Points Mean Prizes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.