Spanked! - Naval Action in the War of 1812 (1/1200 sailing ships)

When war was declared with Great Britain in 1812, the American navy was just in its infancy at that time and had nothing comparable to the numerous and large ships of the Royal Navy. However, the Americans built strong frigates crewed by aggressive sailors and commanded by competent captains. In duels, the American frigates would usually win.Well, not this time...

This scenario pitted the USS Constitution against HMS Guerriere in the the famous action off the East coast on 19 August 1812. The rules were a modified version of Trafalgar called Trafalgar Redux and the models were from GHQ.

Captain James Richard "Kevin" Dacres was in command a British 38 gun frigate while Isaac "Sylvain" Hull was steering a strong 44 gun American frigate, specifically built to outperform British ships of the same size.

Sent to investigate, the USS Constitution just identified a British intruder in American waters. Get ready for battle!

The American crew displayed excellent seamanship, keeping a good distance from the enemy, avoiding being shot by moving out of the British firing arc...

... while shooting at the masts to slowly, but surely destroy the enemy's sailing capacity. Everything was historically correct so far.

Then, a series of unfortunate events happened. The American crew failed a first maneuver test, a tacking maneuver, which meant that the USS Constitution was now stationary in the water and the British had the wind in good position. To understand how humiliating the situation was, a comparison is necessary. It's like, for a WW1 soldier, to fall head first into the barbed wires he was about to jump, with the butt sticking out in  the air. Another test for being taken aback resulted in heavy damage to the fore mast and severe casualties among the crew. The British frigate took this opportunity to do a stern rake which resulted in ruinous damage to the hull.

Stunned by how ridiculous the situation was, the American crew probably panicked because, in the next two turns, two more maneuver tests, just to turn the ship back into the wind, also failed. The American butt was still sticking out in the air and the British frigate, after an impeccable tack maneuver, came back for more spanking, right into the stern again. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! This time, the USS Constitution took two critical hits, one resulting into a blaze which reached the reserve of black powder, which exploded, virtually wiping out the crew. The ship was still afloat, but the crew had had enough and the captain had to strike colours.

The rules work quite well for one on one battles, but I think I would like to give captains maybe one or two re-rolls per game to alleviate series of bad rolls.

Thanks Kevin for coming and trying this scenario. The outcome was not historical at all, but it was interesting and funny.

That War of 1812 thing... (Round 2)

Well, it's been over a year since I last posted about the War of 1812 project. I figured it was time to do an update! That, and the fact I have some GREAT NEWS! (but more on that later...)

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My friend Tim and I haven't yet done any games (mostly, because I sort of "stalled" on the painting of my figures!), but we're getting closer to that now. I recently started to get my "painting MoJo" back somehow, and have been working on a number of things, including some War of 1812 items.

First off, six North American Indian figures by Conquest Miniatures. Conquest make some beautiful figures! The detail is amazing, and the weapons are slim and 'life-like' - not the big, bulky "clubs" of most 28mm figures. I have another six in the works presently - hopefully, they will be done soon too!

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Next, a British Cannon and Crew by Wargames Foundry. The crew are based on 20mm metal bases, and the cannon sits on a piece of magnetic sheet glued to a piece of plasticard. This allows a couple of crew figures to "attach" to the gun base to allow for easier movement of the gun during games.

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OK, remember that "GREAT NEWS" I mentioned earlier? Well, here it is...

Part of my "stalling" with the figure painting, was trying to figure out a way to do the Regiment numbers on the backpacks of my British infantry... I KNOW my hands are no longer steady enough, and my eyes are no longer good enough to paint those numbers 'free-hand' with any consistency! So I had to figure out some other way to do them...

I got to thinking maybe I could get some decals made for the backpack number! That seemed like an easy fix to the problem. However, finding someone to make the decals has been a proverbial "uphill climb" for most of the past year! I tried a few people that do the "at home" decals, but basically, no-one was interested in the idea of marketing these types of decals, or wasn't that keen on doing 'custom' decals like this...

We do a lot of Check Your 6! games from time to time, and I've bought some 1/144th decal sheets from a couple of Ebay sellers over the years. One seller that was very good to deal with, was Matt S. - the seller, "mehusla" at 144Direct on Ebay. I contacted him recently with my idea. As it turned out, Matt was a sort of "kindred spirit" having tried to paint backpack numbers on a lot of 32mm Napoleonic figures! We emailed back and forth for about a week, trying to figure out a way for me to create a file that would produce crisp, sharp numbers at this tiny size! (the backpack numbers wind up being about 2-3mm wide!)

In the end, I was hitting a brick wall on creating a usable file (Matt wasn't able to work with my vector art in the program he regularly uses), and although Matt was keen to help, he had projects of his own to work on, and couldn't get to my decals right away. The backpack numbers would have to wait till Matt was able to create a file on his end...

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As luck would have it, I ran into an all-together DIFFERENT problem with one of our upcoming Check Your 6! games! I had three German JU-88 bombers, and I wanted to change up the "ID" letters on the side, so all three bombers didn't have the same "ID" - that would just look weird!

I visited one of the local hobby shops (one I don't get out to all that often, I'm sad to say!), Spare Time Hobbies, looking to see if I could find anything remotely similar to the decals I had from the JU-88 kits. Pete didn't have anything at the time, and I was pressed for time as we were having the game the following day! Pete said, "...if you have 10 or 15 minutes, I can print some up for you...?" I was ecstatic! I didn't know anyone in town had one of those fancy "home decal" printers! Pete scanned the decal sheet I'd brought with me, and about 15 minutes later with some fiddling in Corel Draw, I had a bunch of "ID" letters for my JU-88 bombers!

This immediately got me thinking about my backpack numbers project! The next day, I emailed Pete my "backpack numbers" vector art file (since he works with Corel Draw, he actually PREFERS a vector art file!) and asked if he could try printing it for me. Later that day, I got a reply that the file had worked fine, and I could stop by any time to pick up my decals! I was almost giddy driving home from Spare Time! FINALLY, I'd be able to finish off my 49th Regiment of Foot figures!

As to the decals, I put a bit of Gloss Varnish on the backpacks where the decals would go (a trick I learned from the Plastic Modeller folks some time back!) and applied all the decals. After they had dried, I painted a little more Gloss Varnish over the decals to seal them in place.

And here's the results!!
(by the way, the British Infantry figures are by Knuckleduster Miniatures)

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And lastly, a close-up of the decals.

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I have to give a big "Thank You" to Matt from 144Direct for his willingness to help with this project! --and to Pete from Spare Time Hobbies for helping me finally get my idea to work! --and LOCALLY, to boot!! Thank you very much, Gentlemen!

That "1812" thing...

OK, so I've been dancing around the idea of gaming the War of 1812 for a couple of years now. For those who don't know, the War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the early United States and the British North Americans (and early Canadians) along with their Aboriginal allies, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. A friend of mine, Tim, is interested in the French & Indian Wars period and I thought he might be interested in the "1812" thing too. I've sent him links to various 1812 web pages, books, scenario books, etc. for the last couple of years, and he finally said, "...why don't we already commit do doing something for War of 1812?..."

...I decided it was time to get off the proverbial pot!


I wasn't sure what to do for figures, and Tim suggested an "1812" line by a newish company, Knuckleduster Miniatures. I had a look at their website and liked the look of the figures, so we decided to order a few packs and check them out!

I ordered one pack of "British/Canadian Command, Marching" and three packs of "British/Canadian Center Company, Marching" for a total of 24 figures (6 figures per pack). At only $10.00 US per pack, I thought this was pretty decent value for metal figs! Certainly beats the 8 figures for *whatever* that Foundry charges!

While waiting for the figures to arrive, I started researching the War of 1812 in earnest! (I've always had a passing interest in the conflict as it's part of Canadian military history). One regiment I came across in my research was the 49th Regiment of Foot. They had a young Lieutenant by the name of James Fitzgibbon that bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain "sharp" British Napoleonic soldier of television and literary acclaim! His exploits harassing the US forces on the Niagara Peninsula looked like they'd be perfect fodder for skirmish gaming! He was also the British officer that Laura Secord traveled through the wilderness to contact! With all these things in mind, I decided the first unit I would paint for War of 1812 would be the 49th Regiment.

The figures arrived in a timely manner and were well packaged. I set about to cleaning and basing all 24 figures. Since part of our usual gaming is 'skirmish' gaming, I based my figures on individual, 20mm metal bases by Wargame Accessories.

Aside from just showing off my painting, I thought I'd give a bit of a review of the Knuckleduster figures themselves. A comparison picture on the Knuckleduster site shows that they are comparable in size to Perry and Front Rank Napoleonics, so should mix reasonably well with those figures. Personally, I like the 'heft' of metal figures, so I was more interested in the KD line, over the plastic Perry or Victrix lines. But that's not to take anything away from Perry or Victrix - they certainly look like beautiful figures!

The KD figures have a certain 'chunky' quality to them. Some of the detail is also a bit 'over large' - as an example, the cuff buttons look like they would be about 1/2" thick if scaled up to "life size." Sometimes, there are mould lines running down the face of a figure - while this is annoying, it's also a function of the casting process and something that's difficult to avoid. In some cases, the sculpting could be a little crisper, but until I can PERSONALLY sculpt figures, I'm not going to complain too loudly!

Overall, I'm very happy with the Knuckleduster figures! They painted up very easily, and look great marching across a table!

The flags used are produced by a local fellow, Brian, who runs Vaubanner Graphics.

One thing that I like about KD's "1812" line - they plan to release figures that (to the best of my knowledge) are not available from any other company. One of the first "Big Battles" we plan to undertake will be the Battle of Crysler's Farm - involving a greatly outnumbered force of British veteran units, Canadian Fencible units and a small force of Aboriginals versus a large force of US units that were bound to attack Montreal. One unit in the British force were the Canadian Voltigeurs - basically a Lower Canada/Quebec Militia force, but they were trained and equipped at a level comparable to a British Light Infantry regiment. Knuckleduster already has plans to produce Voltigeur miniatures! KD also has plans in the works to produce characters such as Laura Secord, as well as James Fitzgibbon and figures to represent his "Green Uns" (a small force of 50 'Chosen Men' who operated as guerrilla troops, along side their Aboriginal allies, harassing the US forces on the Niagara Peninsula).

I was happy enough with the KD figures to be a 'repeat customer.' I took advantage of KD's recent Christmas sale (20% off per pack), to order enough figures to do two more units for the Crysler's Farm battle - the 89th Regiment and some Canadian Fencibles - and a couple of packs of Glengarry Light Infantry (useful for a number of other battles we may undertake, but eminently useful for skirmish games!). I will post again on this "1812" thing when I get some of those figures finished!

Oh, and for those who are interested, we plan to use the "Rocket's Red Glare" rules from Canadian Wargames Group.


Cheers, and Happy Gaming!

(footnote: ...and with this, I'm no longer in the "basement" of the Painting Challenge!! --woo-hoo!)