I was pleased to have somewhere to hide from the news onslaught this week. I carried out a few spot checks on the details of some procedures - some got changed, some were fine, at least one was axed completely!
The photos are a mixed bag from various tests - they get more serious towards the end, since I am now working on taking bombardment through its course. This will continue over the weekend, if my sanity holds out. All the changes thus far have been in the direction of simplification.
Simplification; simplification.
One useful sub-project is that I have rehoused my trenches and earthworks in (smaller) Really Useful boxes, which makes it possible to keep the battlefield tidier, and also to find individual items of scenery in real time.
Boxes and boxes - I bet you Vauban was one of those schoolkids who put brown paper backings on his books
And labelled them
Testing encourages me to make up a proper chart for the turn sequence, so that's progress for a start
This is the Local Support marker, to keep track of how happy the townspeople are - on a scale of -3 to +3, this seems a bit high to me
This started out as the Digging Standard marker, but may have evolved into a Weather Dice - we'll see
Early session, with the Allies' Sapper Team A sapping forward, with a guard (a company of Franconian Grenadiers) on hand to protect them from Trench Raids
Here Team D is under attack (at night...) by two companies of French infantry. Team D have infantry support, and the French boys have brought their own sappers with them, so that they can wreck the sap if they chase the Allied lads away. This scrap yielded 1 hit for each side, so the Trench Raid party sulked off home and both sides applied the sticking plasters
Another early effort, where I made a late-evening howler with the artillery rules, and some of the Allied infantry had to be rescued by VAR
We're now moving on to my latest session, where the Second Parallel has been completed, gun emplacements have been constructed, while the defenders attempted to blow them all away, and I have just reached the point where the Allied guns are about to open fire. Note the nifty redoubt on the end of the trench
Since the Allies have (predictably) placed their batteries where they can enfilade the terreplein, the French sappers have been busy placing these inelegant green lumps on the terreplein, to reduce the effect of ricochet fire. Are these things called traverses? - can't remember. To be honest, I can't remember whether I meant ricochet fire, either. The French have more soldiers than this, but lack of space means that they are in a safe part of the town, which is A4 sized and lined with ferro sheet...
Allied 24pdr batteries - at the Second Parallel stage they can't see enough of the wall to start trying to breach it, so the main effort for the moment will be to wreck all the defenders' guns before the big push. There's a mortar here as well; for simplicity, I'm working with a draft rule whereby mortars can be set up in a trench, sparing the need for a full emplacement. We'll see how it goes. The mortars are mostly intended to lob shells into the town, starting fires and upsetting the civilians
The Allied commander, with a couple of his engineers. Although officers can't be fired on, it is generally regarded as poor judgement to ride a horse. As I recall, taking a look at butterflies outside the trench is not recommended either
For these test sessions, the besieging infantry are mostly Hessians. The town is in Wallonia, the garrison is French and Bavarian with a French Governor. A sort of World War, really
The Allies have set up their heavy batteries in the centre and on the left, positioned so as to enfilade the walls, they have field artillery on the right and mortars on both flanks. They haven't started firing yet - that will be tomorrow, when the smoke puffs will be in evidence
Very nice. I am liking how this is going and tempted to dig some trenches myself. Unfortunately the butterfly has taken me off in another couple(!) of directions. Those Fat Frank trenches look good - are they his 15mm version?
ReplyDeleteHi Jim - yes these are Fat Frank's 15mm trenches - the straight trenches and the gun emplacements are 150mm wide. If you order any, you can specify what level of vegetation you want; I order mine without sandbags. Sandbags look good but worry me in case they are "modern".
DeleteThis all looks very interesting Tony!
ReplyDeleteI now aspire to own a box labelled ‘smoke puffs’…
Hi Ian - yes, I think you've correctly identified why my hobby seems more strange by the day. There is an identical box which sits next to it, on top of the bookcase, labelled "Videoconferencing", so you can see why I have to be organised.
DeleteKISS is the key to so many things. I do think your smoke 'puffs' would benefit from a little light spraying with matt black - just a frosting.
ReplyDeleteI've thought about it in the past. I may do it some time, but at the moment I'm quite enjoying the simplicity of not bothering. You know how it is.
DeleteNice work and all looking very impressive - and could not agree more about trying to esacpe from this week's news. Great to have an absorbing hobby! I have been busy with Danish flags although feel the urge to head back to the mid-18th century for a while... Must find time to do some of my own wargaming projects though. Posts like yours make the itch to do my own even stronger.
ReplyDeleteThanks David - I've been enjoying your Danish flags so much that I was wondering whether I could sneak some Danish regiments into my armies! You will observe that the infantry in my siege games use only 2 of the 3 bases, omitting the command stands, which means that pikes, mounted officers and (especially) flags do not appear - partly for convenience, and to keep the unit footprints down, but also because it would seem daft to wander around the battlements or the trenches with the full pageantry!
DeleteThis is not accidental, for years, the organisation of my wargames battalions has been designed to provide the option of using an abbreviated version in sieges; to be honest, my determination to get sieges to work has probably outlasted any last vestiges of commonsense, and it is (let's face it) a forlornly solitary kind of game, but I enjoy it all immensely, and it probably stops me from starting fights at the village bowling club.
Part of my motivation is also that Bruce Quarrie once said it couldn't be done...!
David sent a further comment, which for some reason Blogger will not allow me to publish - this is what he said:
Delete"Glad you like the Danish flags. :-) I do hope you raise a few Danish units; after all, they were paid by the British and Dutch to join in against the French so you can see them effectively as mercenaries, if you wish! I understand the logic of not using your flag and command stands in the trenches; makes perfect sense, although as a vexillomaniac I am also sad not to see the flags in action. When did commonsense have much to do with wargaming? A bloody minded determination to make something as complicated as sieges work is quite admirable and I am sure we are all enjoying it. As you say, it stops us getting into other trouble so why not? ;-) I look forward to further instalments of the saga. (And don't forget those Danes... :-))"
All seems to be moving in the right direction Tony. I do love your dedication to getting a workable siege game ready. You're sort of a latter day Uncle Toby.
ReplyDeleteAlso pleased to note I now have one of the same regiments in your allied force - the Hessian Leibgarde zu Fuß.
Good old Hessians. Hesse was always a sort of Tweedledum and Tweedledee set up, it seems to me. Almost as though the Darmstadt and Kassel factions existed primarily to nurture their mutual spite. Even the national flags were parodies of each other - different, but sufficiently similar to make the point. My Hessians are Hessen-Kassel, but it doesn't really matter - all the same sort of thing really.
DeleteI've been likened to worse characters than Uncle Toby, so my thanks for that. Eventually someone will interrupt my siege game, just in time to rescue me when I can no longer recall what it is that I'm doing. He was a harmless soul, they said; mad as a drawer full of frogs, but he meant no harm.
This last week, in the big world away from my toys, has reduced me to a level of despondency I dare not admit to, so I shall keep on playing until supper is ready.
Ah yes, I should have specified Hessen-Kassel. A side note about Hessen-Darmstadt back in the days when 5 of us boys at school got into the SYW, one of the lads got hold of the Blandford book, 'Uniforms of the Seven Years War'. One of the colour plates had a grenadier from the Reich Upper Rhenish Circle regiment, Hessen-Darmstadt*. We all thought it was dead cool because in the book the coat looked black and not blue.
Delete* Side note to the side note. It didn't say which regiment but as it was in the section on Rossbach, it must have been Prinz Georg (and because the other 2 line regiments did not serve during the SYW - was the ruler keeping them back to hedge his bets?).
The regimental histories are hard to follow - at least I find this to be the case in the WSS. There were at least two units called Prinz Wilhelm, and they both existed at the same time, though the Inhaber's name changed to avoid obvious duplication. Perhaps one was temporarily in Dutch service - can't remember. Must have been a feature of running a Rent-an-Army operation?
DeleteEven the Leibregiment zu Fuss spent the odd year being Willi Schultz's regiment (or similar), so the noble traditions must have changed on a regular basis.