Creeping Elegance: Everyone Switch Units (Musical Sabots)

Creeping Elegance is a general classification here - any odd sorting-out or reorganising jobs which are not obviously a high priority, but which still irritate me when they don't get done.

It's easier to get on with it when there are several reasons all pushing in the same direction - i.e. the planets align (which doesn't happen very often).

For a while I've had the following in mind:

(A) There are a few units in my French army which acquired a 3rd battalion at some point. My improvised house standard for these French 3rd battalions seems to have stipulated that they have no mounted officer and no eagle - I can't remember why, maybe I was short of command figures at the time. Yes, quite. Subsequently I changed my mind - I decided I already had a real, serious house standard, which is that the infantry of my French army in the Peninsula will consist of divisions, each of which has 2 brigades and a battery; each of these brigades will comprise 2 regiments, plus a converged mini-battalion of voltigeurs from these regiments; each of the regiments will have 2 battalions. Not 3, 2. 

(B) Some of my battalions do not please me, because their appearance does not match up to the rest of the army. A case in point is provided by 2 battalions of old 20mm Garrison fellows, some of them recasts, which I've had since 1971 or so and which I've always thought I should upgrade sometime.

(C) Fairly new idea - I need to raise some more little 12-man battalions for my developing siege games.

So I've decided that I can rationalise much of this in one go - thus:

(i) The 1/50e Ligne (apart from their command figures) are of these old Garrisons - if I combine the Les Higgins rank and file from the unwanted 3/50e with the command from the 1/50e then they can become a new, rather smarter 1/50e, and the Garrison troops thus released can be reallocated (very appropriately, in fact) to siege duties. Good. They'll be happy there. The idea of making the 3rd battalion into the new 1st battalion works for me, but I suspect that the 2nd battalion will be furious when they find out.

(ii) Similarly for the 59e Ligne, except that they previously did not have a 3rd battalion, so the replacement Higgins troops for the 1/59e will come from the (unwanted) 3e/15e. The Garrison boys will go for siege basing, as for the 50e.

(iii) The 3rd battalions of the 6e and 25e Léger can also be released, to be allocated to forthcoming Divisions which are in the Refurb Queue.

This is the revamped 1st battalion for the 59e Ligne - the command figures were previously surrounded by Garrison men for many years, and the replacement Higgins rank and file have arrived from the (now defunct) 3/15e.

Here are the troops released to be rebased for siege games - mostly Garrisons - some old friends here!

So I've done the necessary basing adjustments and unit labelling, I've taken new photos for the Napoleonic Catalogue, and I've adjusted the sabot numbering slightly so that the battalions may still be placed consecutively in The Cupboard. So far, I seem to have done everything correctly, though I am half expecting to find two units with the same catalogue number in The Cupboard.

Time to have a cup of tea and read for a while. Nice sunny day here - freezing cold, mind you. 

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

Pensioners: some grenadiers from the old Garrison battalions, now re-based and ready for siege duties.

***************

Conversions and Paint Jobs - French Heavy Cavalry Trumpeters

I've been happily fiddling away at filling the "Command" gaps in my unplanned Reserve Cavalry Division. Yesterday it was trumpeters - I still have one trumpeter to finish off, then I move on to officers and eagle bearers. I've decided (or have been convinced by shortage of troopers) that my French cuirassiers will break with house tradition and will carry (1804-pattern) standards in action.

I'll get to that - any excuse for a play with Paintshop Pro to knock up some flags. In the meantime, just because I have nothing else to post about, here are some trumpeters. Nothing great, to be sure, but any kind of conversion or paint-conversion work is almost always satisfying work.

Each trumpeter is sentenced to spend his operational life based with a trooper he never
met before. The troopers are all PMD, with the compulsory "eyes-right" pose. The trumpeter
on the left (8th regt) is Art Miniaturen, kindly supplied by the Old Metal Detector - strictly this
is from an OOP dragoon command set, but perfectly suitable; the one in the middle (3rd regt) is
an old (and not very ambitious) conversion by a previous owner, based on the trooper next to
him - I've revised the paint job extensively, and left him with his carbine; the one on the right
(7th regt) is the official PMD-issue trumpeter (officially a dragoon, but intended to serve in
the cuirassiers as well), and I've mounted him on a 20mm Garrison horse - partly for variety,
but also because it's a far better horse.

The uniforms are sort of 1809, and the regiments are selected so that the facings will also be suitable for 1813-14.

Battle of Alquèzar - 14 May 1813

The guest general duly arrived today, and, with appropriate ceremony, the battle of Alquèzar took place after lunch (how civilised is that?).

The action was loosely based on the published GMT scenario for Vauchamps, though for the purposes of today's game it was set in Spain. On the face of it, it looked as though the French troops might be a little short of numbers to attack successfully, but I felt that the fragility of the Spanish defenders, and the disadvantage at which they have to fight when they require to manoeuvre, might compensate for this.

The first French attack on the village was repulsed - quite a bloodbath - at which point the Spanish army was ahead by 7 Victory Points to 4 (9 needed for the win), but after some switching of his reserves to his right flank D'Armagnac made a second attack which went rather better. During the wait for this second attack, the Spanish general was panicked into making a couple of unwise (as it turned out) forays with his light cavalry, and lost General Morillo (wounded and captured) and sufficient additional troops to turn the day. The French won 9-7. From the jaws of victory, etc.

The game went well - once again, the artillery of both sides was disappointingly ineffective, and the Spanish line infantry's poor ability to sustain effective musket fire when advancing was a handicap.

We used a cut-down version of C&CN, without the Command Cards, and the game lasted a little over 2 hours. My thanks to Matthew for his invigorating company and his participation - excellent fun.

Here are some photos from the action - the OOBs are in my post from the other day.

The combined voltigeurs from Leberknödel's Pommeranian brigade 

Things getting a little hot for the regiments of Leon and La Union

The Pommeranians were running out of men at this point

The French organised a second attack with fresh troops, but it took a while to develop.

The "Tulips" - the Grenadier battalion "Zum Alten Greif" - Scruby figures...

One of the Pommeranian light cavalry units did great damage to the Spanish horse...

...and here they are, doing it

This Spanish foot battery never hit a thing all day. Not a bloody thing.

Refurbing again - French Line Chasseurs à Cheval

I've stated here, quite recently, that refurbing old, bought-in, pre-painted figures is mostly more grief than it is worth - unless, of course, there is some particular reason to go down that path. The results are rarely as good as I had hoped, the amount of labour is invariably far more than expected, and so on.

Well, I've been doing some more, despite all the lofty theory. 20mm French line Chasseurs are a rare find - apart from Hinton Hunt and Qualiticast (neither of which is around in sufficient quantities to keep prices down), the best traditional stand-by is the early (20mm) Garrison casting, which can still be found on eBay, and can be very useful if the figures are in good nick. I can never get enough Chasseurs, so I have a quantity of the old Garrisons in my spares box, waiting to be smartened up to take their place in the line.

Today's restored unit is the 15eme Chasseurs. They are certainly not beautiful, but the troopers were passable when I first got them, and their previous history was prestigious enough for me to wish to keep them as is, with basic retouching of chips, new varnish and the official-issue bases and sabot. Sometimes, for reasons which are not clear even to me, it seems right to leave things alone if possible. I've even left the rather faded orange facings and the oversized Garrison swords. These fellows must have been first painted in the late 1960s, I reckon.

One problem, of course, is that Garrison did not do command figures, so my improvised officer and trumpeter are both modern Kennington line Chevauxlegers-Lanciers, with spare Garrison heads fitted, mounted on Garrison horses. The resulting conversions are a little shorter than their colleagues, but their hats match beautifully, so they must be the right size...

The 15eme (and the 14eme, who may or may not appear eventually) have been pencilled into my official Grand Plan OOB for some years, nagging away at me, since I have been aware that they have been sitting in the boxes waiting for a place in the painting queue. Well, they're finally done - quite satisfying, really. The flaky trumpeter in sky blue is correct, by the way.

Assorted Wargames Nostalgia

This post really is just a collection of bits. I was going through a file of old paperwork connected with my wargaming past – nothing very distinguished, but I was reminded of a few things. Sadly, the accompanying photos for the first item were lost ages ago, during the hostilities which followed my split with my first wife (which almost certainly serves me right).

(1) Waterloo Day – yes, today is the 199^th anniversary of Napoleon’s Really Bad Day, and one of the items I found in the file was a sheet of scribblings from a 160^th anniversary Waterloo game I played at my old flat in Marchmont, Edinburgh, with some friends [that’s 1975, ladies and gentlemen]. The first thing that struck me was that, of the players involved – Philip Snell, John Ramsay, Dave Thompson, Alan Low, Allan Gallacher and myself – I am the only one still alive. Good grief – I hadn’t thought of that before. The game was considerably scaled down, but still used inappropriately detailed rules (around about this time I started using Charles Wesencraft’s rules, with all distances halved, but June 1975 is just a little early for that, so I guess we were using a hybrid game which was mostly Tunbridge Wells [George Gush?] with some bits of South-East Scotland WG thrown in). This was probably one of the last biggish games I staged before I started painting hexagons all over my tabletop – we hadn’t thought of Old School yet, though there was definitely some creaking associated with our enthusiasm for what we naively regarded as increased realism.

One thing I remember fondly was that Allan G was supposed to bring the Prussians, since otherwise we didn’t have any, but he actually turned up with Russians, since he didn’t have any Prussians either but hadn’t the heart to tell us. Thus this particular version of the B of W was notable for an unusual lack of authenticity in the OOB. The battle staggered on all day – eventually we agreed that the Allies were beaten, and that was that – we caught the last orders for drinks at the Bruntsfield Hotel and got into the obligatory justificatory arguments. We had decided that the [P]Russians would arrive after 2pm as soon as Wellington threw 11 or better on 2D6 (or “two dice”, as we would have called them at the time) at the start of his turn. As soon as they arrived, Napoleon would start rolling dice each turn, and a French reserve force under Grouchy would arrive on a 9 or better. Don’t ask me where these scientific probabilities came from, but – anyway – it’s academic, since Wellington never managed the requisite dice roll, and his bewildered Russian allies were not called into play, and eventually returned to Dunfermline in their toolbox – I’m not sure if they were relieved or outraged.

(2) Having mentioned the South-East Scotland chaps, I am delighted to have had an email from Mark, in Canada, who knew the notorious George Jeffrey back in the 1980s (rather after I knew him), and was, for a while, a disciple of George’s famed (but little understood, especially by me) Variable Length Bound system, or VLB. This, in theory, is the answer to a great many problems which wargamers have struggled with over the decades, but is reputed to suffer from the slight problem that it doesn’t actually work. Whatever – without making any pre-emptive judgements – I have invited Mark to contribute some notes about VLB, which we have briefly mentioned here before, and he hopes to send me something – excellent.

(3) I found a bunch of photos of my old (early 1970s) Ancient armies, which were dreadfully crude but served me for many years. Now gone – a nice chap in New Zealand bought them on eBay some years ago – their only claim to a place in my heart is that they are – like my Waterloo collaborators – no more. I don’t expect anyone to be excited by my crap painting or my very basic Airfix + Garrison + Atlantic armies, but – if we are to preserve a hallowed whisper for Old School – it is as well to remember that this was the reality. You may notice that my dread of paint-shedding by plastic figures was such that I kept spears and the wobbly bits of chariots etc in the raw plastic, which explains the distinctive vibrant orange preservative obviously employed by the Celtic chariot builders.

I am still quietly pleased by the onager, which I built from balsa, with shirt button wheels (all right, all right), based on the drawings in the WRG’s nice little book. Purists will protest that the Romans did not have shirts, never mind shirt buttons.

Note early view of The Cupboard - I didn't have so many figures in 2001

The occasion commemorated by the first few photos is my first wargame in my present house, New Year 2001. The room is what was the dining room at that time, which has subsequently become the downstairs shower/toilet (so wargames in the bog almost took place here), and my opponent was Malcolm Turner, who – now I think about it – is also dead now. Maybe it’s me then? That will have cut the queue of people wishing to visit Chateau Foy for a wargame, I would think.

The remainder were taken 5 years ago, when I was proposing to sell them.

(4) I also found some vintage, typed casualty tables I derived from the kill rates in Bill Leeson’s reprint of Von Reisswitz’s Kriegsspiel rules, which I am still poring over. These may be too dry even for the standards of this blog, but I’ll see if there is something useful which could be put here.

I think that’s probably quite enough of all that…

Pommerania - The Army of 1808 (2) - complete

Off-line project No 514a is finished. The forces of my mythical Duchy of Stralsund-Rügen (otherwise known to history as Swedish Pommerania, just to the right of Mecklenburg on the Napoleonic map), duly signed up to the Confederation of the Rhine, are painted and ready for action. To their considerable disappointment, they are destined for counter-insurgency and LOC duty in Spain.

In the unlikely event that you wish to read a little more about the (mooted) history of the Duchy, there are some earlier posts here and here and here.

Here's a general view of the troops lined up on the big parade ground at Korkmatz, ready for inspection by old Herzog Friedrich. From left to right, the infantry units are the Grenadier battalion Zum alten Greif, fusilier battalions Putbus and Graf von Grimmen, and the Franzburg jaegers. In front you see the combined sharpshooter companies, looking suitably sharp, and the foot artillery company Stadt Stralsund.

On the right is General Graf Leberknödel (the Duke's son-in-law) at the head of the two regiments of Jaeger zu Pferd - Herzogin Katarin and Herr Friedrich.

As befits a project with an Old School feel, figures are by Scruby and Garrison, with various odd bods drafted into command roles. My particular thanks to Rob Young for providing out-of-catalogue Garrison figures in some haste (they are back in the catalogue now!) to help out when some of my intended Scruby figures failed the flash quotient test. Thanks also for the people who egged me on to do this in the first place.

I am confident that there are tales of glory ahead for these fellows. As for myself, I'm just waiting for the phone to ring - it will be Osprey wanting me to do a Men at War title on Napoleon's German Allies: Stralsund-Rügen.

New Unit - Dragons à Pied

With a considerable amount of help from my friends, here's a new unit - an unexpected bonus for the army.


Majority of the figures are Les Higgins, one of the foot officers is a 20mm Garrison casting, and the mounted officer is PMD, though I put him on a rather passive Falcata horse to give suitably non-reg campaign appearance and to avoid having the rather silly Higgins horse galloping alongside marching troops. The drummer is a 1/72 Strelets plastic, and I'm not awfully happy with him, but there isn't much else available.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with the unit - thanks very much to Iain for most of the Higginses, and to Clive for help with the command figures. I fear these chaps have a fairly humble career coming up - they seem like ideal garrison troops for a fortress or maybe a hostile village. Higgins put epaulettes on the advancing dragoon figure, though not on the "at the ready" one, and thus I have a very high proportion of guys here in elite company uniform. Accordingly, they are a provisional bataillon de marche, from the 19e and 23e regiments, who seem to have sent all their best men!

Garrison

I have to say right at the start that I'm talking about the original 20mm Garrison figures, not the later larger ones, and not the recent re-issues, which I never really fully understood, despite patient efforts on the part of the new proprietor to explain them to me.

I liked, and still like, these little figures. My local model shop stocked them, so you could go in and pick what you wanted. The range was not extensive (the big sellers at the time were their Ancients), and the infantry had a semi-flat profile which was not to everyone's taste, but I liked them. I particularly liked the cavalry, which are simple and vigorous and really very pleasing; again, the snag was the small range - if you wanted officers or trumpeters you had to convert them yourself (which is what I did, of course). Their galloping Napoleonic cavalry horse (with the various saddlery options) is one of the classic 20mm wargames horses, and certainly makes the Higgins/PMD horses look a bit sad.

Something of a rarity is the very distinctive skirmisher pose, firing with the "wrong" foot forward. Not recommended as a stance for firing a flintlock with a kick like a mule. The rifleman in the foreground is the Garrison man, with Higgins colleagues in the background. This, by the way, shows one of my 80mm wide skirmisher bases.

The Chasseurs a Cheval unit shown here has a NapoleoN officer, in case you can't make him out - an appropriate mix - apart from the peerless Art Miniaturen, the Garrison and NapoleoN horses are probably my favourites in 20mm. The hussars were aggressive little chaps, but the mould problems with the original series meant that you are very unlikely to find one with a complete sabretache.