Unit Commander/ Strength Stands

 

For weeks I’ve been mulling over the best way to represent and track unit strengths and casualties in a way that is functional, but also doesn’t disrupt the look and feel of the table.

One day it struck me that the wooden blocks from the old Avalon Hill/ Columbia board game, ‘Napoleon’ might work well: The blocks have unit type symbols (Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery) as well as strength pips on each edge that represent the strength of the unit in the game.

These blocks have the advantages of dice, which are often used for this purpose, but also a little better feel for the period.

They can also be used standing to prevent your opponent from knowing the exact strength of a unit. This hidden information is one of the advantages of blocks vs. counters in block wargames.

So I decided to take the concept one step further and create specialized unit command stands with a ‘frame’ build specifically to hold the blocks. The added advantage is that I could also use the Unit Command Stand to also label the unit and the commander: In this case, the French 2nd Infantry Division in D’Erlon’s I Corps at Waterloo, commanded by Donzelot.

I constructed the stand/ frame using a Litko Base and craft sticks cut to size and wood-glued.

 

 

This divisional commander figure is an old, repainted Hinchliffe rider on a new Hinchliffe horse.

Hinchliffe are a bit outdated by today’s 28mm sculpting standards, but have many well animated figures, and are perfect for my current ‘toy soldier’ ‘shiny Napoleonic’ project. They are roughly 25mm in scale, and therefore work well with other classic 25mm lines that I want to use, like Minifigs, Del Prado, Connoisseur, Lamming, and Mirliton.

This figure is a bit odd looking, but actually resembled the portrait I found of General Donzelot.

Shiny Napoleonic French Dragoons

After a crazy five year delay on this project, I’ve gotten back to my true 25mm vintage napoleonic miniatures.

I’ve been collecting painted and unpainted Minifigs, Del Prado, Connoisseur, and Hinchliffe figures. I’ve cleaned up, repaired, touched up, and rebased old painted figures from the 70’s and 80’s. It feels good to rescue these classics! Though I try to improve what needs help without changing the original artists work too much.

This set is the venerable Hinchliffe 25mm French Dragoons in Bardin 1812 - 1815 uniforms. (Note: The original painter designated them as the 9th Dragoons, which historically were converted to Line Lancers before the Bardin Regulations went into effect. So this unit never really looked like this…but I don’t mind.)

These figures were beautifully painted by the original owner, so I didn’t need to do much work on them. I refreshed the helmets with brighter bronze (actually used gold for this) to help them pop more on the table. I refreshed-painted the horsehair plumes and horse tails as the black had faded. I painted blankets red that had been left white. And I repaired a few spots where the paint had worn down to the metal. And then a fresh coat of gloss. 

All figures are Hinchliffe except the Eagle Bearer’s horse, which is Connoisseur. I’ve got flags ordered from GMB, which I’ll add soon.