The Last Kingdom

A short break immediately after the Waterloo 200 wargame afforded me the time to reflect on so many toy soldier projects started then left in limbo for one reason or another, so I started a list with the intention of getting some of them completed on my return home.  Top of the list was a Viking warband, which has been sitting based and undercoated in a drawer for yonks, influenced after reading Bernard Cornwell's Uhtred of Bebbanburg novels, these chaps are intended to double up as Celts/Barbarians to oppose the Roman Legion I started several years ago.

I painted all of these up yesterday and very pleasant it was to have a break from uniform Regiments of Napoleonics or Frederickians.  The chap with the shield on the left who looks like he's eating a squirrel will eventually be the standard bearer when I print up an appropriate flag for him.  Mrs C is of the opinion that the Cherilea figures on the right are in the same poses as the male models that featured on knitting patterns in the 1950's, I suppose that might explain why they're wearing chain mail "tank tops" and Madonaesque bullet bras!

Anyway, the reason for the title of this post is pure serendipity, as I applied the last touch of paint to these figures this morning I opened my newspaper to read that Bernard Cornwell's Uhtred novels are coming to the telly, in eight episodes, produced by the same firm that brought us Downton Abbey and airing in the UK on 22nd October (also on BBC USA but I don't know the dates)

Here's the preview :    The Last Kingdom

Brilliant stuff 

Funny Little Wars - Waterloo 200 game

Yesterday saw 9 enthusiasts meet in a London park for the long awaited Waterloo 200th Anniversary Celebration Wargame.  The sun shone as 2,000 54mm toy soldiers were unpacked and positioned to refight the battles of  Wavre and Waterloo across two vast windswept fields.  I've always thought the importance of Wavre was rather underrated in the potential importance and significance it had on the outcome of the 100 days campaign, so I was glad to see it included in this event.  The players commanding on the Waterloo field set up their respective troops while the Wavre Battle was played out and therefore didn't know whether it would be Blucher's Prussians or Grouchy's French that would arrive to take part in the main event.

This isn't a battle report (look out for a full report on the Megablitz and More blog, see blog list to the left) just gratuitous pictures of some lovely toy soldiers out in the grass on a sunny day.

French light cavalry and horse artillery approach Mont St. Jean, in the background is the chateau of Hougoumont

A closer look at Hougoumont defended by British and Allied troops on the right flank

The farmhouse of La Haye Sainte viewed from Mont St Jean, beyond it is the sandpit defended by the 95th Rifles.   The flags in the background represent troops which are not yet visible to the enemy, some may be dummy markers.

French infantry and artillery deploy before La Haye Sainte, further back on the road Napoleon and his staff  confer at the Inn of La Belle Alliance

Allied artillery dominate the centre of the field from the heights of Mont St Jean, the much vaunted new fangled Rocket Battery proved devastatingly ineffective!

French cavalry masses on the plain before Mont St Jean

The charge is sounded

The infantry calmly form into square to meet the thundering tide of French cavalry

The squares hold as the horsemen surge around them

The cavalry reform for another attempt

The steady British infantry await the next wave

The Prussians arrive 

The Prussian artillery opens up.....

....in support of the cavalry

The final act on the plains before Mont St Jean, the massed cavalry clash

The melee continues for several rounds 

Until both sides brake off  and retire

The field of battle was so large that you couldn't follow anything that was going on elsewhere, only the the action you were immediately involved with, and that's how it should be.  So this is just a flavour of the biggest game we've played to date and no doubt there will be reports on the many other actions played popping up elsewhere on the blogosphere like here on Wargaming Miscellany.

That's all for now folks!

Funny Little Wars at the Siege of Westmalle-Trapiste

With the weather in the old country turning pleasantly mild the Campaign season opened early and sees the Pragmatic army stealing a march to fall upon the unsuspecting Frederickians in the well appointed town of Westmalle-Trapiste. 

The Citadel and town with it's outlaying earthworks, this is the City Bastion, to the north is the St Nicholas Bastion and to the south the New Works.  The approach of the Pragmatic army has been reported by a mounted patrol, the pickets have been pulled in and the garrison beaten to quarters.

The attackers range across the countryside, setting up camp and commandeering livestock, they quickly establish several batteries and commence the work of driving saps towards the enemy earthworks.

A steady cannonading from the defenders slows the progress of the saps and the attrition takes it's daily toll of the attackers, reducing the odds for when the final assault must surely come.

While the outer works are thinly held during the bombardment a strong reserve has been held back to counter attack any breach in the lines.

The Citadel of Westmalle-Trapiste is a stronghold but the outer works are too long a perimeter for the limited number of defenders to hold in strength.

The strong City Bastion is the bulwark of the defence.

While the heavy guns of the siege train pound away at the defences engineers just beyond the ruins begin tunnelling to sink a mine beneath the City Bastion.

The siege lines are a hive of activity as troops are moved up for the Grand Assault.

Both sides sense that their work is coming to a conclusion now, attrition has taken it's toll on both sides and the final effort must be close at hand.  At dusk the defenders carry out a pre-emptive sortie to destroy the Pragmatic sap before the St. Nicholas Bastion 

The storming party clamber over the damaged earthworks and wreak havoc with their grenadoes.  Just when the trench has been secured, the earth is rocked and the air rent by the sound of tumultuous explosions as mines and counter-mines are blown simultaneously.

The defenders have sunk counter-mines and after several attempts they can hear the unmistakable scraping of enemy diggers tunnelling towards them.  Mines and counter-mines are exploded at the City Bastion but they have all run short and are ineffective, to the north a mine breaches the works at the St Nicholas Bastion ....... and the assault goes in.

When the dust had settled the attackers were held before the City Bastion but stormed through the breach in the weakly held St Nicholas works, whereupon the opposing commanders presented their compliments to one another and retired to discuss terms over a good dinner.

Sadly the engravings shown here are of poor quality due to my archivist being supplied with inferior opticals, finer illustrations and a full narrative is provided by their worships over on the Vauban and Shandy blog

Canadian conversion conundrum

Back in June I had an email from Jeff Chorney of the "For Honours Sake" blog to say that he was getting out of wargaming and would I like his collection of 54mm figures.  "Well of course I would but are your sure?" I asked.  Jeff explained that he had too many hobby projects on the go and needed to focus elsewhere, I guess we can all relate to that, so for just the cost of the postage I was please to take delivery of the following:

Possibly more than one unit here.  The numbering on the Union flag (XXVII) leads me to surmise that at least some of them represent the 27th (Inniskiling) Regiment of Foot but don't hold me to that.  I foresee these turning up in Crimean and Sepoy Mutiny scenarios that I've been mulling over recently.  I particularly like the staff officers in the foreground. 

Royal Horse Artillery?

I'm guessing that these chaps in top hats and variously armed are the Fenian Brotherhood or some such other rebels.

These chaps have me foxed, green tunics with yellow facings and dark grey trousers, does anyone out there have any ideas who they are meant to be?

And finally some local militia, no prizes for guessing the original figures they were made from but it's interesting to see the variety that can be achieved with little more than a head change and how a uniform painting scheme can make diverse figures look like a cohesive unit.

There is more but these are the units that I'm struggling to identify.  Jeff told me they represented the Fenian raids in Canada and the War of 1812, and were the work of Ross Macfarlane so I'm hoping to get a bit more background on them.  I was sad to hear that Jeff was leaving wargaming and closing down his blog but I'm grateful for his generous gift and at least I can assure him that they have found a good home where they will see plenty of table top action!

Oh, and my apologies for the rather naff title of this post.

Tony Bath - War Game of the Middle Ages and Ancient Times - part 2

So how did the rules work out?  Well I have to admit when I was drafting the quick reference sheet I had grave misgivings.  Players dice to see who goes first in each game turn, the winner moves, fires and melees, then the loser does the same, actions are consecutive not simultaneous.  Movement distances and terrain penalties are sensible and not over complex, the same goes for firing ranges and effect, so it's all fast moving.  So far so good.

The French Battle advances, crossbow companies in the lead followed by knights on foot and heavy infantry.  The mounted knights hold back while the footmen test the softness of the ground and clear a path through the English men at arms.

The only difficulty we had was with the melee system, the rules state that when a figure from one side moves to within half an inch of an enemy they create the "contact point" and that all figures within an infantry move (i.e. 12 inches) of said point are included in the melee. Seems straightforward but in practice so many troops are drawn in that it just becomes one almighty bundle, perhaps it works better with 30mm figures?

First blood to the archers, three companies of French crossbows get off the first string of arrows and annihilate the Burgundian bowmen.  Realising the threat of being unable to reply to the enemy archers the English light horse charge and catch them unsupported in open ground as they ride them down.

The melee is a two stage process, first you asses which side has won then you calculate the casualties.  And this is where the difficulty comes in, different troop types (see QR sheet at bottom of post) have combat values which vary depending on the troop types opposing them.  This is fine when both sides have the same troop types in the melee but with the 12 inch inclusion zone described above it is inevitable that you will have mixed arms (heavy/light cavalry, heavy/light infantry etc.) on both sides and we found it nigh on impossible to figure out who had won the melee, try it yourself and you'll see what I mean.  

To simplify the situation we broke the melees down into a unit on unit calculation rather than the 12 inch free for all and it seemed to work okay.  Once the winner has been decided, casualties are based on a simple calculation which ensures that the larger side always wins, very similar to the system in H G Wells "Little Wars"

The footmen of both sides lock horns as they slowly splash through the soggy marshlands.

In the melee we found that when the heavier armoured French eventually came to grips with the enemy they bludgeoned their way through the lines but the greater numbers and mobility of the lighter Allies meant that they could quickly plug the gaps to blunt their advance and wear them down by attrition.

Four companies of English men at arms hover like mosquitoes around the edges of the wetlands.

Over the years I've been picking up bits and pieces of Timpo knights on the cheap - a pair of legs here, a torso there, from the junk boxes at shows and when I started to put all the bits together I found I had a decent enough quantity to field an army with no painting involved.  The only drawback being that there is a preponderance of Crusaders which seem to have been very much more common.  The idea of using them as a Crusader army in the Holy Land doesn't really float my boat and I can't see me picking up enough Timpo Arabs to make that feasible so I have decided that any figure in a white tunic with a red Cross of St. George will be English.

After riding down the French archers the English cavalry have overreached themselves and are charged in the flank by the French heavies.

I think it's fair to say that some rather basic tactical errors were made on both sides, notably advancing archers unsupported in an attempt to close the range for them (I might consider extending the bow range to 3 feet in future games).  With the loss of all the archers the game turned to one of local melees erupting all over the field and with no morale rules to break the tension these became a fight to the finish slugfest.

The English numbers hold up well against the heavier strength of the French knights and both sides are worn down by attrition until the allies decide to slip away leaving the French in command of the field but too depleted to follow up.

So all in all a fun fast play game, we both agreed the rules worked well as the core of the system but they need a little bit more built around them like something to cause a unit to break and run or even refuse to fight.   Our aim was to play the to game as close as we could to the original rules, or at least our interpretation of their intention and I think we achieved that, although I would love to have tried them using 30mm flats.  This was just a trial run so we kept the scenario simple but tried to include as many of the troop types and terrain features as possible, the original manuscript offers additional features such as constructing earthworks, sieges, supply etc. And for the Ancients there are chariots and auxiliaries, all the more reason to buy the book (see last post)

The quick reference sheet for the rules, should anyone wish to give them a spin!  Oh I think I forgot to mention that the loser of a melee falls back 1 move, quite important that. 

Tony Bath - War Game of the Middle Ages and Ancient Times - 1956

Following on from the Herring War game a few weeks back (see earlier post) AM and I made tentative arrangements to meet again across the table of  Mars, AM chose the period, Medieval, so I got to choose the rules.  I was a little surprised at the choice, but pleasantly so as I'd been spending a little too much hobby time working on the 17th and 19th centuries recently and a change is as good as a rest etc.

The lay of the land at the start of the game.  The flower of French chivalry confidently line the southern hills on the left while the bawdy English and their brutish allies the Burgundians are jostled into line along the northern slopes opposite, between them the marshes in the valley floor are swollen from the incessant rains

I mentioned in a previous post here that I had stumbled across the first set of wargame rules written by Tony Bath, founder of the Society of Ancients, in 1956 and since then I have been looking for an opportunity to try them out. 

The English lights - cavalry and infantry rush into the fray

There's something that appeals to me about the idea of using old rules for playing with old toy soldiers.  Now, my medievals don't hail from 1956, they're mostly from the 1960's, (well, some are) so not too far out. When I first read the rules I assumed they were written for 54mm soldiers because the movement distances were what I would expect for larger size figures and of course that was the type most widely available back then.  Also there was something about the game mechanisms that reminded me very much of Wells' Little Wars rules.

The well appointed French heavies - cavalry, infantry and swarms of crossbowmen begin a ponderous advance over difficult ground

Tony Bath actually used 30mm flat zinnfiguren which he imported from Germany for his games as the Ancient and Medieval periods were barely covered by the toy manufacturers of the day and this was long before the advent of the 20mm wargame miniature or even that pillar of the hobby soon to be known as Airfix.  By contrast the historical coverage of the flat manufacturers was, and remains, phenomenal.

Faced with the prospect of a charge from the heavy French horsemen, the English infantry make for the relative safety of the marshlands

Although the name of Tony Bath has become synonymous with the Ancient period it was to be several years after writing these rules that he founded the Society of Ancients and it is clear (apart from the title) that he intended them to stretch to cover at least the Hundred Years War as there is specific provision for "dismounted cavalry in full armour armed with shortened lance as used by the french at Poitiers".

The French crossbowmen have secured the ruined abbey

So, very much an old school game was had, with books under sheets for hills, pine cones for bushes, marshes hastily cut for the occasion from card and aquarium ornaments for ruins.  The Anglo-Burgundian force were mostly Timpo swappets with a hindrance of militia provided by Elastolin Saxons and stiffened by a phalanx of Deetail pikemen.  The French were mostly conversions, some painted in heraldic livery and finished in the toy style.

First blood to the French, the heavy cavalry on their right charges into the first line of Burgundian men at arms while a body of militia forms a hedge of pikes to protect themselves from the onslaught

We wanted to play the game as true as we could to the original rules without any tweaks and we could see that they depend on testing combat strength v mobility between the various differing classes of troops, so to give them a good first run out we made the opposing armies very different in composition.  The French were much heavier with greater firepower, about  30 heavy cavalry, 30 heavy infantry and 30 archers.  The Allies were much lighter but greater in number: 15 light cavalry, 60 light infantry, 10 militia, 10 heavy infantry and 10 archers. 

On the French left more heavy cavalry approach the marshes but are checked and look for firmer ground through them

I was given permission by the British Model Soldier Society to reproduce these rules for enthusiasts but before I got around to doing it I discovered they had been published as part of the History of Wargaming project, edited by John Curry, in Vol 4 - More Wargaming Pioneers so if you want to give this game a spin I would urge you to buy the book, it costs less than £12 and is part of a project that deserves all our support.  What I have done is produce a summary of the rules in a quick reference sheet which I will make available in the next post, but you really should still buy the book because there's a lot more in it.

The English men at arms jeer at the French knights from the relative safety of the wetlands egging them on to come forward