5th of May 1860: the beginning of the Expedition

158 years ago, during the night between the 5th and the 6th of May 1860. Garibaldi and the Thousand volunteer sailed from Quinto, near Genoa, directed to Sicily.

So time for some updates about my Risorgimento project.

I recently started reading Garibaldi, from Osprey Commander series (Command #14). The book gives a good basic introduction of his personal story, mainly dealing with his military deeds, of course. 

Concerning painting: so far I finished 8 garibaldini red shirts, 9 Bourbonic cacciatori (sharpshooters) and one picciotto (Sicilian volunteers joining Garibaldi expedition). Of course pictures will follow, so keep tuned.

Considering the little time I can dedicate to painting I don't think I'll be able to play rebels and patriots at the release date, as stated in a previous post. Nor any other large skirmish game. Additionally, I think that using my painted figures as soon as possible will keep my motivation high, so I started looking for some skirmish (1:1 ratio) rulesets. 

Here a brief summary of those I've taken into account so far. Bear in mind that only Smooth and rifle has a specific list of the period and that I just read most these rules.

Forager

I played a couple of turns at Salute last month. The game flows well and require just half a dozen figures. Every figure is a character, and uses his own cards for stats. These are available IIRC for Peninsula game at the moment.

Cons: too much unique characters, I don't own a copy (my bad).

Songs of drum and shakos
This skirmish game by Sergio Laliscia of Ganesha Games, is set during Napoleonic wars, but can easily be adapted to 1860. My favorite so far (by instinct, I confess).
Pros: nice activation system, needs about 12 figures per side.

Smooth and rifle

Written by Lorenzo Sartori (Impetus and Dadi e Piombo) aims to cover the black powder period skirmishes. There is a bit of emphasis on squad action (quite strange since if I calculated correctly you field about about one dozen figures per side). Overall seems quite a nice ruleset, well laid and complete. It deserves a proper reading.

Legends of the high sea

The popular pirate age ruleset from Warhammer Historical, out of production, but I luckily own a copy and have played it several time (in the appropriate setting, i.e. in the Caribbean).

Pros: solid basic mechanics, I already know the rules

Cons: completely different theme, so I'd have to draw some list (minor issues) and most missions would feel...weird. Plus I'm not particularly fond of the complete IGOUGO separation of turns.

So it's time for some reflection (usually while I'm painting), keep tuned!

Summer (painting) Campaign!

The council of war was reunited last week and our plan was finally set.

The main question was: what's next? What's the next big project our club will devote the next year? We decided a theme, after many years (Luca waited for this about 17 years) we are finally jumping into the Thirty Years War period, also known as Pike&Shotte period!

So, our next step was to decide which ruleset had to be used for the period. After FOG:R was ruled out, due to the massive number of miniatures and (most important) time needed to set up and play a game, there were two pretendants: Liber Militum Tercios (supported by Luca) and The Pikeman's Lament (proposed by me).

Every general is going to gather his forces: Luca, Paolo and Stefano already own a relevant collection of 15mm miniatures for the period, most of them painted and based (using the DBx standard, since they were meant to be used with FOG:R).
Marco, Jack and me, on the other hand, bought 28mm warlord models, Luca and Paolo decided to join us in that scale, too.

During our war council we decided that the games are not mutually exclusive, we will use Tercios to recreate the proper battles of the period and TPL for skirmishing action like foraging and raiding. We found an agreement on bases (for 28mm) and so we should be able to game Tercios in 15mm and 28mm and TPL in 28mm. There are also ideas to link the game of the two ruleset in a kind of campaign game, but it's all pretty vague, for now.

Now, it's time to paint! First armies are expected to be ready for the winter. Of course, future developements will be posted in this blog, so stay tuned!

Factions

Luca - Imperial Army (15mm and 28mm)

Jack - Spanish Army (28mm)

Marco - Swedish (28mm)

Stefano - Swedish (15mm)

Paolo - Parlamentarian (15mm); Danes (28mm) [still thinking about them] 

Riccardo - German Protestants (28mm) [loosely based upon Saxons]