The War of the Triple Alliance (2)

 I honestly didn't think it had been January since my last post.  I was aware that I wanted to post all my Napoleon in Egypt figures before posting about anything else, but those went into my basing backlog and nothing happened as a consequence.  But today I took proper photos of all my completed Great Paraguayan War/War of the Triple Alliance units to date, so I'll be writing about those over the next couple of weeks or so (14 posts' worth).  Since I posted some initial "group" shots last December, I've added another Brazilian infantry unit, the Uruguayan "Libertad" infantry regiment, and I've completed the Paraguayan cavalry unit.  I've recently finished some artillery for both sides and more Paraguayan infantry, and have started by first Argentinian infantry battalion.  Before that, I spent most of February to May painting Dixon ACW - loads of stuff, including Federals and artillery, that's also stuck in the basing pile.   

Another view of the Alliance forces to date

A brigade of Kingscarbine Paraguayan infantry with a Perry cavalry unit

So things are finally back on track, I think.  For those interested in this period, I can recommend the new book "Borders of Blood" by Victor Barone, published by Caliver and also sold by Perry Miniatures.  This gives a run down of the history of the war, organisation information in respect of the various armies, and has loads of photos from the Perries and the author's gaming group.  But the bulk of the book is a set of rules for the period and some scenarios.  I haven't digested the rules themselves yet, but they have a card activation deck that looks interesting and the rules take account of details specific to the period such as the effects of the weather (heavy rain and half the Paraguayan muskets don't fire) and the marshy terrain.  The book also collects in one place all those uniform guides from the Perry website.

The section on army organisation made me think that my units strengths aren't quite right.  I was aiming for 18-20 figures for each unit across all combatant nations, but it seems clear that Brazilian and Paraguayan units should be larger than those from Argentina and Uruguay (at least for the earlier part of the war).  I'll touch on this in other posts, but I think I might use the following strengths:

- Paraguay: 18-24 figures;

- Brazil: 18-20 figures;

- Argentina: 16-18 figures;

- Uruguay: 12-18 figures.

If anyone has other views, please do let me know.  Finally, as I'll be blogging about this period for a while, Kiwi wargamer Mark Strachan has a fantastic collection on this blog (amongst lots of outstanding collections: his WTA stuff is here.