Another Quick Burst of Engineers

Mostly to give myself a little break from refurbing the 70eme Ligne, I've painted some more soldiers for my French Siege Train. Here are the 1st and 3rd companies of the 2eme Bataillon de Sapeurs, all ready for Ciudad Rodrigo or the Salamanca Forts.

The guys who will do the actual work are from Hagen. The officers are clearly of a superior breed altogether - these are from the Franznap Pontonniers Command set. I've had the Franznap set for a while, but since I am unlikely to make any serious attempt at a wargaming pontoon team, here they are.

I enjoyed painting all of them - a lot of fun. I'm usually a bit nervous of Franznap - the sculpts are lovely, the castings (by Schilling, I believe) are very good too, but the figures are very slender - a bit delicate for tabletop handling, maybe - the castings regularly arrive bent from the supplier, especially the legs of horses, and I am always doubtful about any wargame figures which have to be assembled from bits - they just look as if they are going to come apart in moments of stress.

Anyway, here they are, to sit in The Cupboard and remind me I was going to get back to my siege game any time soon. The officers look a little senior for digging trenches or saps - a Chef de Bataillon and possibly a Colonel? - I guess that must be a really important piece of wood they have there.

As with all (most?) of my siege stuff, these chaps are on the earth brown bases - these are individually based, on magnets, so they can be deployed around the diggings once I have got the siege rules a bit more stable...

Janitors of the Guard

Goya very kindly gave me these chaps some weeks ago - three odd figures from the collection of my late Edinburgh friend and erstwhile wargame opponent, Peter Gouldesbrough. They are, as you see, French engineers - Peter converted these from Hinton Hunt French line artillery gunners. I never saw his 20mm armies in their glory, since he had moved on to 5mm by the time I met him.

I have smartened them up a little (I hope you can tell). I guess Peter probably painted these around 1968-70, and he didn't really believe much in varnish, so there was some touching-up required to get them ready for duty. I thought they looked a bit like janitors, with the home-made hammer and shovel - ideally the third fellow should have had a bucket of sawdust. So they are currently known here as les Concierges de la Garde.

Of course, they are nothing of the sort. These are regular line engineers - I also have some more sappers and miners to paint up for the French Siege Train box, but they are all in full cuirass and helmet order - I didn't have any in campaign dress until now.

Peter had something of an Impressionist painting style - I've deliberately tidied them up a bit. I think he might disapprove of my painting, but he would be pleased that his boys are still around to cope with the odd job. Anyway, they're fun and I'm pleased with them. If you need any shrubs planted, please get in touch.

Siege Testing – (2) Getting Started

Just baby steps to start off.

Today’s main priority for me was scarifying the South Lawn before the rain came, so the siege was delayed until late on. There was a lot of trying things which didn’t work too well, and then trying them again. My developing siege game is played in two modes – strategic and tactical. A strategic siege turn represents a complete day elapsed. At any point in a strategic turn, either side can declare a switch to tactical – a tactical turn represents about half an hour of more detailed action, and the game becomes simplified, up-and-down-the-table Commands & Colors until the tactical spell is over.

Middlehampton, ready for the siege

Thus a sally, or a storm, or anything outside the scope of the normal day of bombardment, digging and attrition requires a tactical switch.

Each army has a number (range 1-3) for each of the following indicators: Resolve, Vigour and Leadership. These affect the troops’ fighting effectiveness, and also their ability to carry out digging and other labouring tasks. I have a sketchy mechanism for controlling rations, and reduced rations can have an effect on Resolve and Vigour. There should be some system for Plague, but I haven’t worked that in yet. The fortress defenders also have the mixed blessing of a civilian population – these have a number of interesting attributes, but in particular they have a Loyalty Number, which can range from +3 (fiercely supportive of the garrison, will fight alongside them, if required) to -3 (hostile, require constant policing, prepared to revolt or collaborate with the enemy). Thus the townspeople can be a valuable source of labour, or they can be a major nuisance and distraction, and this has a knock-on to the Resolve and the effectiveness of the garrison.

At the start of each day, the Digging Number for the day is set. Initially, this is set by rolling 2D6 and taking the lower; in subsequent turns, roll a die at the start of the day – if it is higher than the Digging Number, increase the Digging Number by 1; if it is lower, reduce the DN by 1. The DN must be in the range 1 to 6, and is the score which must be achieved by diggers to complete a section of work on that day – it is, if you like, a simple, rather bovine abstraction of weather and other imponderables which make shovelling earth more or less difficult. It is possible, for example, for the DN to get so high that it becomes almost impossible for the besieger to make any progress.

Never had a use for the Giant Die before - here's today's Digging Number - seems clear enough...

In the Test Siege of Middlehampton (for such this is), the initial Digging No came up as a 3. The population is between 4 and 5 thousand, the soldiers placed there for defence include 3 companies of musketeers from the county trained bands, plus 2 full regiments of foot, 2 regts of horse and a total of 7 guns, of which only 3 are heavy. The townspeople – strong supporters of the King – have a Loyalty Number of 2 – they will gladly work to help the garrison, but will not fight. The initial scenario tests also revealed that there were 6 days available before the attacker (those Covenanters again) would appear.

Very neat job - no trace of the old suburb, and a nice new earthwork - these
boys are good - they will give you a competitive quotation for raised flower beds

The Military Governor of the Town, Sir Edward Bloat, took advantage of the available time, the easy Digging Number and the sunny disposition of the citizens to demolish the suburb of ramshackle sheds and farm buildings outside the town’s Stockgate, and – under the direction of his German chief engineer, Captain Von Schuwel – to erect an earthwork embankment in front of the section of the curtain wall west of the Stockgate, complete with a “mount” – an entrenched artillery position. This would give valuable protection for the old masonry wall footings, eliminate the risk of the suburb buildings providing shelter for the enemy, and add to his available firepower. The walkways and most of the towers of the old walls were unsuitable for artillery.

Man the Sconce

The rest of the town garrison are kept off the table for the moment - if I had little
houses with detachable roofs, I could put them inside the buildings, and maybe
they could all have cups of tea and sandwiches

He had also considered the alternative of building earthwork walls right around the suburb, and leaving it in place, but there was insufficient time to complete the work. He installed 2 of his heavy guns, plus Bertram’s company of the musketeers, in the Duke’s Sconce, a modern addition to the town’s defences, and waited for the visitors.

Lord Leven’s boys duly arrived, and got busy setting up a first parallel, placing the two heaviest cannon and an enormous mortar in emplacements to bombard the Sconce, which was seen as a major obstacle to an otherwise systematic operation to approach the walls of the town.

A regiment of foot (of 3 bases, in full Vigour) gets to throw 3D6 – that becomes 4D6 if they have an engineer attached. To build a section of trench, one of the dice must be equal to or greater than the Digging No. To build a gun emplacement, 2 dice must meet the number. If the work is not completed, the position of what is planned is denoted by gabions, and until such time as the earthwork is finished the diggers get reduced cover. I haven’t done any forward sapping yet – the plan is that the engineers will be more important in this.

One of the gun emplacements isn't finished - just a few gabions, which will give
the diggers very little protection in the meantime

Good view here of the new earthworks pieces from Fat Frank - I rather like them

It became obvious very quickly that the Scots’ heavy guns were going to make little impression on Von Schuvel’s fine Sconce, so, concerned about the time in which the town was to be taken, Leven ordered an assault on the Sconce, to attempt to take it by escalade. So the call went up - "Tactical"! The advancing foot were hit by a storm of iron from the artillery, and two regiments were stopped with heavy losses, but the remaining 3 units in the assault pressed on, and captured the outwork very easily, in the end. The cannon were taken, and turned on the town, and the musketeer company, though it is said they asked for quarter, were cut down to a man.

This very serious mortar was Leven's original main hope for blasting the Royalists
out of the Sconce, which would be a better idea if it was less inaccurate - the mortar
has an additional disadvantage in that it is possible for the grenado (shell) to ignite
but not the propellant charge, which requires a lot of sprinting on the part of the
gunners, and usually wrecks the mortar

The besiegers' two Full Cannons are the main wall crushers, but they have to be
at close range to score consistent hits

That’s as far as I’ve got. I haven’t even started working with food supplies, and there’s a pile of stuff (not least the dreaded mining, for which I have a cunning scheme) which I shall get to. It is very easy to come up with draft rules which make it impossible to cause any casualties in certain situations. Tweakle, tweakle. Fix it and move on.

With the Sconce in Parliament’s hands, the spadework should proceed in a more standard manner. I say this, kind of hoping that it implies that I know what that should be – in fact I am learning a lot as I go along. Keep Chris Duffy's book open at the right page.

Good fun – chaotic, but good.

More soon.

British Sappers & Miners

For a while now, I have been looking for some fellows to do sapping and mining work for the British army in my Peninsular War siege games. I already have some nicely authentic French sapeurs armed with pickaxes and shovels, and garbed in cuirasses and helments – these are from the LW and Strelets sets, and were kindly donated by Clive when he came to do some siege testing a couple of years ago.

It might appear to be an obvious subject for a plastic set, but no-one has done a British equivalent to date, so I have been keeping an eye open for conversion possibilities to balance things up. I have a few odd figures – also left by Clive – from the HaT British Marines and Sailors set, and even a couple from the Orion English Pirates set, who can serve well enough as men stripped down for serious digging. To these I have now added some men from Art Miniaturen’s nice set of Austrian engineers, plus a couple from the Finescale Factory set of French pontonniers (which I believe is now back in production, and available from SHQ), and a pair of officers from Falcata.

It occurred to me that an undressed man of any nationality is pretty much the same, so the possibility of these becoming Spanish by simply substituting a couple of specifically Spanish officers into the line-up is already noted. There is one of the Austrians that I attempted to fudge into a pre-1812 Royal Artificer who would need to be hidden or replaced as well.

Ideally I would have used officers with spyglasses or something more obviously specialized (I had ideas of modifying a British ensign so that he was holding a pole, but gave up on that one), but ended up with a couple of chaps lining things up with their swords – presumably with the intention of guarding their men while work goes on, or at least of pre-empting any possibility of disagreement about the task in hand.

As with their French opposite numbers, the men are individually mounted on 20mm discs, backed with magnets so they may stay on their movement trays, and the bases themselves are painted in the official house shade of Siege Mud which is used for siege equipment and engineering.

I’m a little bothered that the man with the wheelbarrow is easily recognizable as Hamish, with whom I played in a band for many years, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered so I won’t consider the matter further.

Another ticked box for the siege games – the British may now dig holes and tunnels whenever they like. Next big gap is some decent trenches and earthworks. Don’t go holding your breath.

Hi-ho, hi-ho – plus Stephen and Buddy

…it's off to work we go

The prospect of getting back to some siege gaming (an activity which – strangely – was actually discouraged by my Peninsular War campaign) has got me sifting through the boxes of not-quite projects to get some more engineering and supply units finished off.

First hit was an easy one – a little group of British infantry pioneers, individually based. Right away, I have to admit that these are not really a siege-type unit – there will be proper sappers and miners for that later on, with the regulation brown bases. These fellows exist primarily because it seems like a good idea, and there is already in existence a French equivalent. Next admission is that I don’t actually have any rules to allow the pioneers to influence the game, but now that I have a unit for each side I am more likely to do something about that.

They are, as you will see, from Minifigs “interim” range – the one after the S-Range and before the current range of clinically obese chaps. There isn’t much available in metal in this scale. My French sapeurs are a mixture of Kennington and Falcata castings, which gives some variety of poses. I had intended to use S-Range Brits for the pioneers, but the S-Range pioneer is a disappointingly weedy looking sculpt, who looks as if he is struggling with his axe, and might have trouble sharpening a pencil. So it’s the intermediates – these are BN55, vintage circa 1974?

Since this is an informal collective (pool?) of bods from various regiments, they have mixed facings. If you want someone to lose that gate for you, or to help with building a bridge, these could be just the fellows. I regret that there are no beards on show, but the castings have no beards. I tried painting a beard on, but the effect was funnier than I had hoped.

Subject 2: Stephen Fry

Of late, I have given up trying to paint soldiers with the TV on. Wearing my painting glasses, I cannot see the TV, never mind work out what is on the screen, so these days I listen to music while painting. This weekend it has been the usual mixed bag – Mississippi John Hurt (brilliant, but after 20 minutes it all sounds the same, and is always in the same key, which doesn’t help), Buffalo Springfield (disappointingly dated, and not as good as I remembered), Herbie Hancock (excellent – I played River, which is an album of Joni Mitchell’s music, with guest vocals provided by numerous worthies, including Leonard Cohen and – erm – Joni Mitchell), Cassandra Wilson (terrific, and sexy in a slightly weird way), and a boxed set of Mendelssohn’s symphonies. Intuitively, it seems odd that Buffalo Springfield seemed more dated than Mendelssohn, but hey.

One of the things I did not watch on the TV was Stephen Fry’s QI show, which makes me decidedly uncomfortable. If you haven’t seen it, it consists of a sort of bogus panel game, which is entirely designed to perpetuate the legend that SF is the cleverest fellow on the planet. The panel members do not always sit easily in their role as stooges, but the show can be very amusing nonetheless.

It’s hard to put my finger on why Stephen’s public image grates with me. I actually quite like him – he is unpredictable and witty and frequently endearing. I just get very fed up with the constant force-feeding of his TV packaging as a National Treasure – fed up in the same way that I became fed up with the constant overexposure of David Jason and the late John Thaw (great talents, both) on British TV in past years.

No amount of TV is going to make me accept that Mr Fry is an intellectual, or a great scholar, or Oscar Wilde, or Dr Johnson. My attention is limited – I will find it more convenient if he remains a comedian, an occasional writer and – to be brutal – a TV personality. I am happy with him in that more digestible role.

I hasten to add that I have huge affection for the old Jeeves & Wooster series he did with Hugh Lawrie, which remains one of the very brightest gems of British television in my humble opinion. In fact, now I come to remember that I have an Amazon gift voucher which someone very kindly sent me for Christmas, I must have a look to see what boxed sets of DVDs are available for that series. While I’m at it, I should check out what there is of the old black-and-white Tony Hancock shows. You have to be careful with this – it would be awful to be confronted with the fact that – like Buffalo Springfield on Saturday – these shows are not as good as I think they were. Tricky stuff, nostalgia.

One of the very strangest bits of Stephen Fry was when they sent him on a trip to America – touring in a London cab. His visit to Chicago included an interview – in the cab, naturally – with Buddy Guy, the great urban blues legend. The idea of Fry empathizing with Buddy’s recollection of what life was like for an impoverished black musician in 1950s Chicago is bizarre. I suspect that they could have achieved a comparable amount of empathy by getting Stephen to travel round Chicago in his taxi with a grizzly bear – he is affable and enthusiastic and correct, but these worlds never quite collided, did they?

The Engineer and the Coffee Table

I am still exploring the possibilities for providing my British Peninsular army with some engineers and sappers for their siege activities, as discussed in a recent post. I have had some very interesting and useful suggestions, for which thanks to anyone I haven’t thanked already. I’ve looked at some plastic ACW engineers, which were interesting but not quite suitable (primarily because of that physique thing – 1/72 plastic models are mostly wonderfully sculpted, but they also seem to represent a race of men with skinnier build and smaller heads than 1/72 metals), and the latest suggestion – from Rod – is the Art Miniaturen set JS72/0468, Napoleonic Austrian engineers, for which I have reproduced Herr Schmaeling's  catalogue picture at the top of this post. I’ve ordered some of these. I reckon a man in a shirt is a man in a shirt, regardless of nationality, though I may feel the need to carve off the odd moustache.

I think the aforementioned Finescale Factory French pontonniers which I have in the Spares Box may also switch sides and join the Brits – still thinking about this – and I have been offered some weaponless British infantry who should lend themselves to odd-jobbing and landscaping. One thing I haven’t got a source for is someone like this...

This is the only depiction I’ve ever seen of a British engineer from this period in serious working kit. The drawing is by Richard Scollins, and comes from a book I have which has an unjustly chequered past.

The book is shiny, big format. The edition I have comes from Book Club Associates, and the whole production is very obviously that most uncomfortable of things, a Coffee Table Book [gasp]. You know the sort of thing – lots of nice pictures and not much detail. A book about sieges for people who really couldn’t care less. You just know that the well known print of Major Ridge of the 5^th climbing the breach at Badajoz will be there and – sure enough – there it is. My lack of enthusiasm is evidenced by the fact that I unsuccessfully tried to unload it on eBay – twice, I think. No takers.

Well, in fact the book is not bad at all, once I got around to having a proper look at it. If anyone else is selling it on eBay, it's worth a modest bid. It contains some good stuff on artillery and engineering and all the unglamorous bits of sieges, and there are a lot of illustrations I’ve never seen anywhere else. So – credit where it’s due – I regret having previously rejected this volume – it’s fine. It even has some good pictures of British 10-inch howitzers, and you can’t get more specialist than that.

Sappers & Miners

I’ve been having another good rummage in the spares boxes, to see what I should be doing when the ECW calms down a bit. I found the plastic box labeled Sappers & Engineers, and this reminded me of some holes in my Peninsular OOB. [I’ve already sounded out a few friends on this topic already, so if this post looks familiar you must be one of these friends…]

For the French, I have a natty little provisional unit of infantry sapeurs, who are a mixture of Falcata and Kennington, and some interesting little companies of fellows in full siege gear, with cuirasses and helmets and wheelbarrows and all sorts. This latter group is a mixture of LW and Strelets plastics, very kindly painted and donated by Clive when he came up here to try out my siege game a couple of years ago. You will notice that my engineering figures are individually based, and based on a handsome shade of two-tone mud, which seemed a good idea at the time.

[I had a look, and found Clive's excellent slideshow of that siege play test here - really enjoyed the nostalgia trip. Recommended.] 

I also have a team of pontonniers, from the mysterious Finescale Factory (also given to me by Clive), but I have never got around to assembling and painting them yet – I will, though…

The British are not in good shape, in comparison. I have a number of half naked labourers in plastic, who started life as British sailors, and I have collected enough infantry pioneers to make a unit similar to the French sappers, though they need painting and finishing. My original plan was to use the Minifigs S-Range BN55s for the pioneers, but that is such a weedy figure that, though I have enough, I have decided instead to use the later, intermediate-range Minifig, who is appropriately burly and rather more pleasing.

That’s it. I have no diggers or tunnellers or anything for the Brits. No-one, as far as I know, makes suitable RSM figures in 1/72 or 20mm scale. Old John has suggested a uniformed British infantryman without weapons which he can supply, which could be converted to carry picks, axes, shovels etc, and I have some packs of HO model railway workmen’s tools which could provide a barrow, so that is very interesting, but proper RSM chaps in short-tail jackets and silly hats would be a real find. I’m surprised that there is nothing of the sort available in plastic.

Anyone been down this road before? Are there 20mm engineering figures for a different period which would fit the bill, or which could be converted?

I know that the current Minifigs range includes a nice little working party of British engineers, but they are well out of scale, and I understand the S-Range never had an equivalent set.

Not a problem, but an interesting little itch that needs scratching. I am also reminded that I really must dust off the siege game and have another bash at it.

Sapeurs and Baron Thiébault

A while ago, I was discussing with Clive a Minifigs S-Range Old Guard band which I've had, unpainted, for donkeys' years. Like any non-combat unit, the band have suffered from always being a secondary priority in the painting queue. If it is a choice between painting a fighting battalion or a soppy band, I will pick the fighters every time. Result? - 25 years later, they are still only partly painted. We joked that, to make the band more useful, and raise their ranking in the paint queue, it would be possible to introduce a new rule, such that all units within earshot would get bonuses for morale and so forth.

Now I come to think about it, and joking aside, that sort of thing has been going on in my wargames since I started. I once was out running in the Queen's Park, Edinburgh, when Her Majesty was in residence at Holyrood Palace, and a troop of the Royal Horse Guards were drawn up in line, in the park, in such a way that I had to run along behind the complete line of great, towering, black horses’ backsides to continue my jog. I was so impressed by the experience that when I got home I amended my rules for the effect of cavalry on infantry.

Recently I have added various siege-type units to my Peninsular armies, since I am working to develop rules for sieges. I have some small units of French sappers in full siege gear, with round helmets and cuirasses, and the siege rules will have to give these guys special skills and duties. I also recruited a bunch of French line infantry sapeurs (Falcata and Kennington), which are pleasing, and I have been gently looking for clues as to what such chaps might do, and how they might be organised.

I realise, for example, that your battalion sapeurs would be just the fellows for smashing down doors, or maybe corduroying rough roads, and they could, I guess, be provisionally grouped at brigade or division level for special duties. Looking at various historic OOBs, it is clear that each French division had units of pioneers - i.e. men from the engineering branch of the army - so I assume that if you wanted to construct a bridge or something these would be the people to do it. What role, then, did the regimental sapeurs have? I had a look at various rules, to see how engineering is addressed, and I found that it is pretty haphazard. Some rule writers have dismissed engineering as an aspect of warfare which is too slow and too tedious to take into account. Some - the old WRG and Big Battalions rules among them - have a fair amount of detailed stuff, but it all looks a bit like something borrowed from a scenario.

Interesting. Does anyone have any ideas about obvious, no-brainer duties which sapeurs could carry out on the battlefield? Are there any sets of rules which address this in a particularly coherent way?

As with the band, it would be silly to distort the game just to give my new unit a job to do, but it has made me realise that I have very little idea what they did. All clues welcome.


Completely separate subject. Just before Christmas I managed to obtain a good copy of the 2-volume Memoirs of Baron Thiébault, which, though I owned it in a former life, I never actually read. Officially, I am currently having an 1814 (Defence of France) period, and have the appropriate works by Petre, Houssaye and Uffindell lined up for study, along with the trusty (but very heavy) Elting & Esposito atlas. I had a quick squint at Thiébault, and the 1814 plans are now on hold as a result.

I am aware that the baron does not get a very good press, and I can see why. This is something a bit different. Thiébault was present at some important episodes of the Napoleonic Wars, so he is a major witness anyway, but his personality is unusual. He writes well, with a great eye for detail and excellent recall, even humour, but he is vain, permanently offended, always the victim of injustice, and always the hero of everything he describes. He never loses a witty exchange, his only fault, he believes, has always been excessive humility and honesty. He is, in short, a horror. If you want to know what a complete waste of space all the celebrity generals were, this is where to find your information. Soult, Darmagnac, Dorsenne, Solignac, you-name-it all got a roasting in last night's session. Dreadful people. D'Erlon, it seems, was not completely hopeless, but was ineffective unless Thiébault was around to support him. Anyway, it's been hugely entertaining. There are moments when I wish I had a time machine, to travel back to give him a resounding slap, but it’s a highly recommended read overall.