The Military Geography of Alzheim

Alzheim is a medium sized, middle-ranking state in the middle of southern Germany.

It is approximately 400 kilometers along it's east-west axis and about 250 kilometres north to south.

To the west and south curve the mighty Alzgebirgs beyond which lie the realms of the Gallispania and of the Italians respectively. These are intersected by five mountain passes which the military geographer may divide into First, Second and Third Class roads. The first and second class roads are guarded by old fortresses that date back to the first half of the fifteenth century; the First class roads are guarded as at the town of Finke by latterly erected modern fortresses to M. Vauban's system of fortification. At the same time as these fortifications were built, the old forts on the secondary roads were graced with diverse outworks; Ravelins &c.

 The old Fortress at Finke.

To the North and East run the gentle loops and meanderings of the Mur Flusse. This river's great flow is fed by tributary rivers arising in the Alzgebirgs, the Themse and Grossehaber. Paralleling their course, but not joining the system is the Isar which runs it's course to the south and east, creating the Waldsee and the marshy, forested country in the hills East of Grunwald. This swamp eventually finds it's way via a network of small lakes into the Neider Iser which gently waters the Uckermark in the South-East of the country.

These rivers are the highways of the country and so are guarded as potential invasion routes by the bluff-built fortress of Prenzlau which guards against the sundry Princes of the Germanies, the small fortress at Rosenthal (which watches the Bavarians) and those of Grunwald and Gunzbad which along with the Grunwald marshes are the Eastern bulwark in case the Empire should ever attempt to replicate the depredations of the Thirty Years' War.

The singular feature of Alzheim is the Great Escarpment which cuts across the South-western portion of the land. This is Alzheim's national redoubt, which, although not seriously fortified since Mediaeval times, has nonetheless been the refuge of the people as recently as the 30 Years' War when Bavarian and Imperial armies ravaged across the land.

By Crom, Post Number 450!

 Reaper Miniatures barbarian-types. I think this one is meant to be evil...

... and this one's meant to be a Hero.

Never would have guessed it, would you?

These are examples of the black undercoat technique in all it's glory, usually with a base, mid and highlight colour. The skin on Mr Muscles up top has about six highlights on it, all very thin, to get the smoothest transition between highlights I could manage. Sepia ink glazes to tie the layering together.  Looking at them, I realise how much I owe Marvel Comics and Dark Horse (and Games Workshop) in the visualisation of these figures!

Noodling about on the Net

As in the title, I was poking about on the internet and stumbled across this:

http://martianchess.blogspot.com/2010/11/royal-armies-of-hyborean-age-1975.html

Which led me to the back of a 1985 issue of Marvel Comics "The Savage Sword of Conan" featuring on the back cover an advertisement for players to join the play by mail campaign "Hyborean War".  You could "Join the tens of thousands nationally who are enjoying the vivid interactive games only made possible in the last few years by recent advances in computer technology.

And then there is this:

http://conanvault.ign.com/wiki/index.php/Hyboria_Map

And this:

http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Webstuff/hobbies/armatihyboria.html

And to think I was foolish enough to plan on working on some of my French cavalry and Anglo-Prussian infantry some time in the near future.

Help! I'm all over the place.

I Explore My Inner Nerd

Small venture into the Star Trek universe - who knows where it might take me.

http://finalfrontiers.blogspot.com/

Once a Knight...

I'm taking a little break at the moment from painting hordes of ACW soldiers and putting a little extra time into painting up a few figures for my "Great Siege" collection. what you see below is my basic cavalry figure, a mounted Knight of St John. Visual references are few and far between, so I've gone with what feels like a reasonable representation based on an Osprey plate from (I think) "The Warriors of the Cross" or the "Knights of Christ" or some similar title and the cover of the issue of Practical Wargamer featuring the Siege of Fort St Elmo.

Note that the lance may well be just a little too long, but I think it looks better that way.

Willie Spanish Mounted Arquebusier from the Spanish Conquest range with added 10cm steel lance and a Castaway Arts shield.

Same guy, different view.

I am discovering a renewed interest in painting and will probably spend the next few weeks painting a few comrades for him. And some opponents.

In other "news" - Is it just me, or is the blogosphere irrevocably doomed with no hope of recovery?

Now I have your attention, I just wanted to ask what's the deal with these "Stylish Blogger Awards" people are nominating each other for? Do we realise that these are structured pretty much like chain letters - everyone nominated is invited to nominate a further four blogs for the award. Therefore, to get one's own award, one has to finger another four folks.

Let it go on for long enough and everyone will have one which rather detracts from the cachet, does it not?

Really, how can getting an award under these circumstances be anything other than meaningless.

Post Script, I do have other issues with the blogosphere that I may explore at a later date.

Constructing Fort St Elmo

I thought I'd put up a couple of WiP shots to let you all know how I'm going about building Fort St Elmo. As you can see, the main structure of the fort is just polystyrene that i salvaged from a construction site. It's 10 cm/4" thick. I've just cut it out with a thin-bladed saw I have and then carefully sliced the "batter" of the walls so they slope. That then gets smoothed off and generally tidied up with a block and 120 grit sandpaper.

The base and fighting platform are both 3mm/ 1/8th" MDF cut to shape with my jig-saw. I got the shapes right by tracing around the top and bottom of the balsa with a marker. Make sure that there is a couple of millimetres' overlap on the top layer to produce the "lip" that you see on many vauban-type fortifications just below the ramparts.

The sentry box is just a piece of balsa rod with a half a foam ball stuck on.

The figure is a 30mm "Willie" who is standing in for the whole Turk army.

Building Fort St Elmo

Havin some time to spare this weekend, I decided to start building fort St Elmo for a Great Siege game some day. You'll note it's main structure is made from large slabs of polystyrene used in housing insulation that I scavenged from various building-sites!

The figure I am using for scale purposes is a 30mm Willie from the Colonial "Dolly Grey" range.
A general view of the fort showing counter-clockwise from the left; the cavalier; the main fort itself; the original ravelin covering the main gate and; the hastily constructed ravelin of earth and fascines.
The cavalier. I'm intending to build this as a two-tiered gun platform. In it's final state it's going to be somewhat higher than the fort as was it's real-life counterpart.
The landward side of the fort. I have not yet decided whether to just cut a gateway in the curtain behind the ravelin or to put it in the recess behind the orillon of the lower demi-bastion. The former would be easier, the latter more accurate.

The next major piece of work will be to sand down the exterior faces of the fort to give the characteristic "batter" of these kind of works. After that I will need to cut out the interior courtyard of the main fort and line it with some foamcore in which I am going to be cutting numerous arches to simulate the forts casemates.

The whole work is about a metre long (or a little longer depending on how you space out the outworks) by about 60 centimetres wide.

Terrain and Undercoats

Big terrain as it is made on the exhibition circuit as I know it tends to make bulk use of polystyrene as a keleton with any number of different skins and finishes. One similarity they all seem to have is the use of a black undercoat and then sucessivly lighter coats of base colouration put on with a four-inch brush. Has anyone ever done their terrain on a white undercoat and then used progressively thinner and darker washes to get their base effects? I'm going to repaint some earthworks over the next few days as an experiment.

Fort St. Elmo

Where better to start than with Fort St Elmo? It seems to me that there have been some misconceptions concerning its' trace as reported by Ernle Bradford in his book on the Siege.

The fort is described as a star fort with three outworks in the shape of a pair of ravelins (one built in some haste of timber and earth) and a cavalier. Now, how are we to interpret this?

Take the image above, an engraving of a fresco of Matteo Perez d'Aleccio. The fort under siege is St. Elmo. Note that it is simply a star fort. There is a structure to the side of the fort closest the peninsula-tip, and another to the left of the fort.

The image below is a modern interpretation of this image and others. I believe that what we have here is a star fort with a ravelin at it's left, another "ravelin" or more properly a "rivelino" (see the great "ravelin" at Sarnzello) oriented at face the tip of the peninsula. I'm not yet persuaded one way or the other that the tower-like structure is in fact a cavalier (or raised battery - the battle accounts don't read that way to me) or whether that might be the structure linking the two named outworks being pierced for artillery and arquebuses to command the ditch. Certainly I think that the tall structure still exists, having been integrated at a later date into the greater structure of the fort. Accounts of the siege do stress that once the Turks took it, they were able to dominate the interior of the fortification, as the Ravelin they captured was taller than the fort.

Discuss!

Snap Out of It

Time to set some goals here, people.

Time to put a stop to the drift.

Goals, then. Right.

By the end of 2012, I want to have done the following:

*Made real progress in the "1565" project.
*Re-started the "Old School ACW" project.
*Finished all of my outstanding French Cavalry regiments
*Built at least three British, Prussian or Bavarian Infantry regiments and a pair of Cavalry regiments to go with them.

Rough outline of the above as follows:

"1565" - to start with a skirmish-sized force to see how I go painting my assorted Knights of St John/Spanish and some Turks. Working out some appropriate army structures for them. Pausing and seeing if I am really interested in starting to build them. Building some anciliary bits to go with them. I would like to build some Renaissance artillery fortifications just for the fun of it. I am looking for an excuse to construct an earthern "star fort" from polystyrene. I am also itching to build some of the Langdon 1:1200 Renaissance warships. They look terrific. I have some experience building his Napoleonic ships, so I know what I'm in for. Where might this take me? I am pondering a loosely-based-on-reality solo campaign set in the eastern Med in that era. Might it culminate with a "Great Siege"? Who can tell. Certainly not me, but I have greatly enjoyed reading about it. I've also been daydreaming about Landsknechts, perhaps just as a painting/collecting thing, but again, who knows where the renaissance may take me. Maybe I also want some of the old Hinchcliffe Winged Lancers, too.

"Old School ACW" - I feel like a bad parent. So much effort went into the project, and I felt so bad when I ran out of time with only one undocumented game played. At the very least, I need to get a few games in, and at best, I need to follow the project plan I laid out in the blog to it's conclusion. I have at least enough miniatures in stock here to build the project up to it's divisional-sized milestone. Let's do it, eh?

"The Eighteenth Century" - This has been on a care and maintenence basis for longer than I care to think. Not good. I have one complete and six part-completed French Cavalry regiments. Surely I can finish off another three from my existing lead pile alone? Likewise a recent audit has revealed many many infantry who could fight my French Infantry - if only they were painted... My ambition is to get playable forces together to play some of the smaller scenarios from "The Annexation of Chiraz" and "The Raid on St Michiel".

At a rough guess, that's about 340-400 Olley-points over about 20 months. That's less than one toy soldier or horse a day; at my painting speed (900-milliolleys to one Olley per day), that's a pretty acheivable amount.

Part two of this post is titled "The Lonely War Gamer". I'll keep it brief as it is largely born out of a fairly large disappontment.

In recent months I had decided it was all very well to build these damn' huge armies but really, what was the point of it all if they just sat around in their plastic boxes in the car-port. So, I decided to get out there and join a war gaming club. Your actual, honest to god wargaming club. None of my friends here in Melbourne are war gamers, indeed, my nearest and dearest friend I am sure regards it as only a step above dressing up as a lady, although what's wrong with that I'll never know.

My nearest club dabbles in almost anything other than straight historical games, so I thought, OK, go with it and finally got around to painting/touching up the Riders of Rohan army I'd been slowly putting together after reading Mike Siggins review of GW's "War of the Ring". I read the rules, tried to become familiar with them and finally went along.

Well imagine that of all the people there playing the various flavours of Warhammer, only two were doing the Ring thing and they were about 14 or so. Nice kids, but, really, do I really want to be spending my precious spare time doing this? One of the other guys there told me that this was a dead gaming genre pretty much and that GW was only promoting it as much as it was to recoup the massive license fee they'd paid.

I was generally ignored as I wandered about the room, hopefully trying to insert myself into a conversation here and there... Fair enough, they all knew each other and were mates and I was just some guy, but I'm not sure it's how I'd have treated a noob.

So I'm thinking fuck it, I'll be a soloist from now on.

Might be selling some Riders of Rohan before long. Painted to a basic wargames standard. 48 infantry and 34 cavalry. Another 20 infantry and 30 or so cavalry unpainted.

The Great Siege of 1565

Over the past few months I have indulged myself to no small extent by buying old issues of Practical Wargamer.

No disrespect intended to any gentlemen publishing wargaming journals in these latter days, but I must nail my proverbials to the mast and declare this one of the finest wargaming publications ever.

There. I've said it. It's not without it's faults, but I think these are far and away outweighed by the general excellence of the content. Specifically, I am thinking of the regular columns and in particular that of John Treadaway's Fantasy Facts. Suffice to say, he was not one to hold back and call crap when he saw it. Count me a fan-boy.

Ian Weekly was a very regular contributor, mostly promoting his business which was fair enough, but every now and then he came up with an interesting article.

That could have been better expressed!

One that has really caught my eye was his account of the Siege of Malta in 1565 for which he built a model of Fort St Elmo, seemingly for his own pleasure. What I think I really liked about the project was his use of "Willie" figures from the Spanish Heritage (Conquistadores) range for the Knights of St John and various Islamic figures (to use a pretty broad description!) for the Turks along with some one-offs from John Ray which I think might have been the Turkish gun crews.

Now I don't know why, but this has really gotten the juices flowing for some reason. I mean, actual books have been purchased. Old magazines have been trawled for on eBay and bought. Money has been laid down with Spencer Smiths' for samples of Pizarros' men.

Now, I don't have the services of Mr Ray*, but I think that this might be a fun little side project. I don't recall if I've alluded much to my current situation, but I have really very little spare time these days with baby number two. Painting time is about 20-30 minutes a day as I get ready for work, and most of that is going into my Riders of Rohan**. Heaven knows, I'm abandoning precious sleep time to write this tonight.

The charm is there for me. Elizabethans versus Turks with fairly primitive artillery, early fortifications and a folorn hope. The thought of gaming or role-playing the corsair raids of the knights against Turkish shipping. Turkish raids on Christian towns for the purpose of slaving. There's a lot there for the wargamer. I'm excited at the possibilities of campaigning with the Knights of St John against the Turks, as well. The fighting could take me across the Med to North Africa, or across the Agean to Rhodes.

For figures, Eureka do useful ranges of Turk Corsairs as well as a nice mortar and Spanish and Portugese and Gendarmes who could easily stand in for any of the Christian players in the theatre. Just in case I go beyond a few "Willies"*** to whet my appetite. Navwar do Galleys and galleasses in 1:1200

Do I sound enthusiastic? I think I am. Now's a matter of honing down I think, and finding the central thread that I can follow through this period. Happy days.

*More's the pity!!!
**34 Cavalry painted or touched up from various eBay purchases. 20 infantry complete and another 28 on the stocks ready to begin...
***And of course, now I have a dremel tool, they will present no problems.

The Scrounger

I was in my facvoured hobby shop recently and the owner and I got to talking about the kind of customers he gets. It turns out he had a label for me, too.

I am a bargain hunter.

He has a table of cut price items at the back of the store which I always make a bee-line for as there is always something interesting to be seen. I always go there before I take in any of the more-regularly-priced items on the shelves.

I'm not particularly upset at ebing viewed in this way, because I am not just a bargain hunter, I'm more of a scrounger.

I have been quietly buying Lord of the Rings miniatures on eBay over the past year. I was interested in their mass battles rule set and wanted to assemble a large Riders of Rohan and an Uruk Hai army to have a go with. Add to the mix that my "local" games club only does GW games, I thought well, why not?

Long story short, I suppose I have assembled a pretty respectable Eored of about 75 mounted and 60 or so dismounted, of whom about half are painted to varying degress of finish. This has cost about a quarter of what walking in through the doors of my local GW barn and emptying my wallet.

Proud to be a bargain-hunting scrounger.

Got to go - I need more Uruks. I hope they're half-painted. Stops me having to assemble, clean and undercoat the buggers.

The Red and the Blue

More or less on a whim I went and bought some HE Artillery just to see what they were like.
I bought three - the Traditional Charles XII Gun, Light Artillery Gun and Heavy Artillery Gun which you can see here. The Charles XII Gun has the barrel cast in one piece with the carriage and although the detail is a little heavy in places is not too bad. The imaginatively named Light Artillery Gun and Heavy Artillery Gun are very fine. Detail on the carriages is very simple - for example whatever metal work there is i have simply painted on myself. Nonetheless all the pieces are very slim and fine. The barrel of the Heavy Gun in particular is really delightful. All three guns repay careful clean-up as there is some evidence of mould wear especially around the axles and on the muzzle of the Charles XII Gun. this is nothing you can't clean up with a jewellers' file, though.

By comparison, the SSM Field Gun recast from the original plastic weapon is a much more clumsy affair, nonetheless, quite a satisfying little model. I was very pleased how the gun tubes came up over a green base-coat. Once again, the detail on the carriage was scanty and I ended up just painting it on.
While I was feeling whimsical, I bought a load of HE sample infantry on the basis of a couple of blog posts from Mr Preece and Mr Schwartz. These are Swedish Infantry on the march and as you can see, they have a lovely dioramic quality. I am put in mind of vertain scenes that have been put together by talented flats painters like Mr Christian Rogge. Warning, this site contains images of pures wargamers' porn.
What to do with them, though? I have been tempted with my new copy of Anton Hoffman plates on the Bavarian Army of "The Blue King", I must say.

Heckenfeur #3

... or: "I aten't dead" to quote Granny Weatherwax.

Well, here I be, six weeks into baby Sam and all is going pretty well; no dramas to report. Big sister seems to be happy enough with her "bay" as she calls him. Amy's doing well; breast feeding is proceeding. Sleep is being lost! All normal so to speak.

So, it's half past six in the morning here at the moment, both children are still asleep as is mother, so it's obviously time for a blog posting.

So to business.

Firstly, thanks you all very much for your kind notes and emails after my last posting. They have been too numerous (and I've not really had much computer time to be able) to respond to, but please be assured that all have been read and are very much appreciated here.

Hobby activities are on a heavy, heavy slow-down here in the Duchy of Alzheim. Bauer has gone fishing and HM Augustus Rex is snoozing after consuming much too much trifle over the Christmas holiday.

Naturally, imagineering has gone on apace as ever; the focus of my attention is always rather like a blowfly trapped in a jar and bouncing off the sides if that makes any sense whatsoever. I recently dug out my old copies of Practical Wargamer - I think I may have about two-thirds of the set if it went no further than Volume 12 - and have been reading away. The first thing I turned to was John Treadaways always excellent "Fantasy Facts" column which I hope some of you might remember with admiration for the force of his opinions and very entertaining style. It looks to me like he was quite a fan of GZG's products (in addition to the work of Tom Meier and Julie Guthrie) and I remembered how nearly 20 years ago I really, really wanted some of the Stargrunt figures he wrote about but never bought at the time due to the difficulty and huge expense in those far-off pre-internet days of ordering anything from overseas. Well, a little googling (new verb anyone?) and I found that not just GZG but quite a few other manufacturers from that era are still in business and now I've various little parcels of lead and resin crawling their way through the lousy northern winter to my sunny door-step. lovely. Phil Olley will tell me off for being a hobby scatterbrain, but there's no helping that!

So, pure self-indulgence.

What else? Since Sam's been born my duty has been to give Erin her breakfast first thing in the morning and while she's dawdled over her Rice Bubbles I've done a little plastic modelling. Just some Armourfast kits that I had hoarded - so now i have a half dozen Sherman 2 and 3s with a Matchbox Dingo scout car for Alamein if that ever happens. I still go and re-read the Richard Marsh Alamein article on the Rapid Fire website. We'll see.

My Sudan wanderings continue. Not to the same extent as Gordon, but I have just finished painting a dinky little Conoisseur Screw-Gun and crew and just finished prepping and undercoating a trio of 9-pounders which seem to make up into very nice models. I've also about finished reading Mike Snook's "Go Strong into the Desert" which is a very comprehensive (for the relative brevity of the book) treatment of the early part of the conflict in the Sudan, say, 1881 to 1885. Lovely plates, excellent narrative, really good information on early Mahdist dress that chimes in very well with the early Mahdists produced by Castaway Arts. My respect for Gerry Webb as a designer and researcher went up another couple of notches as a result of reading this book.

I especially enjoyed the too-brief discussion of the logistic options available to Wolseley and how they pretty well sealed Gordon's fate. A good book overall, although I found the author's political commentary a bit off-putting, but then I would, wouldn't I? Recommended.

That's about it for now, Erin is strating to stir and will be wanting her Rice Bubbles shortly and as it's now a quarter past 7, I'd like a coffee myself.

Cheerio.

Samuel David Horne

It's time to let the cat out of the bag and welcome to the world our newest addition, Sam. Sam was born today at 3.25 in the afternoon after a five-hour labour.

He's about two hours' old in the photo and has had his first meal of colostrum. Yumm-o!

We have had quite a nervous time with his gestation as his mum who lives with type one diabetes had a very bad hypo at about the 14 week stage of the pregnancy. I came home from work in the middle of the day on a panicky hunch to find Amy unconcious on the bed with our little girl Erin quietly sitting next to her.

Well, what with Ambulances, a trip to the Emergency Department and a week in hospital for mummy, we nearly forgot about the potential effect on baby.

Still what with MRIs that they can perform on baby whilst still in the womb, we were sufficiently re-assured and the result was well worth it and well worth the wait.

And his big sister seems hardly jealous at all.

No, I wasn't wearing a Violent Femmes t-shirt during the birth this time, but I'm bloody well wearing it now. I think I'll put the CD on. You know which one.

Things You Find... Redux

On a hunch tonight after I got home from work I combed through a little-regarded storage area here at home.

Jackpot!

Perhaps it's a sign that I have too much toy-soldiery whan I discover troops that I have not only forgotten, but forgot when I last worked on them. Still, it's a nice surprise.

Starting with the Castaway Arts stuff:

Half a dozen Hadendowah Camels and riders - 90% painted.
A dozen "ansar" Cavalry minus their horses - 40% painted.
Ten "early" Ansar. Just need basing and a few weapons and shields painted.
A handful of Egyptian regular infantry and Bashi-Bazouks, about 80% completed.

Then there's the Conoisseur stuff.
40 Naval brigade, about 65% painted.
A handful of asorted Highlanders, bare metal.

I've taken this and added it all to my painted/painting lists and feel I ought to be able to come up with the following by about January:

Sudanese:

3 units Ansar
1 unit early Ansar
1 unit Jihadiyya rifles
1 unit of cavalry

4 units Hadendowah
1 unit Hadendowah rifles
1 unit of Camelry

Egyptian
4 units of infantry
1 field gun battery

British
4 units of Infantry in Home Service Dress
2 units of Naval Brigade
1 unit Yorks & Lancs Infantry
1 unit of Camel Corps
1 unit of Hussars

So, now that I've stopped hugging myself, what to do with this bounty?

Looking at the British, I am thinking seriously about Wolseley's 1882 campaign against 'Urabi. Lots of appeal there for me, and incentive to build up my Egyptians and my Highlanders, too. I could use my Krupps and build lots of field fortifications as I seem to enjoy doing.

The Egyptians would let me defend Khartoum, any number of desolate garrisons, or let me see if Hicks Pasha might ever have stood a fighting chance.

Another possibility that occours is a campaign based on the Desert Column. The naval Brigade could proxy for some of the camel corps. The British would take a little more building, but the Sudanese are nearly there, I feel. An interesting element would be the British need to limit their casualties as they needed to remain a viable force if they were in the last instance to throw themselves into Khartoum. Likewise they would have to protect their wounded as they accumulated during the campaign. It might be fun to include Fred Burnaby as a special character.

What would you do?

Heckenfeur #2

The Sudan

*Note that this article is a placeholder until I organise my thoughts some more!*

I am as ever amazed at the resources that generous people make freely available on the web.

Here below is much of the excellent magazine "Savage and Soldier" free online:

http://www.savageandsoldier.com/articles.html

Here Steve Winter (The Colonial Angle) presents his "Fire and the Sword in the Sudan, a campaign based on the Mahadist rising. The rules are an adaptation of those presented in "the Courier" 'many moons ago' for playing Pondiac's rebellion. The material he presents on his website include a thrilling acount of his re-fight of a siege of Berber. Wonderful stuff.

http://home.comcast.net/~theangle/Campaign/FSCampgn.htm

I'm not too sure how far people might be interested in the creative process, but I thought it might be worthwhile uploading a few cartoons of some Nile steamers that everyone ought to have in their collection if they are to embark upon campaigns on those blood red desert sands.

As I have outlined in my Defense of Melbourne Blog, my ship-building methods are pretty simple.

I make a blank for the hull out of expanded polystyrene with a lamination of balsa. The balsa when scribed and stained becomes the main deck whilst the poly is the hull, usually cut to the profile of the deck with my hot wire cutter. A sanding block takes care of any complex curves at the bow or stern. The bularks are of thin card, whilst the deck-houses are of daler board - available in art supply shops.


I continue to read and paint and imagineer.

The things you find....

Uh-oh. Serious trouble.

I was messing about in the car-port this evening after work (as you do) when I found what I thought was a box of Castaway Arts Indian Army figures. Now, it contained just that, but imagine also my surprise to find:

4 early Ansar;
15 Hadendowah and;
10 late Jiadiyyah riflemen.

Is this synchronicity?

Just one small order and I can add two more TSatF units to my Mahadist collection...

This is how new projects start for me. I already have the bones of a Mahdist army - about 7 TSatF units. Oh, and I also just found about 5-6 Conoisseur Fuzzies, to boot.

This means trouble.

And a new blog label.

"Sudan".

Bits and Bobs

Getting pretty close top finishing the block-houses at the moment. Just the details to paint in now. Then I need to ge on to making the barbed wire entanglements.
An interesting sub-plot might be how much space these things take up on the table. The block-house is about 80mm in diameter. The earthworks blow the foot-print out to about 300mm. By the time I have added barbed wire, I think the diameter of one blockhouse would be in the region of 370mm or so. Food for thought! Add another and you are taking up quite a substantial portion of your avarage 6' x 4' war-games table.

In other news, and prompted by the perfidious Jeff, I have been reading on the Sudan.
Let me please share with you some OOB and scaling thoughts that i have prepared in an anally-retentive half-hour.

The Desert Column before Abu Klea (13.01.1885).
Guards Camel Regiment - 414 all ranks
Heavy Camel Regiment - 400
Mounted Infantry Camel Regiment - 383
1st/35th (Royal Sussex) - 258
19th Hussars - 135
25th Coy, RE - 27
1/2 Battery RA - 38 (3 x 2.5" Screw Guns)
Naval Brigade - 58 (1 Gardiner Gun)

Ths totals out at 1653 men whaich at a suitably Old School 1:10 is close enough to 165 figure. Now, lets take that scaling and apply unit organisations from The Sword and the Flame and apply them:

The Desert Column before Abu Klea for TSatF
Guards Camel Regiment - 2 units (40 figures)
Heavy Camel Regiment - 2 units (40 figures)
Mounted Infantry Camel Regiment - 2 units (40 figures)
1st/35th (Royal Sussex) - 1 unit (20 figures)
19th Hussars - 1 unit (12 figures)
1/2 Battery RA - 1 x 2.5" Screw Gun - (four figures)
Naval Brigade - 1 Gardiner Gun - (three figures)

Which comes to 159 figures. A pretty fair approximation, I think.

Of course, you'd need heaps of Mahdists. But there are tried and true ways of dealing with that.

What do you think?

Earthworks

My trusty hot-wire cutter comes through with the goods again.

I've opted to paint the block-houses in GW "Boltgun Metal" washed over with some burned sienna as a light tarnish and to add some definition on the corrugations.

I decided on this approach as there was no information really on whether the blockhouses had been painted or no. Besides, I squinted at some poor quality, black-and-white internet images for long enough to convince myself they were bare metal!

Block-house work in progress

Just a quickie to show you what's on here.

The idea here is to build a block-house in stand-alone form that I can drop into a terrain piece. The circular part is an industrial-scale toilet-paper roll cut in half with a saw, whlie the gable-ends and ceiling are of that perennial favourite, foam-core board.

The the roof and all the rest of the "corrugated iron cladding are a roll of finely corrugated cardboard I found a few years back in a stationers. It has a flat backing so it takes an even skim of glue well for when I have to laminate it onto a thicker card for stability. It's just been cut as a square and scored to fold for the roof.

The miniatures are Hinchcliffe in the Slade Wallace personal equipment. Very nice figures that I'd never really considered before.

Classic Wargamer's Journal

The latest issue (#1) of the CWJ is out now.

Take a look at Phil Olley's Classic Wargaming blog for details and take out a subscription while you're at it!

Getting out of the doldrums

You know how it is, you get into the project doldrums and you need a break. That's about where I'm at with my ACW project, I'd say.

I've long been interested in the Boer War, but not really wanting to commit too deeply.

Thus I'm going to do a little mini-project - a couple of Boer War Block-houses and a pair of TSaTF-sized infantry units. Not too much, just enough to slake that little thirst.

However, there are dangers; now I'm eyeing-off my Sudan collection.

Uh-oh...

Those Schombourg Dragoons (or - the Dragons de Saxe!)

Well, here they are, the Schombourg Dragoons, 17th in order of precedence after the Seven Years' War. Figures are complete, barring terraining the bases and providing a standard.
Advancing here as they are in column of troops rather than as by lines of Squadrons as is the case below, you'll notice they are are all RSMs with a line cavalryman standing in for a Cornet.
I have included a pair of trumpeters as ordinary troopers as the standard "Grant" organisation makes comparatively little allowance for command figures, a feature of the "Young-Lawford" organisations that I've always greatly enjoyed.
Squadron commanders are keeping a careful eye on the alignment of their troopers.
Bravely charging an abandoned piece...

I'm thinking seriously of painting some of the lovely RSM cossacks in similarly coloured uniforms and brigading them together to make a version of the Legion de Saxe; or a Legion de Horne as the mood takes me together with some fusiliers, a few grenadiers and a gun or two were I to fall into "imagination" mode. Certainly reading my copy of Wargaming in History has piqued my interest in that direction.

I may have mentioned already, but I expect sufficent deliveries in the next week or two to let me finish off La Reine and Royal Pologne in pretty short order. In the meantime I am painting up figures to complete the first squadron of the Royal-Cravattes.

Got any old RSM Cavalry you no longer want or need? Drop me a line at bloggeratorATgmailDOTcom.

Progress Report

Well, I'm six squadrons into the great 20 squadron cavalry push of 2010.

Very good, Greg, but what does it mean?

Glad you asked - in concrete terms, it means I have finished the Schombourg/Saxe Dragoons (bar the colour), and the first squadrons of La Reine, Royal Pologne, Montcalm and the Turpin Hussars.

I am within spitting distance of completing second squadrons of La Reine and Royal Pologne (just waiting on the next order from DPC) and I ought to be finished with the first squadrons of the Cuirassiers du Roi and the Royal Cravattes by the end of the month.

So there we have it, we ought to be at the 10 squadrons mark by the end of May - 50% of the way to the goal.

Pictures when I get time this weekend.

Cavalry WiPs

If the infantry be the Queen of the battlefield, then does this make the cavalry King? I had a minor review of the troops this afternoon and found that I have gotten myself together enough to put 74 (!) fully painted horsemen of 8 different regiments on the table.
Four are complete squadrons, the others are odds and sods as you can see - the Cuirassiers du Roi below being a prime example. I took Stokes method of dry-brushing black horses with Navy Blue and ran with it.My most complete regiment at the moment is La Reine. I'll be making it the subject of my next round of purchases.


My Schombourgs will be finished first though, as I have the second squadron lined up ready for painting and eight of their horses already done.
Royal Pologne will not be far behind - I've another half dozen troopers part-painted for them and will only need another half doz. on top of that to finish them off.

Progress Report

No pictures Jeff, the camera is playing up.

I have spent the past few weeks dilligently painting, basing and re-basing and here's what I have so far:

A squadron of a dozen Schomberg/Saxe Dragoons;
Likewise a squadron of a dozen Hussars;
Ditto, a squadron and-a-half of the La Reine Regiment.

Further, I have half squadrons of Royal-Pologne, Cuirassiers du Roi, Royal-Cravattes, Montcalm and some red-coated, black-turnbacked regiment whose name escapes me just now. Bless their hearts. Oh, I just remembered - Colonel-General.

More figures are on order; more Schomburg/Saxes for a second squadron, another dozen line Cavalry to wrap up the Royal Cravattes and Colonel-General squadrons. More Horses to mount another eight of the Royal-Pologne. Odds and sods of musicians and officers.

I will try to get some pictures taken this weekend. I promise.

Now, to market.

All this building and purchasing comes at a price, both in $$$ and in terms of storage, so I am going to be having a sell down, a paring down of the collection if you like.

I'll be making my first offer here and on a couple of relevant Yahoo Groups; I'll leave it up for a week and then anything left will go to eBay. Fair enough?

My first offering:

• 17 Pax Britannica/RSM Prussian Fusiliers - note that they are older castings in the softer metal in the Advancing pose. Detail is much crisper than the current offering.

• 19 Pax Britannica/RSM Austrian German Musketeers - in the Advancing Pose. Note that they are older castings in the softer metal. Detail is much crisper than the current production.

• 20 RSM Austrian Hungarian Grenadiers - in the Advancing Pose.

• Two boxes of Revell Austrian 7YW Dragoons, still in their boxes; the sprues have been cut up, but the horses and riders are still attached to the sprue fragments.

• *SOLD* Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905. It's a Near-fine copy with an intact dust-jacket and only minor bumping on the cover boards.

I'll take cash or trade for them. Please contact me at bloggetatorATgmailDOTcom

The Guns, the guns the sound of guns

Taking maladministration and peculation on a massive scale as a given, let us admit that the Artillery of Gallispania and Alzheim have fallen into a sad state of disrepair, disorganisation and a great many other words starting with dis- and then move on, shall we?

I've always liked artilley models and have collected a great many of them from a great many manufacturers. Now, while this has satisfied my child-like appetites for pretty-pretty toys, it's not really let me build a useful collection of guns for the wargames table being a they are, all rather incompatible with each other and my RSM gunners!

I'll be selling them off as far as possible to produce a more unified park based around the RSM range and the odd ring-in for perceived gaps such as in the fortress and siege artillery areas. And I may well indulge myself here and there... no! stop it!

I aleady have a few RSM guns and I like the few Eureks pirate ship guns I've been using as Fortress Artillery (they look good and the price is right) and will keep on going this way, but with limbers, horse teams, munitions wagons to properly support them.

On another note to the Imaginationeers (new word, add it to the dictionary today) who likes the idea of creating their own 18th Century-style Legion? The Legion de Horne for example?

Rationalising the Cavalry collection

It's not what you think.

What I have in mind is getting my French - er - Gallispan army onto a more "rational" basis. I mean, my stars, this is the Age of Reason, is it not?

I am starting with the Cavalry, a much neglected arm in my collection. Up until now, my cavalry has been two fairly well-developed (ie, laregeish) units of the Line Cavalry; La Reine and another gray-coated no-name unit. The rest has been scraps, really, eight or a dozen Gensdarmes, a similar number of the Bercheny Hussars and so forth.

Now, I've been re-reading my Charles Grant and am wanting to put my Cavalry on that sort of basis - 24 troopers, 3 Officers and a Guidon. I have been having a good old rummage though my assorted lead piles and have found numbers of varying types of cavalry figure I bought at various times but never got too far into painting, so I do have a start on building things up, but more purchases will need to be made.

I'm looking at a structure consisting of two Line and one Light Brigade of Cavalry with the following regiments:

First Brigade:
Gendarmerie
Colonel-General
Cuirassiers du Roi

Second Brigade:
La Reine
Royal-Pologne
Montcalm

Light Brigade:
Saxe Dragoons
Bercheny Hussars
Ratzsky Hussars

Each Brigade will have an appropriate Etat Major.

I have been getting back into the swing of painting having produced in the past two weeks a squadron each of Royal-Pologne and the Saxe Dragoons. Next on the painting table are some of the Bercheny hussars. My painting plan is to paint me each a squadron of each regiment in turn before going on to paint a second.

Next time - reorganising the Artillery.

I think I'm back

Been a while, hasn't it?

I've got to admit to having had a long, deep and wide hobby funk which I'm still slowly climbing out from under.

It's been a pain; my little hobby which has consumed so much of m time and effort for years was really starting to pall. I couldn't be bothered painting; setting up a game seemed an endless chore; all my old books seemed nothing more than just old books. My lead mountain was becoming a burden rather than a fruitful field of rediscovery. Finally, I really couldn't be bothered taking “The Duchy of Alzheim” anywhere.

I'm thinking this came about due to a number of factors – less time and sleep due to the baby meant that I'd rather take a nap than put another layer of highlighting on another ten soldiers. Perhaps a degree of burnout after the big CanCon demo game last year? I'm not sure. I was also conscious of wanting to do another show on the same scale but couldn't see a way to make it happen with my now greatly diminished spare time. That might have been a factor.

I think another factor has been my complete disorganization which has seem me build bits of armies as I went along rather than properly balanced forces. For example, I have something like 60 Croats and a unit of Hungarian Infantry for my Austrian Army, but no Artillery or Cavalry. I have more “armies” like this. This leads me to a situation where no project ever seems finished and of course discouragement sets in.

Not too sure.

Nonetheless, I think I might be on the road back.

I've read The War Game Companion, Wargaming in History (v1!), Raid on St Michel and am waiting to take delivery of The Annexation of Chiraz with increasing impatience. In the meantime I've been looking at some Teasers from Mr Grant and was tempted indeed.

I've also taken to painting the little pile of Minden French Command I bought a while ago and found myslf enjoying the process to the point where a couple of weeks ago I set myself a target and began to paint one a day. I've now got a dozen painted that I will soon be incorporating into my RSM units. I'm also painting a dozen of the RSM Saxe Dragoons with an aim of getting them up to a Grant-size unit. Longer term, I'll be building my forces toward a scale that will let me take on a Teaser or two.

This leads me in an awkward way to some decisions I've been making about the Duchy of Alzheim. Previosly it was more or less a German Duchy with a French Army! No more. It's just become a German Duchy with a German Army (more or less Prussian, but with additions...). My French Army has become that of Alzeim's western neighbor, Gallispania, while to their South is a quasi-Italy that will allow many oportunities for alliance-making, mountain fighting and so on.

I still have to work this out in more detail. Will the DoA remain an independent entity or will it become a part of some kind of United Free States (hm, in German that's Vereinigte Frei... hang on...)? Will Gallispania be one or two states as implied by the name? It will doubtless have an Opera Bouffe flavour.

More as it comes in.

New bloglet

Airfix Battle of Britian

A sentimental journey of Spitfires and Hurricanes, Messerschmidts, Heinkels and Stukas...

Clankety-clank - it's a (Steam) Tank!

A blast from my past - steam tanks inspired by the great Tremorden Rederring website. A heavy mobile casemate with three firing ports for her forward 12-pounder. She tows a Armstrong 40-pounder.
HMLS Oliphaunt wheezes forward, spear torpedo at the ready, a screen of sailors acting as skirmishers. Her semaphore ready to telegraph her next command.
SMDPW (His Majesty's Armoured Steam Wagon) Elfride; a light "raider" vehicle armed with little more than a single Gatling. Speedy at 12 kph.

UPDATE: Excellent TSaTF-based rules for steam inventions of all kinds - recommended.

Idle Googling

I like this one...

This one's OK...

I think I like this one best, but I'm open to argument...

UPDATE: It gets worse... I've just discovered I own a 20-figure unit of Castaway Arts Sikh Infantry...

Colonial Potterings

All the "Defence of Melbourne" work I've been doing recently (in conjunction to Bill's "General Pettygree" excellent adventure/blog/comic-strip) has left me feeling in a decidedly "colonial" frame of mind.

Thus inspired I've been at the Spencer Smith website, looking and daydreaming and lordy, lordy what do I see but some nice-looking Bengal Lancers:

Indian Officer parade position
Indian Sergeant parade position
Indian Trooper parade position
Indian Trooper turning in saddle
Indian Trooper lance slung
Indian Trooper charging

And some lads from the 24th:
Officer standing with drawn revolver
Bugler sounding call
Private kneeling reloading
Private kneeling firing
Private standing with rifle at the ready
Private standing firing
Private standing firing leaning forward
Private standing taking ammunition from pouch
Private standing fending off attack with rifle
Sergeant standing giving orders
Private falling wounded
Private lunging forward with bayonet

Samples ordered!

I've been following Bills' blog for a while and find it very enjoyable. I really like the larger units he's using. I'm more familiar with the Sword and the Flame rules, but I do admire what he's doing.

More anon when the samples have arrived.

What's he up to

Well, it's been ages since I've posted here.

Not all is quiet on the home front, but most of my activity is going on here at the moment:

http://defence-of-melbourne.blogspot.com/2009/11/80-pounder-progress-shot.html

Best regards to all..!

Earthwork - Ravelin

I couldn't be bothered painting any toy soldiers last week, so I built a Ravelin, telling myself I could use it with Fort Niagara eventually.

It's all polystyrene with balsa for the planking and matches for the uprights.

These projects look a real disaster until you get to the painting stage, I find. You know; a mess of raggedy, sanded-down* polystyrene covered with filler and sand; and then more sand because it looks like it's been clad in sand-paper. Then it's the stippling, the wet-on-wet work, the dry brushing, oops, gone too far, needs a wash of burnt sienna, oops too far in the other direction; another wash then one last dry-brrush and... does it look right, dear? You're the artist.

You should have done it in daylight.

Oh, yeah.

*Do the sanding outside if you value your health and relationship with your partner!