Wednesday 5 January 2011

A hasty piece of scenery

Tent camps were universally used during the Napoleonic era, although they are not usually found in the wargaming battlefields. During the battle of Gévora, my next wargaming project, camps played a prominent role because of the lazyness of General Mendizábal, the Spanish C-i-C, which allowed himself to be surprised by the rapid approach of the French columns, while his soldiers were atill sleeping. This failure, in combination with his erroneous deployment (cavalry in the rear) was the key to the French resounding victory.
The chronicles of the day talked about French cavalry units entering into the Spanish camps, and these are usually depicted in the available maps of the battle, so Spanish camps were urgently needed. For it, I hastily designed templates for wedge and bell shaped tents in Powerpoint, and built several elements (13x13 square cm) to be placed in the Spanish rearguard.
See the building of these elements in the main
web-site.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Rafa,

    I'm looking foward to this one more than usual! I love the Spanish armies in their rainbow of uniforms. I just regret that they are so easily beaten!

    However, the fact remains that because Spain retained standing armies, no matter how often they were beaten, the French could not afford to ignore them, allowing Wellington's small army the space it needed to operate under the nose of the French behemoth.

    Viva Espagna!

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  2. Hi Rafa

    That a very effective little bit of terrain and I love the wagon as well. You just need to add a few models to represent the sleeping Spaniards!

    Ian

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  3. Thanks guys... I am finsihing some scenario rules to spice out the battle!
    Rafa

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