The back of the box showing some quite superbly painted figures - rest assured that mine will not look anything like that!
*The Loud Shirt or an approximation thereof! Mr Fox suggested something like this as suitable name for the leader of my planned band of Guerillas - for some reason one of my holiday shirts made him think of this although I can’t understand why….
Loud shirt? Moi? I thought it was quite understated in a sartorially elegant kind of way….
I mentioned in a previous post about my return from Andalusia and of my fondness for the place - we have already booked to go back there next year - with its wonderful scenery and history. I also mentioned that, additionally inspired by rereading The Gun and Death to the French by C.S. Forester, I had in mind a 28mm skirmish based set up using Perry Miniatures.
Well the deed has been done and so now I am the proud owner of not one but two boxes of the Skirmish in a box set, featuring sprues from the Spanish Infantry, Guerillas, French line and Elite box sets. There are 65 figures in all - 38 Spanish and 27 French - but the set is designed to be able kit bash all manner of Napoleonic types from the theatre. The figures are beautifully sculpted and there is a huge amount of potential for fielding all manner of types suitable for the theatre. A very useful extra in the box are three coloured painting guides, one each for the Spanish Infantry, the Guerillas/Militia and the French.
The three painting guides. I was really pleased with these as my Napoleonic library is bereft of anything related to the uniforms of the Peninsular War.
The rules of choice to accompany this latest bout of insanity are a variant of the popular Rebels and Patriots set by Dan Mersey and Michael Leck and published by Osprey. These are based on the hugely popular ‘Rampant’ series and are aimed at the large skirmish level as opposed to the more usual man to man types. Mr Fox provided me with the Napoleonic variant of Rebels and Patriots which he has used extensively with his own collection. That is all the recommendation I need!
From the pen of the renowned Napoleonic author, Charles Esdaile. If you recall he wrote a book called Wargaming Waterloo in which yours truly featured as a footnote!
I have a copy of Nick Lipscombe’s Wellington’s Eastern Front which covers the other operations of the War in the Peninsula. I really wanted something that was more specific to Andalusia and so came across the book you see above. A quick trawl of eBay got me a copy and a quick email to the esteemed Mr Esdaile drew my attention to another book of his - Fighting Napoleon: Guerillas, Bandits and Adventurers. Needless to say, a copy of this is now en route!
The area of Andalusia from roughly Alacaucin to the coast has a long tradition of banditry and smuggling that stretched beyond the Napoleonic Wars and indeed, featured in Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra, written some years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There is a huge amount of potential for actions involving bands of Guerillas fighting the invaders or amongst themselves, for raids, ambushes and all manner of small scale mayhem.
I have hankered after a small scale, off the beaten track kind of 28mm set up for some time now - various ideas have come and gone with monotonous regularity - so reckon that fighting black powder skirmishes in the part of the world that I have come to really enjoy was a no-brainer.
“Meurte a los franceses!” As they said, back in the day!
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