Prepping for Aspern Essling & Eggmuhl

We're hoping to do Aspern Essling and Eggmuhl next month, which has meant that I've been doing some quick work bringing the Austrian collection up to speed and some work on the terrain.  I have fairly extensive kit suitable for Spain, but not so much for Bavaria. 

Eggmuhl requires some artillery positions, so I set to working out what I could do with what I have. 

What I needed were positions built out of gabions and possibly with some form of duck boards for the cannon to recoil on.  I used a mixture of 3d printed bits from my pal Du Gourmand and some bits and pieces from Italeri artillery sets. Given that we will be playing using Command & Colours Napoleonics, these will need to cover specific sides of a hex. 

I started off by laying out some 3d printed pieces on a five inch MDF hex. This approach was growing on me when I realised that all three positions that I would need for the game were located on hills.  Therefore they would need to be smaller to fit on top of my hills. 

So I started messing about again.  Once I had something that I was happy with, I slipped a piece of paper underneath and used a pencil to sketch in the shape I was looking for. I then cut that out and used the stencil to transfer the shape to plasticard. 

I was toying with the idea of using this part of an Italeri plastic bridge to add duckboards to this, but decided against it because it's actually an infantry position and I couldn't get one of my units to sit on it neatly.  This is no doubt, unrealistic, but it just didn't look right to me and interfered with the function of the playing piece, so I scrapped the idea.  

Once I had a outline that I was happy with, I cut the shapes out of plastic card with a scissors and trimmed the edges with a knife.  All the pieces were glued down with super glue and the base itself was bulked out with pre mixed wall filler. 

The artillery position and the infantry position side by side. 

The final product.  I am debating giving these a watered down coat of PVA to make them more solid, which given that they are wargaming pieces and will see some handling, I think will be the right thing to do before I prime them. 

In the mean time, I came up with the insane idea that I would have separate named figures for the all the Austrian commanders.  This proved to be a bigger job than I anticipated, so I'm going to bodge it somewhat.   Where I have figures that represent named individuals,  I will have a round base with the commanders name on it. More generic figures (i.e. the chaps who don't stand out like Picton, Ney, Bonaparte, etc) will be fitted with a section of steel paper.  I will make name tags on magnetic material that can then be swapped out to individualise the commanders for individual battles. That's the plan at least. 

These are from the Italeri Austrian and Russian staff set.  I didn't like the pose on the grenadier officer, so I cut his arm and super glued it in place so that he is holding his sword by his side instead of waving it over his head.  I am generally terrible at conversions, but having been inspired by the superb JP Wargaming Blog and YouTube channel, I decided I should give it a go. 

My pal RB has very generously offered to paint up the Austrian leaders for the game while get weaving on bringing the Austrian troops and the terrain up to the snuff. 

This figure will be representing Colonel Frimont here.

I went rooting through the Osprey on Austrian Commanders of the Napoleonic Wars, looking for fellas who looked like the figures I had for Austrian generals. I have a box of Italeri commanders and a really lovely box of Strelets Allied Staff which should make for some decent figures.  Given that some of them are pretty similar, I'm hoping to get brave and try some head swaps. 

It remains to be seen whether this will be a success.  RB is painting up the Austrian commanders and I will be transferring my Frenchmen to round bases and adding name tags.  Du Gourmand is 3d printing the Granary for me, so the plan as Hannibal says, is coming together.