Napoleonics Month Coming to a Close!

It was a lucrative month in terms of historical wargaming. I was able to play a large refight of the battle of Eylau, along with a few “pick up” games of “Valour & Fortitude” with my 10mm Napoleonic figures. I plan on posting some photos from the Eylau game and a battle-report from the V&F game soon.

According to my 2026 Wargaming Schedule, next month (March, 2026) is “Cold War” month and I am going to run some experiments with the US Army’s old “Dunn-Kempf” rules and see if I can bring them ever-so-gently into the 21st century with some standardization and streamlining. I may post some ramblings about that soon and a Quick Reference Sheet for future games. March will culminate in a large “Fulda Gap” styled battle with the old US Army H or J-Series MTOE (Modified Table of Organization and Equipment).

Here are some pictures from recent games:

The Emperor at Eylau
Old Bennigsen.
Heavy Combat!!
Soult and Augereau’s attack go in! Davout’s Corps is in the right-middle of the pic, still a long ways from Serpallen!
Russian and French units trade volleys across the snowy landscape!
Murat’s Cavalry go up the slope! Just like in the real battle, the French infantry corps’ exhaust themselves against the stalwart Russians. Murat’s hard-charging cavalry are desperately needed to punch through the Russian lines and secure victory!

So while I’ve been playing mostly Napoleonic games this month, I’ve also been continuing on with re-building my 20mm force once my son expressed interest in playing “Bolt Action”. Since Santa got my son his first pack of 1/72 scale toy soldiers this past Christmas (Italeri American Paratroopers) and 20mm was my first-ever scale going back to when I was 12, I decided we would play BA in 20mm / 1/72 scale and I’ve started building a German PanzerGrenadier platoon next to Andy’s 101st Airborne troopers. Here are some pictures so far of the progress:

I really like the way these Italeri troops came out! Only about 30 more to do!
Armourfast M4A3 sherman. I used a large paint-brush bristle for the whip-aerial and chopped up an MG34 to look like a .50 caliber machine gun!
German HMG Team before finishing their basing. Also Platoon Leader and Platoon Sergeant for the German PanzerGrenadier platoon are above.
My 9 year old son painting US M1 steel helmets

Anyways that is all for now. Stay tuned as a Battle Report is coming soon. I may also post a Napoleonic Scenario (Lindenau, 1813) for Valour and Fortitude next.

-DF

8 thoughts on “Napoleonics Month Coming to a Close!

  1. Great to see that you have got your lad involved in the painting production line 🙂

    The freebie plastic sprue on front of the wargames Illustrated this month deals with the new WWII Soviets from Warlord Games … I have snipped of enough parts to make two figures! Oh no … a distraction 🙂

      • Hi Norm! I saw your email address so I saw I knew it was you! WordPress has its share of issues just like Blogger :/

    • I told him – well since you asked!!! I needed to press him into service given the sheer amount of plastic that needs to be painted in a short amount of time! 🙂 WWII draws me ever-closer! Apparently I’m back in the 20mm game again. Scale Creep!

  2. Great to see you back sir. And the 20mm plastic looks superb… did i hear you mention podcast a few episodes ago? 😉

    • cheers, Darren, thank-you sir 🙂

      yes I was looking for a different platform for sharing that was not blogger (or even a blog, per se).

      my first thought was a newsletter but I wont pay for MS publisher and word and Google doc templates are either too elaborate or too plain for newsletters and so I kind of left that behind.

      a podcast or some kind of conversational platform would be interesting…

  3. Good for you to work on passing your problem… I mean “passion” on to the next generation – my son had no interest. OTOH, he is now expressing an interest in Army at the 1:1 scale, so we will see… 😮

    Scale creep note: it isn’t scale creep, if the figs are getting smaller as you get older… it’s actually “vision creep”

    🙂

    Alex

    • Hi Alex good to hear from you sir. Yes this problem is definitely being passed on. I was very happy to hear he was interested so naturally I bought a ton of 20mm stuff to play Bolt Action. Youll be pleased to hear he hated Flames of War 🙂

      Im glad to hear your son is interested in 1:1 Army. Take him to the West Point museum – he’ll be hooked!

      Crazy – I swore the figs were getting smaller 😉

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