A little family project. We’ll keep the posts in this topic as we progress.

So… after collecting ESR second edition and every campaign guide. Looking, reading, dreaming, and starting learning the rules with the figures we had (6 and 10mm), life happened..

Time went by and now 3rd edition is here. Streamlined and to the point. Haven’t found anything yet that doesn’t make sense, except perhaps the “stuck” artillery when withdrawing, retreating, and breaking vs abandoned guns. But we can always houserule that if need be.

We’re from Denmark and paid twice as much in taxes and customs than the actual product, but it was worth it. The cards? They’ll have to wait until we can get them all at once.

But something stuck in my mind. Here we have all these beautiful campaign guides. So much love and work has clearly gone into creating them, yet it seemed not many (if any) as of yet, used them the way we believed they were dreamed to be used. We wanted to pick a campaign guide as a complete project, play every battle in order and actually win or loose a campaign, and doing it all over again as a campaign rematch. But to do this we needed something where the terrain, setup, and forces could be created for each battle in one or two weekends each (for the small battles). We wanted the helicopter view - the true look of a massive battle from above, a moving scale model. And it became clear to us that we were going for 2-3mm units. The search was on..

My son (12) and I then stumpled on a guy on youtube - Project Wargaming and a blog - Forward March Studios. The YouTube videos showed that with 3D printing you could actually create decent small scale minis worth painting, as in there’s a difference between a shako and a bearskin. Now, we are aware The Wargaming company is launching its own miniature line of 10mm and we do hope it becomes the next Flames of War and wish it the greatest possible success. But for this project idea it wouldnt work with the time we have on our hands (I work 50h+/week in an office 60 miles from home).

Forward March Studios also had some 3D files, but that was not for us. It was meant for blocks that somewhat looked like men - a no go. But he had this “crazy” idea about fast modular battlefields for doing many different battles with accurate roads, rivers etc. that really looked good. It had that helicopter view we were looking for.

And so, putting all three together and diving into the works of Ian Castle, George Nafziger, and Michael Leggiere we were ready to set of. We got our 3D printer, wash&cure station, plexiglas map panels, posca pens, some woodland underbrush, small buildings, some 5mm foamboard sheets to cut hills and ridges, and most importantly our 3rd edition rules of ESR.

We chose 1805 Roll up that Map to start with because a) the battles are small (except the last one obviously) and b) because its the first one in the chronology.

This was it. We can now print, paint, and build up each battle as we go. Learn the rules proper and build a massive collection week by week and each battle can be depicted exactly as in the campaign guide down to every road turn and little building. Our units are 30+mm on 40mm bases (artillery 20mm) but we believe they work well for 150y/“. We posted a few pics in the ESR Facebook Group of our first handful of 3D printed units.

So this weekend is Battle of Wertigen weekend. We’ll keep this thread as a little journal and see how far we make it.