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.