking off in transit |
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| Bag Two - taller, thinner, but just as good-looking |
The only disappointing aspect is that the trees in the first bag are not very stable, but with any luck a solution will not prove too difficult.
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| Trees, with a French infantryman and dragoon for comparison |
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