Wargaming Show - Partizan 2025

 

Had a great day today at the Partizan wargaming show at Newark (UK).  It's a bit of a trek to Nottinghamshire from Oxfordshire, but it is well worth it.  I think Ian put up with my moaning about the state of the roads and ever growing housing estates pretty well!   

I'm starting off with my haul of goodies in the first photo - I didn't go to excess (mostly from having been made redundant from work this week), but I did pick up my pre-order of Chain of Command 2, some much needed grass tufts, and a few Perry's Napoleonics.

What really makes Partizan is the quality of the games. They are splendid to look at and so much thought and time has clearly gone into them.  I find it all really inspiring and I pick up lots of ideas as I go around seeing the games.

Where I remembered, I tried to take photos of the signs explaining which battle was being portrayed. In some cases it was just too busy to be able to work my way through the crowd to get to the signs.  Below is a great Battle of Stamford Bridge game, with a really decent sized river - I think might have to get a wider one as this one looks really good.

The battle of Pirmasens 1793 below.  The use of contoured shapes for the terrain is very interesting.  I like the way it attempts to match the ground topography.  So many battle were defined by the ground, and I can probably do more to improve my own games in this area.  The difficulty always comes in the playability and troops sliding down hills for me.

Below is an excellent looking game from the League of Extraordinary Kriegspielers - The Battle of Wake Island.  The players looked like they were having a lot of fun too.

The Battle of Wagram game looked very impressive.  I do like the general appearance of 6mm games, it's the actual physical painting of them that I don't enjoy very much.  Looking at individual 28mm figures that I have painted pleases me, but the overall 'look' of  6mm is undeniably good.

The semi-transparent unit labelling was a nice touch. These can often be very ugly and obstructive, but they appeared almost like holograms on here and didn't detract from the action or the figures at all.

Below is the Battle of Germantown by the Yarkshire Gamer, famous for his very large battles, this one was no exception.

Perry Miniatures put on a Napoleonic Peninsular game using Valour and Fortitude rules.  As you can probably imagine - this was breathtaking.

I was immediately drawn to the battle below. I am very interested in the Wars of the Roses and have a pretty large collection - however, it does not compare to this!  The battle portrayed - The Battle of Boars Hill, Oxfordshire, was a fictitious battle but neverthess could have happened. Being fairly local to that area  - I kind of wish it did happen as it would make the area that much more interesting!

Sassanid Persians and Romans in battle below in Syria 295. This was by the Bramley Barn Wargames Group. I really must add more to my own Sassanid Persian collection!

Now this was outstanding - details are on the sign below. The gentleman at this stand was a delight to chat to and was very appreciative of my compliments.  There is so much detail to be spotted in the terrain - it must have taken so much planning and work to have created this.

                                                  

I had to laugh when I saw the fellow on the thunderbox below!

The Battle of Shimonoseki 1863 by the 'Like a Stone Wall' Wargames Club.

Below is one of the best games in show for me - it was Bill Gaskin's Seven Years War battle (I cannot recall if it was set on a particular battle) but the layout and the troops were simply amazing. Talking to one of Mr Gaskin's colleagues, I understood that the figures are very heavily converted by him so that few figures look the same. Bayonets are made and soldered on and hands individually sculpted to assist in creating the required look for the conversions.  The figures are beautifully painted - truly each one is a work of art and then to see them all together on the table...really quite amazing.

Below is the very impressive looking Battle of Intombe 1879 presented by BAD Wargamers.

There was so much to see and I kept forgetting to get my camera out to take photos.  Partizan is one of the wargaming highlights of the year for me.  I think I have definitely gained 12 months of inspiration until the next one!

28mm - Napoleonic French 21e Legere Regiment - Perry Miniatures

This has been a serious venture! I think most of my free time of the last month has gone into painting this battalion of the 21e Legere.   I'm not complaining though - it is nice to have a project to look forward to coming home to each evening and these have been so interesting to research and paint.

The 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 21e Legere Regiment  were heavily engaged at several of the major battles of the Peninsular War.  Notably they were in the thick of it at Albuera in Gazan's Division in the main infantry attack on the British and Spanish centre. 

I decided to paint up 12 figures at a time to make this project manageable.  Doing all of them in a production line would have been intensely painful!  Progress could be measured and the 'win' of completing 12 figures was the spur to doing a further 12.  I started with the Carabiniers and Voltigeurs as they are so interesting.  

I chose to paint up the 21st Legere mainly because of the actions they were at.  On researching this regiment I discovered that they were an early recipient of bearskins for the Carabinier company.  In addition (and unexpectedly), source material showed that they wore the shako plate on the front of the bearskin.  This presented a potential issue in how best to represent this.  I decided to use my modelling blade to carve the plate into the fur and then paint it on. Much of the plate would be behind the bearskin cord anyway.

I saved the Command stand until last along with the final Chasseur stand.  I realised at this point that I had not checked to see if the correct flag was commercially available!  Thankfully it was - GMB Flags to the rescue.

My only regret with the command stand is that it looks so 'busy'  I should perhaps have reduced it by a figure, but then, which would I lose? I really liked all of the figures so did the best I could to get them all on and leave space for the flag.  I could have gone for a larger stand, but for gaming purposes I try to keep my troops in close order to give that 'look' and to maximise the use of space on the table.  In the end I stuck with 6 figures, but alas, some of the fine detail on the command set is slightly harder to see. A small sacrifice but there we are.

The voltigeurs with their tall plumes are absolutely spectacular. It was a joy to see these come into fruition.

I thought that the Chasseurs would be the least interesting being the bulk of the battalion and not being in the elite companies, but this was far from the case.  I really enjoyed seeing them develop as each colour was carefully applied and I think they have quite possibly my favourite French uniform.

I try to make the troops a little less 'parade-ground' and hint more towards campaign with showing the use of local brown cloth and different colour greatcoat/blanket rolls.

It is recorded in primary sources of the French putting on their best uniform items and plumes prior to battle, so I bear this in mind to avoid going totally ragged with uniforms and keep things looking plausible with a lean towards smartness.

It has been so interesting to read more into how the Legere were used on campaign.  It would seem that the Legere were known for their aggressive attitude.  This possibly comes from the way they were often used to spearhead assaults, rather than just skirmish, which is how they are often portrayed.

I must caveat this post on the 21st by saying that there were some things that I had to make best guesses at with uniform colours. So much seemed to be at the whim of Regimental colonels and not everything was recorded.  It is possible that towards the later campaigns, much more brown was used to create the uniforms. I have found one illustration showing them with a full brown uniform of Spanish cloth. I opted to go slightly earlier in the campaign to when the illustration was set, so hopefully having more of the blue uniform would be more accurate.  

I made a best guess with the red topping the plumes, which seemed common with many Chasseur companies of Legere, but not in all regiments.  I hope I got this one right but we might never know (I'm not changing it now!). 

More Napoleonics to follow...I'm on a roll and finally playing General d'Armee2...just solo so far but what a brilliant Napoleonic set of rules they are. Very inspiring!