Guest Contributor Issue - Jean-Marc's 18th Century Fort

Always good value; I was delighted to hear from Jean-Marc last weekend. Apart from being an invaluable and knowledgeable friend (he is, among other things, a noted author and Professor of History at the University of Tours), Jean-Marc is also my link to the obscure world of Le Kriegspiel, an early hex-based French miniatures game (not the German map-based game much studied by the Prussian Officer Corps and others). You may have seen photos of some of his Napoleonic 20mm flats here in the past.

Our exchange of emails this week was mostly about sources for the original rules of the game, which might be a topic for another post sometime, but J-M was also kind enough to send me some photos from his archives of what seems (thus far, at least) to be an unfinished project!

A brief quote from Jean-Marc himself: 

[I made] a good starfort for 18C games with 6mm Heroics and Ros. I have the troops (see attached pics, on one you'll see the Royal Ecossais regt), the guns for battles, but, alas, not the rest: siege guns, gabions etc. And no rules that I can remember any line!

Fantastic stuff, Jean-Marc - many thanks for sending these - I am impressed and fascinated by your work. 6mm scale sieges seems a very appealing idea; I am not sure where you might get siege artillery in this scale (maybe someone got into this in the interim?), but it looks brilliant.

***** Late Edit *****

Very kindly, Jean Mark emailed a follow-up to the comments sent in, so I've cut-&-pasted him into this edit:

Hi Tony, 

I have read the comments. As regards on how the Vauban fort was made :

a) I had tried first what you see on the left of the pic: wood frame parts for picture frame for walls. it's very hard to work with this kind of wood, damaging the parts is easy, the results was not very good though I liked the "old fashioned" look of these walls. I tried twice, and stopped, and destroyed the forts. I suppose the engineers were exiled or shot! I suppose this method would be better for 15mm or 20mm scale.

b) 3rd and 4th times:  the way I worked was completely different. From the beginning I wanted a starfort which could be put on a single 30cmsX60cms terrain tile I used.  I believed in very modular terrain at the time!

So, I used one of the simplest plan of a fort I could find, enlarged it to the scale you see, and worked from the plan and on the plan (I suppose this makes sense) with card, balsa, some pieces of light wood and some green stuff. The 3rd attempt was not that good but I was happy with the 4th. You just have to be careful to have at least 4/5 plans because, well, with blades and such, the plan can be quickly damaged. So it's a rather 1/500-1/600 model not 1/300 even if the walls are not to scale, (they are larger than they should have been, but it's deliberate).

I also made a few buildings in this scale (again card, balsa, and also plasticard) for "Army level games" and could reduce the scale of old H&R buildings card stuff or use tourist cards (the castle on the pics is a well known Loire chateau).

c) I never finished the siege project, as I have said no siege guns, gabions etc. Only the SYW troops are ready, (but many H&R WSS packs remain unpainted). On the right of the wooden picture frame-wall you see the prototype of an artillery siege emplacement using card and wood pencil round pieces cut in half , and masquerading as gabions of some sort. 

Best Regards, 

Jean-Marc

 

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***** Even Later Edit *****

Jean-Marc sent some more photos, of a different project, which I thought were interesting enough to add to this post:

Hi Tony, 

That's me again, 

Just for fun, some pics of a Canadian wooden stockade, SYW, way too much reading about Montcalm and the Last of the Mohicans when I was young and after. I loved the movies: Last of the Mohicans, North West passage etc. 

So in 6mm, the fort needs some repair, but you'll see that British and French troops can use it. If you look carefully you'll see Redcoats,  Rangers, French trappers and Canadian militias, and French regulars. Iroquois have a red piece of wood on their stands, Hurons have only a green one...

Best Regards, 

Jean-Marc

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