The Bridge at Strudelberg

Following some very kind advice from the Old School Wargamers* on running a participation game, I've been thinking rather on scenario design.

My preliminary thoughts (dreamt up while lying insomniac abed whilst trying to get over my jet-lag!) are these:

One idea I have found really helpful in approaching the scenario is to use Victory Points. I'm working toward the idea that the first side to hit a certain number of VPs wins the game. It seems to be a useful way of allowing me to introduce some tension for the players - a tension between means and goals.

To illustrate, I am thinking that one party, the defender, is going to have one main goal and that is to retreat over a bridge, blow it and sail off happily into the sunset. That's his main goal; if he manages that he wins the game... provided he also picks up a subsidiary goal as well that I need to think about as evilly as I may.

Anyway, to this end he's going to have to hold out against roughly 2:1 odds (that's very roughly) whilst a party of pioneers prepares the bridge for demolition. They'll be successful from move "x" on on either the roll of a value on a d6 or the draw of an event card. The spanner in the works for him may well be that as a random event, the Colonels' daughter Miffy may well decide that it's a lovely day for a trip into the countryside. Naturally Miffy's capture will be a major (say 40-60%) flow of VPs to the attacking side.

Likewise, his position will be open to a flanking movement that might put enemies in a position where they can attack the defenders' pioneers and make the destruction of the bridge difficult/impossible. This will also present the difficulty to the defender of having to detatch a sufficiently large force to defend the pioneers. Perhaps the destruction of part of the pioneers will delay the happy moment when the bridge might be blown.

As to the attackers, I want a tension between having to recklessly attack on the one hand and the knowlege that each figure lost gives the defender VPs. I think this will be created by the knowlege that any move after move "X" could yield the event card that says that "Yes, the bridge is ready for demolition". I like event cards!

Likewise, Miffy is a rich source of VPs, but is the risk of snatching her worth the expenditure of soldiers when a determined attack on the defenders at the bridge might end the game at a stroke?

That's about where I am at the moment.

*You know who you are!

Europe Wrap Up

Oh well, home again. The house is now mostly back in order and the jet-lag is mostly overcome, thanks be to Allah.

So, what were the highlights?

For me there were the museums - The Vienna Military History Museum, The National Army Museum in Chelsea, the Imperial War Museum to name a few. I was fascinated by all that I saw in these places, especially by the Prussian trophies in the Vienna Military History Museum. Seeing Frederick the Great's suit of clothes in the German History Museum nearly knocked me flat on my backside, too.

The downside to these museums is that you are generally not allowed to take photographs of the artefacts, but I got past that in most cases simply by buying the guide-books. I'm still waiting to take delivery of a number of these as I did a very big couple of mail-homes of books when Amy and I were in Hay on Wye, so they are still bobbing homewards via surface mail!

I was very interested in the Neolithic remains (although as to whether they had any wargaming potential...) in the Orkneys; especially Skara Brae on Orkney and the Broch I saw on one of the other islands. Couple this with the Housesteads and Vindolanda sites (and the inevitable purchases of guide-books) and I was pretty happy overall.

Unexpectedly for me though, I found that the museums and "sites" did not hold my interest in the way I thought they would. I'd look at an item, go to myself "Oh, 4oo-year-old armour, how interesting" and then move on. It's strange, but I was really finding that I'd rather read a book! I need to think a bit about this.

I'll put up some photos in the next few days as I get them sorted out.

Logistics Redux

The Logistic Art in the Age of Linear Warfare (as gleaned from "Supplying War" by Martin van Creveld)

Eighteenth Century Warfare was characterised by on sieges.

This was due to a number of factors operating at the time.

Firstly the standing Army; soldiers of the time were expensive to train both monetarily and in terms of time. Whether you won or lost, battle could lose you 20-30% of your troops.

In this era war was conceived of as a primarily political and economic rather than a moral or religious activity, and as such it was aimed at the attainment of concrete and limited objectives.

Unless your enemy's' will do do battle was as your own, then a strike into enemy territory was likely to fall on empty air.

The power of fortified places was very great.

Fortified places could not retreat.

On this point, it was the siege and the problem of feeding a besieging army that led to the development of the magazine system. Recognising that an army had to draw its' supplies from somewhere once it had eaten out the countryside around a fortified place, magazines came to be created near the frontiers of a state. Note that this was the problem that magazines were created to solve – it must be recognised that they could never hope to supply but a fraction of the armys' needs.

This too limited the possible duration of sieges, turning them in effect into races against time whereby the besieged could hope to outlast the ability of the besiegers to survive as they ate up the countryside – the interception and destruction of the 3000 wagons of the Olmutz Convoy compelled Frederick II to raise the Siege of Olmutz.

The armies of the time had grown to such an extent that they could no longer afford to sit still – the countryside could not support them. An army was forced to keep moving so that it could continue to keep eating; no army could ever be fed entirely from base as the quantities required for the transport systems of the time were impossible. Specifically this meant that the quantity of fodder required for the armys' horses was more than the transportation systems of the time could bear. Flour could be managed, and ammunition for the entire campaign was generally carried with the army.

Vienna Army History Museum

I was just wandering around the aforementioned Museum today and what should I see, but a number of trophies taken from the late King of Prussia.

Among them I espied a pair of Grenadier caps as well as no less than five fusilier caps.

Well!

Imagine my surprise when I measured them with my beady eye and noted that the fronts of both caps were almost exactly the same height!

Food for thought for our figure sculptors, do we not think?

Freidrich Augustus in London

Nothing to see here...

Toy Soldiery activities; went to the Fusilieer Museum at the Tower a day or so back. It was OK, but not great; likewise I'll try to get to the Guards Museum, but my expectations are not too high.

There were a good selection of vehicles at the Imperial War Museum, but the bookshop had little to really interest me as it was focussed on 20th Century conflict. The "Monty" exhibition surprised me as there was no real focus on el Alamein or the controversy on operational goals for the European campaign and his eventual sidelining. I did find out that his poor wife died from an infected bug bite, though. I seriously got more from the Airfix Magazine Guide article on "24 Hours at Alamein" and the writeup on the Rapid Fire website on a scenario inspired by the same article!

7 Day Painting Challenge - Final

Here we are at last.

I've had to stop painting - we are just about to go overseas for six weeks. IR33 has had it's faces and hats painted. Three-quarters of the mens' small-clothes have been painted (and look quite spiffy, too) but I am out of time now and have to go.

I think I have had just a few too many distractions or preparations to really have time for the paint-brush this week!

I'll be updating this blog as time permits and material allows.

If you want to follow out travels, please feel welcome to drop in here:

www.awaywithamyandhorn.blogspot.com

All the best.

7 Day Painting Challenge continued...

A very unproductive weekend has passed me by.

Family celebrations over a big barbeque (and cleaning up, and cooking) reduced my painting time severely.

I've painted the small-clothes of fourteen fusileers in their base-coat of pale-gray, that's about it. I'll try to get another few finished tonight and tomorrow morning so I can start on their blue coats.

It's not looking good.

UPDATE: The image above shows you roughly how we are going. I love the chracter that the blackundercoat technique imparts the faces. I also like how well the cartridge belt and small-clothes look with the black undercoat defining the edges of this and that. Nice and crisp, just the way I like it.

Day 2 of... The Seven Day Challenge!

Well folks, here we are on Day two of the Seven Day Challenge and it's not looking too good for our contestant - Greg?

*Oh, well, you know, at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, there's no I in team and..

Did you get the hats painted?

*Yes, good-looking aren't they, nice and pointy on top...

Did you get the hats painted?

*Er, no, not entirely, I gave them a nice dry-brush of white (that's 36 hats, remember - 36!) then base-coated them orange, did some touch-ups with black and then painted on the brass mitre fronts. I washed them with some nice, thinned Windsor and Newton Sepia ink to define the detail and then i ran out of time.

A little overambitious?

*No - OK, yes, but it also painted a couple of horses. They look nice. I also realised one of the limitations of my Osprey one-and-only reference; no details on Officer and NCO hat lace! I just took a gamble on gold. It looks pretty even if it may be wrong.

Seven Day Challenge

This is a bit of a follow on from a post I made a day or two ago about building on my Prussian collection.

I've since had a good scrounge through my lead pile and have come up with enough castings to build two Fusilier and one Grenadier Company. To build this force in the configuration that I am aiming at (three companies of "hatmen" and a company of grenadiers per batallion), I'm obviously a bit short but will carry on for now with what I have for now because I'm off on holiday in a week and don't have the time to wait on a new order from the lads at DPC.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

I have 41 figures and one horse to paint. To challenge myself, I aim to paint them before I go away. To make things a little more difficult for myself, I've decided to create a little vignette depicting the death of General Schwerin at Prague.

After spending the past few days with my nose stuck in an Osprey I have decided that I will be painting Fusilier Regiment Nr. 33.

The night before last I cleaned, mounted and undercoated the castings with my favoured matt black spray paint. Last night I painted all their little lead faces and hands and this morning while I got ready for work, I put the highlights on chin, cheeckbones, knuckles and nose.

As I write this I have just finished trimming the standards for IR 33 and IR 24 (the latter for the Schwerin vignette) and tonight I ought to get a couple of hours to myself and I'll get the hats and the horse done at least and start on the vignette.

As to the vignette, I'm hoping to use the mounted French officer and a rearing horse as the basis. I'll swap his hat-holding hand for a flagstaff and try to get a couple of suitably-dismayed-looking troopers from IR24 on the same base.

I shall report again tomorow.

Things to do in 2008

Just thinking out loud here, you understand. I can’t be held accountable for any of this, OK?

I’ve been thinking about where to go next with the Duchy of Alzheim. As I’m writing this, my French Army stands at nine foot units (7 Line and 2 Light), five of horse and a smattering of artillery. Now, I reckon that this is a pretty fair force for now and probably won’t be adding too much more to it for a little while, apart from the ongoing effort to round out the unit sizes to my current targets and eventually adding some Gardes Suisses to pair with the Gardes Francaises and some more gunners. Naturally I’ll revisit this at a later date and add more units, but that’s for the longer term.

I’m now looking for another project to take me through the next twelve months. I’m thinking of taking up my original Seven Years’ War project and picking up where I left off with my Prussians. I’d gotten as far as building out IR13 to my original unit standard which was about 43 figures, so it won’t take too much to build it up from there. On top of that I had about a dozen of DR5 and a half dozen of the von Kleist Horse Grenadiers and a couple of guns.

From this base I’ve been poking around at my lead stocks and think I can make a pretty good start on another two Musketeer Regiments and a Fusilier Regiment, each with sufficient Grenadiers to give me a couple of combined Grenadier battalions. I’m then wanting to round out DR5 to three Squadrons, the v. Kleist Horse Grenadiers to a similar strength(?), add a Cuirassier Regiment, a Hussar regiment, some more guns and some v. Kleist Light Infantry.

That should make a nice little force, smaller than the French, but able to stand well enough against them in the field, especially if they ally up with my Bavarians once they’ve been built up to 2 Foot and one Horse unit.

I think that’d be enough to occupy me for the next twelve months or so.

What are your longer term plans?

Wagon Hill Container

I have spent the best part of the past five or six days researching respectively the Saxon Cavalry from about 1740 to 1763 and Field Bakeries.

Enquiries in the usual places have yielded quite good results on both topics, but in the case of Field Bakeries, the process has been linguistically interesting.

The materials I have forund on Field Bakeries have been exclusively in either French and German, both languages with which I am not very familiar - although my French is FAR better than my German. As a result I have been using Alta Vistas' online translation software "Babel Fish". We are all familiar with it's limitations - it is linear, processing a sentence one-word-at-a-time and thus provides a literal translation that often lacks the sense of what the author was trying to convey. Then there is the problems with words that may have more than one meaning. I fear that this software will only use the most common meaning used for that word, thus in the fairly specialised translating required for English-speaking users the French word for "Grenadier" which has a very specific meaning in our context tends amusingly to get translated as "Pomegranate".

Then there are German compound words. I fantasised today about being a German speaker who might have been something of a military buff who wanted to find out what the amusing English term "Cartridge Case" meant. Imagine his surprise at getting back a result like "Wagon Hill Container "!

If no-one else has done it, I am going to start compiling a glossary of French and German 18th Century military jargon. If anyone wants to contribute, please email me at bloggerator@gmail.com . We can discuss terms like "hat lace", "facing colour*" and "turn-back" and compile a list.

*OK, "coleur distinctive"

Painting Panzers - OT???

I bought a box of Armourfast PzKwIIIG this weekend and have been happily painting them in North African livery. To this end, I purchased some of the appropriate Tamiya shade and some Matt White with which to lighten it.

Assembling the kits was a breeze. For anyone who is not familiar with the Armourfast kits, they are very basic with upper and lower hull, complete track units, turret, and a vew detail units to complete a satisfying model in a simple kit that takes little time to throw together.

I halted construction when I had the hull, turret and tracks as seperate units. I sprayed these in a flat black as an undercoat and then proceeded to paint these in German Dark Yellow.

Tamiya does this colour as an attractive sort of orange-ish tan. I laid this on with the biggest, flattest brush I own. The first layer was laid down quickly and lightly over the whole kit and the idea was to get good coverage while leaving the black undercoat in all the recesses. More paint was layered on with the aim of producing on a nice, smooth coat onto the flat surfaces of the vehicles, the aim being to get an almost "enamelled" surface. The black base-coat will create shading in the recesses.

Next will be to highlight with a couple of successively lighter shades put on with a lighter dry-brushing per coat.

Finally I will give the vehicles a very light dry-brush of Panzer Gray to simulate wear on the Desert Yellow base-coat.

I will then gloss varnish the vehicles and apply decals from my spares box.

I hope to finish off by washing the tyres with a thinned gray then lightly spraying with a little Tamiya USAF Tan and then an even lighter spray of white - both to simulate dust. Finally I'll apply a coat of mat varrnish to dull down the finish of the vehicles.

I'm a bit painted out on the 7YW just now, so I'm taking a few weeks out on this project; I'm thinking of a couple of batallions of Commonwealth troops and a company of Panzers, some reconnaissance troops and a Panzer-grenadier battalion. A nice diversion courtesy of Rapid Fire.

Mustering the Forces

OK, I was mucking around with the whole of my French infantry tonight and was pretty impressed with how they look en masse. What you are seeing here is the result of about two and a half years' work; nearly as long as I've been a member of the Old School Wargamers Yahoo Group.

May I take the opportunity to thank everyone who might visit this place for their inputs - especially Stokes, Jeff and Alte Fritz - who have long been regular and supportive contributers, and to acknowlege the role that OSW has had in giving me the inspiration and ongoing encourgement to keep both this blog and this project going.

My most sincere thanks to you al,l and I genuinely hope that we all keep in touch, sharing ideas, stories and perhaps even having a few laughs on the way.

Thank you.

Now, I've got some Croats to paint, so I'll be back later...

Berry Regiment - 95%

The Berry Regiment as of the weekend - almost done barring three NCOs, two musicians, an officer and a little terraining.

Establishment is set at a mounted Colonel, two ensigns and three "companies" , each of an officer, a drummer, an NCO and 12 musketeers. A total of 48 figures.

I've about another campanys' worth of French figures on the pile. Now, I know that I was speaking last week about usuing them to kick off another regiment, but I'm thinking of using them to round out a couple of the other existing regiments.

What's on in the Duchy

UPDATE 22 August:

I wrote this to a friend today and thought it germane - it's slightly edited to conceal some identities:

(Replying to a query about the Strudelberg Game)

Very slowly; I got all distracted by Bill P in the US wanting to do a Ticonderoga/Carillion game for the 250th Anniversary next year and have been madly painting my commitment of French troops to send him (about 100 figs) whilst also helping out a little with some bits of research for the scenario.

In the meantime, I've also gotten involved with Andrew from the group that did the super Gallipoli game at CanCon who it turns out is also a fan of the Australian Colonial scene and doing a "The Russians Are Coming!" scenario at some stage soon - so it seems I must also paint 80-100 British/Victorian Infantry in Home Service Dress at some stage in the not-too-far future. Blimey.

Still, I've managed to finish a Hungarian regiment, a Bavarian regiment (each about 50 figs) and another 50 Grenze and 20 Mounted and 10 dismounted Dragoons. I've still got plenty of unpainted Grenze and Bavarian Dragoons to be getting on with though.

And Austrian hussars, too.

Forgot those.

In the meantime Amy and I are off to Europe on the 27th September for six weeks. Decision time when I get back.

I've just ordered a TSaTF unit of Sikhs and a representative sampling of the rest of the Castaway Arts NWF ranges which I'm meaning to review for Battlegames. Can I say that they were launched with a bang at Historicon? It makes for good copy..!
Regards,
Greg
PS: Do I sound like I'm a little over-committed?

*******************************************

I’m delighted to report that I’ve just laid my hands on a nice hard-back copy of “Setting Up a Wargames Campaign” by Tony Bath. I’m just in the process of absorbing it now and am loving every minute – thanks to Paul and Teresa Bailey of “The Keep” via eBay. They give excellent and speedy service for those who are interested.

The “Berry” Regiment is coming along very nicely and ought to be pretty well finished by the weekend. This is going to bring my French infantry up to 7 battalions: The Gardes Francaises, the Gardes Lorraines, La Reine, Bourbonnois, Languedoc, Bearn, and of course, Berry.

I’m keen to keep going and I think I might make a start as soon as these guys are finished on another unit of infantry, perhaps one of the senior regiments – Picardie, Normandie or Champagne? I’ve also a few more Bavarians to paint before I can sign off on the Leib Regiment. Not sure which just yet. I’ll follow this up with some more cavalry – I have some stockpiled that I am itching to get started on just now.

On another note, I've just bought a laptop with on-board WiFi and have finally gotten around to buying a 1GB card for my camera. I've loaded up Photoshop on the device to pretty the piccies up, so I'm looking forward to doing some mobile blogging from the six weeks starting 27th September when my partner Amy and I go off to Europe. Whoopee!

NCO for the Berry Regiment

The figure – on the right in both images has been converted from the RSM French NCO on the left of both images.

Basically I’ve cut off the right hand, the left arm and the hat from the original figure. The right arm has been bent into a posture more suited to a walking or “advancing” pose, whilst the left arm has been bent a bit and glued on so that he might credibly be thought of as carrying his pole-arm. The amputated hat has gone onto the carefully sawn-off top of his head. I think this really changes the look of the figure, giving it a much more erect carriage than the original.

UPDATE: The figure also converts nicely to make a gunner hauling on a wheel, I've since found. I think I'll paint mine up as an infantryman pressed into serving a gun. I think the figure could also be capable of wielding a variety of artillery tools.

NCO and Colours for the Berry Regiment

More infantry need painting up today to glear the goals I set myself for the week. I've nearly finished converting the NCO, as you can see here. He looks pretty good so far - I'll need to patch him up with some Green Stuff where his hat meets his head and his re-positioned left arm meets his shoulder. I'll also need to re-model that part of his coat I had to saw through to get his hat moved!

From the Warflag site with a little re-touching done in Illustrator. I like to make my flags a bit over-size so they stand out more on the table. These are 35mm square.

I need to cut the flag-poles down a little and add finials. Perhaps I'll add the cords from fuse-wire or the like.

Eagle Miniatures - review in brief

UPDATE 13.08.2007 : Added image of an RSM French and an Eagle Prussian Infantryman.


Recently I laid my hands on some samples from Eagle Miniatures. They are a company trading out of the UK with a small-ish number of ranges covering NApoleonics, ACW, Moghuls, 7 Years' War, 100 years' War, and a few Hadendowah in 28mm and in 15mm range covering Napoleonic Russias and the Franco-Prussian War. These ranges are all fairly eclectic and incomplete, the 100 Years' War range amusingly containing a King Arthur, a Knight returned from the wars and a Welsh Spear-man.

I ordered some sample French and Prussian infantry, a personality figure of Frederick the Great and a Prussian Dragoon.



Well, what a mixed bunch they were. Overall the figures are quite nice, really. The cavalry sit their horses well (unlike say, Elite!), the infantry are quite pleasing in their way too, although some more than others.

I would rate the animation of the castings as being a cut or two above Old Glory. What I mean by this is while the figures have some of that OG liveliness, they still maintain a certain stately poise. the sculpting of the figures themselfes is somewhat unrefined, perhaps even a little crude by todays standards. the figures are not "fine" in the manner of Staddens or RSMs, and to me represent a couple of paces down the road that leads to the Foundry stable of figures.

The figures have a few neat touches. I like the way the prussian dragoon had a notch cut out of the front of his shoulder so hos sword-arm (cast pointing out from his body) could be bent forward and secured with super-glue. The marching Prussian infantryman with shouldered musket is a gem, as is the Grenadier in the march attack pose. I was especially impressed by his mitre. Lovely, and I'd love more to create a grenadier batalion.



On the downside, I understand that this is an older range of figure and that there would be some flash from the review of another OSW-er. Fair enough, and this was removed with a sharp blade. Why though was I as a customer who clearly stated that he wanted some samples (the implication being that I wanted to test the waters before I dropped hundreds of dollars on a few 60-figure batallions) would you as a manufacturer supply imperfect castings? The Prussian Dragoon was missing most of his musket, and if you look at the secoind figure from the right in the picture of the Prussian infantry, you'll see the Ensign was missing the top half of his flag-pole!

And please, if you are going to market a personality figure as Fredrick the Great, it'd be nice if he looked like him!

The French infantry were OK, but nothing to set my world on fire. I'm sorry to say that my benchmark for French infantry is the old "Willie" range ang these suffer by comparison looking, simply, crude.

I'll paint these to solidify my view, but for now, I'd create a batalion of Grenadiers and a Dragoon Regoment with these figures, but probably stop there and carry on with my RSMs.

Books

I've been on a bit of a book-buying spree recently.

As a result of my recent interest in logistics, I went and bought Martin van Creveld's "Supplying War". I'll report back as I get through it. A quick scan looks fascinating - thanks to those who put me onto it.

Recent eBay wins have put me in posession of a number of new Blandford uniform books which I always treasure for their lovely plates.

Another gem was the Ian Weekly book on building wargames terrain. A cut above the "Touching History" series, I think!

Furthermore, I've also acquired about 30 White dwarf mags from all stages of their first 140 issues and so I feel I have the best of the series - certainly WD isn't really what it used to be.

Introducing the Regiment de Berry

Here is the first company (plus a few extras) of my new regiment, that of Berry.

Note that I have finally (!) gotten around to making a start on terraining the bases. I'm using a gap-filler, plaster-in-a-tube sort of a preparation - it's easy to use, dilutes with water and requires only a wet sculpting tool or finger to shape it.

I'm using some GW "Scorched Grass" for vegetation; I just pop a dot or two of superglue on the base and dunk it in the pot and it's ready to go. A quick zap with the spray-on varnish and it's (hopefully) there forever. I think that the varied colour of this mix looks rather better than the electric green also available from GW. I definitely think that "less is more" with this material.

I am painting another company currently and hope to have them finished off for the weekend. At the same time I'm also terraining the bases of my large company of Compagnies Franches de la Marine. Furthermore, I'm thinking of converting the fairly useless French NCO figure into something a little more NCO-ish.

You know, looking at the lads as I am just now, I really want to do a 2-3 figure command vignette.