Jemima Fawr’s Review of 2024

Well, that was shit…

I hope that my remaining reader had a better year, but here at Fawr Towers, 2024 was pretty diabolical, primarily down to major health issues in the family, my ongoing eye trouble being the very least of it!  Thankfully, the end is now in sight, so here’s to 2025 being a far better year.

Needless to say, that did have a major impact on my wargaming and blogging, so this annual review is going to be relatively brief (stop cheering at the back)!

My sodding eyelids flared up with a vengeance, quite literally on New Year’s Day 2024, which meant I did absolutely no painting whatsoever until August!  Since then however, my painting-rate has been pretty good, though it’s been 100% 15/18mm Seven Years War and the overall totals are obviously well down on previous years.

So here’s what I’ve painted this year.  The links will take you to the relevant article, though I haven’t yet caught up with my photography and article-writing for the most recent units:

The first unit was one I actually started last New Years Eve, but had to abandon due to eye-trouble, so I finally managed to finish them in August, namely the Brunswick ‘Imhoff’ Infantry Regiment, along with a Brunswick artillery detachment and General von Imhoff himself:

Then I finished off the infantry of the Chasseurs de Fischer, by adding some skirmishers to the unit which I’d part-painted in 2023:

Intending to put on a refight of the Combat of Sanderhausen at a local club open day, I needed to expand the Hessian contingent, so added a few more infantry battalions, generals, artillery and the Jäger Corps.  I also had a varnishing disaster with the Hessian Foot Guards…

You can never have enough French infantry, so I added two more large regiments; the Regiment Du Roi and the Grenadiers de France:

Then it was time for more Hanoverian infantry, horse and artillery, as well as Freytag’s Jäger Corps:

Lastly, there are a few units for which I haven’t yet taken any decent photos or written articles, starting with the first half of the French Royal-Carabiniers (there are still another sixteen of these to paint):

For the Christmas Minden game we also needed a few more French cavalry, the Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeburg Artillery Corps and a pile of Saxons.  Sadly however, my painting-table photos are even worse than usual, due to my new Samsung S24 phone having a surprisingly poor camera for photographing models (it’s probably something in the settings, but buggered if I can work it out…).  I’ve therefore decided to keep my old Samsung i10 in reserve, purely to use as a camera for photographing models and games:

And last, but most certainly not least, I finally got around to getting myself a ‘proper’ fortress…

So to the scores on the doors…  As previously discussed, it was a late start and I only painted for five months, so numbers are well down on previous years.  I managed to paint 335x Foot, 56x Horse and 8x Guns, totaling £354.60 at current prices.  However, to that can be added 2x bastions, 1x ravelin, 1x lunette, 3x curtain walls and 1x gatehouse, which adds a further £144.00, bringing the total to £498.60-worth of stuff painted this year.

All of the figures came out of the Lead Dungeon, so my wargames expenditure this year has been limited to the fortress and two board-games (the excellent ‘Napoleon 1806’ and ‘Napoleon 1807’).  This pleases Mrs Fawr…  Paint, brushes, glue and books of course are essential household expenses, so don’t count… 

So aside from solo board-gaming (of which I did a fair bit when I was unable to paint), I managed to get a few games on the rare occasion I was able to get down the club AND gather a few suitably-interested people around me.  This mostly revolved around the Seven Years War, but in March I dragged part of the old Murfreesboro terrain out to once again play the northern flank scenario, this time at W.A.S.P.

In June I was at W.A.S.P. again, this time to test a draft scenario for the Combat of Sanderhausen:

In September, the Sanderhausen scenario got another run-out; this time at the annual open day of the Haverfordwest Gaming Club:

In October, our old mate and club-deserter Jase was back from New Zealand for a visit, so we managed to play another Seven Years War game before he buggered off again; the Combat of Corbach:

Finally last Friday, for our Christmas game we played yet another Seven Years War scenario, being a half-scale version of the Battle of Minden.  The game report is still to be written, but here are a few photos to be going on with:

So games were fairly thin on the ground for me this year, though in the meantime I’ve been fighting a ‘postal’ (e-mail, actually) campaign of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  The campaign is masterminded by Barrie Lovell of Timecast Miniatures and he runs the campaign and fights the battles on his wargames table in Shrewsbury, while we send him orders. 

My role is the Chief of Staff of the Prussian-German 2nd Army.  I can’t say too much about it at the moment, as French eyes might be reading this, but to date we have managed to cross the River Saar and with some difficulty, eject the French army out of their fortified position around the town of St Avold.  3rd Army meanwhile, comprehensively defeated a rather bold French invasion east of the Rhine. 

Having forced the bulk of the French army back behind the walls of Metz, my 2nd Army managed to catch the French Imperial Guard Corps and V Corps in the open to the south of the city and finally gave them a well-deserved malleting!  3rd Army meanwhile did likewise to another French army at Luneville, which is now in full retreat through Nancy.  However, we now have reports of yet another rather rash invasion of Germany up near the Luxembourg border, so that’ll be a task for 1st Army to deal with. 

On to Paris!

Here’s a picture of Barrie’s wargames table, showing my 2nd Army giving the French Imperial Guard the good news outside Metz…

I was nowhere near as productive on the scenario, game report and general history-writing front as I’d hoped I would be this year (for the reasons mentioned above), though I still managed to get a few articles published, starting with my write-up of last year’s Christmas game, the Battle of Warburg 1760:

Then I finally got around to writing up my much-played ‘what-if’ scenario for the northern flank at Murfreesboro/Stones River 1862:

June was a pretty productive month, with two scenarios published.  The first was for the Battle of Kesselsdorf 1745, which ended the 2nd Silesian War and Prussia’s participation in the War of Austrian Succession.  I really need to finish that Saxon army and get on to playing this one (8 infantry battalions, 4 cavalry regiments and 1 artillery battery done, just a few more to do…):

The second scenario for June was the above-mentioned Combat of Sanderhausen 1758, pitting a Hessian rearguard against a superior French force:

It’s been a while since I posted anything relating to WW2 (despite having repeatedly promised more Burma stuff…), but in August I finally finished off a Normandy scenario I’d started in 2012.  Titled ‘No Longer Having a Go 1944’ this scenario covered the events of one of the darkest days for the 7th Armoured Division in Normandy:

Then it was back to the Seven Years War with the Combat of Corbach 1760:

Other stuff on the blog this year included catching up with a load of troops I’d painted at the end of 2023, starting with some more SYW French infantry regiments:

Then some more British Dragoon regiments:

And some British Dragoon Guards and regiments of Horse:

Then it was back to the French, with some more artillery and Swiss infantry regiments:

Rounding off the catch-up articles from 2023 was this profile of the Chasseurs de Fischer and the massed French Grenadiers and Chasseurs:

There was only one ‘also-ran’ article this year and that was prompted by a discussion elsewhere on 18th Century Spanish forts.  I posted a few photos of such things from my photo-albums of visits to the excellent Military Museum of the Canary Islands in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and then thought “That might actually make a good blog post.”:

The museum article was well-received, so I’ll probably do another in 2025 about the Italian Air Force Museum at Lake Bracciano, which I visited last March, as well as some of my Normandy battlefield tours of years past.

Another highlight of 2024 for me was my visit to Richard Youngs and his amazing wargames collection (see below)!  Richard is a fellow fan of AB Figures Napoleonics and Napoleon’s Battles rules, so I think it’s safe to say that there will be more Napoleonics (my first wargaming love) in 2025!

I don’t have too many plans for 2025 beyond hoping that my family members recover from what ails them.  From a wargaming point of view, I’d like to catch up with writing up my game-reports and would like to actually do some more wargaming this year!  As much as I love the 18th Century, it would also be nice to play some WW2, Napoleonic, AWI and ACW games this year and perhaps some other things as well.

Oh and I should add that this blog just clocked up over 100,000 visits this year (now on 100,932 at time of writing), which is the first time I’ve had over 100,000 (or even 90,000) in a single year! 🙂

Anyway, that’s me for 2024!  Have a very Happy New Year who/wherever you are (unless you’re Russian, of course)!