Cyber Monday Sale continues the Black Friday Sale Through December 6, 2025

 

We are extending the 20% discount on all items purchased through the Fife and Drum Miniatures web store. Several of our long time customers could not place their order before the sale period ended and so I extended the 20% discount for one more week.

Web Store Link

Enter the coupon code Concord2025 when you check out with your shopping cart to receive your 20% discount.

We want to thank everyone who took advantage of the sale to build up their SYW and AWI armies.

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Black Friday WEEK Sale - 20% Discount

 

Minden Miniatures Swiss in French service for the Seven Years War.

Guilford Courthouse battlefield park

It's that time of year when we eat lots of turkey and think about buying stuff. Lots of stuff. Lots of miniature figures, and lots of Fife and Drum Miniatures.

This year's Black Friday sale starts today and runs through November 30, 2025 so you don't have to join the maddening crowd and only buy online on the actual Black Friday day.

Enter the coupon code:

Concord2025

When you check out with your shopping cart on the Fife and Drum Miniatures web store

Fife and Drum Black Friday Sale

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And Now Onto Something Completely Different: Trenton Project

 

General Nathaniel Greene consults with John the OFM about what game 
Der Alte Fritz should host at next year's Historicon.

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach. You can feel it in the air, Autumn's out of reach...

So it is on to the next thing.

Now that Fall In 2025 is behind me, it's time to turn my focus on my next project for 2026. I have decided to do the AWI battles of Trenton and Princeton for my Historicon Project. Next year's Historicon theme will be the American Revolutionary War (or AWI, if you must) since it is the 250th anniversary of the war.

General George Washington decides on the next project for 2026
Fife and Drum Miniatures from my collection

I already have all of the Winter terrain and mats needed for a wintery looking tabletop, complete with snow. One would think that I already have the figures that I would need for the game. You would think.

But noooooo, I want to create two completely new American and Hessian armies with Winter snow bases. This entails upwards of 500 painted Fife and Drum Miniatures figures that I will need in the game. Don't worry, I have enough time to paint all of the figures.

I like to view every year as a "war game project". Each year I choose a new topic, turn it into a project, and then totally immerse myself in said project. I am good at that. The Project also has the benefit of making the Winter shorter as I break down time into one month at a time. It's January - good - paint 90 figures this month; February - what's next on the  painting table? March - SYW convention is on at the end of this month. April - Little Wars convention at the end of the month. And so on and so forth.

Here is my contemplated order of battle for a six player game for the Trenton scenario. I'm using a figure ratio of approximately 10 to 1 for my forces (one figure equals ten real soldiers).

American Forces at Trenton

Advance Guard - Brigadier General Adam Stephens (549)

2 units of Virginia Continentals, 24 to 30 figures each

Knox's artillery will also command the artillery

Major General Nathaniel Greene's Division

Sterling's Brigade - B.G. Lord Sterling (673)

2 by 30-figure units of Continentals (Delaware and Virginia)

Mercer's Brigade - B.G. Hugh Mercer (838)

2 by 30-figure Connecticut Continentals and one 24-figure Maryland unit

Fermoy's Brigade - (628)

2 by 30-figure units of Pennsylvania Continenals

Sullivan's Division

St. Clair's Brigade

3 by 20-figure New Hampshire Continentals

Sargent's and Glover's brigades were deployed covering the exit roads crossing Assunpunk Creek and so they were not in the central part of the action. Accordingly, I am not going to paint these two brigades for the project.

Hessian Order of Battle

Grenadier regiment Rall (512) = 1 unit of 50 figures

Fusilier regiment von Lossberg (345) = 1 unit of 30 figures

Fusilier regiment Knyphausen (429) = 1 unit of 40 figures

Jager Company (50) = 1 unit of 12 figures (taking 12+45+29 = 86 men from the three line regiments and adding them to the 50 jagers = 136 men = 12 figures).

Summary

Thus there is only one Hessian player and five American players in the game.

I will need to paint 318 Americans and 132 Hessians which totals 450 figures for the project. These numbers do not include artillery crew for the American army.

If I can paint at a pace of 90 figures per month then it will take five months of painting figures for this project. This takes me from December to April.

If the pace falls to 60 figures per month then it will take seven months to paint all of the figures. This takes me out to June which is cutting it close if I'm running the game in July at Historicon.

Gremlins are at the gate

 

I have had difficulty logging in to my Blogger account today and I feared that I might have been locked out for good. However, I came up with another roundabout solution that allowed me to get back on the page.

This is basically a test blog post to see if things are working again.

Fall In Convention

 

A view of the two game tables that I used for my three Fall In Sharpe Adventures in Spain games.

I am back from my trip to the HMGS East Fall In Convention in Lancaster, PA November  6-9, 2025. All told, it was a successful show, having hosted three games featuring Captain Richard Sharpe's adventures in Spain during the Peninsular War of the Napoleonic Era. I won a PELA award for my game on Saturday ("Sharpe's Bridge - The Battle of the Coa River") and I also won the Best Terrain award for the convention. Finally, all three games were fully booked with players and this is always my personal goal when I am hosting games at war game conventions.

PELA Award for my individual game on Saturday morning.

Fall In is held every Fall at the Wyndom Resort in Lancaster, PA. This is the same site as the old Lancaster Host Hotel that used to hold Historicon before it moved to a better facility in downtown Lancaster. New ownership completely renovated all of the rooms, so the floor layout was the same as before, but more importantly, the rooms were brought up to a high standard and they had a fresh and new vibe to them.

Fall In is a bit smaller than Historicon in terms of the number of games available and the number of attendees, but it is larger than the HMGS-Midwest Little Wars convention as a point of reference. The convention organizers gave me a premium table site in the main foyer in front of the large Lancaster Ball Room; so everyone had to walk past my two game tables before entering the main game area.

The view of my tables as you first walk down the stairs into the main game hall.
The food vendors were next to my tables so this brought a few more eyeballs to my game table.

Here are more pictures of my games. I will post a separate report about the other games at Fall In.

I hosted three games: Friday at 10AM, Friday at 7PM and Saturday at 10AM. My favorite scenario of the three was the Saturday game: "Sharpe's Rescue" which was inspired by the Bernard Cornwell book "Sharpe's Enemy". All of the players were very familiar with the Sharpe books in general and the Sharpe's Enemy book in particular. Consequently, they all actively played their roles to the hilt regarding  the forces that they were commanding: the evil Obadiah Hakeswill, the French spy Pierre Ducos, several French commanders, Sir Henry Simmerson and others.

Richard Sharpe was tasked with rescuing Lady Farthingale from the evil clutches of Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill (Sharpe's mortal enemy), who was holding her as a hostage. She was being held captive in a convent high up in the mountains. Sharpe led a force of his own Chosen Men (95th Rifles), the Light Company of the South Essex regiment, La Aguja's band of Spanish guerrillas (commanded by Sharpe's wife Theresa) and a half company of the South Essex regiment.

So Sharpe and his Chosen Men and the South Essex light company assaulted the convent from one direction while the guerrillas attacked from another direction (with the aim of cutting off the retreat of Hakeswill's army of deserters.

While the other forces provided covering fire, the Chosen Men fought their way into the convent courtyard, rescued Lady Farthingale and attempted to fight their way out of the compound to safety. Along the way, Sharpe fought and captured Hakeswill and cut his way through a swath of French regulars (who were also trying to capture the hostages). So far, things were running close to the events in the book. However, Hakeswill's men forced their way into the hut where the Chosen Men were holding off the bad guys and Sharpe was faced with the tough choice of releasing Hakeswill from captivity and escaping with the hostages, or try to keep both Hakeswill and the hostages. 

Meanwhile, Sergeant Patrick Harper was leading the way down the back stairway of the convent. His seven barreled Nock Naval Gun blew a hole through a squad of French regulars and the road to freedom appeared to be secured. Just then, the bad guys won the next initiative card and they shot down Harper.

We were running out of game time, so I reshuffled the card deck and decided that I would keep drawing initiative cards until either Sharpe's or Hakeswill's card was drawn first. That would determine the winner of the game. Hakeswill drew the first card and was declared the winner, but close only counts in horse shoes as the old saying goes.

Richard Sharpe and Sergeant Patrick Harper fight their way out of the convent. Rifleman Harris tries to hold the door closed to protect Sharpe's back. Sharpe and Harris made it to safety, but Harper met an unfortunate end.
Or did he? Sharpe and Harper will march again at Little Wars in April 2026.

As often happens during a game, you find some loop holes in the rules or discover a better way of doing something differently.

During a melee, the individual figures match up and both sides roll a D20 die, with modifiers, and the high score wins the melee. Then a card is drawn from the deck: a heart results in a kill, a diamond results in a wound, a spade results in the loser running away, and a club card results in the capture of the loser. During the second game, some of the players started applying this "results method" to small arms fire as well as to melee outcomes. I liked the way that this worked and so I used it in the third and final game. It amounts to a saving throw of sorts and reduces the amount of hits/kills from small arms fire. 

In the next several days I will post some pictures of the other games that I saw at Fall In so stay tuned for more.

A River Runs Through It - Making River Terrain

 

The Coa River and the Santiago Monastery, built by me.

I finished making river sections for the main table of my game at this year's Fall In convention in Lancaster, PA  Fall In Convention web site.  November 7-9 2025 at the Wyndham Resort and Convention Center in Lancaster, PA. (This is the hotel that used to be called The Host). Click on this link  to get to the convention's home page so that you can register for the show and make reservations for the games via the Table Top Events app.

First things first: 

I need some of my followers (you) to sign up for my Friday morning game (see below) because, so far, nobody has signed up for the game. If you plan on attending the convention then I would be most grateful if you would sign up for one of my games. Each game has 8 tickets or player slots. I can run the games with 2 or 3 people since I can then step in and play multiple commands to facilitate the game.

Each game is a Napoleonic skirmish game set in Spain during the Peninsular War and feature the exploits of Richard Sharpe and his Chosen Men against the Forces of Evil, notably Pierre Ducos, Obadiah Hakeswell, and Colonel Henry Simmerson.

Click on the links in blue, for each game below, and sign up for one of my games. I have made some terrific bespoke terrain boards for the game and have painted a number of 40mm figures from Sash and Saber and Perry Miniatures.

Sharpe's Treasure sign up Event number 528 at Friday 10AM (8 of 8 tickets available)

It's 1810 and Napoleon has conquered most of Spain. Captain Richard Sharpe and Sgt Harper must find and retrieve the Sword of Santiago before Napoleon's spy, Pierre Ducos finds it. Legend has it that the bearer of the sword will unite the people of Spain and drive out the invaders of Spain. So Sharpe and his Chosen Men of the 95th Rifles find themselves in a race against time to find the Sword of Santiago before it falls into the hands of the French. This is a Napoleonic skirmish game.

Sharpe's Bridge - Battle of the Coa River Event number 441 at Friday 7PM (5 of 8 available)

Crawford's British Light Division has made a fighting retreat across the Coa River Bridge, but just barely. However, somebody forgot to give Richard Sharpe the order to retreat. Was the lost order the work of French master spy Pierre Ducos? We will find out. Now Sharpe and his Chosen Men must fight for their lives to reach the safety of the Coa Bridge. Help Sharpe escape in this Napoleonic skirmish game.

Sharpe's Rescue   Event number 527 at 10AM Saturday  (3 of 8 available)

Richard Sharpe and his Chosen Men must rescue Lady Farthingdale, who is held hostage by a renegade army of British and French deserters under the command of Sharpe's mortal enemy: Sgt. Obadiah Hakeswell. Lady Farthingdale is the wife of an important British diplomat and the heat is on Lord Wellington to find her. Wellington turns to his only hope:Richard Sharpe. The hostages are being held at a remote mountain village where all sorts of dangers await the rescuers. Napoleonic skirmish game.

Making River Sections

The river sections were fairly easy to make. I use cork-backed place mats the measure about 12" by 16" and I cut these in have to get two 12" long by 8" wide pieces of cork board. Next I spray some tan primer on the boards. After that, I draw the outline of the river on each piece, making sure that they all enter/leave the center point of the cork board. This way, the river section water will line up with any of the boards that I make.

Moving on, the water parts of the river are painted black and then dark green on top of the black. Some lighter green color can be used along the edges of the river bank to denote shallower waters than in the center of the board.

Next, I spread a mix of wall board paste and tan paint over the surface of the board, but take care not get any of the goop on the water sections. While the goop is still wet, I sprinkle some fine Woodlands Scenics railroad gravel on top of the goop. Now I let the boards dry overnight.

Now I dry brush several different layers of paint that is lighter than the underlying tan primer.

Note that the final step of the river section boards will be glossing up the water. This is because you don't want any of the fine gravel, dust or other bits of material falling into the water piece and mucking up the surface of the water. I used two or three coats of Mod Podge on the water parts, letting each coat of the material dry before applying the next coat. I use a small craft brush (ten to a bag for about $3.00 at Michael Stores) to brush the Mod Podge onto the water. This produces a moderate amount of gloss on the water that almost looks like water when you look at it.

The final touch is to find a bunch of rocks and spread them along the banks of the river. I do not glue the rocks to the terrain river board. When the game is over, I just scoop up all of the rocks and put them in a metal gallon pail, which makes them easy to carry around.

If you want to add some tall grass or reeds along the river bank, then do this after you have dry brushed the river board. I use a sisal door mat and cut off small bits of the fiber. I dip the strands of fiber into a small pot of green paint. The fibers suck up the green paint so as to make them green. The pieces are then glued to the board using two-part epoxy glue.

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Taking it to the next level

 

Peninsula terrain boards and the Monastery of Santiago for my 40mm skirmish games.

I have been busy as a beaver working on the Spanish terrain boards and terrain ground clutter pieces and I am nearing the end of the construction phase of the project (or at least as far as I can foresee). Recent terrain additions include some vineyards, an olive grove and a mount to place the monastery in the Sharpe games.

I decided that the Monastery of Santiago, the center piece of my terrain, needed to be elevated a bit more to make it truly stand out, so I cut off a chunk of 2-inch thick pink foam insulation board and carved out some steps and  ramps to provide access to the monastery.

Front view of the monastery and the dual entrance ramps.

The church has a back door so I had to have an access point at the rear of the building.
When I elevated the buildings on a 2-inch thick slab of foam board, I was able to carve
some steps into the raised base. Rocks were scored into the foam with a ball point BIC pen
and then painted various shades of grey to simulate stonework.

A view of the raised monastery cited on the far side of the Coa River crossing.
The sides of the raised base will have bark nuggets glued on and painted to match
the stone inside of the river gorge. The driveway still needs some dry brushing and highlights.

This picture depicts the Coa River, but it also shows the monastery layout before I 
decided to raise the buildings two inches higher. On the far back table on the right a 
new board is a work in progress- the pink insulation foam has been painted a dark
brown undercoat color.

A close up view of the vineyards.

NEXT:

Now I have to turn my attention to the construction of some river sections to place inside the river gorge. I have cut up some cork placemats and given them a coating of tan primer. Then the water will be painted onto the boards using black paint and dark green paint; then the ground gets covered with wallboard paste and all other dry brushing work gets done. Finally, a gloss coating of either gloss spray on primer or Mod Podge will cover the water to give it a shiny shimmering water effect. This step must be done last, otherwise bits of sand and dust will get on the gloss surface and stick - this doesn't look good.

THE BOTS ARE GONE?

The bots disappeared at the beginning of October and now my viewer count is deemed more accurate with respect to the number of visitors and page views that each blog entry is getting. The previous entry currently has around 350 views compared to 15,000 views for several of the September postings. I hope that this is the last of the bots for awhile.

In closing, here are two pictures of the Perry 40mm British light infantry company of the South Essex Regiment.

Peninsula War Terrain Boards are Finished; or Are They?

 

Vineyards for my 40mm Peninsula War terrain

Click on the Pix to enlarge

I have been very busy making terrain boards for my 40mm Richard Sharpe games at this year's Fall In Convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania  Fall In link November 7th through 9th. I will be running three Napoleonic Peninsula War skirmish games featuring Richard Sharpe and his Chosen Men. My games will be on Friday morning, Friday evening and Saturday morning of the convention.

I finished construction of two vineyards the other day, using the "how to do it" instructions from Pat Smith's "Setting the Scene" books. Pat's instructions are easy to follow and even easier to build and I highly recommend the book.

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Another view of the vineyards, now populated with some 40mm Sash and Saber Spanish Guerillas.

The deep gorge of the Coa River in Spain

40mm French fusiliers passing under a mountainous bridge

View of the entire 15 by 6 feet of tabletop space

The village of Santiago, where all of the action takes place.
Battle Honours 40mm 3D printed buildings.

The hidden valley road that skirts the Coa River Bridge.
Beware, here be guerillas.

View of the table from the town of Mondega. Santiago is off in the middle distance
on the high ground.

The light company of the South Essex regiment (Perry Miniatures 40mm figures),
supported by a company of the 95th Rifles, approach the Coa River Bridge.

Why Have Just One Table When You Could Have Two?

The plan was always to have two parallel 15ft by 6ft tables for the game. I was only going to make terrain boards for the main table and use a Cigar Box Battle Mat system for the second table. But now that I have seen how the terrain boards look, I decided to take the plunge and build a smaller number of boards for the second table. Fitting all of this in a rental SUV to transport everything to Lancaster will likely place a constraint on how much terrain I can take to the convention. I have a reservation for a large SUV already, but I might have to switch to a rental cargo van, which has much more cargo capacity than the SUV. We shall see.

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Spanish Peninsula War Project Update - Fall In

 

Hopefully everyone will concur that this table looks like Spain.

I wanted to post an update on my 40mm Spanish Peninsula War project that I am building for this year's Fall In Convention on November 7-9, 2025.

British and Allies

South Essex Regiment (20 figures)             - Colonel Henry Simmerson

South Essex Light Company (20 figures)    - Captain Leroy

Sharpe & His Chosen Men (7 figures)        - Captain Richard Sharpe

95th Rifles (13)                                           - Richard Sharpe

La Aguja Spanish Guerillas (21 figures)    - Theresa ("The Needle")

23rd Light Dragoons (3)                            - Major Hogan

French and Allies

French 8eme de Ligne  (20)                              - Major Dubreton

1st Chasseurs a Cheval   (10)                            - Major Pierre Ducos

Evil Spanish Guerillas (20)                               - El Metarife and Father Hacha

French Voltigeurs (15)                                       - TBD

Other Evil Bastards

The Army of Deserters (1)                                - Obadiah Hakeswell

Captain Richard Sharpe and his Chosen Men (95th Rifles)
Sash and Saber 40mm figures.

The center companies of the South Essex Regiment are on the march.
Sash and Saber 40mm figures

French 1er Chasseurs a Cheval
Sash and Saber figures

Spanish guerrilla leader and Sharpe's wife, Theresa.
Theresa is a Steve Barber model and the Guerillas are Sash and Saber figures.

The Bad Guys: Pierre Ducos and Father Hacha
Steve Barber Models 40mm figures.

Summary

The above table indicates that the British and Allies forces are largely painted and completed. I plan on increasing the cavalry contingent of 23rd Light Dragoon up to a total of 10 figures.

The French will get another 5 Voltigeurs. I might combine these into Ducos' command of cavalry as one command in the game. I have the figures for another 20 French line infantry, but they are not really needed for this particular game. Other than the Voltigeurs, the French forces are close to completion.

The Army of Deserters has no figures, other than Hakeswll and these will be a mix of British and French soldier figures, totaling 20.

So the total number of figures left to paint stands at 32 figures as of today.

Terrain Construction

I could go to war with the terrain that I already have on hand: see pictures in this posting. I can use Cigar Box Battle Mats and put some styrofoam boards underneath the mats to create some land elevation. I am using my existing 28mm Herb Gundt buildings for the town of Mondego, two other small villages and one small farm house. The central terrain piece, the Monastery of Santiago (Battle Honours) of 40mm buildings, is painted.

The Monastery of Santiago
Battle Honors 40mm 3D printed buildings

The approach to the monastery, crossing the Coa River

A close up view of the bridge that spans the Coa River
Hovels bridge

This is a mock up of how one of the olive groves might look. This is not what
the finished product will look like.

This is the second game table that runs parallel to the main table.
Windmill made by Herb Gundt

The Coa River, downstream from the main gorge.
Novus Designs river sections. Rocks made by Mother Nature.

Other nice-nacs to make are some vineyards and several olive groves and some stone walls.

However, that would be too easy, so I plan on making some terrain boards measuring 4ft by 30-inches that will serve as the higher elevation where the Monastery will be. I have the pink insulation foam already on hand and I've starting gluing the 2-inch thick pieces together to create some 4-inch high and 6-inch high areas on the table. I want to create a river gorge with a couple of stone bridges and that is why I am considering some 6-inch deep boards.

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