Frivolous Fusiliers - Wargaming In The Rococo Period

Imperial Infantry Reforms (or A Touch of Gilder)

2011-09-08T04:20:00.000-07:00

There was a time when painting white uniforms was an occasion of pure joy. You slapped on an undercoat of black and then dry brushed with white (enthusiasts could use varying intermediate shades of grey). Flesh, facings, and various accoutrements were then added and one held up the result for the approbation of ones friends and started writing an acceptance speech for the inevitable Turner Prize.

Those were the happy days when we used Humbrol enamels. The pigments in those paints would separate from the spirit that contained them and settle at the bottom of their tins; where they could be scooped up and readily applied using dry brushing. Nowadays I use acrylics, and while I am grateful that neither I nor my house any longer smells like an oil refinery, my dry brushing has suffered as a result. I simply cannot dry brush properly using acrylics.

Left Side Treated, Right Side Untreated

The result of this is that my Imperial Infantry, sporting a uniform of the most brilliant white, look like an advert for washing powder. This might not matter if the figure I was using was of the finest quality, but it only serves to highlight the defects of my sculpting. As I am currently concluding the painting of the first company of my second Imperial infantry regiment, I have decided it is time to act.

There is a technique that is worth trying here; something I was told by an artist friend some years ago, although I have never had occasion to try it until now. My friend has since disappeared off to Canada where he no doubt spends his time fighting grizzly bears; chopping off one's ear being considered terribly passée among contemporary artists. But fortunately the technique is a simple one and can be used by normal people unaffected by such sinister places as Art Colleges. Indeed, my friend told me that it originated with none other than Peter Gilder.

The method uses a touch of Humbrol gloss black mixed into a pot of Humbrol clear gloss polyurethane varnish (and yes I do appreciate the irony in the choice of saviour). The quantity of gloss black used is left to the user's discretion: I simply plunged a thin piece of bamboo into the gloss black and then mixed that into the pot of gloss varnish. I suppose the correct prescription would be 'add to taste', the key being that you can always add more, but cannot take it back out. I would also add the advice that you paint the pot's lid with some black, so that you don't use it on other tasks where normal, untreated varnish is intended.

The resultant concoction is used in place of normal varnish: as it dries it will tend to pool in places where shadows are supposed to form, creating subtle effects for no real effort. In my case the figure does not give many opportunities for that to occur, but it does at least tone down the brilliant white to a more acceptable shade. I am not sure yet if I have added sufficient black to have as great an impact as I want: but this is a decision that is worth taking time over.

Good Company

2011-09-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

Progress on the Croats stutters along: I have one company complete (hence the usual corny title) and the second company is cast, cleaned up, and awaiting its muskets. The photos show the extant company in a rather Napoleonic pose (it really should be lurking off to the side in some woods) in front of IR Furstemburg. The latter regiment has seen the addition of two officers.

As the photos indicate, I have made at least some progress in my sculpting and the newer Croats rather put the older line infantry to shame. The new infantry officer isn't quite as good. When stood next to the Stadden Prussian infantry officer, he looks like a pigeon chested, knock-kneeded evolutionary throwback who could never expect to receive an invitation into polite Viennese society. Needless to say, I shall be avoiding any chance of such comparisons being made.

Sunshine And Light

2011-08-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

"Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu! I gloat! Hear me!" So crows Beetle and his friends in Stalky and Co. It's clear that while Kipling's characters received a fair number of beatings, as were routinely applied to erring children of his times, they might well have both merited and benefited from a few more. For all that, I am pleased with current events and my glee is exhibited in excesses only a degree less exaggerated than those of the obnoxious Beetle. At the age of 50+ this is I accept, albeit with no great consternation, rather sad.

The cause for all this celebration is that I have finally produced a mold for Croats, and the figures emerging from said article are - to my mind - highly satisfactory. The accompanying photo shows the first three figures at the stage before varnishing and applying metallics.

Croats At Last

Setting aside the unhappy instance of the 'mold' that turned out to be a solid block of rubber, my attempts at mold making are improving. The detail on the figure has come through well; even the moustache is being cast intact.

The pose I prefer for light infantry, with the musket held in front of the body, does not lend itself to casting so readily as the usual march attack pose does. There is no obvious plane along which the mold can be split into two halves. Instead, the boundary between its halves has to be shaped to wrap around the figure. The resulting mold has to be flexed slightly to release the casting, but with only 24 figures needed for a light infantry battalion I can hope to get them cast before it breaks up: if this was for multiple battalions of line infantry I'd be making additional molds.

There is just one sour note to add: painting all the lace on these fellows is rather like painting that most trying of personages, the drummer, with all his gaudy plumage. Only now I have no fewer than 24 lace-bestrewn dandies to deal with. I shall console myself with the reflection that intricate detail like this does serve to disguise all manner of sins in the both the sculpting and the painting.

Bleh, Bah and Bum

2011-07-24T01:37:00.000-07:00

I would prefer my blogposts to provide a history of my triumphs without any memorials of the accompanying disasters; but this post is perhaps a more useful record of what can go wrong when mould making.

Today, I was supposed to carefully pry my Croat master figure out of its newly made mould. Following that, I'd spend an impatient day or two allowing the silicone rubber to dry out fully before introducing it to hot metal. Shiny new Croats would then have miraculously appeared and all would have been sweetness and light.

Not the Desired Result

It was not to be. Instead of a mould that would split into two halves, I found I had a single block of rubber with a milliput figure somewhere inside it. So I spent an unhappy half hour trying to dig the figure out with a craft knife. That required slow and delicate work to prevent any damage to the figure, requiring a patience that, in the circumstances, was notable only for its absence: my instincts were more along the lines of wanting to punish the offending objects by chucking them against a wall. So the figure was lucky to come away with only the damage visible in the photo.

The disaster was caused by my using insufficient separator (vaseline) to coat the half of the mould that had been made from the first pouring of rubber. In my initial attempts at mould making some time ago I had used pure vaseline, resulting in the figure losing much of its detail due to a thick layer of the stuff. In subsequent molds I had thinned the vaseline with white spirits and the detail had thereby been preserved. But there are clearly limits to how far you can go with this: it appears I would be best using raw vaseline to separate the two halves of the mould, while using thinned vaseline only on the figure itself. Oh well, these lessons have to be learnt. I will repair the figure, and my temper, and then try again.

The Croat Peril

It has been some three years since I was complaining about the difficulty of finding a decent Croat figure that would fit with my Staddens. I should console myself with the reflection that if I am finding it hard to get to grips with these gentlemen, poor old Frederick never really managed to.

Ansbach Dragoons

2011-06-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

I have started work on my second Imperial cavalry regiment. My chosen regiment is Dragoon Regiment Ansbach: a decision made on the grounds that the uniform of this regiment looks good and is also easy to paint. As this unit will complete the two regiments that are required to refight Sittangbad, I have decided to save on time and money by using the same mould as I used for KR Hohenzollern and simply painting over any differences. In truth, given the low level of detail that I paint to, this does not require any great effort.

The first three troopers are completed up to the stage of varnishing and metallics. The photo shows them in this state. For all the blue parts of the uniform I have used Coate d'Armes dark blue highlighted with medium blue. This may be a little too light, but the prints I have seen show such variation in shade it's hard to be sure what would be correct. The saddle blanket ought to be 'blue edged with white' but as I have no idea how wide the edging should be I am inclined to use blue alone. In the prints I have seen the saddle cloth has a blue zig zag inside a white edge: this turns out to be easy to simulate as historically correct wobbly lines disguise my wobbly brush work very nicely.

Awaiting the Shiny

I am happy with the finished model. The casting is pretty awful: mostly because I used unthinned vaseline as a separator when mould making and this blurred any detail I had sculpted on the figure. But, fortunately, once the figure is liberally festooned with bits of brass rod, wire, paper, milliput and thread representing musket, sword, reins, saddle cloth and pigtails this doesn't matter so much.

Never Mind The Knees

2011-06-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

My latest efforts at sculpting have reached the stage where they are worth photographing: the magnification in a photo can show flaws that I will all too readily miss when handling the figure. Both figures have their knees rather akimbo: but the problem is not, I hope, too pronounced, and will not be visible on a wargames table.

Officer and Croat, Interrupted

The left hand figure is a dismounted officer to help control the companies of Imperial infantry that I have already produced. The figure's right hand is empty. It is easy enough to fit a piece of beaten wire representing a sword, whereas trying to gravity cast something as thin as a sword rarely works.

The right hand figure is the return of my first attempt at a Croat. I put this to one side after my first attempt casting it resulted in little more than a vaguely humanoid blob. The basic proportions were fine, although the details that I had sculpted were very bad. But I have redetailed it to look rather more convincing than before. As usual, the musket barrel is not present, my intention being to add one made from brass rod to each figure after it has been cast.

My desire to get this figure sorted was prompted by the unhappy impact the enemy Frei Corps had upon my army in its recent defeat. My line infantry might be expected to fail me, but an Imperial army should never find itself at a disadvantage in irregular warfare while there are Croats available.

Battle - The Plan Unravels

2011-02-24T07:04:00.000-08:00

If you are going to have a plan, it had better be a good plan. In this particular case, my plan was an indifferent one, and its implementation was equally lacking. The key to its chances lay in the performance of the left flank cavalry: Kurassiere Regt Hohenzollern. These worthies had the job of blocking the enemy's right wing when it tried to come to the assistance of its left: against whom the rest of my army was supposed to hurl itself.

Kurassier Regt. Hohenzollern Loses Badly

Unfortunately, van Erp chose the simple remedy of masking the Hohenzollern's by charging them with his own Dragoon regiment. As I had formed my cuirassiers into a single formation this left me with nothing to halt the progress of his remaining right flank units.

With both sides fielding twelve sabres in their front rank, it seemed to me that the melee between the Hohenzollerns and van Erp's dragoons was exactly equal. The dice, however, saw things differently and chose this moment to pass severe judgement on the relative quality of the forces of the Reichsarmee. The result was that I lost seven troopers in one round of melee without inflicting any casualties on the dragoons in return. While I couldn't blame the dice on grounds of historical authenticity I did feel rather let down by this turn of events.

Van Erp's Dragoons repeatedly charged, and although the Hohenzollerns held their own in subsequent rounds, they were finally forced off the field of battle, leaving the Dragoons still in fighting trim and positioned to the left rear of my crumbling battle line.

Preparing To Charge

Meanwhile, on the far right, my Cuirassiers had charged the enemy infantry battalion and had come off worse. It had taken some casualties from musketry as it charged and then failed miserably in the subsequent melee. I had never expected to overcome a full strength line battalion with a cavalry charge, but was hoping to enfeeble it sufficiently for my following line infantry to have little difficulty in overcoming it. In the event, the enemy infantry emerged almost unscathed while my cavalry had taken a serious knock. In subsequent turns I split the cavalry in two, one part charging to red ruin against the same infantry battalion to halt its progress for a moment, while the other part attempted to punish the enemy light infantry company that had advanced without any care for its flanks. Even here the dice throws were indifferent and the enemy light infantry survived.

With my attack plainly failing. My line infantry halted and attempted to make some form of defence. With van Erp's succours arriving from his right this was never going to last long. My artillery did finally show some fighting spirit, with a couple of sixes removing a full company of his grenadiers. But its supporting infantry proved feeble and at last the gun was overrun by a charge by his light infantry company, who took some hurt in the charge but showed the by now customary Hessian superiority in the melee. Having reached half strength, the Freikorps then withdrew taking the sole surviving gunner with them: Jim informed me they had spiked the gun although, with no-one left to man it, this mattered little. No doubt, adding insult to injury, they left behind a rude note too.

A Plan Unravelled

By this time there was no doubt that the battle was a decisive victory for van Erp, and so we halted proceedings. I could feel a little let down by the dice, but there was no doubt that van Erp richly deserved his victory. I shall console myself by reflecting that I had simulated the performance of the Reichsarmee only too well.

Battle - The Plan

2011-02-22T14:15:00.001-08:00

Viewed from the Imperial side, the features of the battlefield presented a fairly simple subdivision into contrasting halves. To my left, it seemed that any attack I made would be confronted by a strong defense resting on the stream. The right was largely free of such obstacles and so it was to that side I decided to throw all my weight.

My left flank cavalry would therefore operate as a blocking force should my opponent attempt to move forces across the field of battle. The rest of the Imperial army would move against the right, led by the Gensdarmes attacking the enemy infantry battalion on the extreme right, my two infantry battalions pressing home their attacks as soon as they could close upon the enemy. My artillery would take up position in the centre where it could fire in support of my attack or else gall any units moving from the left.

The Imperial Army Advances

Well so much for my 'plan' such as it was. There seemed some hope at first that the enemy would fall in with it. There was some milling about by the Hessian units behind the stream, and their artillery seemed about to deploy on the stream's banks. But van Erp came to the realisation that such a position would be too far from the action for the guns to have any great effect, and any force esconced there would be relegated to spectators. And so the Hessians crossed the stream and then, seeing the point of pressure was moving towards their left, began moving in that direction.

The photo shows the battle after the first moves. The entire Imperial army is in the shot (save for the artillery, which is hidden behind the buildings). I'll conclude by relating what actually happened in one final post.

Battle!

2011-02-20T08:03:00.001-08:00

Readers of Charge! are aware that Catherine of Hesse Damall was the Helen of her age - notable not only for her beauty, but also for her ability to act as a Casus Belli. In the present case it seems that Catherine, while visiting the baths at Vichy, had made unkind remarks to the Markgräfin von Baden-Durlach who repeated them, with some embellishment, to Madame de Pompadour. A letter full of recriminations was sent by that lady to the Empress, who made it her business to goad the Emperor into taking action. An Imperial army was soon tramping its weary way into Hesse.

Of course, the real reason for any battle in these parts is a visit from Jim Wannop. As time would be short (Jim's relatives had the idea he was in the neighbourhood to visit them) I set up the terrain, and split my forces into two roughly equal halves, deploying them both with no great thought as to their dispositions. I then gave choice of sides to Jim when he arrived. He scanned the set up, pondered the relative strengths of the forces and how the terrain would play out. He then decided to roll a dice and discovered he had been appointed to command of the Hessians.

Initial Set Up - From Hessian Left Rear

The orders of battle were:

Hessian Army (Gouert van Erp)
Dragoon Regt. von Platen
Infantry Regt. Hessen-Darmstadt
Infantry Regt. Prinz von Preussen
Garde Grenadiere Regt.
Freikorps von Noble
Artillery (1 gun)

Imperial Army (Graf von Arlitz)
Kurassiere Regt. Hohenzollern
Gensdarmes
Fusilier Regt. Wied
Kreis Infantry Regt. Furstenburg
Artillery (1 gun)

The Imperial Army had two cavalry regiments to the Hessian's one. It was, however, weak in infantry with only two battalions to oppose to the Hessian three line and one light battalion.

Gouert van Erp

The rules were essentially Charge! basic rules, with some slight modification necessary because my line infantry figures are mounted with six figures per base.The light infantry were allowed a nine inch move when in open order, and could fire up to a maximum range of nine inches while so deployed.

Ah, an orderly has just entered with the casualty roll: there are despatches to be written. My narrative of the battle must be delayed until my next post.

Tribulations of a Gentleman of Quality

2011-01-31T02:29:00.000-08:00

As the photos show, Infantry Regiment Furstenberg has finally achieved the proper number of rank and file. It is, however, entirely missing the proper complement of officers and musicians that should accompany them. The obvious solution here would be to buy Stadden figures to fill this gap, but - for vanities sake - I'd prefer to make the entire regiment from my own figures alone, and so the regiment must wait upon my slow and erratic sculpting.

In the meantime, General Lentulus has been temporarily appointed the regiment's Inhaber: one lonely Suren figure amongst a homecast rabble. He has so far remained amiable and, indeed, remarkably tolerant of the situation, running through the regiment directly through the regimental agent and its NCOs. As this has occasioned frequent travel away from his comfortable Viennese town house during the harshest of winters, his zeal might be applauded. But enquiries have found that not only is Lentulus profiting handsomely from the salaries of the missing men, but he has been able to dine out every night owing to the attentions of families anxious to secure a place for their sons in the Imperial Army.

It would appear likely that, regardless of its state, the regiment will be pressed into action this next campaigning season. The current financial crisis has hit the economies of both Hessian states hard, but while Rheinfels struggles to meet its debts, and its army has gone unpaid for some months now, Marburg appears to have obtained money from an unknown source. It is rumoured that British agents have arranged a secret treaty and that, in return for a generous subsidy, the Prince of Marburg will break with the Empire at an opportune moment. If this is the case then loyalist Rheinfels, with its unpaid and mutinous troops, will be vulnerable.

Hmm... Looking at the photos, I think the figures look best when viewed from the rear. I hope this isn't some kind of evil omen: an indication of the view the enemy will most often see due to a tendency, on the regiment's part, to flee in the heat of battle.

I have cast, and am currently cleaning up, the figures for the first company of a second imperial regiment. My current plan is to paint this as IR Wildenstein (Kurmainz) unless some particularly attractive uniform from another Reichsarmee regiment takes my fancy before I start painting.

Officers And Tables

2010-08-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Gendarmerie officer is complete and sits proudly at the head of his squadron as the accompanying photo shows. I liked the photo so much I didn't reduce it in size as I usually do. Painting single figures like this is terrible for productivity, but scores highly for pure enjoyment. So the remaining officers for this regiment will be allowed to join at their leisure: the CO has been absent on his country estate for years now and the regiment has not missed him.

I suspect the availability of a decent sized wargames table is a problem that vexes many a wargamer. In my case I have had a solution mapped out for this for some time: but it has been placed 'on hold' as it has depended on the necessary materials appearing in some nearby skip.

The ideal wargames table needs to be reasonably light (stories of ceilings bowing under the weight of a sandtable come to mind here) while possessing dimensions normally associated with the banquet tables of reigning monarchs. Even if such an article was entirely homemade, the materials, if shop bought, would represent a considerable sum. However, it occurs to me that there is an unappreciated item of domestic architecture that is admirably suited to the purpose.

This is the cheap wooden domestic door. Round my neck of the woods these are often discarded in skips due to the belief of local womenfolk that a fancier article is necessary to their peace of mind. It is relatively robust and yet light, being constructed of thin wood stretched over a wooden frame, and is generally 28" wide and 80" in length. As a neighbour has just thrown three of these out, I at last have the materials to make a 7' x 6'8" table: not quite up to the size of Charles Grant's table as shown in 'The Wargame', but as large as I can fit in my house.

Making the thing will have to wait until Winter: the garden is taking up most of my energy for now.

A Company, An Old Acquaintance, and a New Artillery Table

2010-08-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

Progress has been slow: this is the time of year when warfare is mostly being carried out in the garden, against invading hordes of slugs, aphids and caterpillars. However, the first company of the Imperial Army's Furstenberg regiment is, at last, complete. The second company is already started and I ought to be knocking companies out at a fair old rate. But there is a monotony here that prevents me doing this at a faster pace. I find myself distracted by other, more fiddly but fun projects.

Lentulus Wonders Where the Rest Are.

In my pile of unpainted figures (more a metal molehill than a mountain) I have a couple of Suren cuirassier officers waiting their turn to be introduced to their squadrons. This figure has always been a problem for me: it's nicely proportioned, but the right arm is waving about in mid air, in a manner that leaves me baffled as to what to do with it. I am led to believe that it is intended to hold its sword aloft, in which case its not going to be holding a sword at all after a few wargames.

The one officer painted up until now had his hand dropped to the pistol holders, resting there in a rather unmilitary fashion that might have prompted Old Fritz to make a few unkind remarks. I decided this time I'd try for a better pose, drawing the sword from its scabbard. This should place the sword in a safe position where other parts of the figure protect it from damage.

Suren Cuirassier Officers on Stadden Horses.

There is one small detail that has me concerned. As usual I have replaced the saddlecloth with one made of paper: this makes it easier to fit the Suren figure to a Stadden horse as well as having a better scaled thickness. But the cuirassier troopers all use a saddlecloth that has a rounded shape whereas some - but perhaps not all - officers seem to use squared off ones. At least, this is how I interpret the illustrations in Dorn and Engelmann, but as I can't read the accompanying German text I haven't a clue what the proper distinctions are here. I think I shall mount the Colonel on a squared saddlecloth and the squadron commanders on rounded ones, administering the necessary quantity of lame excuses - as is every wargamer's prerogative - should I be in error.

Prussian Infantry Under Fire From The Old Artillery Table

This refers to the artillery rules here.

My new artillery table is another attempt to recast the powerful artillery of the Charge! rules into something a little more game-friendly. Using a two dice roll to hit gives a Gaussian probability distribution, so the decrease in accuracy at extreme range becomes much more realistically pronounced, while at closer ranges where artillery can be expected to become destructive, there is little change from the original rules. I added an 'mischance' table consulted when a double one is thrown: this adds a little colour but should rarely need consulting as it has only a 1 in 36 chance of occurring. There is a 1 in 6 chance on this table (1 in 216 when the odds are combined with the 'to hit' roll) of killing one of your own gunners. I based this on an incident from Captain Mercer's Waterloo diary:

"He had just finished ramming down the shot, and was stepping back outside the wheel, when his foot stuck in the miry soil, pulling him forward at the moment when the gun was fired. As a man naturally does when falling, he threw out both his arms before him, and they were blown off at the elbows."

Movement and Curses

2010-07-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) html editors are hard to find and rarely successful. Sadly, the blogger 'compose' mode editor conforms to type and can best be described as a What You See Is Not What You Wanted editor. So, after much bad language, I have reverted to editing in pure html mode and have switched off the 'compose' mode so that accidentally invoking it does not allow it to work its evil deeds on my efforts.

This post refers to the movement table at the end of this section of rules.

There is one rules mechanism in Charge! that I am eager to be rid of. Charge! instructs us that moving within a set distance of other companies (rule 7c page 56) reduces a company's movement rate: this is the method by which the rules prevent a battalion deployed in line moving at the same rate as a battalion deployed in coulumn of companies. There is good reasoning behing this idea: if a column has room to its flanks then it can navigate around terrain features that would throw it into disorder were the unit compelled to march through them.

But it matters very little to the individual infantryman whether he has thirty or a hundred men to his right and left: he is still expected to advance at the regulation pace of so many strides of regulation length to the minute. If a battalion in line advances across ideal terrain that happily resembles a parade ground then it will advance as rapidly as a single company in line. But if the same battalion advances in line across a battlefield which has all the typical features of a rural landscape, it will find its advance slowed as its various companies encounter obstacles.

If we can model the problem of terrain in our wargame, then we will see that the rate of movement of a line will be dictated by the frequency with which parts of it become entangled in obstacles. So we can replace a somewhat awkward rule with a more pleasing simulation of the problems of manouevre that were associated with linear tactics. This is made easy because we have hexagonal terrain, and so we are able to define unambiguously which terrain areas have the potential to impose these kinds of delay on a formation. We have only to scatter hexes that represent this terrain around the battlefield judiciously. Movement rates for the company in line and in column are therefore all that are needed.

I can therefore use a hex-based variant of the movement table (page 59) with the reduced movement rate for infantry in battalion line removed. I have reduced movement distances so as to favour a smaller table than the original authors of Charge! envisaged, using 1 hex as equivalent to 6 inches even though my terrain hexes are actually 4 inches across. For consistency the same system will be used when determining firing ranges.

Organisations, Formations And Movements

2010-07-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

This post discusses the rules linked here.

I am going to try following the list of chapters that is used by Charge! So the first chapter discusses the organisation of units, their formations, and how this determines their movement rates. This part is uncomplicated: the organisations used by both Charge! and The Wargame require little alteration.

The biggest change from Charge! rules is to use four twelve man companies instead of three sixteen man. On aesthetic grounds alone, I prefer the 'square' organisation, and I suspect that Charge! adopted sixteen men per company solely because it uses firing groups of eight men. But my musketry will use a system based on The Wargame and that uses six man firing groups, so the twelve man company will work well enough.

Light infantry are organised as per Charge! The use of open order formation is one instance where hexes are beneficial: it is easier to denote use of open order by limiting deployment to four figures per hex rather than having to carefully maintain proper spacing between every figure.

The cavalry squadron organisation of eight troopers plus an officer is nominally as per Charge! but in reality represents a slightly weaker unit as my officers are nothing but eye candy whereas in Charge! officers would fight along with the rest of the squadron. Cavalry don't fit so well into hexes. A squadron must be able to opt between deploying in a single line or a double line: in the former case the space required dictates that the squadron can use two adjacent hexes.

The next step will be to lay down the various movement rates. There are some problems here, but also some benefits from using hexes: but this will be covered in the next post.

I put a lot of photos into the section: they aren't particularly informative, but do give some feel for what the units will look like when conforming to hexagonal terrain. The formations in column do not look pretty: the half hex offset between hex rows is aesthetically unpleasing. So the photos in this case do serve to warn about how the look of the wargame suffers in this manner.

Hexed

2010-07-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

When I first started this blog I wrote that I was interested in developing hexagon-based rules for fighting my battles. Since then, although I have used traditional 'measurement by ruler' based rules, the goal of using hexes has remained fixed in my mind. My unit organisations have all been ordered to fit within 4 inch hexes, and my terrain has been constructed upon these hexes.

Using hexes has significant advantages. The speed with which a game can be played is speeded up because there is no measuring to be done: ranges can be assessed at a glance, movement distances are immediately apparent. More importantly for a competitive game, there are no ambiguities; no borderline cases where a distance might be 'in' or 'out' depending on how the ruler is held or on the prejudiced eye of the observer. Movement orders - defined by destination hex and facing - are made precise.

I have reached the stage where it is time to start setting down my ideas for the rules themselves. This is where the technology that is now available to us all comes into its own. My idea is to set out my rationale (if that's not too kind a description) for a particular section of rules in an entry on this blog, and to write out the rules themselves in an accompanying blog that contains the rules without any of the associated blurb.

There is sufficient precedent to show it is possible to create hex based rules, but whether it is possible to do so while retaining what represents to me the essential look and feel of old school rulesets is another matter. There are some obvious problems. The imposition of hexes removes all chances of making small adustments to position or facing: a battalion in line cannot face just where it wants. There is no move distance smaller than one hex, so penalties like 'half move up hill' cannot always work. Using a rules blog for the exercise will, hopefully, help a lot with trying to develop mechanisms that cope with all this: it represents an easily editable medium in html that I can update as the rules develop (or flounder). If I set the layout of the blog correctly it should be printable.

Inevitably, the rules are intended to suit only my personal taste, but anyone interested will be able to make suggestions (or point out shortcomings) in the comments section of the blog. All such help is gratefully received. And at the worst, the rules blog can be deleted without any great sorrow if - as is only too likely - the effort does not prove fruitful.

More on Multiple Basing

2010-06-06T01:24:00.000-07:00

I have rebased a complete infantry battalion so it is now possible to judge whether the method gives the visual effect that I want. The photos show my Grenadiere-Garde battalion deployed with various august personages inspecting. Just laying out the battlion for a photo would have taken some time with single basing, whereas this shot was prepared in a few minutes and the figures, constrained by card and milliput, are arrayed with a precision that the Erbprinz regiment would approve.

I decided to retain officers and musicians on single bases. They do not represent the same time problem as there far fewer of them, and there is no need for the precision in placement that is required when drawing the rank and file up in formation. So I am happy, for now at least, that I have obtained the compromise between practicality and looks that I was seeking.

As the photos show, the unfortunate 'Oick on a yellow horse' has been found a position. My artillery battery was lacking a CO and this happy coincidence allows me to find a use for the Oick while observing 18th Century prejudices against the lower classes. It is yet to be discovered whether the fellow's understanding of ballistics is any better than his knowledge of horseflesh.

Modern architects like to use the description 'honest' to describe many of their most hideous productions. My basing system uses the opposing philosophy. I no longer have figures that are individuals, they are now mere components of six-man blocks, irrevocably linked together until the end of their days. As this is something I don't like, I'm happy to use a basing method that disguises the fact; that lies about it. I am reminded of something Michael Flanders' description of his revue 'At the Drop of a Hat':

The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.

Once figures are mounted on multi-figure bases, there are numerous modifications that need to be made to the Charge! rules. The following amendments are intended to cover these.

1. Casualty Removal. Casualties are always removed from the flanks of the unit, the unit gradually shrinking in upon it's centre. If only one base is removed then this is taken from one flank and the remaining bases are shifted half a base's width in the direction of the flank the base was taken from.

We lose the appealing spectacle of gaps opening in the ranks as casualties are taken, but this is not necessarily any less realistic. It would be natural for the men to close in upon the centre as their losses mounted: in bad regiments the officers struggled to keep their men spread out in line rather than breaking ranks and ending up in a formation best described as a huddle.

2. Melee Resolution. The number of figures in contact on each side are counted up. If there are X figures on the side with the highest count and Y figures on the other then we have:

X minus Y = Z combats at 2:1
Y minus Z combats at 1:1

So if twelve figures are fighting ten, we have 12-10 = 2 combats at 2:1 and 10-2 = 8 combats at 1:1. This isn't difficult maths to do in one's head. Anyone playing Little Wars will have become accustomed to such calculations. I find it's a lot easier than working one's way along the figures keeping a careful eye on where we have gotten to in a confused melee.

The Imperial Infantry At Last (Part 2)

2010-05-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

I have finished painting the first four castings. The photos show the final result.

Imperial Infantry (Home sculpted and gravity cast)

Imperial Infantry - Rear View

I have a second mold for the same figure currently drying out: if that works then I have all I need to start casting the figures in quantity. I still plan to make a third mold for safety's sake.

Imperial Infantry - Side View

The muskets are made from 1/32" brass rod, which allows them to be far more slender - and stronger - than if they were cast. Surprisingly enough using this diameter brass rod means they are still slightly too thick than if they were properly scaled.

Bizarre Basing

2010-05-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

One consequence of my starting work on my fifth infantry regiment is that I have to rethink my method for basing the figures. It is apparent that my armies are reaching a size where moving individual figures becomes too lengthy a process to be practical: fighting a battle with hundreds of men on each side cannot be done in the few hours that will generally be available.

Infantry Company on Single Bases?

Moving to a system where I can pick up and move multiple figures is now a necessity. I know trays are used successfully in many big battalions battles. This, to me, is a pragmatic solution that sacrifices too much of the 'look' that I want. The trays have to be relatively robust if they are to hold the weight of an entire big battalion, and so they add to the already considerable bulk of the bases of the figures and are very noticeable.

But I don't like the look of multi-figure bases either. It is possible to create terrain on them that is, in itself, a work of art, but to my jaundiced eye it never really works out. The problem here is that the bases do not merge tidily into the terrain that they cover. For example, it always appears that a battalion marching along a road is dragging turf and other foliage along with it. The problem becomes worse when the terrain is contoured, as the base cannot sit comfortably on a rounded surface.

I'd like to preserve the look of Charge! formations as much as I can. So I have decided to try using a base that has gaps between the figures on its exterior edges. If the connecting material can be made stiff enough to support the weight of the figures and yet remain sufficiently slight; it might appear to the observer, if he does not look too closely, as if the figures are still individuals. My infantry battalions are organised into four companies each of twelve rank and file. My plan is to rebase these on eight bases each of six men. This will allow the battalion to be deployed in all the formations I use ( I use three man wide columns of march rather than four man wide). And so, on the photo at the top of the page, the six figures on the right are all mounted on the same base. I hope this was not immediately apparent.

I won't be leaving any figures on individual bases for casualty removal: whether I use casualty markers of some form or else rely on record keeping is still undecided. Officers, standard bearers, and musicians will be left on separate bases so that I will still get the look of Charge! battalions where the mass of the battalion is surrounded and decorated by such folk.

The Imperial Infantry At Last

2010-04-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

Recruitment for my Reichsarmee has been slow. Since the onset of winter I have recruited but one regiment of cuirassiers. With my painting a few personality figures, this might have resulted in an army with as many generals as private soldiers: appropriate given the subject, but not my intention. Fortunately, it appears I am reaching the end of the process that has been causing the delay: I have gotten the first mold for the Imperial infantry working. The results of the first four attempts to cast a figure are shown in the photo.

Imperial Infantry - The First Castings

These castings represent a considerable improvement over my cuirassier figure. As this was my second iteration at creating figures I felt confident enough to invest a little more time in the sculpting. I had also learnt from my first molds that it is necessary to thin the vaseline used to coat the sculpt when pouring rubber. Failing to do this last time resulted in a pronounced loss of detail.

There appears to be only two flaws in the mould; both in the form of small air bubbles. One is at the front of the tricorn: had it only appeared slightly further to the left it would have made a nice pompom. As it is, it will have to be cut from each figure, along with the second bubble which is lodged between the turnbacks at the rear of the figure.

I'll be casting elements of at least three Imperial infantry regiments from this sculpt. A single mold will be very unlikely to last that long, and I'd like more molds so I can cast more figures from one melt of metal. So I'll be creating two or three more molds from the same sculpt.

More immediately, I need to try making muskets and then painting a few figures to see how they look. Until that's done, and I know there's no adjustments that I want to make to the original, I'll hold back on further mold making.

Nag Nag Nag

2010-04-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I can be unkind at times. My relatives are inclined to agree, although they replace the 'at times' with 'usually' while gently indicating their disapproval and urging me to reform. That Stadden horse is feeling the full brunt of this callous side to my nature. Having been frankly unimpressed by what I consider to be the deficiencies in its anatomy, I decided that a steed of such ignoble character warranted a paint job to match.

Oick On Horseback

"It was a Beaunese sheltie, of about twelve or fourteen years of age, yellow as an orange, without any hair on its tail, but abundance of galls on its legs, and which, whilst carrying its head lower than its knees, yet managed gallantly its eight leagues a day."

Anyone who has read the book will not fail to recognise Dumas's description of the horse that propelled Dartagnan from the parental home to Paris. When Dumas wrote "The Three Musketeers" in 1844, he could assume his readers would be familiar with horses and popular prejudices towards their appearance: we can be sure that the colour is not intended to recommend the animal to us.

It seemed to me, at the time of painting, that such a apparition might, in this case, suit admirably. On reflection, it seems my imagination has gotten the better of me: I have produced some poor oick mounted on a nag that no gentleman of quality would be seen dead on. Oh well, I shall try and palm it off on visiting generals.

Anatomical Angst

2010-04-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

The first half of the mold for my marching infantryman is drying out. Its been over a week now and the surface has only just solidified: I suspect I didn't use enough catalyst, so it will be best left a while longer. In the absence of anything else to do I've continued fiddling about with the Suren personality figures.

Nice Figure, Shame About The Legs

Almost every horse I use is the Stadden H1 standing figure. The only exceptions to this is for the colonels of infantry regiments who use the H2 walking figure so they don't get left behind by their troops who are inevitably moving forwards in march attack pose. I decided that for the Suren personality figures I could use a wider range than this, amd as a 'daring' experiment I bought one of the H10 horses. This noble steed is rearing in a dramatic manner, that is just begging to be used by the more flamboyant kind of general (or possibly any gentleman who has difficulty controlling his horse).

On examination, I was surprised to find what I think are a couple of flaws in this figure. This is something I am reluctant to admit to: Stadden served in Mule Pack Transport during WW2 and so his knowledge of equine anatomy was on an entirely different level from my own. However, I decided not to let the flaws pass because they bothered me, and fortunately I have only myself to please.

The first problem was the front right leg. This seemed to have telescoped considerably and had to be shortened to match the left fore leg. I chose not to cut the leg down as the legs on this figure are rather flimsy: instead I build the ground up beneath it and modelled a new hoof using Milliput. The second problem lay with the bending of the neck. The inside edge of this had a considerable arch to it that looked wrong to me. Photos on the net - with one exception - seem to show that the horses neck would compress rather than arch in this area, so I chose to fill the arch in with milliput. Right or wrong, the new neck looks more believable to me.

Having attached rider and reins as per usual, I applied the usual black undercoat and a light drybrushing of white as a preparation for painting. This is the stage at which the first photo was taken. What seemed to be a satisfactory figure when viewed as bare metal, doesn't look so good when undercoated: the noble steed has rather bent, thin and nobbly upper legs. I could straighten them out a bit, but I have decided the figure would benefit from a little bit more preparation, filling the insides of the upper legs to create a most robust set of limbs. Oh well, time to scrape off some black paint and break out the Milliput again.

Marechal De Saxe

2010-04-02T01:32:00.000-07:00

The world is full of secrets and it should be no surprise if Tradition of London have theirs. If you go to their website, all the wargame figure ranges seem to be visible in a block on the main page: so you click on "30 mm Tradition" or "30mm Suren" and off you go.

And you might just miss the link Tradition Scandinavia which leads to 30mm Willie Series which would be a shame because, unless you follow them, you will never happen upon such wonders as The High Command T.S. Willie Box D F1. These boxed sets are Suren figures that have been cleaned up: they retain all their original beauty but have had the wrinkles that come with age removed. With Private Schulz currently awaiting his great encounter with destiny (in the form of silicone rubber mould making) I have need of another project. And this will fill the gap nicely.

Marechal De Saxe: Suren Figure on Stadden Horse

The box does not come with horses supplied: a great convenience for me as it allows me to order the Stadden horses which I prefer. The first figure I chose to work on is the one that I take to be Marechal De Saxe. Any general lively enough to die from a 'surfeit des femmes' following an 'interview with a troop of eight actresses' deserves a figure to commemorate him.

Saxe at Fontenoy - Or Not

I found the choice of uniform for de Saxe problematic. Pictures of him at Fontenoy show him mounted on a white or a brown horse and he is dressed in a dark blue or a red uniform. According to Wikipedia he was carried round the battle in a wicker chair (he probably needed a rest) so the artists are clearly not fussy about accuracy. I chose to use the red uniform simply because it differs from the Prussian blue of the "other lot".

The only physical changes I made to the figure were to cut the rear of the saddle cloth off and replace it with milliput that I could fit more exactly to the horse's back, and to replace the cast reins with wire. There's a small blemish on the horse's mane that I didn't notice until I could see the photographs I took of the figure: it's only with the magnification these images give that such problems are noticeable by me, alas.

Private's Progress

2010-03-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

St. George's Volunteers (Gillray Cartoon from Wikimedia)

Poor old Private Schultz. He's never going to break any records for beauty, though he's perhaps not as ugly as the characters in a Gillray cartoon. But if the Guiness Book of Records had an entry for the greatest length of time taken to sculpt a figure, he'd be a contender. I am making progress, but it's very slow due to the number of errors I am making on the way.

Schulz -Some cleaning up left to do

The 'affair of the right hand' will serve as an example. I did manage to sculpt what I thought was a pretty good hand. It wasn't quite 'Staddenesque', but it was a servicable hand with the requisite number of fingers and generally satisfactory proportions. But a right hand has to be attached to a right arm of the correct length: and it was there that I failed. So the hand had to go when the arm was lengthened, and now Schultz is blessed with a new hand which, despite being in an anatomically better position, somehow doesn't seem to measure up to the standards of the old one.

Schultz's legs and feet have been completed and a base added. As noted by DC in the comments in the previous post, there was a certain 'sauciness' about the legs that would have been suitable for one of Marshall de Saxe's actresses, but entirely inappropriate for infantry of the line. Hopefully, this has now been fixed. The figure is now as good as my current skills can make it, so I will be trying to make a mould after I have had a few days to convince myself there really is nothing else I should try to do.

Track Sections (Unpainted)

All this fiddling around with milliput is generating appreciable quantities of unused putty. Rather than waste it I'm putting it to good use making track hexes to add to my stock of terrain. The milliput is smeared onto paper as thinly as possible before ruts are drawn into it. I could use plaster of Paris for this purpose, but that would be at the risk of considerable warping as the plaster dries out. None of the modules are painted as yet: this process uses spray paint and so I need to complete all the new terrain before I can economically spray it all in one go.

Private Schultz

2010-03-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

The photos show the current state of affairs with 'Private Schultz' my master figure for Reichsarmee musketeers. Hopefully, they demonstrate some improvement in technique from my first attempts.

At this point I am torn between hastening to complete the figure so I can start painting, and the need to work a lot more to bring the figure up to a higher standard. This figure, if successful, is likely to be the progenitor of the troops for at least three infantry regiments (almost 150 men) and so every improvement made now will be of considerable value later.

The pose will be March Attack. At the moment I am planning so use brass rods for musket barrels, so only the wooden stock needs to be included on the figure. If I tried to cast the musket using gravity casting I'd have to have a short and excessively thick musket.

Points Mean Prizes

2010-02-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

It almost seems like heresy, but there are various mechanisms that can be introduced into the framework of the Charge! rules according to the taste of the wargamer. Long ago the group I played with fought Napoleonic battles with 15mm figures. These were, of course, tawdry affairs between massed ranks of popinjays garbed in peculiarly shaped headgear and not a decent tricorn in sight. But they are worth recalling because we used a variant of the Charge! melee rules (I have no idea where this variant first arose) that is of some interest. Such a system might be used for the Seven Years War as easily as for Napoleonics, and so I thought I might present it here.

Melee is resolved using individual combats as per the original Charge! rules. This is a point of importance to me, as the procedure generates some excitement (as well as occasional bad language and unkind remarks). But Charge! uses a single dice throw for each side, with multipliers according to the number and type of figures. With the variant rules, each side uses a 'score' which is calculated as the sum of the melee values of the figures involved plus the value of a dice roll.

The melee values we used in our Napoleonic battles were:

Heavy Cavalry = 3
Light Cavalry = 2
Infantry = 1

So if two light cavalry troopers are fighting one heavy cavalryman we'd be comparing (2+2+Dice) vs (3+Dice). A casualty would be removed if a difference of two or more in scores result (as the ordinary Charge! rules dictate), although an additional saving throw of 6 on a single dice roll is allowed for cuirassiers.

It should be noted here that infantry are decidedly weaker in melee than before; no less than three of them are needed for an equal combat against a single heavy cavalryman. I believe this to be a considerable advantage over the original rules where infantry, if they have significantly narrower bases, can rather too easily mob cavalry. As John Preece has noted: allowing only one infantryman to fight any given cavalry trooper can be a useful amendment to the original Charge! rules.

Dragoons Versus Cuirassiers

So much for detail. Now it so happens that Smith, with a full cavalry regiment of thirty all ranks, has been manoeuvring to charge a regiment of Jones's dragoons. I suspect it will come as no surprise to most readers if I disclose that the latter regiment, for a variety of reasons, numbers only twenty.

A Fight To Forget

2010-02-21T03:47:00.000-08:00

Jim Wannop, having bundled his good lady wife out of the car somewhere in the vicinity of Wolverhampton, was in the area 'visiting family': which meant he spent the day fighting a battle with me. Two infantry battalions, a regiment of cavalry and one cannon per side with Charge! elementary rules in play. Unfortunately we were very pushed for time and so I failed to take any photos to record the fight.

That is probably for the best: my performance was not something to dwell on. Napoleon is supposed to have once said "I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning". In my case, on the evidence of the day's proceedings, it appears that I may have forgotten most of what little I ever knew.

Hohenzollern Cuirassiers - Looking On With Dismay At Their General's Ineptitude

Although I failed to recognise it at the outset, the battle was going to hinge on whether I could advance sufficiently rapidly from the confined space in which I had to deploy. Had I placed my cavalry in the front line I might have been able to do so. But instead they spent the larger part of the battle trapped to the rear of my infantry who were frankly going nowhere. Jim had noted the fault in my arrangements and, alert to the opportunity, pressed forwards to box me in very effectively.

The only bright spot was in the closing stages of the battle. My Hohenzollern Kurassiere made a brilliant charge losing but one trooper to a ragged volley, and then sabring a fair number of infantry without any further loss to themselves. Sadly, by this stage my infantry were melting away and my army was at half strength: the agreed decision point.

Perhaps I need to take a lesson from Napoleon's book. After any setback he'd write a distorted acoount of the battle for Le Moniteur, confident that a sycophantic editor would publish it without any questions.

Officers And Gentlemen

2010-02-14T06:56:00.000-08:00

The rank and file of the Hohenzollern Cuirassiers are almost at full muster. The near completion of this stage has raised the issue of how the regiment is to be officered. I decided (for reasons of vanity if nothing else) that I wanted the entire regiment to be made from my own figures. I am therefore taking one of my trooper castings and promoting him, by craftknife and milliput, into an officer: this will serve as a master for an officer's mould. Converting a figure is easy compared to creating one entirely from scratch, and so at the same time I am converting another casting into a dragoon figure to be used for my second Imperial cavalry regiment.

Hohenzollern Cuirassier Officer

Looking at this photo now I can see the poor fellow is frightfully flat chested: I shall have to adjust him to more heroic proportions.

Just to add to the list of projects (and to make more efficient use of the milliput I mix up at each stage) I am creating an improved horse figure. This uses a casting of my first horse as a starting point. I have moved two of the legs very slightly for ease of casting as well as refining the horse's anatomy very slightly.

Horse Begets Horse

The final photo shows the current state of my attempt to sculpt a new infantryman. It took a while to decide how to get this moving. I really needed some kind of physical reference point on the dolly: I didn't make any progress until I hit upon the idea of using the frontal edges of the coat for this purpose. So I rolled out two thin cylinders of milliput and pressed these onto the dolly so they ran along the approximate position I though the coat's front edges should be on. Once these were on I used two shorter cylinders to form the inner edges of the coat tails, and after that I could fill in between cylinders to complete the form of the tails.

Mr Blobby

Rubbish In, Ruins Out

2010-02-01T05:53:00.000-08:00

I am forever looking for ways to make use of excess milliput left over from conversions, filling in, or my attempts at sculpting. In the past I was using this for making trees, but I long since gotten enough of those.

The photo shows the final destination of the last year's unwanted milliput. This ruin is intended to take the place of the temporary fieldwork thrown up alongside the mole on the river Weser in Sittangbad. It was made out of MDF offcuts left over from making terrain baseboards. Having made the structure out of MDF, I applied the waste milliput (whenever I had some) on top and cut the stonework in it using my bamboo sculpting tool. This isn't a style of terrain making I particularly like (the effect is rather too like icing on a cake rather than believable construction) but it did salve the conscience on otherwise throwing away perfectly usable material.

Soubise and Lentulus discuss prospects for the forthcoming campaigning season

Aside from that, its clear from the photo that the green on the tile edges is far too bright and doesn't merge at all with the green on my other terrain boards. So I'll have to go over it again and try to tone it down.

Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

2010-01-28T02:06:00.000-08:00

As the photos show, the second squadron of Hohenzollern Cuirassiers is, at last, complete. The time taken to complete a squadron is not down to the painting required: as with any low-detail figure, painting is actually relatively quick and easy. The problem lies with the preparation: each figure has three cast components and another seven items made out of wire, milliput and paper. Added to that, there's the need to fix any casting flaws with more milliput. I am reminded of the Douglas DC3, an aircraft that was described as a "a collection of parts flying in loose formation."

Wire, Milliput and Paper in Line

The third squadron is already cast and is now undergoing assembly. With the completion of the rank and file now plainly on the horizon, I need to decide what to do about the regiment's officers. I'd prefer to complete the regiment using all my own figures: my first attempt to do so will be by converting the trooper figure by cutting off straps and modelling coats without turnbacks using milliput.

Meanwhile, my attempts at sculpting some new figures is going badly. I have an acceptable dolly now, but building up the uniform on top of it is proving a frustrating task. It seems that whenever I add milliput to the dolly, the stuff is determined to adhere to anything else. However, I shall persevere: the only way to succeed at something like this is to work at it and learn from each failure.

Mangling The Milliput

2010-01-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

My experiment with creating sculpting dollies is progressing slowly. The first problem was deciding what gauge wire to use. 1/32" brass rod would seem to offer the right degree of stiffness, but might be a bit thick compared to the limbs of the dolly I am trying to create. I have some garden wire that's thinner, so I'll try making a dollies using both types of wire.

The Milliput Production Line

The photo shows the two dollies in progress. One is still attached to the paper template, the second has been detached from the paper so that its back can start being rounded out. As can be seen, I haven't followed the shape of the template as well as I might. But I am not sure how much effort I should put into that kind of detail yet: if I acheived decent proportions at this stage, all that might be wasted if it doesn't look right once the dolly is bent into the required pose. This is something I'll appreciate better once I've gotten to the later stages on this, my first attempt.
I have also shown the production line for my cuirassier's muskets. I use a single template with eight muskets so I can create multiple muskets per session: I chose eight because this quantity doesn't get too boring to do all at once. Brass rod bent to shape, rods with milliput (crudely) applied still glued to the template, some muskets needing more milliput where I've accidentally broken it off, and the finished article, is shown. I have found it easier to shape the milliput after it has set rather than be too particular when applying it: the muskets are so thin that the milliput can be filed to the correct shape very quickly.

Limits And Renewals

2009-12-25T12:21:00.000-08:00

There's only a few figures left in my metal molehill (as opposed to the normal wargamer's metal mountain). I won't be ordering any new material until the new year, so it's time to reflect on what I'm going to do next.

The first decision is that my Croat infantryman isn't up to the standard I want. Rather than waste time on creating a battalion from a figure I'm not happy with, I'm going to try working on the milliput master a bit more to see if I can improve it. The cuirassier, on the other hand, is good enough. I've just used the last of my small pile of unwanted figures (including the Croat rejects) to cast another four cuirassiers: with these painted the regiment will be at half strength. So I'll order some white metal to cast more from, along with silicone rubber for new moulds in the new year.

I really like the idea of building units using my own figures, and it's hard to restrain myself from grandiose ideas about sculpting all the figures for my Reichsarmee. I have learnt a few things from my first attempts and from the mistakes made so far - both on the techniques of sculpting and when making moulds. So it's worth taking time to explore further what I can acheive. This is where working on a solo project is advantageous: I have no schedules to keep to, there's no battle marked on the calendar that I must be ready for. So even if my experiment does not produce anything usuable, there's no harm done and I can enjoy the journey.

If I'm looking at creating multiple figures then I need to use a process that ensures some uniformity in scale and proportions. I shouldn't be trying to sculpt each individual figure totally from scratch. So my next step is to make some dollies - basic human forms without any detail - that can be used to simplify the process that has to be gone through each time I want to create a new figure.

Not Quite Vitruvian Man

As usual with my sculpting efforts, I will cheat like an Member of Parliament filling out his expenses. The trick, I think, is to replace art with a more methodical approach that can be used without any great skill. So this time I will use a 2D template (hence the image, not quite Vitruvian Man), as I did previously with the horse, to improve my chances of creating a figure with acceptable shape and form. I'm going to experiment with laying a wire skeleton on the template and then filling in the figure with milliput. If I leave the areas around the joints bare, the figure can be bent at the joints to pose it.

2009-12-18T04:23:00.000-08:00

In my teenage years the only Charge! style units I possessed that were at full strength were artillery batteries and light infantry. The Airfix French Napoleonic Artillery set probably dominated the battlefield wherever Airfix models could be bought by teenagers (their Royal Horse Artillery set was ignored by aspiring European dictators for providing fewer cannon per box). Building a light infantry battalion took a little more effort, but with a single box of Waterloo British Infantry, painted as 95th rifles, you had figures to spare.

Innkeepers Eye View Of Freikorps Le Noble. Stadden Grenadiers With Milliput Hats

So it is something of a surprise to find it has taken me two years in my project before the first unit of light infantry is fully mustered. But, finally, the full complement of officers and musicians has now been added to Freikorps Le Noble. I have to say I do have some qualms about how those drummer boys are going to fare mixed up with such a desperate crew.

More Of The Same

Using the Stadden grenadier for the rand and file does cause some difficulties of scale. Stadden seems to have sized them to fit the Potsdam giants of Frederick the 1st and so they tower over their officers. That reminds me again of the old Airfix days where Highlanders and the Old Guard were both surprisingly puny compared to other troops.

A Swirling Mass Of cavalry?

2009-12-11T02:55:00.000-08:00

"Now the whole area forward of the Sittangwald was filled by a swirling mass of struggling cavalrymen". This is the description to be found in Charge!, in the opening stages of the Battle of Sittangbad. I will be guilty of hyperbole if I ever use anything like it myself. A more truthful description will be that large numbers of cavalrymen sat on their horses looking at each other. There is a downside to the sedate, parade ground poses that I prefer for my figures.

Cavalry Yes, Swirling No

As the photos show, the first squadron of my Hohenzollern Kurassiere is complete. It's slightly late, as I can happily state is only appropriate for a unit of the Reichsarmee: the only wonder is that they mustered with such useful accessories as a horse for every man.

Not Really A Mass Either

Painting up that squadron was great fun, and I shall use the enthusiasm generated to see me through a few less enjoyable tasks. I have a fair few figures - all in the eye-candy class - that have been waiting to be painted while I got ready the figures that were absolutely necessary for my refight of Action. So while the rank of file of all the units involved were present and correct on the field of battle, a fair number of their officers and drummers (gaudy fellows with overly complex uniforms that I hate painting) remained in barracks.

The first unit to turn to is my battalion of light infantry. I have just one officer to look after 24 men of Le Noble's Freicorps. That's not enough command and control to get a rabble like that out of the nearest Bierkeller, let alone keep them in line when the bullets start flying.

The Return of the Prodigal Dilettante

2009-12-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

I'd gotten past the hurdle of sculpting the figures. I'd made the moulds. I'd even cast some figures. But there it all stopped, while the sun beckoned and it was good to be outside. But now it's the annoying cold part of the year when the more naive type of goose is getting fat, and there's nothing to be done in the garden except shiver and bolt back inside the house as quickly as possible. All very depressing, but it does at least persuade me to get back to the various modelling projects that have lain unattended for so very long.

The priority job (that's common wargamer parlance for the most enjoyable bit) is to work on the first squadron of my Reichsarmee Cuirassiers. I'd cast a full squadron's worth of these gentlemen before breaking off for the summer. The next task, cleaning up what can fairly be described as very bad castings is quite a lengthy one. But, with commercial cavalry figures, I always had to cut off reins and saddle blankets, so the amount of time involved isn't so very different and there's less damage done to fingers by my clumsy knifework.

One unresolved problem from last winter was what musket to equip the cuirassiers with. I started by looking at the sensible suggestion that has been made of simply buying some muskets. But looking at those available, I can't find any that suit my tastes. Separate muskets by Stadden or Suren - in the slender style I prefer - aren't available, those muskets that I have seen are typical examples of 'cartoon fodder'.

The temptation at this stage was to avoid the problem by not issuing the cuirassiers with any muskets at all. There's some justification for doing this: in the Reichsarmee, where a fair proportion of the infantry would be lacking a properly functioning musket, the cuirassiers would very probably be the last to receive them. But I decided against this easy solution on the non-historical grounds that the more clutter I can add to the figures the less obvious the flaws in the castings are.

So my plan is to make my own. This shouldn't be too difficult: after all, most of an 18th Century musket is the barrel. I can model that in about 5 seconds flat by cutting a length of brass rod. As usual, my intention is to cheat as much as possible and use a paper template as a guide: no relying on that artist's sense of scale and proportion that I don't possess. The Wikipedia article on 'musket' includes a lovely jpeg of the article: this can be suitably scaled and then printed out. As an aside, I'd suggest doing this as a useful exercise for anyone who doesn't understand my criticism of commercial castings: the real thing is very elegant and slender compared to what is on offer from figure manufacturers. But be warned: the revelation may be an uncomfortable one.

The production process is very simple and surprisingly quick: a paper template with lots of muskets on it is printed out. 1/32" brass rod is cut to the length of the barrel with about 7mm extra to be incorporated into the stock (actually as these are for cavalry I have chosen to shorten the barrel considerably). The brass rod is bent where the stock meets the barrel. It is then lain on the template and milliput is used to form the stock. Subsequent applications of milliput can be used to add as much detail as wanted; but the thing to note here is that the need for most detail is illusory because properly scaled it's too thin to be visible. If detail has to be horribly overscale, I'd prefer it to be left out.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

The photo shows the completed figure with a Suren cavalryman on Stadden horse for comparison on the left. My brass rod/milliput musket is clearly visible and is, I think, pretty successful. The figure as a whole is shown to disadvantage when placed next to what I still consider to be a first rate commercial figure. I hope to complete the full squadron within a week and this will show better whether it works as a wargames figure.

2009-05-10T06:12:00.000-07:00

'The Emperor thought the moment propitious to settle accounts with the arrogant and overbearing Petrus, and despatched an Army under the Archduke Guitar to seize and sack the Electoral captital'.

It is in small pieces of narrative such as this that I find a great deal of the charm in Charge! that has kept me interested in wargaming the past forty years. The image of a crumbling empire with its well-connected generals of doubtful talent leading their long-suffering troops to war somehow has great appeal. It is difficult to know exactly why - perhaps it resonates with real life experience and can be fun when the only lives at risk are little metal ones.

Oddly enough, I have never in the past attempted to build an Imperial Army. Perhaps I have been deterred by the reputation of an Army remembered for its routs rather than for its victories. So it is the blue-coated opponents of the Emperor to whom I have been drawn in the past. It is time to make amends for this shameful adherence to what, from my newly adopted viewpoint, can be considered as a rebel cause.

Figure manufacturers seem to view the ReichsArmee with the same amount of enthusiasm as the average wargamer. We can't really blame them for this: a manufacturer who devoted much of their time to such an army would starve due to lack of demand for their figures. So it is especially important to check that all the troop types I want are available.

The infantry of the line will use the Stadden Prussian musketeer figure: so long as I choose regiments whose uniform had a 'Prussian cut' this should not be too inaccurate. Casting my own figures would be very economical, but would be too time consuming given the number required. Light infantry will be provided by an Austrian contingent in the form of home-sculpted and cast Croats. No Imperial general left home without some of these gentlemen.

Uhlan - From Remarks on Cavalry, by Warnery

For heavy cavalry it was an easy decision to raise two regiments of cuirassiers, again using my own castings. Light cavalry are a more vexing problem. The armies in Charge! had a regiment of lancers on each side. This does not appeal to me as lancers are an unusual troop type in the Seven Years war, receiving little more notice in the histories than a few unkind remarks about Frederick's Bosniaks. Also, the dress of these lancers tends to be far too exotic for my taste. Hussars and Chevaulegers are more representative of the army and the period, but I have decided to evade the issue entirely by not raising any light cavalry regiments at all. My excuse for the omission is that, while light cavalry are unmatched for utility on campaign, they appear on the battlefield as inferior to their heavier brethren in what is only their secondary role. As I only intend to fight battles and not campaigns I feel it is best to field additional heavy cavalry in their place.

The gunners will almost certainly be Stadden AWI British manning an Elite Miniatures 6pdr as suggested by Der Alte Fritz. This option combines elegant figures with an elegant gun.

One disappointment in basing an army on the Reichsarmee is the lack of references for it. Project SYW does have some uniform information, and the detail it gives on its recruitment are fascinating. The thought of the single cavalryman owed by the Abbess of Gutenzell turning up for duty conjures up quite a picture.

Hohenzollern Cuirassiers

2009-04-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

The first figures that I 'successfully' sculpted were a cuirassier and his horse. I have now cast and painted the first figure from this master, as is shown in the photo below.

I have painted him as a member of the Hohenzollern cuirassiers, a unit of the Reichsarmee. From the references I have seen for this unit, it is not certain as to whether the cuirass was worn over or under the coast. I chose to model the latter as this makes for a greater difference in look from the Prussian cuirassiers that will oppose them.

The figure still lacks a musket - I haven't made a mould for one yet. It's therefore not yet varnished, nor have metallics been painted. I usually add the musket at this stage - the varnish adding a little more strength to the bond given by the glue - so the figure will not be completed until a musket is available.

Grenze Infantry

2009-03-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

My first attempt at creating my own figures has gotten all the way to a result of sorts. The process took a lot longer than expected: partly my own fault, due to my trying to juggle too many different projects simultaneously, but also due to the bizarre society in which we all live.

I live in a town with a population of 25,000 people, and to any rational observer it might seem that such a town would support a thriving shopping area. What we actually have is a high street with a large number of charity shops, interspersed with banks and building societies, a few genuine shops (none of which seem to have a long life) and a wide selection of places where you can get food poisoning or drunk, depending on your preference. To acquire something as rare as plasticine required a trip to the nearest city. Unadulterated talcum powder was not to be had, so my moulds are dusted with baby powder (relieving me from any anxiety over my soldiery getting nappy rash).

The Silicone rubber I bought on the web from Alec Tiranti's. The mould making was poorly executed (if anyone can claim to be able to control the wilful determination of silicon rubber to explore the world far from the confines of a mould I can only envy him). I let the moulds dry out for some time before attempting casting. My wariness on this point owed much to an incident in my youth when I poured metal into a damp plaster of Paris mould. This turned into an impressive demonstration of the power of the steam catapult, pieces of metal being deposited on the ceiling.

The Offending Article

I have so far cast just one infantryman, although I have the moulds for a cavalryman and his horse also ready. I wanted to paint my first figure up so I could assess whether the results were usable. This is the figure shown in the photo.

With any project like this there is always the danger that one will view the products on one's labour with the same level of impartiality as a mother has for her new-born babe. However, in this case, even I can see the figure has it's faults: I would describe it as hovering dangerously close to the limits of acceptability. In particular, the face came out looking more like a lunar landscape than a face (the photo shows the figure after it has been cleaned up considerably). The overall impression is encouraging though. It does at least conform to my most important criteria: correct (slim) bodily proportions and a pose that works well on the wargames table. If, on my first attempt, I can get a figure that is at least usable, then it is worth pursuing this in the hope that with experience, I will acheive better results next time.

My choice of uniform helps a lot here: it's taken from the Funcken depiction of the Karlstadter-Oguliner Croat on page 99 of volume 2 of the Lace Wars books. The reason for choosing this uniform is that it is bright and busy: something which distracts from the figure's many blemishes. On the wargames table (and with the aid of a 50 year old's eyesight) I am happy with the look of the figure. And there is one good feature of making one's own figures that applies here: if I sculpt a better figure in the future this fellow can be melted down and reborn again.

The Crunch

2009-03-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

One disappointment in our recent refight of Action! was the absence of any attempt by cavalry to charge infantry in line. As long-term users of the Charge ruleset, we have in the past always written off such an event as inevitably resulting in nothing but woe for the cavalry. The Grantian rules include mechanisms which penalise infantry drawn up in only 2 deep line, and so I was keen to explore whether cavalry might - with these rules at least - expect a more fortunate outcome. The details of the rules I am thinking of are given on page 77 of 'The Wargame'.

Such a test does not require a proper battle and so I chose to lay out the necessary figures and try out the rules by myself. The starting position was a full regiment of dragoons drawn up facing an infantry battalion, also at full strength, deployed in line. I assumed that the infantry had not fired in the previous turn, being content to reserve their fire until just before the moment of impact. I decided, however, not to allow them their first fire bonus.

Starting Position

The Grant rules give the infantry a 50-50 chance of firing at close or medium range, giving -2 or -3 on the dice of each firing group for effect. If this were the sole factor determining losses then casualties would be likely to be heavy at either range, with 8 firing groups resulting in 13 or 8 casualties given average dice rolls. However, in practice there is considerable scope here for multiple hits on the same trooper: each firing group of 6 infantry is only firing at 3 cavalry (note 1). In my refight I scored only 4 casualties firing at medium range (and would have scored 8 casualties if firing at close).

I assumed that front rank losses amongst the cavalry could be filled in from the rear. Thus 12 cavalry charged home. I assumed the average number of breakthroughs (ie. 6) merely throwing for their position. I chose to allow a cavalryman who achieved a breakthrough to remain where he was if he was still in contact with at least one of the enemy (note 2).

After Firing And Breakthroughs

I was now at a moment where the strength of the Grant rules was in evidence: not only had the infantry already suffered casualties that would not have occurred under the Charge! rules, but their formation was sufficiently broken to allow the cavalrymen a far better chance in the subsequent melee. Almost every fight was at 2:1 in the cavalry's favour. In Charge! the cavalry would be facing an unbroken array of bayonets with many more 1:1 combats. This showed in the result, with eight more infantry falling as opposed to only one dragoon.

After The Melee

At the end of the melee, 14 infantry had fallen while the dragoons had lost 5 (or 9). With -3 on their morale due to the number of breakthroughs, as well as a further penalty due to the number of their losses the infantry would have a fair chance of failing their morale throw. Whether the dragoons were in a position to take advantage of this would also be a matter of some doubt: their chances of making a morale throw depending on whether they took losses due to close or medium range musketry.

I have to admit that all of this relies on a very shaky knowledge of the Grant rules. But I do like the mechanisms involved. The importance of steady infantry holding their fire until close range, and the 'feel' of the breakthrough rules seemed to give a flavour of the British infantry's desperate fight against the flower of the French cavalry at Minden.

Note 1: This is based on a very hazy understanding of 'target groups' given the musketry rules given on pages 33-37.

Note 2: In this case I decided the rear rank infantryman would still fall back - he'd probably be more inclined to think of his wife and children at this moment than wish to seek revenge for his fallen comrade.

Afterthoughts on Action! And More Blobs

2009-03-03T12:42:00.000-08:00

Our refight of Action has seen me pondering over my choice of rules. When I was fighting battles with my friends as teenagers (some 30 years ago) we always used the Charge rules. There wasn't any real logic to this choice: they simply happened to be the first set of rules that we read and, as we were happy with them, there didn't seem to be any need to explore the issue further. After so many years, using the Grantian rules for the first time has therefore been something of a revelation.

I found that I much preferred the musketry rules from the Grant set. They have slightly more involved mechanics than the Charge ones but give good value for the extra effort. I feel they reflect how range affects the effectiveness of musketry far better than Charge does: our bickering at longish ranges were satisfyingly ineffective.

The Grant morale rules also worked well, although we would attend to proper bookkeeping next time. The Charge method of 49% casualties=no effect, 51%=total loss was never particularly satisfying.

The use of artillery templates as per the Grant rules we avoided and will continue to avoid. I have never found this device usable: often moving a template just a fraction of an inch can radically alter the number of figures within its area. This is not something that works well in a game with any sort of competitive edge. Fortunately a mechanism based on the Charge rules can be substituted here.

We never got a chance to try out the cavalry vs infantry (ie. the breakthrough) rules. In our game, by the time that the infantry columns had been roughed up sufficiently for them to be vulnerable, neither side was in a position to use them. Soubise's Gensdarmes were trying to rally (and failing every kind of dice throw they made), Kornberg's dragoons were better employed as a 'threat in being' to limit Soubise's options. Even so, the existence of these rules had some impact on the game as both sides felt the threat that cavalry posed. Using Charge rules, we were always confident that the casualties suffered to musketry in the charge would make the cavalry regret attempting to charge an infantry battalion.

Cavalry Man and (with luck) Croat

On the sculpting side, progress continues at a pace sufficient to make the average snail look like an olympic athlete. It's still great fun although, with the realisation that it might just result in a usable figure or two, there comes the the daunting prospect of having to try and make a mould. In addition to the cavalry figure, I'm now also working on what I hope might turn into something resembling a Croat.

A Frivolous Action! Part 2

2009-02-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

Turns 4 and 5 saw the musketry duel in the centre develop. Kornberg was struggling to form a better battleline. His grenadiers reformed in four deep line behind the cover of the stone wall, and his gun was moved to fill the gap between them and the fusiliers. The dragoons moved up to the right flank of the fusiliers and deployed into two deep line.

Some poor shooting from his men prompted Soubise to advance slightly to close the range. Meanwhile, his jaeger circled around the left flank of the grenadiers.

The musketry duel was largely ineffective, both sides losing little more than a handful of men. Kornberg was fortunate not to be more severely punished, his forces generally having fewer men able to fire due to the evolutions being asked of them. The Gensdarmes lost two men to enemy fire in these turns: while not severe, this discouraged them from advancing further and they were therefore unable to deploy into line.

Turn 6 saw the critical moment: one squadron of the dragoons charged the Gensdarmes. The resultant melee saw the Gensdarmes lose two men to the dragoon's one and thereby decide to go rather precipitously to the rear. Elsewhere firing continued to take a steady, if small, toll of both sides.

Turn 7 added to Soubise problems. Kornberg's jaeger emerged from the woods to pour fire onto the Gensdarmes, and knock down another 3 cavalrymen. If Soubise's problems were not bad enough, the fire of the fusiliers shot down two officers from the left flank musketeers regiment. As that regiment had already lost one officer earlier it was suddenly looking very fragile despite having the fullest ranks of any regiment on the field.

Turn 8 added to Soubise's misery with another officer falling and, inevitably, the regiment now gave way. Soubise had moved to join the Gensdarmes and was now struggling to reform them while they were being tormented by the fire of Kornberg's jaeger.

Soubise's Left Gives Way

The last four turns saw Kornberg able to gradually mop up. Soubise did finally manage to get the Gensdarmes to charge the jaeger that were tormenting them. However, they lost another four men in the charge and fell below half strength. On the other flank, the second musketeer battalion found itself engaged by the main strength of Kornberg's forces and inevitably gave way, albeit after a splendid resistance. Soubise's Jaeger and gun were left to absent themselves by devious paths.

A Frivolous Action! Part 2

2009-02-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

The opening two turns saw both armies advancing at a reckless pace. It seemed that neither General was prepared to hold back and take a defensive position. Soubise was displaying signs of unusual energy (it is possible that some carousing on the previous night had got his blood up) and was enthusiastically talking about 'not letting the enemy take the initiative'. Kornberg was living up to his fiery nature with a headlong advance, with little regard for tactical niceties.

Turn 2 complete: Kornberg's grenadiers wonder if he's trying to get them killed

Turn 2 complete: View from Soubise's left flank

By turn three the range had rapidly closed and a musketry duel could not be long delayed. Kornberg halted the leading grenadiers, while the remaining companies were ordered to seek cover behind the stone wall on their left. His fusiliers, nervous at the sight of the Gensdarmes massing opposite formed a four rank line on the grenadier's flank (note 1). His jaeger, continued their lone advance along the edge of the woods on the extreme right.

Soubise had played his hand well and viewed his position with satisfaction. His jaeger continued pushing around the enemy's left flank, and with plenty of bad terrain to provide safe cover, were happily positioned for an good day's bickering. His gun (note 2) now unlimbered, having an good position from which to play on the grenadiers. His infantry halted and presented their muskets ready to fire, while the Gensdarmes covered their flank, occupying what little space remained before the second stone wall.

At the end of the turn both sides engaged in long range musketry. Kornberg ordered the leading two companies of grenadiers to fire: four enemy musketeers falling. Soubise replied with the leading companies of both his regiments: the grenadiers losing five men and an officer, the fusiliers (to whom only a small proportion of shot was directed) losing a single man.

At this juncture, Kornberg was confronted with the possibility that there was more to generalship than shouting 'Forwards' and waving one's sword around. His army was badly positioned and a good drubbing seemed likely to be the result. As to whether he managed to do anything about this, well, I shall relate this as soon as I may.

Note 1) Neither general had played the Grant rules before, and both were rather fixated by the breakthrough mechanism by which cavalry can punish infantry drawn up in less than four ranks.

Note 2) As both forces were little more than advanced guards we ruled that only light guns were present. We decided to use Charge! rules for firing cannon (I find templates both slow and hard to use) and used 6" range increments (ie 36" max range). This meant that the guns were little more than a minor irritant, something that I much prefer.

A Frivolous Action

2009-02-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

Soubise reined in his horse and cast his penetrating gaze over the field of battle. Summoning his staff with one imperious gesture, he addressed them with the confidence and poise that only centuries of breeding can confer. "Where exactly are we?" he said (note 1).

And so we have finally arrived at our frivolous version of Action! I hope to write it up over the next few days, but for now here's the photo of the starting positions. Orders of battle for both sides were as in the original battle, save that each had only the one company of light infantry, both possessed a single cannon, and we have used the names of our favourite generals.

The Position At Dawn Viewed From Kornberg's Tent

Note 1: What Soubise said was "Là où sommes exactement nous", but Soubise's schoolboy French was always eccentric. It is a sad fact that, long ago, Kornberg and Soubise sat next to each other in the special duffer's class for linguistically challenged boys in their grammar school.

Pale Rider

2009-02-15T02:43:00.000-08:00

My experiment with sculpting is continuing: I cannot remember the last time I had so much fun doing something that I am not very good at. Despite my initial cynicism, I am seeing some progress and there does appear to be a chance that something usable will result.

Dobbin the horse is almost complete. I am still struggling with his head, and there is still his tack to put on. The mane is also proving problematic - getting a texture that indicates hair without going over the top is proving harder that I thought.

Dobbin and Master

I decided to try and sculpt a Reichsarmee cuirassier, with cuirass under his coat, for Dobbin's rider. This is a lot easier than doing foot figures. I found that getting a convincing looking gait on a marching infantryman was beyond me at this stage. My efforts all resulted in various knock-knee'd individuals, or unfortunates hunched over with a severe case of piles. While neither of these are particularly inappropriate for the Reichsarmee, well, it would be nice to put on a better show than that. With a rider the legs must conform to the shape of the horse's back, so that's easier as there's one degree of freedom less to worry about.

I have gotten the basic bodyshape, minus arms, complete. There's no details as yet: I am still adjusting the work done so far. Mostly this consists of paring off pieces of milliput to slim down the figure to more elegant proportions.

Progress is horribly slow. If I was trying to do this professionally I'd certainly starve. The difficulty is not merely in getting the shape of something right, but in avoiding damage - mostly in the form of breaking off recently applied milliput. I suspect that much of this is caused by my doing a lot of the work by carving milliput after it has set, whereas the professional does most of his work while the milliput is soft.

A Survivor's Guide To Sculpting A Horse

2009-02-02T03:51:00.000-08:00

I noted in my previous blog entry that my first attempts at figure sculpting were a convincing demonstration that I am not able to create a decent wargames figure. At least not using the standard method of wire armature and epoxy putty: this blog will describe a further attempt, using a modified technique.

The problem, as I see it, is that the wire armature method does not provide a sufficient guide for the geometrically challenged. Once the wire is covered by putty it is entirely hidden, so the sculptor is left to compare his figure with whatever reference art he has at hand. I find this horribly difficult, attempting to find the correct position of a surface in 3D space with no adequate reference point. It occurred to me that, with access to a computer, an easier method could be used. I could take a silhouette of the figure I wanted, and create a 2D template of the correct size. This could then be rounded out to create a fully 3D figure, the edges of the 2D silhouette giving me the reference points that I need.

The method is obviously limited in scope, and is likely to produce a quite 'wooden' pose. But there is one common wargames figure, the standing horse, for which the method is entirely suitable. This would be a handy practice piece and the happy coincidence that it would have a fair chance of creating a usable figure encouraged me to give up on human figures for the moment.

The first step was to find an image of a horse in the public domain that could be used for the template. The one I found came from wikipedia, although with a digital camera there would be little difficulty in taking one's own shot. The image was scaled so that it could be printed out at exactly the size of the completed figure.

A layer of milliput about 2mm thick was applied to upper body parts of the image. Some bent wire was pushed into this at the root of the horses tail to add strength at that point. Once the milliput had set, the paper was torn off, and leg armatures made out of bent brass rod were added, more milliput being used to attach them and give the correct spacing. After this, successive layers of millput were added to give the body its 3D shape. I used a different colour milliput for the later stages so that I could easily see the edges of my original template.

Early Stage Horse

This could all be done quite quickly and without any great skill being required. The greater part of the work lies ahead: where I have to shape the detailed contours of the horse, trying to accurately model its musculature. This is where I suspect that Charles Stadden's wartime service in No.1 Mule Pack Transport Company, RASC aided him in creating some of the best wargames horses ever seen. In place of this I shall be using reference images from the web - a search on 'thoroughbred' in Google images has netted be a huge amount of material to use.

Horse With 'Rough Shaping'

A Man Called Horse

2009-02-01T07:16:00.001-08:00

There comes a time in every man's life when he goes a bit mad. He gets married, or he joins the Foreign Legion (or, possibly, having sampled the first he feels impelled to do the second). It seems that it is now my turn. Fortunately, being a wargamer, the forms of madness that are open to me include options that are not quite so hazardous as those available to the mere bulk of humanity. All of which is a painfully long way of saying that I have been having a first few attempts at sculpting my own figures.

There are a number of tutorials on the web on sculpting. While they are useful, I happen to think that they are all in error for one pretty fundamental reason: nobody will be able to create a figure that is up to standard on their first attempt, and they should recognise this before they try. Fortunately it isn't necessary to do this: you can develop your skills by working on less ambitious projects first. In my case I have been using milliput for 18 months now, using it to make a few simple conversions of commercial figures, and making very easy things like trees. What I intended to do next was an evaluation of how far I have gotten along the path to creating my own figures, and the answer was very likely to be somewhere between 'nowhere at all' and 'not very far'.

My first idea was to attempt to sculpt a Grenze infantryman. This did not go very well: two mishappen lumps later I really hadn't anything to show for the effort, although I have to admit it was fun trying. But I had gained a little insight into the problems involved, and my own limitations. Creating an armature and filling that in to create a basic humanoid shape was easy enough. But going beyond that; creating a body correct in all its proportions, and then cladding it realistically was still beyond me.

If I lack artistic ability then I do possess at least sufficient intelligence to look at the processes involved and try to find ways of making things simpler. And I think I have hit on a method that will do this. I'll go into this in a later post, but for now I'll simply show a photo of the progress so far.

'Dobbin' (Right) with Stadden Horse For Comparison

So far I have gotten the basic body shape fairly complete. The legs are still in a very crude state (and parts of the armature are still uncovered) but as they are the most delicate part of the figure I plan on leaving them until last. The hardest part is next: capturing the nuances of a horse's musculature is probably the part where I will fail. But it has been an excellent morale raiser just to get this far.

A Bit Of A Bore (Part 2)

2009-01-25T02:33:00.000-08:00

More than 200 Stadden infantry have passed through the recruiting sergeant's hands since I started this project. While the rest now march proudly in the ranks of the four battalions so far embodied, one unfortunate individual - known locally as the 'The Not So-Good Soldier Švejk' - has been separated from his fellows and left to languish in the spares box.

His problem stems from a little bit of crud that found its way into the mould when he was born into this world. Although it missed all his vital organs it found its way into the musket - the most vulnerable part of the casting. As a result, said musket was found to be fragile and, with a minimum of force, broke in two when tested. At the time I had no ready solution to the problem and so 'Švejk' was put to one side. He does, however, provide an opportunity for some experimentation. In my last post I expressed my reservations about the qualities of the 30mm musket: with the offending article broken on this casting I can try some surgery without risking a perfectly decent figure.

As John Preece noted in his comment on the last post, there was a time when Minifigs spears were noted for being rather more like the trunk of a tree than the bough from which a spear was made. One of their main competitors - Hinchliffe - addressed this problem by providing a length of steel rod with every spearman. I intend to use the same approach: using a piece of brass rod to replace the barrel, and to form the bayonet by beating the end of the rod flat. Having epoxied the rod onto the figure, some milliput can then be used to hide any gaps and replace parts of the wooden stock that were also lost when the musket broke.

Our Eponymous Hero - A Reformed Švejk

The accompanying photo shows Švejk as he now is. The task of fixing his musket turned out to be relatively simple: the one 'trick' of note is to avoid thinning the musket until after attaching the brass rod. The rod acts as a guide that can be used to slide the craft knife along, as well as strengthening the softer cast metal so it doesn't merely bend when attacked by the knife.

With Švejk summoned back from the dead. The final question was into which regiment I should put him. This was an easy one - where else should a soldier with a dodgy musket held together with brass rod and milliput go, but into the Reichsarmee? I have painted him in the uniform of IR Furstenberg, details being copied from Project SYW, except I have given him white gaiters.

Comparison shot of unmodified and 'improved' figures

As a repair for a broken figure, the method is (for me at least) a success. I am not entirely convinced that improvement to an unbroken figure would be sufficient reward for the amount of work involved: the last photo allows comparison with an unmodified figure. The original Stadden musket does not need replacement so urgently as on other, cruder, figures. However, the improvement is not only in original looks but also in durability - something that will only become apparent after the figure has seen some use.

A Bit Of A Bore

2009-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

By the standards of modern firearms, 18th century muskets were a crude device. The Prussian musket of the Seven Years War had a bore of roughly three quarters of an inch. The outer diameter of the barrel must have been a little less than an inch. Yet despite all this, if you look at an example of a musket, you will find it is elegantly shaped and is quite slender when compared to its length.

Firing A Brown Bess Musket (Image from Wikipedia)

Elegant and slender are not two adjectives that can be applied to typical wargames figure muskets. I recognise that we are limited by having to work with figures that can cope with rough handling. The best painted battalion in the world would still fail in its looks if its muskets were bent into a myriad of shapes or, worse still, broken off at the shoulder. But does this really force us to equip our metal heroes with weapons that look like ancient medieval arquebuses?

A musket correctly scaled would be no more than 1/60th of an inch in diameter. A certain thickening of the barrel is going to be necessary if we are to have muskets cast of ordinary metal that last for longer than a single campaign. But is it really necessary to decorate the barrel with metal hoops that scale up to a thickness of half an inch? These might be appropriate on a fantasy dwarf, but I find it hard to accept on an 18th century musket.

The Stadden figures that I use have relatively thin muskets compared to the common crowd. So slender that I find it difficult to store the figures: even just laying them flat, the barrels are prone to slight bending. Minden figures (which I do not own, but admire greatly) have slightly thicker muskets. Indeed their muskets do look rather ungainly to me, although I suspect this is partly because they accompany a figure that is otherwise very elegant indeed.

The Plot So far

2009-01-01T05:59:00.000-08:00

It was my plan to refight Action! this Christmas. This was a bad idea: if ever there is a time of year when it is difficult for two men to both find time to fight a wargame, then I suspect that Christmas is that time. It must be recognised that although this is the season of goodwill, the female half of the species will not extend the principle to wargamers who want to sneak off and play with 'toy soldiers'.

And so the only activity has been to muster all my forces, the product of about 20 months work, and see what exactly I have acheived in that time. As the photos show, there are a number of holes in the units currently enrolled that need to be fixed. The two infantry regiments that I painted first don't have static grass on their bases. This is not the kind of distinction I want for my senior regiments. The junior regiments are frequently missing officers and musicians.

The biggest decision I am struggling with involves a possible change of plan. I had originally intended to use all Prussian units for both sides. But I am now thinking about building the 'Imperial' forces using historical prototypes from the Reichsarmee. I have always been fascinated by this, possibly the worst European army in history.

Cuirassiers At Last

2008-12-12T04:07:00.000-08:00

Suren Cuirassiers on Stadden Horses

As vaguely alluded to in the title of my last blog entry but one, I have been working to complete my regiment of cuirassiers. I started on this unit over a year ago, and there were two squadrons present and correct in time for my BlastHof Bridge fight. Since then the regiment has been ignored in favour of the dragoons, who are so much easier to paint.

As the photos show, the third and last squadron is now completed. The regiment still lacks its proper complement of officers: but as with other recently 'completed' units, these are but decorative additions and must therefore wait until all vital components of the two armies are ready for Action!

Oh Its All About ....Someone Else Actually

2008-12-06T01:54:00.000-08:00

John Preece is back with us after a short absence. He has returned with a loud bang, presenting us with a series of posts that are quite simply jaw-dropping. The photos are a thing of beauty in their own right, and the accompanying text gives considerable insight into the art of painting them. I find myself torn between envy and admiration.

Plains, Terrain and ..er Cuirassiers

2008-11-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

A beyond cheesy title: the fact that I was amused by it is probably an indication of how badly one's sense of humour deteriorates with age. It vaguely relates to my being in the middle of making the terrain tiles and units necessary for the next battle. Action! was a small affair by the standards of the Grants. To me it represents a major step forwards, both in the amount of terrain needed and the number of troops.

Work in Progress - Terrain Pieces

There are a few details that make reproducing this battle more awkward. The rules in 'The Wargame' were, for their time, unusually precise in their use of distance. Charles Grant specifies a frontage of 12.5 inches for an infantry battalion. My battalions measure 16 inches. I should therefore either increase all other distances (movement, ranges and the size of the table) or else reduce my 48 man battalions to 38. The first of these is not practical: I don't have the room to do this. The second is (for me anyway) undesirable: I want to use as many of the figures I have as possible.

I shall therefore mull all these things over in my mind, and come to whatever grudging conclusion best suits me at a later date.

The Tricorn Affair Concluded

2008-11-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

The King having observed, that the hats of the several Regiments are of different sizes, and cocked in different methods, I am to acquaint you, that the patterns which are sent to the Comptrollers Office, for the Cavalry and Infantry, are, in conformity to the King's Orders, to be sealed by the Board, and deposited as patterns; and it is his Majesty's pleasure that the hats of the several Regiments are for the future to be made conformable to them, both as to the size of the brim and method of cocking. [4th February 1769. Miscellany Book: clothing correspondence. Adjutant-General to Mr. Fauquier. W.O. 30/13B.]

As the excerpt above shows, there is nothing new in the problem of trying to get a hat of the correct size. In my case the lack of uniformity all occurs within a single unit: the evidence is shown in the photos that follow.

I may go back at a later date and knock off a few of the worst hats and remodel them. But, for now, they are 'good enough' and I have a lot more urgent things to do if I am to be ready for the Christmas battle. Similarly, the unit's complement of officers and musicians will have to wait while other units are attended to.

The Le Nobles uniform does look aesthetically pleasing. I think I have made the light blue a little too bright (a touch of grey probably needed to be mixed in) but I am happy with the result this small error gives.

Its Too Cold For Some

2008-11-11T01:48:00.000-08:00

We just had a spell of unusually early cold weather here in the UK. For a day there was snow on the ground: very confusing for the many trees about that were still in full summer plumage. My computer was so impressed by this that it felt the need to mark the event by blowing up (I really must remember to put the heating on more).

The lack of a computer seemed, at first, to be a major loss. But I soon found that its absence encouraged me to spend more time painting and modelling. The rank and file for the two companies of my first light infantry battalion are now nearing completion and photos will follow shortly.

Sadly old habits seem to be returning all too quickly. I have an awful lot of blogs and other websites to catch up on, so the rabble of Le Noble's Freicorps stand unattended for the while.

Passing Out

2008-10-25T04:11:00.000-07:00

Its a 'big grin' day here with the Dragoons finally being completed. Even the arrival of a copy of 'The Wargame Companion' was insufficient to halt the final stages. Referring to the book, I must say that the revelations about a certain Brigadier's nocturnal activities on page 63 was something of a shock. I shall not reveal the details, but how the press never got to hear of it is beyond comprehension (buy the book if you want to know more).

My Dragoon regiment follows the organisation given in Charge! with the exception that I have given the standard to a separate figure rather than having one of the squadron commanders bear it. This gives me the excuse to avoid painting a musician with all his inevitable intricate finery.

DR8 - Suren Riders On Stadden Horses

This is the first cavalry regiment that I have gotten up to full strength (at least in Charge! terms). It does seem to me to represent a lot of effort, but I am happy that it has been worth it. We come down to the simple fact that having been soaked with the values laid down in Charge! when I was a teenager, even now at the supposedly mature age of 50 I cannot really settle for anything less.

A Wargamers View of DR8

In my particular scheme of things, the figures mounted on circular bases are purely eye candy. Only the figures on rectangular bases fight and define the position of the regiment. The eye candy can be moved around to provide scenic effect - just as can be seen in the refights in Charge!

Dragoons (Almost)

2008-10-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

Dragoon squadron commander and standard bearer (Suren riders on Stadden horses).

Today's rather embarrassing photo puts me in mind of a passage in Shaw's "Saint Joan".

DUNOIS: Not a man will follow you.

JOAN: I will not look back to see whether anyone is following me.

I had hoped to show a photo of my regiment of Dragoons, complete and basking in the full glory of a Charge-style cavalry regiment. But all I can do is put up a shot of one slightly bemused squadron commander, accompanied by a standard-bearer, wondering where his men have disappeared to.

Neuro-surgeons may understand some of the details of how the brain works. But I suspect that none of them would be able to explain how that part of my brain storing the fact that 'those dragoons need their muskets adding' chose to remain dormant until today. Inevitably, these dozy neurons chose to fire just after the critical moment: when the dragoons had been varnished. It would, perhaps, be unscientific to attribute all this to the sheer bloody-mindedness of the world in general.

Hopefully in a few days time I will be able to show the completed regiment and wax lyrical about the thing. Until then I shall be wondering about what else is lurking forgotten in the dark recesses of my mind.

Accumulating Companies

2008-09-29T05:28:00.001-07:00

The first two companies of IR12

I have to admit to having trouble dealing with even that most simple of inventions: the paper flag. I cut the thing up using sufficient care to impress a brain surgeon. When I glue it to its pole I am aware of all the nasty tricks that a paper flag likes to play on the unsuspecting wargamer and take care to circumvent them all. And yet, when all is done, I end up with nasty white strips along the edges where the two halves of the thing have not been lined up properly. I have no explanation for this: I suspect its an inevitability, rather like that law of physics that says that toast always falls buttered-side down. I have given up trying to find a cure for it other than reaching for the paint pot and painting them out.

As the photo above shows progress on IR12 is continuing albeit at a slower pace than I would like. My plan is to fight Action! with Jim around Christmas time, and there are still quite a few units to do: two companies of line infantry, four companies of light, and two squadrons of cavalry. Hopefully I'll pick up some speed once the weather turns bad and I'm stuck indoors: the current Indian summer, although splendid in many ways, is not doing the painting schedule any favours.

Tedious Inattention To Detail

2008-09-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

Prussian musketeers ought to have white lace on their tricorns: at least that's the inflexible rule that's somehow burnt itself into my brain. And so the men of my version of IR 12 (I'm currently painting the second company) have white lace on their hats. It never occurred to me that the Prussian army, in an inattentive moment, might allow any slippage of my golden rule.

Unfortunately, when checking Bleckwenn a few odd uniform details came to hand. Firstly the neck stocks are red, whereas before I've come across only white or black. But, more alarmingly, their hat lace appears to be gold - not just for officers but for rank and file as well. I took this last to be a printer's error, especially as the unit's drummers were still properly decked out with white lace on their hats (and drummers are a truly tarty lot given half a chance). And so, while I duely painted red on the neck stocks, it was the pot of white paint that I reached for to complete the hats.

But today I happened to be reading Duffy in an idle moment. And here I read 'In the veteran regiments the troops wore stocks (neck-cloths) of red, and sported expensive braid and buttons on their coats'. So now I am wondering whether the expensive braid extended as far as the hats, while mulling over the hazards of careless reading.

Double Blues

2008-09-06T04:01:00.001-07:00

It has been a rainy week and so there's been time for indoors activities. Most of this has been prepping some dragoons and musketeers, for which there's little to show as yet. However, the test figures for my Freicorps Le Noble are finally complete, as shown in the accompanying photo.

Officer and Private, Freicorps

The one mistake that bothers me is with the officer's sword: I've not beaten it flat consistently enough along its length. The lower part of it has therefore come out a little too wide, imparting a rather odd shape. It doesn't show up at wargames ranges though so I'll let it pass. Having satisfied myself that I have a method for converting these figures that is within my abilities, the rest of the regiment will be included in my next order to Tradition.

Lentulus

2008-08-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Emperor, rudely made aware that noble blood formed no substitute for skill at arms, hastily despatched General Lentulus to take command...

So says the good book in its preamble to the battle of Sittangbad. Now I don't have an Imperial army as yet, but as I enjoy working on personality figures I could not resist modelling this gentleman.

I haven't been able to identify a Lentulus figure from the photos in Charge! but then, as the book's authors were happy to use the same figures to represent multiple personalities, this isn't really a problem. There aren't any Austrian figures in the Stadden or Suren ranges but the Duke of Cumberland figure happens to have a suitable uniform and is a nice example of Suren's work to boot.

General Lentulus - Suren Cumberland on Stadden Horse

I didn't do much remodelling on this figure. The saddle blanket was of a distinctive design that I hadn't seen before (though it appeared to match one on an engraving of Cumberland), so I replaced it with a paper one. The pistols and their holsters were also replaced.

Lentulus does have a historical counterpart, a Swiss officer Josef baron Lentulus being in the Austrian Service. His son (Rupert Scipio Lentulus) was also active in the SYW, fighting for the Prussians after being captured by them at Prague. Both father and son rose to the rank of General.

Kelly's Heroes (SYW Style)

2008-08-24T02:15:00.000-07:00

My title refers to Le Noble's Frei-Korps. I can't find a great deal of information on this unit, but the manner of its ending seems to give a fairly major clue as to its character. A unit that has to be disbanded at gunpoint must possess qualities that, if not laudable, are at least interesting. Certainly a general fortunate enough to command such troops will never have to search his mind to find excuses should he lose a battle.

I am intending to use this unit as light infantry. I'm not sure how historically accurate this is as I won't be modelling the unit's jager detachment, only the troops in 'double-blue' uniform. That's a decision based on aesthetics: I like the distinctive double-blue, while the green of the jager uniform looks distinctly 'un-prussian' to me.

The Stadden prussian SYW figures are not ideal for modelling this unit, due to the poses available. The officer marching in parade order with sword upright and the musketeer in march-attack both seem altogether too formal. The officer with spontoon has the right sort of pose. One can almost imagine him shouting "this way you scum" as his troops attempt to sneak off to the rear. But the weapon is altogether too cumbersome, so a simple conversion to using a sword is called for. He also needs lapels added.

The problem of the rank and file is rather greater. A suitable figure with correct uniform and equipment, sculpted by Charles Stadden (or at least with the same elegant proportions), animated 'at the ready' is simply not to be had. I don't like the firing pose (which is the only alternative given to march-attack) as this always looks odd at the start of the game when there are no enemy near enough to shoot at. The Stadden FP16 Prussian Grenadier charging is suitable: but this has the grenadier mitre cap: hence the tricorne modelling discussion in the previous posting.

Modelling tricornes has proven to be a most frustrating process: I think I have made one of these articles with each and every modelling mistake possible (brim too thick, crown too bulbous, fold misplaced in every various fashions, etc.). Currently about one in six comes out as usable: at least by my standards, a professional would probably reject them all. It might be sensible to make a mould from my best attempt but the only way to get better at this is to practice, so I will persevere. The entire experience means that me and the King of Wittemberg are entirely in sympathy.

The photo shows the two figures converted and then undercoated. I am not altogether happy with the converted grenadier: as usual with Stadden prussian grenadiers the figure appears slightly over-sized. I think Charles Stadden may have had the Potsdam giants in mind when he sculpted these.

Tricornes

2008-08-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

One of the great virtues of our blogs is the manner in which ideas can be floated, discussed and developed. In this case I refer to a posting by Adderphue which gave his method for creating tricornes - by creating a wide-brimmed hat and folding it to shape. This is a solution to creating a tricorne that seems to be within my limited sculpting abilities. One of my current projects (of which more another time) might be solved if I can make tricornes in this manner, and so I am currently experimenting with it.

The big question is: how does one fold a tricorne? Looking into this one very quickly realises that the question itself is rather inadequate to the problem. The hat's shape evolved over time until it finally became the bicorne. So the initial geometry of the unfolded hat, and placement of folds, changes according to which period we are trying to model. A useful starting point is to look at the tricorne at its simplest. This has folds in the form of an equilateral triangle, and gives us the hat worn by these gentlemen.

Gentlemen Pensioners

The maths for this is simple. The figure below shows that the ratio of the hat's central and outer radii is given by r1/r2 = cos 60 = 0.5. All other shapes can be gotten by slight variations on this. For example, if we want each side to have a concave curve to it then we reduce the inner radius slightly. To mimic the tricornes on the Stadden figures, we need to also to raise the front of the hat and pinch the rear corners of the tricorn.

Tricorne Geometry

Guards, Grenadiers And Waistcoats

2008-08-11T01:16:00.000-07:00

If there was a church near me with a conveniently ill-guarded set of bells I think I would be ringing them now in celebration. My third regiment of infantry (fusiliers) is complete. In retrospect, the tactic of painting en masse did not suit me at all: I did manage an unprecedented 36 Olley painting points in just over a month, but painting large numbers of figures was not as enjoyable as my usual method of painting in small sub units. So I will return to my old routine of a company at a time.

Now what does a wargamer, of a certain age, do when he finds himself in possession of three regiments of infantry - each one boasting forty-eight bayonets - in all their glory? Well, at least in my case, he finds himself attempting to resemble 'so far as a slightly bulging waistcoat permits, an eagle about to swoop'. I don't actually possess a waistcoat, nor any bulge where the waistcoat should be, but those are the precise words from the book. Of course, if you are not familiar with Charge! you are left at this point wondering what this fellow is blathering on about. For you it's a bit like the US cavalry spotting Indian smoke signals: you know there's something up, but you don't know quite what and you really would rather like to know if they refer to you.

The description in Charge! of the stand of the 'Pultava Guards' against the combined might of the 'Douro Grenadiers' and the 'Musselburgh Fusiliers' was a part of the book that I read over and over in my youth. If I read it now, I find I am so familiar with the words that I hardly read them off the page at all. So it was a delight to finally be able to play it out. My Guarde Grenadier regiment took the place of the Pultava guards, my Fusiliers the Douros (as they have pointy hats) and my musketeers were the Musselburgs.

The Guarde Prepares to Receive The Assault

I shall not attempt to recapture the prose of Young and Lawford in recounting what happened. However, the Guarde mounted a magnificent defence, total casualties to the attackers being 51 shot down and 6 prisoners taken, while losing only 12 men in return (the 'fusiliers' were left with only the unengaged company standing). The dice did take a decided bias towards the Garde and 'salty expressions' would have been the order of the day if this had been played against someone else. But there was more to it than just the dice. Company strengths of only twelve men left the power of the attacking columns greatly diminished while increasing their vulnerability to musketry.

The Columns Make Their Assaults

This leads me to speculate over the reasons for one apparent consistency in the Charge! rules and why it was there. If we look at Light Infantry and Pioneers they both use 12 man company establishments. This would appear to be the natural organisation for line infantry too: four companies form a square far more readily than three. It is notable that, later in the book (ie. at Sittangbad), four companies are indeed adopted, although this is done while retaining a strength of 16 men.

The Defeated Columns Prepare To Hand Over Prisoners

Fighting this action has finally laid another childhood dream to rest, and at the cost of only a few uncomplaining metal lives. I am not a reader of Horace, but I do read Kipling and it was in 'Stalky And Co' that I found Kipling quoting the following lines from Horace, Ode 17, Bk. V, which seemed to me to be a suitable (if somewhat pretentious) way to end this blog entry:

How comes it that, at even-tide,
When level beams should show most truth,
Man, failing, takes unfailing pride,
In memories of his frolic youth?

Those Fusliers Again

2008-07-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

When I'm getting near to completing a batch of figures, I start keeping a list of all the painting stages still to be done before varnishing. That's a simple precaution needed if, like me, you have a bad habit of forgetting small items until after varnishing. I started making my list for the fusiliers five days ago, at which time there were nine items on the list.

So its rather a disappointment to find I still have six items on the list to do. I have been lazy I admit, but there's more to it than that. Because that list grew to seventeen items while I was working on it. If my painting was up to it, I think I'd add a slight smirk onto the faces of these figures.

The Legion Of The Damned (many times over): Stadden Fusiliers

If I do decide to try painting another unit as one large batch, then I think I will try mounting multiple figures on a strip - as many of you have suggested. Well, at least if they are infantry. I rather suspect that Stadden/Suren cavalry would be too heavy.

Foliage

2008-07-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

I suspect it is a rule of life that if you don't want a green bathroom sponge then the things are everywhere. Local supermarkets offer special deals for bulk purchases of them, small children try and sell them to you through your car window (I'm guessing here, I haven't driven in 20 years), charities give them away to needy and deserving people. But as I actually did want one, there were none to be found in the neighbourhood. My original plans thwarted by the negligence of local shopkeepers, I resorted to using that kitchen essential: the pan scourer. A pack of three 4"x 6" pads, costing 49p, provided enough material to cover three of my monster-sized trees.

The scourers were chopped up into small cubes. The first of these were pushed onto the bare metal wire remaining at the tips of each bough, the wires being coated with PVA to provide a permanent bond. Other cube could then dunked into PVA and pushed onto cubes that were already in place, being held there by their tangled fibres until the PVA dried. Given the small size of the cubes (due to pan scourers being rather thin) this had to be repeated in a lot of stages, taking rather more time than I'd prefer.

Once happy with the amount of foliage added, it was pruned with a pair of nail scissors to try and remove the more visible corners of the cubes and thus give a more natural effect. The final step was brush on some light green paint to soften the deep green colour of the original pad. The net result of all this is shown in the photo.

Do Painters Have Morale Throws Too?

2008-07-15T06:24:00.000-07:00

I usually buy figures in small units: a company of musketeers, one of grenadiers, and perhaps a squadron of cavalry all in one purchase. I find this lessens the drudge factor in painting by providing a little more variety. But there is a downside to this. There may be an interval of a month or so before I paint a second set of figures of the same type. And this means that much of the familiarity with the figure has been lost: the same old mold lines may not be noticed (again), and details of which features to paint up and which to ignore, what to highlight, what to line, all have to be remembered.

I had already painted the rank and file for one company of fusiliers some time ago. I decided that I would try a different approach for the rest, completing the regiment by painting all its remaining figures if not all in one go, then at least in consecutive batches. Perhaps the drudge factor would be more than compensated for by the efficiencies of the method.

Well, the figures have arrived from Tradition of London. As usual the inital reception was one of pleasure (I can't frolic like a new-born lamb anymore, though I do try). But there was a little voice somewhere in my mind doubting that painting them all was really going to be quite so much fun as unpacking them. I set them all out and admired them: admiring figures does not take much effort. But it was when I started to clean them up with a craft knife that I really began to reflect on how long it takes (me at least) to paint thirty six Stadden infantry plus their accompanying officers.

Stadden fusiliers in column of bottletop

I remember the old WRG rules sets with their lengthy lists morale of morale factors. My table for 'painter about to sit and paint' would have factors such as +1 for a sunny day, +1 for a decent programme on the radio, +2 for good anatomy, etc.. I think I made my morale throw, albeit only just.

Trees

2008-07-11T04:20:00.000-07:00

A glance at the map for Charles Grant's Action! shows that I need plenty of trees. Perhaps not as many as at Fontenoy, but still sufficient to provide an appreciable area of bad terrain on both flanks of the field of battle. I don't have to count up the number of trees I currently possess, because I don't have any to count. So it's really high time to turn my thoughts to what's to be done about them.

I want trees that will look good, be robust enough to survive any knocks during gaming or in storage, be big enough to look like proper trees rather than overgrown shrubs, be small enough that they don't take up much room in storage, and stable enough to not get knocked over during battle. And, of course, they mustn't get in the way of any troops lurking beneath them. That's a fair number of conflicting requirements, so some compromises will have to be made.

It has to be said straight away that 'overgrown shrubs' are what the sensible wargamer uses. Large trees have a habit of getting in the way as you try to move figures. If you knock them over the tress are at best merely annoying, it they are firmly rooted then you are lucky to avoid damaging them or else impaling your hand. However, I decided that the look of thing overrides such sensible considerations, if only because I liked the novelty of bigger trees than I have used in the past.

Having decided on size, I chose to have trees that can be firmly attached to my terrain modules (for stability), but removed for ease of storage. This can be done by embedding a threaded nut in the terrain module and incorporating the corresponding bolt in the bottom of the trunk of the tree. It might be simpler to do things the other way round - with the bolt in the terrain and the nut in the tree, but this would make storing the terrain harder as the thread of the bolt would stand proud of the terrain when the tree is removed.

The tree's trunk is build from bottom up. An irregularly shaped piece of card, with a hole drilled through it for the bolt, establishes a good flat surface where the tree is in contact the ground. The bolt is pushed through the card and positioned so that the correct amount of thread is exposed. I then wrap milliput between the card and the head of the bolt, and (temporarily) screw the nut onto the bolt to hold the cardboard firm while the milliput dries. The main trunk of the tree is made out of old fibre tip pens, because I happen to have a load of these I'd never thrown away. The head of the bolt is simply embedded into milliput at the base of the trunk, the milliput also being used to build up the trunk - which should naturally be wider at its base.

Embedding The Bolt

The nut can now be taken off the partially completed trunk and inserted into the terrain module. The two layer construction of my modules makes this relatively easy - the nut is epoxied onto the 4mm thick MDF that forms the lower layer of the module. The foamcore upper layer - with an area cut out where the nut is going to go - can then be glued onto the terrain module, hiding the nut from view.

The boughs of the tree are made of twisted wire. Twist two wires together to make a bough. Twist two of these together to make a bigger bough, etc. The assembled boughs are then pushed into the trunk of the tree, wedged in with milliput to hold them in place. Milliput is then used to cover the wire, hiding the twists in the wire, and adding strength.

Component Boughs

Basic Trees

More boughs can be added using twisted wire to make the tree more convincing. I wrapped some around the outside of the tree trunks to form lower limbs for the trees. Others were added to the upper boughs to create more complex structures. You can buy terracotta milliput (intended to repair garden pots etc.) and this can be used to provide a brown base colour, thus simplifying later painting.

I have yet to decide on how to add foliage. In the past I have used wire wool dunked in sawdust. This looks good, but tends to be messy with sawdust being shed everytime the trees are used. My current idea is to use chopped up bits of a green bathroom spong - if I can find such an article in the shops. So any suggestions on alternatives would be welcome.

Nearing Completion

More Musketeers

2008-07-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

Painting is continuing at its normal, slow pace. All very routine really: I have finished the first company of the fourth (and last) infantry battalion needed for the Action! refight. It's just a straight forward painting of Stadden musketeer figures, in this case to some semblance of Prussian IR12.

Stadden Musketeers

I usually have twelve rank and file in an infantry company so, as the photo shows, one man has gone AWOL. What's happened is that one figure had a broken musket: I'd rather not waste valuable painting time on a figure in that state. I'll hopefully be able to fix the musket with some wire and milliput: a little project that will provide some variation from the task of painting all those musketeers.

With this company out of the way my metal mountain - which is never really more than a mole-hill by normal standards - has dwindled to just a few odd figures. I have another order from Tradition of London somewhere in the post, but in the meantime I can indulge in the pleasant pastime of fiddling around with individual figures rather than painting in bulk. I have a Suren Duke of Cumberland that looks like he may end up defecting to take up high command in the Imperial Army. I am also starting on the extra terrain I need for Action!, of which more in future posts.

Methode d'Equitation

2008-06-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

No, not Baucher's work, but simply a bit more on the correction of the bad habits of a Prussian dragoon officer. I haven't read the book anyway, I was just looking for a title, and a pretentious one will do fine (I came across a reference to Baucher while reading a biography of Louis Nolan). I've gone ahead with my plan, the remodelling of the draggon officer being done in a number of stages.

The big problem I find is that I have a bad habit of holding the wrong place and so damaging other bits that I've just done. This is a particular hazard when the milliput decides to misbehave (a common occurrence) and I concentrate on the immediate problem and forget about other, vulnerable parts of the model. The only solution is to let the milliput harden before continuing. So what should have been a simple, quick modelling task took a few days while I allowed the milliput to harden between each stage.

Step one was the easy bit: mostly a matter of minor vandalism as I attacked the figure with a craft knife. I removed the horse furniture (reins on the horse, and blanket and pistol holders on the officer). The officer's scabbard was lost along with the blanket that it was attached to, so a pin hole was drilled to accept a wire scabbard that would be added later. The officer's coat at the rear was also pared down a bit. A paper saddle blanket was then glued onto the horse, and the officer was then glued onto that, now of course, in the desired upright position. So far so simple.

Step two saw the application of milliput to form the lower parts of the horse furniture. First up was the rear of the saddle aft of the rider's buttocks. The front of the saddle was next added although this is invisible and serves only to support the rider and the pistol holders, which were then placed on top. The square pads beneath and to the rear of the rider's legs were then added. Lastly, the horse's mane, where it was damaged when removing the reins, was also repaired. None of this is particularly difficult as it involves only simple geometric shapes. The figure after this stage is shown in the photo.

After Minor Vandalism and Some Milliput

The next step started with a wire sword scabbard being pushed into the hole drilled in step one. With this in place I could then add more bits of milliput to extend the rider's coat downwards. This requires rather more skill and judgement than previously, and I found it easier to do in two steps: the first being to add enough milliput to establish only the general look of the tails. Once this had hardened I tidied up with a needle file and then added a few more touches of milliput to refine things. I also added the top covers of the pistol holders and the pistol buckets at this point.

The final step saw new reins made out of thin, beaten wire glued onto the figure. The officer's hand holding the reins was also remodelled using milliput (as little more than a blob, I'm not a good enough sculptor for anything better). After that it was done to a paint job to hide all faults: the final result is shown below.

The Riding Master's Star Pupil

Well, from my admittedly biased viewpoint, I think the remodelled figure is a big improvement. At the very least there will be no unkind remarks from the ranks about the officer's riding ability: Captain Nolan would have approved of the change.

Forwards!

2008-06-15T01:43:00.000-07:00

The command Forwards! in this case is not the signal for yet another desperate advance of Prussian grenadiers across a cannon swept field. Rather, it is the instruction of the regimental riding master to his pupil. The centre of attention of all this is the Suren dragoon officer (mounted as usual on a Stadden horse) in the photo below.

The figure is a beautiful piece of work, as is to be expected from anything sculpted by Edward Suren. But picky idiot that I am, I do not want to use the pose that it has been given. Suren has sculpted this gentleman to be leaning well back in the saddle (the lean looks rather more pronounced in real life than in the photo). I must emphasize that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the pose, it just doesn't fit with my personal goals.

I am trying to acheive a certain, consistent, effect with my armies. Its detractors like to label this as the "clone patrol", a description which really is fair enough. Perhaps the phrase "drill instructor's dream" is kinder: what I'm trying for is the impression of an 18th Century army locked into rigid formations, responding with clockwork precision to the commands of its officers. So - for instance - the ranks of my line infantry are in march attack and, on a good day with no use of alcohol or any other aid, you can fairly hear the crunch of a thousand boots hitting the ground in perfect time. In my vision there is a certain scope for the odd animated figure, but this is limited to personality figures who don't exist on the table in multiple copies. Or to express this as a simple rule - personality figures are allowed to have personality.

Now dragoon squadron commanders don't qualify as personalities under this scheme. I'm planning on having three squadrons per cavalry regiment so three of these gentlemen leaning back in the saddle would, for me, be all too much of a good thing. But as I have noted before, this is where anyone building only a small army has an advantage: we can afford to expend a much greater effort on a per figure basis. So I can look at modifying the figure a little.

The first thing to note is that the entire figure is involved. The feet are tipped forwards to counterbalance the weight of the torso leaning backwards. So cutting the figure in half at the waist and tilting the upper body forwards will not work - unless we want to give the impression of the officer being gut-shot. Instead, the plan must be to pivot the entire figure at the point where it sits on the horse. Doing this means that the rear of the saddle blanket is then raised markedly above the horse's back, so the metal blanket must go, to be replaced by a paper one (this is really no greater loss, paper ones are easier to paint). The horse furniture at the front presents a similar problem, this needs to be raised so that we can pivot the figure at it's seat rather than at the pistol holders. So I'll cut these off, and glue them onto the horse separately.

Well, that's the plan for today. The sun is shining, there's a nice cool breeze: I think a few hours spent sat in the conservatory fiddling about with these figures are called for.

More Dragoons

2008-06-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

We must, I think, sympathise with the travails of fathers in days gone by. There was once a time when a child, left to his own devices, might take up such unworthy pastimes as flute playing. And there was little the enlightened parent could do, other than perhaps chop off the head of one's first born's best mate. My current slow progress has, I'm thankful to say, nothing to do with flute playing.

An 18th C Hoodie Caught On Camera

For my next planned battle - Action!, from the Wargame - both sides will possess a full regiment of three squadrons. So its time to start recruiting my cavalry. First up is a second squadron of dragoons: the new two squadron regiment is shown in the photo. That leaves me with a further squadron to add to each side: something I'll do at intervals to add some variety as I work on the additional infantry units that I need.

Cuirassiers & Dragoons

Decently sized cavalry units will be something of a novelty for me. As youths my friends and I fought battles with Charge! rules, but with sadly understrength units. This was not down to any policy on our own part, but a result of the size of a box of Airfix figures, plus the inclusion in the box of such eccentric figures as 'trooper crouching behind dead horse and waving sword'. And somehow we never used multiple boxes of the same figures, but preferred variety: even to the extent of mixing in units from the AWI up to the ACW.

Military 'history' is an unreliable witness. So if we are to believe French accounts of the passage of the Somosierra, Napoleon smashed a Spanish force of 9000 men and 16 cannon, entrenched in a strong position, with little more than a single squadron of cavalry and his own iron will. Whereas, if we read Oman we discover that the Emperor sacrificed a brave squadron to no effect and was forced to wait for the attack of his infantry to develop.

My own metal heroes are subject to the same faults: my dragoons will willingly relate how they held back twice their number of cuirassiers at Blasthof. My cuirassiers will tell you that they overthrew the dragoons, who were only saved from total ruin by the intervention of their infantry supports. And my cuirassiers, it seems, do not perform head counts.

Ten Months And Counting

2008-05-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

I have some sympathy for Frederick and his problems with Croats. In my case it is not irregular infantry hovering on my flanks that are causing concern, but various garden pests that launch their attacks on my veggies. Add to that the sun suddenly going AWOL, and the joys of modelling seem all the greater.

With painting metal soldiers, I can blame only myself if they don't turn out the way I want. I suppose in a way this might be seen as a disadvantage: no excuses are possible. So when I see all the mistakes I have made on the figures I have painted so far, I have to shudder. Indeed, I have to marvel at the sheer variety of them. If I look back I'd ascribe 70% of them to impatience, the urge to get on to the next step before properly completing the current job. The other 30% are due to sheer cack-handedness and lack of talent.

It is now ten months since I started on my SYW 30mm army (the blog didn't start until much later) after a break of roughly twelve years since last wargaming. The internet has changed the hobby markedly during my long period of inactivity. We now have easy access to information of all kinds: uniform details, orders of battle, descriptions of tactics etc. that were hard to get hold of when our only ready sources were the local bookshop, library and periodicals. But, for me, the most crucial change has been the manner in which we can all communicate our own thoughts on every topic to our peers. We can now all play a part in forming the opinions on which the future direction of wargaming depends.

On a more personal note I can take stock of the progress made in the last ten months: nine companies of infantry, three cavalry squadrons, and two guns and their crew. Counting all the supernumaries, it works out at about twenty Olley painting points a month: rather more than I imagined before I sat down to count. I think ten months is a good enough basis to be able to figure out future timescales. The maximum size of battle I'd envisage doing would be that of Sittangbad. Any greater number of figures and I suspect the chore of moving them individually would be excessively tedious: I should have to use a multiple figure basing system if I wanted to do this. I make Sittangbad to be roughly 840 Olley painting points: so, subtracting progress already made, that would take me a little under three years.

Ten months work

Henry Hyde's post on hisFaltenian Succession armies mentions the hazards of being drawn into different periods. For those fortunate enough to be fast painters this is not a problem: for slow painters like me it is 'madness' as the authors of Charge! put it. The most tempting for me would be WW2 as this presents a very different game. Luckily this problem is solved by the simple fact that the best WW2 wargames I have played have been on a computer, using Close Combat 3 (in my humble opinion Close Combat 4 is nowhere near as good a game). I'd recommend this to anyone wanting to try out WW2: you get all the advantages of using a computer, including concealment, accurate morale, proper determination of the effect of suppressive fire (the last is key to allowing proper tactics), all leading to an excellent wargame. And the biggest benefit of all is that you don't have to paint another army, so your modelling efforts don't get diluted by period creep.

At the moment I am working on adding a second squadron of dragoons. This takes a lot of time as I have multiple parts to attach with epoxy glue, so there's not much to show at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to show the enlarged regiment next post.

Messing About On The River

2008-05-20T04:43:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on bits and bobs at the moment: with the weather having suddenly switched from winter straight into mid-summer there's too many jobs in the garden to occupy my time. Its a fact of life that unpainted metal figures have infinite patience, while vegetables require attention when weather permits. And anyone observing Mitchell Towers at just the right time of night will see me out there, torch in hand, engaged in a savage battle of man versus slug.

One task have have finally gotten round to is to add a little polish to the river sections I created for BlastHof (hence the Cheesy title). The most accurate representation of a stream would use subtle colouring to indicate the reflection of sky and banks in the water. I decided that wouldn't do at all though. I think that with 'water' thats really no more than a few coats of varnish, this would not give the effect of depth that I want.

So my stream sections use a black undercoat with nothing more than a fairly light drybrushing of medium blue on top. The drybrushing is concentrated towards the centre of the stream so that its 'banks' are casting their shadows. Its not realistic: I don't think I've ever seen a stretch of water at all like this, but it does give the impression of something with a depth of more than a fraction of a millimetre.

Stream Sections

I've glued sand onto the banks themselves using PVA. I also experimented with using static grass to represent aquatic plants at the stream borders, but this didn't work too well so I abandoned it after a bit. I think you'd need larger bristles to represent this type of vegetation. There are other embellishments that could be added - such as grit to represent rock - but as stuff like this would make it harder to place figures I think we are moving away from practical wargames terrain into the province of diorama makers. After all, I've already deviated far from the chalked-on water features in Charge!.

On the figures front, I'm slowly painting an officer to lead the Cuirassiers. The Suren figure has its hand sticking out to the front in an attitude that doesn't seem to serve any particular purpose. So I decided to bend this down to a position close to the reins; a pose that looks far more natural. The problem here, of course, is that metal figures don't have elbows so the entire upper arm bends in a gradual curve rather than getting a sharp bend at just the elbow (which would probably snap the arm if you managed it anyway). To fix this I filled in the inside of the arm with milliput and then filed the outside of the arm to remove the curve.

As the only officer painted so far, this gentleman will get to lead the entire regiment (albeit of only two squadrons at the moment). Later on he'll be demoted to squadron commander: the final complement of officers will have two more like him, plus a converted 'special' in overall command.

Suren Cuirassier Officer (Stadden Horse)

I am starting to think I ought to photo my figures before I start painting them: I can see a bit of mold line in the photo that had quite escaped my notice. Oh well, time to get the file out.

Fusiliers

2008-05-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

Given the title of this blog, it's about time I added some of these gentlemen. As usual (when the range includes them) the figures I have chosen to use are Staddens. The first company, of twelve men, is done and shown in the photo below.

I've painted these figures to represent Fusilier Regiment 41. Bleckwenn shows the coat for this regiment being of a slightly lighter shade of blue than the norm: I've tried to indicate this by using a heavier highlight than usual. Bleckwenn does show some variety of shades of blue amongst the many regiments of the Prussian Army, but as I cannot read the german text of his books I'm not sure why this is. Duffy says that FR41 was transferred from Wurttemburg, so I wonder if the difference in shade in this case reflects the unit's origins.

I did paint these a little hastily. Sometimes I find the urge to get a unit finished is overwhelming, particularly when its a new figure. As a result, I've missed off some detail on the cuffs, and I am still wondering about whether to fix that or not.

Afterthoughts On BlastHof

2008-04-30T00:17:00.000-07:00

Its great to see I'm not alone in enjoying picking over these old battles.

Anyone familiar with Charge! will realise that my refight was not an exact reconstruction. Although this (in the original authors' minds at least) was a small battle, it could not be properly contained within the confines of a family dining table. This problem will be far worse for the next battle I am hoping to refight (Action! from 'The Wargame').

Marburgers Close Up - Taken before we chose sides, the wrong general is still on the table.

There were some slight changes to the OOB. These worked very well, the original OOB favouring (in my humble opinion) the infantry-heavy side. It is ironic that the outcome of the battle was decided by artillery. I had reduced the number of guns from two to one on each side. I had originally intended to go further and use a revised artillery effect table, but in the end chose to stick to the original rules in their entirety. The single Rheinfeller gun, once it woke up, blew away an entire infantry company in two turns: one quarter of the Marburger Army.

Fortified by beer and chocolate (no ladies were in attendance to forbid such excesses), both sides pursued extremely aggreassive tactics. This goes entirely against my childhood memories of games fought with Charge! rules, where the tendency was to hang back and bombard the enemy. I don't think we have grown old and foolish just yet, so this change in tactics probably reflected our desire to have a fun game rather than worrying about who won.

We found one major problem (there were many minor ones too) with trying to record the battle. When we came to the critical moment of the battle we were both engrossed in the fight and entirely forgot about taking photos. So the photos of the cavalry charge and melee are of the second and not the first charge. I also didn't take any notes: I'd assumed that with such a simple battle my memory would be sufficient, something that turned out to be an error.

BlastHof Heath, April 1758

2008-04-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

I love it when a plan comes together - as I seem to remember Hannibal Smith of the 'A Team' saying annoyingly frequently. In my personal experience long-laid plans rarely do come together, but this one did. The battle against my old school friend Jim Wannop - almost 30 years since we last locked horns - took place. This post will relate the events. Photos of the battle were taken by Jim, so are of a rather higher standard than is normal for this blog.

The order of battle we used was pretty close to the original: 3 coys of infantry and one squadron of cavalry (36 infantry, 8 cavalry) and one gun on the Electoral side (or in this case Marburgers), commanded by Soubise. Quite what Soubise was doing fighting for the Northern Protestant side is anybody's guess: from his energy on the day of battle it's quite possible that this was a different Soubise who led the French at Rossbach.

Marburg initial position

The opposing Imperial (Rheinfeller) side had 2 coys of infantry and 2 squadrons of cavalry (24 infantry, 16 cavalry) and one gun, under the command (of course) of General Kornberg.

Rheinfels Starting Position

We used the elementary rules as in Charge!, although it must be remarked that neither of us had read the rules before battle commenced. So some deviation from these rules may have unwittingly occurred. However this did not occasion any argument as neither of us was worried about winning or losing.

Initial Moves

Soubise won the toss and moved first. His army moved forwards, inclining to the right so that a second company could come into line on the near bank of the stream. Kornberg responded by a general advance, sending both squadrons of his cavalry across the stream, and following its banks with the rest of his army.

Soubise now showed his natural inclination towards the defensive. He refused his right flank to protect it against the mass of cavalry that was clearly directed at it. His infantry on the left flank continued their advance. He halted his artillery to fire at the enemy cuirassiers, but missed, rolling a four when a five or six would have been required to hit.

Kornberg was unimpressed by the ranging shot and continued his advance, his cavalry being held a little back. By giving up the opportunity to return fire, his gun now reached a commanding position, with its right flank protected by the Rheinfeller infantry, its left and front by the stream.

A commanding position

The Battle Develops

Soubise's staff was now in heated debate about what to do. The leading infantry companies were in easy range of the Rheinfeller artillery, and were masking their own gun from returning fire in that direction. Those who argued for a slight retirement were overruled by Soubise who was inclined to more aggressive action. The dragoons now advanced on the right flank, one infantry company moving to their support. In the centre the artillery moved forwards, Soubise having decided that their gunners were clearly not up to long range firing. One company on his left crossed the stream, the other remained close to his gun.

Kornberg now prepared his stroke. The cavalry moved forwards at a measured pace, its officers keeping the horses fresh until within charge range. The rest of his army remained stationary and the gun took aim at the infantry company opposite it. Only a two was needed to hit, and a two was gotten. Kornberg grinned as he threw for effect. A one, great was the cursing from the Rheinfeller side as a single infantryman was removed. Ignoring their general's discomfort the Rheinfeller infantry fired at the Marburg infantry that had crossed the stream and shot down the four that hadn't gotten into cover.

Soubise now prepared for the charge that was clearly to come. The outnumbered Dragoons were somewhat comforted as their supporting infantry company moved up onto their left. His right flank secure, Soubise now moved his gun forwards again to reach within canister range of the Rheinfellers. His infantry in the houses continued their advance and now took up a position where they could fire upon the Rheifellers without any effective reply. Return fire from those previously caught in the open killed a single Rheinfeller.

Kornberg charged with his cavalry. His gun fired again at the enemy infantry, and despite the close range, somehow managed to miss (he rolled a one on the 'to hit' roll). An irate Kornberg could be seen spurring his horse fowards and belabouring the unfortunate battery commander with the flat of his sword.

The cuirassiers charge

The Marburg infantry now fired on the oncoming Cuirassiers, two of them falling from their saddles. Soubise's gun fired at the Rheinfeller gun: if this could be put out of action, then the need to advance on the strong Rheinfeller position facing his left would be removed. A hit has duly acheived and two gunners fell. The final activity on this turn was to resolve the melee. The Dragoons, despite their secure position, managed to lose one trooper while failing to inflict a single casualty in return. The infantry, who had risked so much to support them, lost three men: again for no return. Both sides fell back.

Melee

Kornberg had now lost control of the battle, occupied as he was in chastising his artillery commander. This seemed to be no real loss to the Rheinfellers, and their cavalry charged again. His right flank infantry wheeled left and lined the bank of the stream, putting the infantry in the houses at long range. Meanwhile, a battle-scarred bombardier had taken over command of the gun, and took long and careful aim at the Marburg infantry. This time there was no error and a six for effect was rolled. Six of the Marburg infantry were removed, a heavy loss.

The Conclusion

Soubise noted that his casualties were becoming severe, and urged his army on. The infantry in the house charged the Rheinfellers in the rear. On the opposite flank the remnants of the infantry company there fired upon the oncoming cuirassiers, killing another two troopers. The Marburger gun then fired again on the Rheinfeller artillery. A decent roll here would have reduced it to firing only once every second turn. Sadly it was not to be: a one was rolled for effect, and that was negated by a 'half owed' from firing at the cuirassiers. The advantage in the right flank melee this time went to the Marburgers, the Dragoons killing two cuirassiers for only one loss, the infantry losing three men.

Kornberg saw that his cavalry were blown. He now allowed them time to rest and reorganise. But in the centre his artillery spoke again, throwing another six for effect. The remnants of the Marburger infantry company guarding the gun were blown away. The desperate infantry melee at the bridge was easily won by the isolated Rheinfels infantry company. these devoted warriors killing five men while losing only one of their own, and bundling many of the survivors into the stream.

The Final Bayonet Charge

Too late: the battle was over. The losses to grape and canister had been too much for Soubise's army, which was now understrength. Covered by the Dragoons, it retired from the battlefield, Kornberg being too involved with thrashing his artillery commander to organise a pursuit.

Dr J Evans Mudd, the noted military historian (now based at the University of Geneva), notes that the battle seems to have been won by the skill of a single artillerist, rather than by the tactical ability of Kornberg. The Marburg army had been savagely mauled and was out of action for many months to come. When the news came to the attention of Ferdinand of Brunswick he sent a detachment under Ysenburg to Marburg.

The Final Countdown

2008-04-17T05:03:00.000-07:00

It looks like BlastHof is going to be happening as planned: my old school friend is going to be visiting the neighbourhood at the right time. So our plans are laid, although (of course) the plans of both mice and men are liable to change at any moment due to the requirements of the female members of the species. But if nothing intervenes the 26th of April should see that famous bridge being contested yet again by a band of metal heroes.

Thinking back on old times, I have some fears about the thing. My friend has at times received generous aid from the dice. We once fought a SPI (hex) wargame on the Ardennes Offensive. In that game the Germans receive an initial 'surprise' bonus on their attack rolls until, at the start of a turn, the Germans roll a six. When I fought that game with my friend, my Americans were still being surprised on the very last day, several weeks after Hitler's minions had first crashed into their lines. Good grief, even the French in 1940 had figured out what was happening by then.

But I digress. In terms of the assets required (for BlastHof), things are plodding along at a slow rate. As that's all that is required to meet the planned date, all is well and good. I have five figures left to paint - none of them essential. The terrain is also well under way - but then there's not a great quantity of it needed to fit on your average family dining table.

Figure basing is proving to be the most tedious task, and I have decided to get quite fancy here and have been experimenting with static grass. Having never used this stuff before, I have been very pleasantly surprised by the ease with which the stuff is applied. Stick it into its bottle and give it a good shake, then puff it at PVA glue on the base. You can buy special 'puffer bottles' for this, but I used a top of the line job available at any local supermarket (citrus flavour no less), as the photo shows. All I had to do was enlarge the hole in its top with a 6mm drill.

Dragoons and 'Puffer Bottle'

Looking ahead, I want to start on the units for the next battle in the series given in 'Charge!' and 'The Wargame'. So I've sent off to Tradition of London for a company each of musketeers and fusiliers and another squadron of dragoons. As usual, I haven't bought greater quantities of figures than I will paint in a month or so: I'm hoping that in this way I won't build up a metal mountain of never-to-be-painted figures. Its enjoyable shopping for model soldiers but one can buy them far quicker than you can paint them.

The one problem I can foresee at this point is the light infantry. I'd prefer to use a different pose from march attack, and I'm not keen on standing firing either. The first I associate with infantry in close order, the latter looks peculiar to me when (as normal) there are no enemy figures to the front. Figures with their muskets 'at the ready' would be about right. I'd also like one of the units to be Croats. Now there are figure ranges that would give me all this, but none that I know of that don't belong to the 'porcine' breed. So, at the moment, I have no idea where to look for these gentlemen.

A Little Bit More Gun

2008-04-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me - albeit rather belatedly - that my photo of yesterday uses a very bad choice of camera angle for showing the Suren gun. So here's a view of the same gun from the side.

You can see from this angle that the gun's barrel is relatively long, as is appropriate for a French gun. Experiments in the middle of the 18th Century showed that the length of barrel could be considerably reduced without any significant loss of performance, either in terms of range or accuracy. A shorter barrel meant much less weight in metal. That in turn meant that a less sturdy and thus lighter carriage could be used.

All this gave rise to much more mobile artillery, enabling units such as Captain Phillip's artillery brigade (two batteries of 12 pounders) to come up in time to support the British infantry column at Minden.

Guns And Gunners

2008-04-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Guns and crew - at least a minimum complement needed for the battle - are now complete. I have only painted four gunners per gun so far (Charge! uses six per gun) but I intend to add the rest only if I have time before battle commences. I really want to crack on with the terrain now, so the extra figures can wait.

Suren French Artillery masquerading as Prussians

Painting the gunners doesn't take long, its the remodelling done to make them a little more like SYW Prussians (instead of WAS French) that takes the time. As usual with any unfamiliar figure, no matter how carefully I inspect them, I tend to find additional detail that I'd prefer to change after I have started painting. Its only when tracing a paint brush over the entire model that I come to know every feature of it.

I'd probably have done better to have gone with gunners from the AWI as suggested by Alte Fritz. However I had thought when choosing figures that the AWI tricorns looked as if their evolution to bicornes had gone a little too far. With the benefit of hindsight, I think this would have been a relatively minor problem, and one that's hardly noticeable on the tabletop.

So my units are essentially complete and I have only the field of battle left to consider. Luckily the terrain for Blasthof isn't all that complex: a few lengths of stream with a single bridge, a house, a hill, and a ploughed field. With the exception of the bridge and stream none of these had any great impact on the original fight so can be left out if I'm pushed for time.

The Artillery

2008-03-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

This has been the topic of much thought. I'll be painting only one battery of two guns for BlastHof - each army receiving one gun for the battle. This reduction in the amount of artillery present will make, I think, for a better game.

As discussed in previous posts, there a limited choice of figures for use in a 30mm army. This problem is made more difficult by my own personal preferences. Figure manufacturers, not unreasonably, create gun crews hard at work serving the guns, and no doubt sending a hail of roundshot and grape to bowl over their enemies in great heaps. Indeed, so enthusiastic are these metal heroes that one must take care to avoid having a rammer who is merrily ramming home at the same time as, at the opposite end of the gun, another gunner is firing the piece. This is pretty much the opposite of what I want. I am really looking for a range with figures with choices such as 'gunner peering gormlessly into space while waiting for the smoke to clear'. My gunners are not to be the energetic warriors whose fire have dominated so many battlefields both real-life and miniature.

My final choice has been to go with my original instinct and to use the Suren French gun/crew set. I decided I wanted an 'unreformed gun': ie. a heavy piece unaffected by the great reforms of artillery that started around the middle of the 18th century in most first rate powers. My two Imaginations are both crumbling princedoms, barely able to escape out of the medieval, and so it seems inappropriate to have them possessing any of the more elegant pieces (such as the Elite Miniatures Austrian Four Pounder) that are available. That in itself is something of a strange choice: prefering the 'realistic' over the aesthetic when constructing an imaginary army. But then, as I have only to please myself, I don't need to care over much about such trifles as mere consistency.

As usual, I will paint the guns so they can also serve as pieces in the Prussian Army. This just means simple colours of blue-grey woodwork and blackened ironwork. I don't think these elderly guns would be too out of place in Frederick's Army because, while that monarch did recast his artillery to a lighter design prior to the start of the Seven Years War, he contrived to lose most of these pieces early on. So for much of the war the Prussians were served by older, heavier, cannon hastily gathered from service in various fortresses.

Converting the Suren French gunners into Prussians is rather more laborious than I'd prefer. Their cuffs are of the voluminous type associated with the War of the Austrian Succession and I therefore have to file down these admittedly elegant items to achieve the more utilitarian cuffs of SYW Prussians. As usual, pigtails can be added using cotton thread coated with epoxy glue. Fragile scabbards will be cut off and replaced with wire ones. The French officers are clad in heavy boots: these must be filed down to give gaiters.

Dragoons Done

2008-03-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

My squadron of dragoons - the last contingent of cavalry I need for my first battle are, at last, complete. There was one rather crass mistake I made on these. I forgot to repair their manes with milliput where I had carved off the original reins. I didn't discover this omission until very late on in painting them, and any repair will have to wait until after the battle.

I'm planning on using two squadrons of cuirassiers against only one squadron of dragoons. This is a rather bigger difference in numbers (16 vs 6, rather than 16 vs 12) than was used in the original OOB for Blasthof. I will only partially compensate with this by a change in the infantry units used - I think the original OOB favoured Soubise. As my opponent will have choice of sides, hopefully if this produces an unbalanced contest, it will be me that suffers as a consequence.

Bits And Bobs

2008-03-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

The flag for the Grenadiere-Garde has finally arrived. It transpires that the owner of GMB Designs has moved premises and this has caused him a few problems. I moved house just two years ago, and still remember the hassle I had: in a simple move that could have gone easily if everyone in a small chain of four people had only possessed three digit IQs. So Graham has my sympathy. The photo below shows my Grenadier-Garde regiment's Fahnenjunker finally ready to join the regiment.

My Dragoon test piece has proven to be as easy to paint as I had hoped: probably taking about half the effort of a cuirassier. The photo below shows him awaiting varnish and metallics.

The rest of the dragoon squadron has just completed the milliput, solder and epoxy glue stage, so I'll be painting them over the next few days. I've also started work on the artillery, gluing the pieces of each gun together.

More On Bases

2008-03-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

Well some things never change. Day one I make a plan. Day two something unforeseen happens and all plans must be recast. In this particular case my pin drill was the cause of the problem. The one millimetre drill, clearly exasperated by my inept fumblings, broke while I was drilling holes in the horses heads to take their reins. So I have only one horse ready for the next stage. I wasn't going to bother with painting a test figure this time round but, as there'll be a few days delay until I can get to a hardware shop, it looks like I'll be doing one after all.

As that won't take much time, I have to move ahead with other items. First up is basing my already completed figures. The cavalry have the worst stability problem so I'll tackle them first. I don't want a large base that overwhelms the figure, so I'm using dimensions of only 18 x 40mm. I am confident that this will be stable enough as the Suren personality figures of Frederick and Soubise have bases of roughly this size and show none of the wobble of the Stadden horses.

Construction is cheap and simple, using only materials at hand. The card I use is thin so I don't significantly raise already tall figures any more than necessary. I build the base up on its upper surface using milliput (I usually have a lot spare that gets thrown away whenever I do any other modelling so this should be cheap) to hide the original metal base of the figure itself and add some weight to it (thereby lowering the centre of gravity). The base is then painted black with sand PVA'd on top. I have the option to add all sorts of niceties later - bits of rock, static grass etc., but thats all I have time to do at the moment. The photo below shows some figures completed to this stage, and spaced roughly 24mm apart, as Im intending to use them in the wargame.

I am pleased with the result. Having a black border around the edges of the base accentuates the fact that the figures are still individuals rather than being mounted into indivisible units.

Correction 15/3/08: base size of 18x40mm not 12x40mm

Dragoons

2008-03-05T05:33:00.000-08:00

I have to admit to having treated these as poor cousins to the cuirassiers. I suspect the reason for this has a lot to do with the photo on page 52 of Charge!. The Dragoons of Montmort make a very poor showing compared with the glorious display of the Erbprinz Regiment that precedes them.

If you inspect the Charge! photo closely you will probably come to the same conclusion as I did - the horses are too small for the riders. This was the photo that convinced me to use Stadden horses with Suren troopers - something in which I am not alone, having seen it alluded to on the Old School Wargamers messageboard. There was a certain irony here, as I'm now not sure whether or not the Charge! regiment is using Suren riders or horses.

Well, the first squadron of Dragoons is now on my table demanding attention. And I am delighted to say that these figures are actually very good indeed - better I think than the cuirassiers. One problem I had with the latter figures was that their carbines were molded as an integral part of the figure and tended to break when I straightened them out. On the Dragoons they are supplied separately, so there is no such problem.

My photo shows these gentlemen cleaned up. The next step is to repair manes with milliput (damaged when the original reins were cut off), attach wire reins to horses, attach shouldered swords to the riders, and then fix horse and rider together. I won't be using paper saddlecloths this time: the figures sit very well on their horses with only a little filing, so that will do. I won't be attaching the carbines immediately - leaving them off will make it easier to paint the detail around them.

Dragoon uniforms are a lot less fussy than those of cuirassiers. These guys were the workhorses of 18th Century cavalry and, for their pains, got worse horses and fewer distinctions than their more exalted brethren. No fancy lace, for example, on the carbine sling or on the turnbacks. So I'm hoping to get these figures completed a lot faster. I'm guessing at three days for all the physical modelling, and then another four for painting. So that gives me a week to decide on how I'll tackle the artillery.

Those Cuirassiers Again

2008-03-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Progress towards Blasthof continues: the box that can be ticked off today is that for the second cuirassier squadron. The photo below shows this along with its sibling. So I now have what Brigadier Peter Young would refer to as a 'weak regiment of sabres', others as a full division of cavalry. The Imperial Horse is now complete except for a single officer. I already have the figure but it will wait for now, while more important items are attended to.

It will be obvious to the observer that I like a relatively sedate pose of figure (I think Charles Grant makes a similar remark somewhere). Figures that are energetically charging, waving their swords about, somehow seem inappropriate for a SYW battle. Anyway, I like to think my cuirassiers are behaving as they did at Leuthen. To quote Christspher Duffy:

The celebrated Bayreuth Dragoons opened the attack, watched by the cuirassiers of Bevern's old army, who were still under something of a cloud. They were not altogether sorry to see the magnificent dragoons being mauled in the first clash with the Austrians. 'It is true that the cuirassiers in the second line could have given immediate support, but their best officers said: "Let the king's favourite dragoons stew a little first!" Finally, when the danger for the dragoons became too great, the cuirassiers arrived and saved them.'

With the completion of this squadron, I was expecting to be able to idle about for a few days while waiting for the next batch of figures to arrive from the manufacturers. However, they arrived yesterday: so the opportunity to be lazy, while striking a noble air and complaining about the laxity of the postal service etc. has been missed. I now have at hand the dragoon squadron and the artillery needed to complete the orders of battle for both sides.

The dragoons will be next as they are a fairly simple job. The artillery will be delayed while I decide exactly what I want to do with them: there's the potential for a considerable amount of remodelling (or figure mangling depending on your opinion of my skills). Of this, of course, more anon.

I still haven't resolved the issue of how to base my figures. Thank you, everyone, for your comments: you have given me a lot of ideas to go through. I shall give it all some heavy duty mulling before making the wrong decision.

A Brief Connection To Reality

2008-03-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

With my first battle within sight, it has been time to pay (however unwillingly) some attention to the practicalities of the thing, So today I set out the few terrain pieces I have made so far (still unpainted) and set up some figures to see what difficulties might occur.

Cuirassiers watch IR Rheinfels marching past an Inn

My soldiers suffer from the wobbles. It seems that their original bases do not provide enough stability for either horse or foot, given the style of terrain I am using. What is sufficient when playing on flat surfaces as in Charge! is not sufficient when using textured terrain. The bridge is the terrain piece that is worst for this problem. Foot figures on this have a distinct tendency to fall backwards into the arms of their comrades: not a very encouraging observation given that the bridge is the focal point of the first battle.

The obvious solution is to rebase them. Best of all would be to combine multiple figures onto the same base. This latter I reject out of hand - I want to be able to engage in individual figure combats as in Charge!.

Rear view of IR Rheinfels

There is a second, not so obvious, consideration as well. At the moment a 58 man battalion of infantry still fits into quite a small box. If I use large bases that will no longer be the case. So my solution must be to continue experimenting with different base sizes to determine the minimum required to do the job. One important determinant of stability is how high off the ground the figure's centre of gravity is. So I will try and make the bases fairly heavy to lower this.

Kornberg Complete

2008-02-26T07:57:00.000-08:00

I am now completely out of unpainted Fredericks, the picture below shows him in his different guises.

The three Freds (from left to right: unscathed, Dragoon Colonel, Kornberg)

I decided to paint the Kornberg figure to match the Rochling print. I'm happy with the result apart from the white frilly bits on the horse furniture - that looks a bit too much like the icing on a Christmas cake.

It was a fun figure to do, and not that hard - I can't sculpt organic things like hands, but a cuirass is fairly easy to do - as long as you've only got the one figure to do.

John Preece made an thought provoking post on painting figures for wargames. I think I'd like to add my comment on this. Its very easy to look at what other people do, like what you see, and seek to do the same. I think that's where we make a mistake - instead we need to select the features that are relevent to our own situation. In my own case, what I'm doing now would be utterly impracticable (because of the amount of time involved) if I was trying to recruit large armies. But what I can do is try to milk as much enjoyment as possible from creating a small army.

Next on my list is a second squadron of cuirassiers: having done that my metal mountain will be all but gone, pending the arrival of another parcel from the manufacturers.

Kornberg And The Three Freds

2008-02-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

Called me biased if you will (I have been called a lot worse), but I happen to think that every range of Seven Years War cavalry ought to start with: SYWAC1 - General Kornberg. Readers of Charge! will recognise this gentleman at once and I hope will echo my sentiment. As far as I am aware, the General is entirely a creation of the book's authors, although he bears some resemblance to Conan-Doyle's Brigadier Gerrard. Despite this I think he's a figure of some significance in wargaming history. Not only did the General figure in both the example battles given in Charge!, but the splendid regiment of cuirassiers featured in the book was named after him.

So it comes as some surprise to find that there's no 30mm figure that I know of which looks quite right to represent him. Examining the photos in Charge! itself is not much help: there's no figure in any of the photos that I'd be certain was him. The Stadden range does include a figure of Seydlitz, but as he's modelled as a pedestrian that's really no great help. Perhaps because I am currently up to my eyeballs in cuirassiers, this is a problem that has been exercising my mind. With so much already to do, it would be absolute madness to start on yet another mini-project, but to inaccurately paraphrase Queen Victoria, "there is no prospect of good sense in this house". And it so happens I think I have a figure that would form good material for a General of Cuirassiers.

Some time ago, due to a fluke event, I became the proud owner of three mounted Frederick The Great figures. Now while I am happy with the sentiment that you can't really have too many of these, nonetheless that gives me two more Fredericks than would be historically accurate. So one excess Frederick has already emerged from a confrontation with craftknife and milliput to find himself a Colonel of Dragoons. The last remaining spare Frederick has been left unscathed until now, but its fate was sealed when I looked at the following Karl Rochling print.

Rochling: Seylitz at Rossbach

The feature that first caught my eye, was the very ornate saddlecloth which is very similar to that for the Frederick figure. I'd find it pretty hard to create that sort of detail. The sash on the Frederick figure is outside the coat, which is conveniently correct. The one thing my Frederick figure lacks is a Cuirass, and that (and its straps) is a fairly simple thing to add with milliput.

Stadden Frederick the Great (on a Suren Horse) with cuirass added.

The Slowest Cavalry Advance Since Minden

2008-02-22T01:44:00.000-08:00

I have at last completed the first squadron of cavalry. Evidence of this is given in the photos that follow.

This looks to be about as good as I can get with my current camera, so I've decided its time to get a newer one. My current one is very old and it looks like I can get a far better one at a fraction of the price now. If the delivery date is honoured I'll be taking new photos in about four days.

I've found that the Stadden bases are too small to be reliably stable. However, I still want the effect of individually based figures, so I can fight individual figure vs. figure melees as per Charge!. So I'll be mounting them on slightly wider bases - probably about 18mm wide. As there's a nominal spacing of 24mm between figures in my set up they should still look 'properly' separate.

I'm now at the point where I'm figuring out the final orders to the manufacturers that are needed to flesh out my small army for BlastHof. I need a squadron of dragoons and two guns and their crews. The Dragoons are an easy decision - Suren dragoons on Stadden horses. As I noted before the artillery is more problematic. At the moment I'm leaning towards Elite Miniatures SYW Austrian 3pdrs with gunners modified from Stadden AWI as suggested by Alte Fritz.

Nothing Much Really

2008-02-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Monsarrat was famous as the author of 'The Cruel Sea'. He was also responsible for another book that I found far more interesting. This was 'Three Corvettes' which is the story of his wartime service in corvettes. There's one particular story in it that often comes to mind.

Minesweeping in WW2 has a risky business. A small boat trailed a sweep behind it hoping to snag mines. As it had to be in front of the sweep to tow it there was every chance that a mine might be inconsiderate enough to contact the boat rather than the sweep, with fatal consquences. Monsarrat recalls watching a minesweeper toiling along when a mine was touched off. He saw the boat disappear in a huge column of water and was very relieved to see it emerge unharmed, if rather the damper, from the other side.

Naval officers in WW2 liked to send signals. It was necessary practise for the signallers anyhow, and, with Noel Coward films in mind, there was a great fondness for displaying calm imperturbalility and wit. So Monsarrat signalled to the minesweeper 'that was a big one'.

The skipper of the minesweeper was clearly Oscar material. His reply to Monsarrat outscores Nelson in my book.

His reply was: 'what was?'.

Which bring me to the fact that I'm still making very slow progress and nothing much to report.

Slow Progress

2008-02-16T06:17:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that my 'campaign' uses the timeline of today minus 250 years. So around this time Prince Ferdinand was conducting a winter campaign against the French. From Savory:

The Weser was covered in floating ice: the night was rough; no fishermen could be found who had the courage to put us across.

All of which seems pretty strange seeing that I am sat in my conservatory, and finding the sun rather too hot.

Today I'm cutting up terrain hexes, and prepping more cuirassiers to add those I'm currently painting. The latter hasn't been going too well: some of my milliput modelling has been rather careless of late, so some figures haven't come out as well as they ought. I comfort myself with the excuse that it's all good experience and my modelling will improve as my knowledge of what works and what doesn't develops. As well as my first test piece, five more troopers are now coming close to completion. The image below serves for little more that to illustrate my slow progress.

My tripod has arrived. There was a period of confusion while I figured out how to attach the camera to it - I was expecting some sort of clamp, rather than the far more sensible method of a standardised screw. I'll try and make time to take some better shots of the troops, now that camera shake can be eliminated.

Map Editor - Manual Editing

2008-02-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

As promised I'll give a quick run down of manual editing. To do this you start by selection the 'tools' action from the 'Edit' menu as shown below

When you do this a tools menu list is presented to you on the right side of the map view. This gives you quick access to all the functions you should need.

You select whatever you want from this list and then click on the map to put what you want at the spot you just clicked on. For terrain, contours, and towns you click within a hex. For roads and rivers you click on near a hex side.

Thats about it for the map editor for now. I've a few things still to tidy up/improve on it. After that I'm going to look at army/unit management though I've no idea about timescales for that.

A Map Editor On The Loose

2008-02-13T02:21:00.000-08:00

I've been putting it off for a while in the expectation that I'd think of something else that must be added, but its time to release my Map Editor. By the time you read this there should be a version of it available for download in the Files section of the Old School Wargaming group. As the program has not been tried other than on my Windows XP machine, its very much a beta version

As previously discussed, this version of the program has functionality for creating and printing maps. The maps can be created randomly, or manually or by a combination of both methods. I'll provide some detail now of how this is done.

The first time you start this program you should get a main window, with a smaller window inside it, as shown below. This is a bare terrain map. From here you can begin by editing or manually randomising the map. Today I'll just write up random terrain generation.

Map randomisation is done in two stages: (1) creating the landscape, (2) creating the man made features that exist on it. These actions are both obtained from the Edit menu as shown below.

The first option - randomise terrain - creates natural terrain features: contours, woods, rivers etc. When you select this action you are first presented with the following dialog box which allows you to set a few options

I've tried to use a pretty generic method of interacting with all dialog boxes in this tool. Click once on an option and its selected, click a second time on the bit you want to change, and you should then be able to either select from a list or type a change as appropriate.

The second action - calculate populations - generates towns and routes between towns. Again, a dialog is first presented to give you a few options. Once done, it will also open up a second window which lists all the towns. You can modify towns (for instance to change a name) by double clicking on a town in this new window

Once you have some sort of map you may want to zoom in/out using the +/- keys on your keyboard. If the map is larger than the window then scroll bars will be created where needed so you can scroll the map. Other options affecting how the map is viewed are available by selecting 'Options' from the 'View' menu.

Once you have something worth saving there are options on the 'File' menu to save your map and to print it. You can also output the map as a bmp image.

Tomorrow I'll give information on how to manually edit things and cover any queries received. Oh, and sadly due to today's litigious society, I give the usual disclaimer denying all responsibility for anything my program might do.

Cargo Cults

2008-02-11T04:27:00.000-08:00

People possess the ability to construct a world model based on whatever little information they can gather. Polynesian Islanders saw peculiar white men arrive on their islands and set up stations (a wooden hut or two with a flag), and then great white ships would arrive bringing all kinds of marvellous goods.

Very sensibly, the Polynesians set up their own stations, ran up their own flags, and then sat down and waited for their initiative to be rewarded. Sadly, the great white ships failed to arrive. Cargo cults proved a disappointment to their worshippers.

I'm feeling today like one of those islanders. I have a tripod in the post somewhere, I have some paper flags on their travels too. All of which is to say - none of my (blurry) photos for the time being.

My Grenadier-Garde regiment has been lacking a standard. It took me some time to decide how to correct this omission. Prussian grenadier battalions did not have flags: the only battalion with mitre caps in the Prussian Army to have a flag was the Grenadiere-Garde. Not unnaturally then, the Stadden range does not have a standard-bearer wearing a mitre-cap.

I rejected the most obvious choice - take the musketeer standard bearer and put a grenadier head on it. The idea of using two figures to make one seemed an expensive choice with these figures. Secondly, from past experience, I know that you have to take a great deal of care to get head and body lined up together correctly. Any slight error and things can look very peculiar. There is of course the off-chance that the figure will literally 'lose his head' in the stress of battle. I'm not sure if having a headless standard-bearer doesn't require an immediate morale throw.

So I went for a second option. I've taken the 'sergeant with pike' figure, removed said pike, moved the left hand a little forwards, and added the flag-cover (wrapped around his body) using milliput. A brass rod was then inserted where the pike once was. The flag itself, when it arrives, will be from GMB Designs. I've never been able to paint flags and GMB's are the best commercial ones I've seen.

All very easy to do, although I'm not sure that the Colonel approves of his regimental standard being carried so carelessly in just the one hand.

Oh well, if nothing arrives in the post tomorrow, I think I'll try running up a flag.

A Brief Update

2008-02-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

Much done but lttle to show for it today. On the figures front I'm still prepping the cavalry before painting, the reins being the thing that really slows me down here.

On the photo side I've decided some investment in new gear is required, as well as learning to take better photos with what I've got. I've a tripod on order for the camera so there should be some improvement in my photos soon.

On the map editor, I've added a town generation algorithm that calculates population based on surrounding landscape and an urbanisation factor. The random terrain generator can now generate towns and can create roads between them.

More On Mapping

2008-02-05T04:42:00.000-08:00

I have coded the method to draw the maps in antique style: the images below shows part of a map printed in various optional settings. The next task on the list is to add towns. Initially I'll give each town only a name, population and position. However that's just a framework within which all sorts of extra detail can be added.

The universe seems to operate by a set of rules that are, at times, perverse. When I paint soldiers I struggle and fail to paint straight lines. When I draw rivers on my maps I want wiggly lines, and its straight lines that are easy. Either someone would have to get outside and straighten up all our rivers, or I had to write a more complex algorithm for my map editor. It took most of the day but, as the images show, wiggly rivers are now accomplished.

On the figures front, I've started painting a cuirassier trooper. There's an occurrence that's becoming annoyingly frequent: I start painting and then discover a feature that needs adding to the figure or something on the figure that needs filing off. Inspection by eye before I start painting seems to fail me, its 'inspection by paintbrush' that spots the problems. So, if its a figure I'm unfamiliar with, its best I start by painting one test case. I've found that the cuirassier figures do not have pigtails, a thing not to be tolerated by a pedant like me. My first attempt to add a pigtail convinced me that I wouldn't be able to use milliput - milliput pigtails are just too thin and fragile unless they can run along the figure's back for support. On the cuirassier figure that wouldn't look right to me. It took a while to think of a solution, and the best I could come up with was to run cotton thread through some epoxy glue and then attach that to the figure.

The Suren figures come with separate swords, but I think they are far too fragile for wargaming, and they'd be tricky to fit to the figure's hand anyway. Probably the best thing to do would be to leave the figures without swords - I doubt cavalry would spend the entire battle with swords drawn anyway. However, I decided I did want shouldered swords, so I went for Alte Fritz's method of using pin swords. These were epoxied onto a slight notch in the shoulder and then soldered onto the hand. After that I added a hilt made of milliput to the hand.

He's now added to a growing number of figures awaiting varnishing and metallics

Links

2008-02-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

I've added a few links. With my usual attention to detail, I have no doubt I'll have missed out many that - because they follow similar topics and values - should be there too. So I'll add more as they occur to me. If anyone feels they don't want to be connected to my shambles of a blog then please let me know.

2008-02-04T02:53:00.000-08:00

Using a delay timer (as suggested by Jim) has improved my photos a little as can be seen below. So I'll be getting a tripod asap to see if that removes the remaining bluriness. Frederick's demotion to an officer of dragoons is more or less complete. Two coats of varnish, and some metallics and he's done.

There's one detail that's confusing me here. Bleckwenn shows the officer's coat without turnbacks, Dorn & Engelmann with. It was convenient to keep Frederick's turnbacks on the figure so that's what I've done. But I am wondering which is right, or if one depiction is on parade. the other on campaign.

Two squadrons of Willies Cuirassiers have arrived in the post, occasioning a few circuits of delight, running around the room like an excited two year old. Having decided to go for extra detailing, I've decided to drop my normal practice of painting by unit, and paint half a squadron (just four troopers) at a time. I'm trying to make things easier for myself because my limitations as a craftsman are becoming apparent.

Metal is supposed to be an inanimate substance. It should not have a will of its own. So the memories of my struggles against it would seem to be the stuff of nightmares, if it weren't for the physical evidence on the table in front of me. My attempts at modelling are proving more than a little frustrating. Replacing the cast reins with wire ones will serve as an example.

Shaping the droop of the reins then hammering the reins flat after and then cutting to length gives me a good start, no problems. Then there's a bit of a fiddle getting them to sit on the figure. The short rein goes into a hole drilled into the horse's teeth, roughly where the bit would be. The long rein (yes I don't know the correct equine term for bridalry, but then many readers won't either) goes from a hole drilled in the bottom rear of the horse's bridle. I try to fix them in place by soldering, and that's the part where the problem starts.

I am not a good solderer. I haven't done it before so that's no surprise: the way you get good at something is to do lots of it. But I think my poor handling of the soldering iron exacerbates the other problems.

Firstly, I seem to lack the required number of hands. One hand for the iron, one for the solder. At this point I find myself envying the Goddess Kali, she'd have the extra hands needed to hold the two bits you are trying to solder together.

Then, solder itself possesses abilities that I had thought were unknown to science. The ability to ignore gravity and run upwards for one. I can spend ten minutes trying to get solder where I want it to be. Then the reins move out of place; an event observed by the solder which will then quickly go where the reins once were, just to annoy me. If anyone uses solder, do they glue the components with superglue first? I'm not sure if its a good idea to use chemicals near where you are going to apply a hot iron.

Despite the frustrations, I am having fun with it all, and better still I am learning a lot as I go. Saturday was best of all: made all the better by being able to listen to Flashman At The Charge on BBC radio while working. MacDonald-Fraser's version of the Charge Of The Large Brigade was particularly amusing, although I'm not sure my new dragoon officer appreciated the joke.

Mapping The World

2008-02-03T03:21:00.000-08:00

My petty rulers now require petty states, more than just names, to rule. With a computer to hand, and with a background in programming, the obvious route was to write a program to create the map, so I have written a terrain editor. The image shows a simple, random map created by my program. Graphics are crude at the moment: its all 'programmer art' which is notoriously ugly, but the basic functionally is all there, and the symbols used can be improved any time I feel particularly artistic. For fun, I'm hoping to add the option of an 'antique' mode where the map is drawn in sepia colours just like an 18th Century map.

There are currently two ways to create a map. There's a random number generator that will create a terrain map from scratch using a few basic parameters - whether or not you want a coast, and how hilly or wet you want things, etc.. Alternatively, you can manually set down each hill or mountain or wood whereever you want. And, perhaps most practically if you choose to create a large map, you can create it randomly and then modify it by hand. You can zoom in and out, and the map can contain a large number of hexes without the program slowing down significantly. The map can be printed or saved as a bitmap file. The map (and all associated data) can also be saved in the program's own format. If there's any programmers out there: its saved in xml format: changing the extension on a file to .xml will enable it to be examined in Explorer or Firefox, so it would be possible for anyone to import it into their own program if they can code.

In my career as a tools programmer one golden rule is that the more functionality you provide in software, the more scope users see for expanding that functionality to cover ever more activities. Its like a builder putting up a wooden shed, and five years later coming back to add crenelations to the large country mansion that now occupies the spot. So I've written the terrain editor as one function within a framework that could happily contain much more - economics, recruitment, unit positions and movement etc - without any difficulty.. Thats the reason for its fancy title (Council Of War) - it may well end up managing every aspect of my imaginary campaign. Whether or when I get much further is, however, uncertain as there seems so much else to do these days.

I'll get the program tidied up (a job known to all programmers as 'the boring bit') and then add it to the files in the Old School Wargaming group - a process that should take a week or two. So anyone who wants to take a look at it can get a copy from there.

2008-02-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

Terence Wise once ran a remarkably good military bookshop in Doncaster. It was due to his enterprise that I own a copy of Charge - or at least of the reprint that he published. He also republished some rare, but immensely valuable books, with subscribers to his booklist signing up to guarantee some sales before it was published. Not only did we get a number of desperately wanted books as a result, but we got our names printed inside them, good for the ego, and cheap at the price.

Lord George Sackville (As Lord Germain, by Romney, 1778)

One of these books was 'His Brittanic Majesty's Army In Germany During The Seven Years War ', by Lt. General Sir Reginald Savory. And it was in the pages of this epic tome that I first came across that unfortunate officer Lord George Sackville and his part in the Battle of Minden. In Savory's words:

'Sackville had refused to advance despite repeated orders from Prince Ferdinand. Seldom, if ever, has there been in battle such disgraceful disobedience.'

And there things might have stood for me if I hadn't, one day in London, seen a book entitled 'The Coward of Minden' in a shop window near King's Cross Station. The title was intriguing (I'm still unsure as to why this kind of book is to be happened upon quite by accident whilst wandering about London) so I went in and bought it. The book, by Piers Macksey, turned out to be a detailed history of the conduct of the battle, the events leading up to it, and Sackville's court martial afterwards. And I think it is probably the best source of information for anyone trying to write rules for the Seven Years War that I have had the pleasure to read.

Without wishing to write a spoiler, the book gives a rather different viewpoint to that of Savoury. Macksey points out the factors that explain Sackville's conduct. To give a very brief summary from memory these were.

1. The rate of advance of the British infantry was unprecedented and unanticipated, and was contrary to Ferdinand's plans.
2. Sackville's view of the battle was blocked by a wood that lay between his position on the extreme right flank and the rest of the army..
3. The orders received by Sackville were both ambiguous and contradictory.
4. Sackville was consciencious officer of proven courage, but customarily a very slow mover of troops. This last was compounded by his being an infantry officer put in charge of cavalry.

I don't think that Sackville is exonerated by the above: as a senior officer he was trusted to use his judgement to overcome all these problems, but Macksey does show that he was dealt with very harshly when a quieter, more dignified, removal might have been called for. I rather doubt if I would have done any better in Sackville's position, but then I don't expect anyone to entrust me with the command of part of a real life army. I do find it interesting to compare his conduct with that of Soubise at Vellinghausen: a SYW general's career was obviously determined as much by his connections at court as by his conduct in the field.

This leads me to the point that while factors such as terrain, unit formation, and training are all important in determining movement rates, we cannot omit one factor of fundamental importance: leadership. The difference between a Seydlitz and a Sackville or a Soubise is so great that it can be the most important determinant in how a force manouvres. Charge rules do not account for leadership. This is something I shall have to think about, and any suggestions are welcome.

A Little Rant

2008-01-31T02:54:00.000-08:00

I have an old school friend, a veteran of many battles with Airfix figures, who remains cynical as to the value of these blogs of ours. It is at his request that I reveal the startling details of last night's tea: vegetable Lasagne.

There's an interesting post on The Duchy of Alzheim regarding blogs and their content. I'd like to see everyone using the comments section of that blog to give their own thoughts on the subject.

So I think I should start by apologising to any students of classic literature, or philosophy students, if I am unable to meet the standards that all bloggers are apparently required to reach. I forgive my friend because we have known each other for a long time, and I am hoping that he will be my opponent when I finally fight Blasthof Heath. As for the author of the magazine article referred to in the linked blog, I have no kind words at all: could one convenient way of filling an article (if you are unable to think of anything better) be to denigrate the efforts of others?

Watched TV lately? Its rubbish. Well, I'm not sure I have improved my content by going down this path

I write this blog because it gives me access to other people's ideas. I set down my (often muddled) thoughts, show what I am trying to do, and then my fellow bloggers sort things out for me in the comments section. Others are kind enough to offer encouragement. It seems strange to me that anyone would have a problem with that.

I could stop blogging. I could go next door for advice, but sadly the lady there has never expressed an interest in wargaming the 18th Century, I'm not sure she has many insights into modelling Frederick the Great's army. Blogs are a technology that allows us to converse with like minded individuals wherever in the world they may be.

And if anyone continues to fail to understand what I and fellows like me are about, I can only regret I cannot award him the order of the boot. I refer here to a picture in my first post.