Army Accommodations

 

A recent posting on Bob Cordery's blogspot, Wargames Miscellany reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for a long time: tell of the accommodations of my war games armies. His own accommodations look to me convenient and handy - especially the 'army in a box' concept - something I have striven for but never quite achieved to my satisfaction. We begin with these 'tray towers'.

The coloured ones house most of my Napoleonic inventory. We might call this an 'army corps in a tray', in accordance with my Big Battles 4 Small Tables game system. Some 'double up', such as the two French Cavalry Corps in the picture below. I Cav Corps comprises 3x12-figure brigades of dragoons and a park of 1 gun with 3 crew figures; II Corps comprises 3x12-figure brigades of 12 cuirassiers. Also present in this tray are Marshal Murat with his aide-de-camp, and Generals Milhaud and Lasalle. Some sort of horse grenadier staff officer seems to have accommodated himself there as well.

In the following picture, a single French Amry Corps takes up only about half the room. One of the Divisions (the 5th) has been taken out for some work that needs doing on them. This Army Corps (II) comprises 3x24-figure Infantry Divisions, a light horse brigade and a park of 2 guns each with 3 crew figures. Those triangular and trapezoidal profiles you see are bases for the artillery in action. I prefer (for the moment) not to fasten the guns to these bases.

Below are a couple of Austrian Army Corps in their trays. Top tray, looks like I Corps: 3 Line Divisions, 1 Jager Division (rather larger formation than historica1!), and a unit of Uhlans. Again we have a 2-gun artillery park, but with 4 crew figures each. The artillery scale is determined by the number of crew figures, at 1 figure representing 8 guns, and 200 artillerymen. So this formation's artillery park represents 64 guns and 1600 gunners.

The bottom tray shows part of the Reserve Corps of Austrian grenadiers and cuirassiers.

The next two trays hold my British army: foot in the top, artillery and horse in the bottom. The Royal Scots Greys were an indulgence. Now, these trays measure 26cm x 34cm. The plastic being rather soft, the heavy metal figures tend to sag the floor of the trays. This was a real problem with the next tray tower, whose trays measure 33cm x 37cm. That extra width was enough to cause a sag that would compromise the safety of the figures in the tray below. 

Stack of trays. the whole unit can be wheeled around
or the separate drawers removed. I damaged this 
somewhat several years ago when I tripped over an 
impediment I might as well have placed in order 
to do so, slammed into the thing, and took a hefty gouge out of my 
knee. The bottom tray still sticks a bit... and I still
bear the scar.

This I solved by transferring all the metal figures to the less roomy coloured towers. The armies here are all - very nearly all - plastics. The top 5 hold my 30YW armies. The picture didn't come out so I am not showing any. The next two hold my War of the Spanish Succession Imperialists.

WSS Imperialists: 36-figure foot and 
24-figure horse units. I rather wish I had adopted
a different plan...

... and the next two my Prussian Army, inherited when their previous owner was about to deep six the lot. The Paul 'Jacko' Jackson added to the infantry, Italieri plastics, enough to build the army from 7 to 9 units; and I bought some Italieri cavalry. So 'antispiring' (outspiring?) were the figures that it took me an age to get them painted.  And then, just because I liked the look, and had forgotten what Prussian horse I had, I added a couple of metal (Minifigs). The whole army comprises 3 Army corps, each with 3x24-figure Divisions, an park of 2 guns and 4 gunners, and two or three cavalry formations. This army, like my French, has far too much cavalry! At any rate, the whole lot goes into just two of these trays.

Prussian Army

***

A very useful ... thing ... that I could use more of!

Now, the sort of thing pictured above would have been very handy: hardish plastic, deep enough to accommodate flags and uhlans. This is where my Napoleonic Russian uhlans live, together with Aeryth Chromatica Turcowaz cavalry. Not all the drawers have much in them at the moment.

WW2, some board games I've hardly ever looked 
at (including SPI's Fighting Sail), and 
logistics elements at the bottom.

But that brings me to something I discovered several years ago: these 3-drawer cardboard archive tray thingies. There is a word for them, I'm sure. The white box at the upper centre of the picture holds most of the army of Altmark-Uberheim - one of my 'War of the Imperialist Succession' armies.

My rather inefficiently stacked WW2 and such 
cupboard. The white box with the blue apostrophe 
is what is intended to engage the interest here.

Just lingering in this tall cupboard for the moment, all the other random boxes here contain WW2 items: tanks, vehicles, guns. I really must go through and sort it all out.

Altmark-Uberheim army box.

Altmark-Uberheim foot and horse.

Now this set was deeper than wide, unlike all the other cardboard storage that I picked up over the years. Pity, as for several reasons this was the better design.

Not Quite Seven Years War army barracks.

Here we have it. Everything in those 5 boxes belongs to my War of the Imperialist Succession/ Not Quite 7YW armies. Atop the left of the pile as you see it two flat boxes hold the Imperialist Infantry, and I do believe one Archduke Piccolo might be found there. Four of my five Sengoku armies are in boxes to the right, and that little black box contains my 'Jono's World' aircraft stands. The labels on most of those boxes will have to be redone...

The main drawback of these otherwise splendid units, is that they are not very robust. I might yet end up replacing them once they start to disintegrate. Mind you some of these are twenty and more years since their purchase.

Infantry of Hessen-Rohr 5 regiments of 36 figures in all 
4 companies of 8 plus HQ of 4.

What the boxes contain: 5 x 36-figure infantry and 4x19-figure cavalry. 

Imperialist horse: 3 dragoon and 1 hussar regiment.
I have a notion that the green dragoons are below establishment 
at 15 figures.

RED and BLUE armies, and my really tiny
navies overall

Then there are these two. The contain my Chromatic Wars armies Ruberia and Azuria - and badly in need of relabelling. The armies of Turcowaz and Izumrud-Zeleniya have slightly different accommodation that I forgot to photograph: same idea, but metal-bound plastic. Very large drawers on that one. 

Here's where my ACW armies live. Mostly photographic paper boxes, with the occasional chocolate box thrown in. The whole arrangement is sufficient to hold something like 1500 figures. Not ideal, though. Mainly one box will contain a brigade or possibly two of infantry, the artillery have very shallow chocolate boxes of their own (except for my South Carolina Brigade, which has a 2-gun battery in the same box.  The cavalry have separate accommodations.

ACW boxes.

My Chromatic Wars navies live in a chest of drawers, two of which accommodate the 'whole worlds' navies'. Top drawer: 20 vessels of Ruberian Royal Navy; the 6 torpedo boats of Chervenia; some landing barges; the 8 Hellenic and 9 Turcowaz vessels.

Third drawer: 7 merchant ships (2 armed); 19 Azurian vessels (including the two overscale 'flatiron gunboats'), the light cruiser and 3 torpedo boats of the minute Rhumbarbarian Navy; and the 8-ship navy of Izumrud-Zeleniya. Separating the Zeleniyans from the others, are two riverine boats: a sternwheeler steamship, and a Ruberian  'Fly' class gunboat.

The above is what separates the naval accommodations: my Roman Fort. This featured as the fortified wall of the riverine market town of Kachinga in the 'Darkest Aithops' campaign run by 'Jacko' and myself that was kiboshed by COVID19 2.0. 5 years ago. I don't think it will ever be revived, worse luck. It promised to be very interesting. The colonial army was about to be ambushed at Getmai Drift by what remained of the m'Butu tribal forces, though it was very doubtful that the colonial tide would have been stemmed. 

In another chest of drawers one might locate my 'Byzantiad' armies - and my ACW vessels, which, again, I forgot to photograph

Some 'Byzantiad' stuff. Those galley hulls are from a project begun 
decades ago. Still don't know what to do with them.

Other bits and pieces have their own storage spaces - this unit of bins contains several HO-OO scale buildings, some cardboard railway buildings, some Usborne mediaeval, a few plastic, and a number home made. These days I find myself using more often several underscale buildings that I have stashed elsewhere.

Assorted buildings

Below, counters, dice, little magnetic chessboard, and my hearing aid stuff. 

That folded thing divided into green squares
and tucked in between furniture was one of those
  'could be useful' buys. Still not sure what to do with it

And finally, I have found a place for my 1:600 'Jono's World' expeditionary forces. One change I will probably make. I combined the AA and logistic elements, which seemed to make sense, and perhaps those elements will remain so. But I think some separate AA elements are called for...

'Jono's World' Armies. The aircraft stands are 
for my 'Mighty Armada's' game system that needs 
a fair bit of work to complete...

Well ... that isn't everything, but it is most of it. At some future time I might say something about my folders of notes, sketches, maps, ORBATS etc. I had a look at my ACW folder, and discovered that over the years I had accumulated a fairly useful resource. More of that sort of thing another time...