WSS: A Little Night Testing

 Best time for fiddling about on your own - the house is quiet and much cooler. Tonight's action was some gentle testing of the revised Combat rules. OK - identified a couple of areas where I'm not quite sure what happens next (or, let us say, there are some choices to be made), and confirmed one rule I wasn't sure of. Good so far.

 

Buckets of Dice and Old School monochrome; The IR Palffy try to see what happens if they make an ill-advised attack on a superior force of Bavarians

 

Workmanlike testing laboratory?

 

Monasterol Dragoons, with General attached, check out their chances against an isolated Austrian unit across the valley. This section of the testing confirmed the adoption of a provisional ruling: viz Mounted Troops who do not win a Combat, if the troops are still in contact, must retire 1 hex or 2 hexes - their choice, but they become Shaken if they go for 2...

 

 

Up close and covered in soot

Tomorrow some more complicated Combats, and try out the new Artillery rules. Baby steps. Take lots of notes. Hot chocolate is a big help. And a little Couperin on the hi-fi does no harm for period feel.

WSS: More Cuddies for Corporal John

 Another welcome addition to my British forces, this unit very nicely painted for me by Goya, for which my grateful thanks. Here are the boys of Hay's Dragoons, aka Scots Greys.

Being a dragoon outfit, they also have a dismounted function - just replace two of the mounted stands - the remaining mounted stand serves as horse-holders and all that, and carries the regimental Status minidice. Important work. Here they are showing off their dismounted set-up - just looking for a wood to stand in.

The men on the command stand and those on foot are Irregular castings, the mounted dragoons are all by Les Higgins, and all the horses are Higgins. According to what I've been reading, these fellows were able to fight against regular units of heavy horse, so they will probably be excused the usual "-1" for dragoons vs horse in mounted combat.

Plus one for being British? That has a familiar ring about it. 

And let us not speak of soft penalty kick awards.

Writing Wargame Rules - Some Ponderings

 

For the last year or so I've been working on a set of home-made rules for the WSS. Things have gone a bit quiet, but they have not disappeared; they are undergoing a heavy re-write at this very moment. It's been very interesting; there have been a few disappointments on the way, and I've been reminded of a few things I should have remembered anyway. Overall, I've enjoyed it immensely, though this still depends on a belief that something decent will fall out of the end!

I contacted my good friend Stryker last week, to run some ideas past him. He is a sound chap - very sensible. Whereas I have a lamentable tendency to over-think stuff, and tie myself in knots (punctuated from time to time with complete changes of direction), I find him an invaluable support since he knows his wargaming, and he can take a look at something and notice that some bits of it are, in fact, nonsense - a gift which I never managed to develop.

So today's blether here is largely a result of mulling over my chat with Stryker. The cheque, of course, is on its way to him.

In the first place, I was keen to get involved in WSS miniatures gaming because I've always fancied the idea and the look of it - it seems like proper wargaming, somehow. It also - in theory, at least - seems to be a period which lends itself well to the rather stylised presentation which is necessary for toy soldiers. There is a good mix of horse-and-musket type arms, but there is a pleasing lack of fiddly bits - no skirmishers, no squares, no horse artillery, no attacking in column, and everyone moves about in nice straight lines. Ideal.

I have read a good number of published rule sets, and I decided that writing my own rules was an important part of the project, though there are enough options available to leave wiggle-room for giving up on the rules idea if necessary.

So I set out, early last year, to write a set of rules which would embody all the things I like, carefully avoiding the things I have lost patience with over the years. Terrific. I did a lot of sketching, and note-taking, and pinching of promising ideas from other sources. There was a lot of arithmetic, and experimentation, and it was all shaping up nicely. Life has obviously been strange, as a consequence of the pandemic, but I decided this would present an opportunity for an extended period of solo work, and I could make a really good job of the WSS rules. 

There have been some hefty changes of heart from time to time (see earlier...), but the basics of the game came together nicely.

Then there were a couple of playtests - these were handled by Zoom, which is better than nothing, obviously, but brings some constraints of its own. The playtests were approached with good humour and great fortitude by my collaborators, but I was left with the realisation that I had spent a lot of time developing a game which I didn't like very much! This, I guess, is a commonplace situation in developing rules, but it is disappointing when it happens.

In reality, of course, it's just another step on the "two forward, one back" path, or whatever variations on that theme are appropriate from time to time. I have been reminded of a number of important principles, which I really should write on a whiteboard somewhere. Some of them are so bovinely obvious that I am embarrassed to put them up here.

* Your rules should reflect the type of game you like, and also (of course) the period and the size of battles you are aiming for. [In my own case, I have gained a lot of benefit in the past from reading design notes by Frank Chadwick and Howard Whitehouse, who are particular heroes of mine.]

* You can playtest your rules on your own for as long as you like, but you will always attempt to play the game in the way that you intended it to work, and back-fit the rules in accordingly. This may come off the rails when you involve some outsiders!

* Proof-reading your own rules may improve the spelling and the punctuation and the layout, but you will always interpret them as what you meant to say (regardless of whether you have actually said it).

* Writing a proper manual before the rules have stabilised has some advantages, particularly if you are intending to play this game with someone else, but it adds greatly to the problems of version control and of making substantial change - the timing of the shift from rough notes and crib-sheets to a proper booklet is tricky to get right, and only becomes obviously problematic when you find you have done it wrong.

* I have, I regret to say, a passion for adding details and fiddly bits to rules, with the intention of improving them, but usually I just slow things down. I need a slap every now and then.

The last (Zoom based) playtest game we had was slow and turgid, and got bogged down in a long-range firefight which would never have happened in 1704, and which my rules did nothing to discourage or prevent. That was the klaxon signal for a major re-think, and I've been working on it since then. Some of the revisions have subsequently been revised, of course, but I believe I am now making good progress, though the re-write of the booklet is a major overhead. 

Anyway, my Prinz Eugen rules are shaping up to draft version 0.8 (the production version, if such a thing ever exists, will start at 1.0!). I have made them a lot simpler, I have dropped some pet ideas because they slowed things down more than they improved the game. It is coming together, I think. This week I had intended to get some troops on the table to try some serious solo playtesting, but Real Life is starting to creep out of the shadow of Covid-19, so I am busy, but it is a necessary step, and it will go ahead.

I'll do some photos, as evidence of my resolve.

 

Separate Topic #1 - MDF Bases

Since Tony Barr has closed his East Riding Miniatures operation, I am wondering where to buy my MDF bases in future. For as long as I can remember, Tony has been so helpful and so quick to respond to requests that I feel more than a bit lost without him. I use odd-sized MDF bases - metric sizes, quite a lot of them, in 2mm thick for figure stands and 3mm for sabots and bigger pieces. I had a look at the Warbases website - maybe that is the thing to do, but I was short of time and found it difficult to find my way around.

Supreme Littleness Designs have done some nice work for me in the past, but I think Michael is heavily involved in doing scenery design work for other suppliers at present.

Simple question, really - I am in the UK - maybe the answer is "Warbases" after all, but does anyone have any strong recommendations where I should get my MDF bases now? All helpful suggestions welcome.

 

Separate Topic #2 - Evidence of Dementia? - The Vanishing Horses

I spent a few hours in the dreaded spare figures boxes last week, and eventually collected together enough good figures to draw up a plan to paint the French Napoleonic Guard Chasseurs à Cheval. The troopers will all be OPC Hinton Hunt, the command figures SHQ, cobbled to fit on Hinton Hunt horses (FNH3). All good - pleased that I've got that worked out at long last. Yesterday I put the collected castings into a little sandwich box, to label it up for the project, and was rather irritated to note that I had lost the extra HH horses I had found for the command. Obviously I must have left them lying somewhere, so I had a good search - the front of bookshelves tends to be a favourite spot for such things - no. Didn't find them, after a thorough look around.

Next obvious possibility is misfiling - maybe the horses got back into the spares boxes? No - it took a while to check, but they are not in there. There are, of course, lots of other wrong boxes they could have finished up in, but we are getting to the limits of possibility here. Anyway, I abandoned the search, hoping that I would remember what I had done with them. I couldn't have accidentally thrown them out, surely? Stop it! - I went to bed last night, determined to continue the hunt as soon as possible, and not really worried, but these things do niggle.

Today was a busy day; I had to travel into Edinburgh, and while I was sitting on the train, reading my book, I suddenly remembered very clearly that the extra horses had been put into the stripping jar, which is about 3 feet from where I was conducting the search, and is in direct line-of-sight (to use an artillery term). Problem solved. Well - one problem, anyway.

Separate Topic #3 - Blogger Blues

At present I am having problems with Blogger again - I just know it must be my own fault - something to do with Account Settings, but I haven't got to the bottom of it yet. For a start, I am unable to comment on anyone else's blog (well, in fact, there was one day when it worked...), and for another thing I can only upload photos into my own blog one at a time, which is tedious. I am sort of keeping an eye on things, but I wished primarily to offer my apologies to anyone who is feeling neglected - at present, Blogger insists on my leaving comments under my Gmail address rather than my official blog ID - can't do that, I'm afraid. I am thinking about this, but I'm hoping it heals up, which is what usually happens with Blogger issues.

WSS: Queen Dowager's Regt of Horse

 This unit has taken a while to finish - the hot weather has been a problem for painting, and also the football has been a very enjoyable distraction. Anyway - here they are. They still have to have their flag fitted, and I'll see to that in the morning when the varnish is properly cured.

Problems with the heat? Well, mostly these are to do with my own tendency to snooze in hot weather, but I did have some issues with paint going off too quickly, and also some concerns about my varnish. Normally, I apply gloss varnish with a fairly large brush - it floods on well, and the fact that it goes on a little frothy is OK, because the bubbles disappear before the varnish dries. However, this can be tricky if the ambient temperature is high - it's possible for the varnish to start to set with the bubbles still present. I was prepared for this, so I've been careful to use the varnish in a cooler room, and everything is fine.

If the flag goes on nicely in the morning I hope to add another photo, and I may line up the growing British contingent for a group photo. 

 ***** Late Edit *****

Righto - good morning - the flag is now in place, and here are the extra pictures:

 This little British army is still to receive 2 more regiments of horse, 1 of dragoons, 3 (possibly 4) of foot, 2 more field guns and some staff - probably a commander and a couple of brigadiers. After that I have to finish some bits and pieces for the Imperial and Bavarian forces, and then start on the French. There are plans beyond that, but let's keep it sensible for the time being!

I am prepared to bet that you probably know who the Queen Dowager was, but I certainly didn't (being an ignopotamus), so I did a bit of reading, and I now have at least some basic facts:

She was the widow of Charles II - Caterina de Bragança. She seems to have had a fairly poor time of it when Charlie Boy was still alive (having to accept Charles's mistress into the Royal Household, among other outrages), and she famously had no children, as a consequence of which there were quite a few British monarchs in a short time. Partly because she was trying to secure her inheritance, she hung around in Britain for some years after she was widowed, and her regiment of horse was still in evidence in 1703 (though known as Wyndham's Horse by this date). She returned to Portugal before she died in 1705.

 

Here is a portrait of Queen Caterina, dressed as a shepherdess. You probably recognised her outfit immediately, since all shepherdesses dress like this - certainly in Scotland they do. The cherub seems dubious. 

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Wargaming Infrastructure: Skimpy Dice

 I adopted the heading "Wargaming Infrastructure" here because it is more imposing than "improvised daft bits and pieces", which was another possibility.

In a dark cupboard, I am still working on my Prinz Eugen rules. The Close Combat rule is now a derivative of Stryker's Muskets & Marshals melee system, and is shaping up nicely. This uses comparison of individual dice rolls, and I realised that for the way I propose to use these I need to revisit an old concept I used years ago - that of fractional dice.

Once I had a couple of varieties of these, nothing very scientific, but very useful in some situations. They were generically known (by me) as "skimpies", and there was a Half Dice (numbered 0-1-1-2-2-3) and a Quarter Dice (0-0-1-1-1-2). Anyway, they are long gone, but I realised that the current draft system for Prinz Eugen would benefit from the presence of some of my old Quarter Dice, so I have quickly (and cheaply) knocked some up, and they seem to be doing the job OK thus far. The "cheaply" bit is partly because I may change my mind about what is needed, but is mostly because of my lifelong devotion to being a skinflint.

Once upon a time, my friend Chris worked in a place that tuned racing motorcycles, and he had all sorts of fancy kit for hand-fabricating parts for carburettors and all that. He could produce custom dice for me at the drop of a hat, during his lunch hour - I would supply blank dice (which in those days you could only get from educational suppliers) and he would drill them with great precision, and fill the holes with coloured resin, as required. Quality.

This time round, I opened one of my spare packs of 16mm blank dice (how did you guess I would have quite a few of these?) and marked them up with a Sharpie pen, which lacks the elegance and the accuracy of Chris's lunchtime specials from the 1970s, but otherwise ticks all the boxes for St Ebenezer.

So here you have them - Quarter Dice - "skimpies" to the initiated. They may be featured in the coming rewrite of Prinz Eugen.

Footnote: Friend Chris later became a big-deal DJ on a local commercial radio station, and left the petrol-head workshops, and I lost touch with him. Eventually, as does happen, he was required to step down to make room for someone younger, and he vanished so completely that I have failed to trace him subsequently, though I have tried chasing up former mutual friends. No-one knows what happened to him. You don't suppose commercial radio stations do something sinister with their ex DJs, do you?

WSS: And Some British Horse

 Slight change of plan - the aforementioned cavalry unit is finished, but their identity has changed at the last minute! I have a (short) list of Blenheim period units to paint up, and as progress with this one has continued I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the facing colour for this unit of horse. When I eventually managed to print out the intended flag for them, the problem was clear, so I've gone back to my original intention, and they are now (once again) the Earl of Plymouth's Regiment (that's Cornelius Wood's Horse in the Blenheim Campaign).

 

Earl of Plymouth's Regiment of Horse

 

The previously-billed Queen Dowager's Regiment will follow as soon as I have some "sea green" paint for more authentic facings! At least this change of heart will have confused the life out of the enemy... 

Never let it be said that I can't make decisions - I make a lot of decisions, more than most people!

The troopers are Les Higgins figures, though the command chaps are from the Irregular "Marlborough" range - the horses are all by Les Higgins, to iron out any scale issues. 

Having convinced myself that a single unit is a comfortable sort of project, I'll be looking to paint some more British cavalry next.

Or some more artillery...

Or some French horse would be nice...

WSS: Some British Guns

 I've been working away at a mixed batch of WSS painting - British artillery and horse, all new figures. I picked this because it made a nice-sized piece of work, and made a welcome change from my last job, which was a big Napoleonic refurb batch. On that job, at one stage, I had two days of white paint, followed by a day of black, so I promised myself a mixed batch next. Seemed a good idea.

And so it was - except that the sequence of paint colours is different for the artillery and the horse, which makes the work a bit fiddly, and - more seriously! - I ran out of space on my wet palette because of the number of colours. Accordingly, yesterday, when I was very nearly finished the whole lot, I put the cavalry in a box of their own, and set about finishing off the artillery bases.

They still need their magnetic sheet for the bases, but here they are.

 

Three battalion guns - the gunners are by Les Higgins (circa 1970), the galloper guns by Irregular Miniatures. Under my rules, battalion guns are attached to those infantry units which have them, so these little bases are really markers rather than units in their own right

 

A field gun and crew - this time, all castings are by Irregular. There will be another two of these to accompany Marlborough's lads in action. Coming along soon. [The Irregular gunners are very slightly shorter and chunkier than the Higgins, but they are fine - I may choose to keep them in separate units as a house standard. In the mounted arm I mix Irregular command with Higgins troopers rather more freely, but my use of Higgins horses throughout helps a lot with the scale compatibility.]

 All being well, I should get the unit of horse finished by tomorrow, so they will be appearing shortly. One thing I have to sort out (now I think about it) is my printer - the cyan print-head appears to be playing up, so I'll get that fixed (i.e. I'll ask the printer to heal itself) so that I can print off a flag for them. The unit, when it appears, will be the Queen Dowager's Regiment (also known as Hugh Wyndham's Horse).

 

WSS: And Still They Come...

 Really on a hot streak now. Having been pleased with the three British battalions I finished off last week, here comes a unit painted by Count F Goya, which puts everything back into perspective. These chaps are Archibald Rowe's Regt, or the [Royal] Scottish Fusiliers by any other name.

Again, figures are all Les Higgins/PMD 20mm (1/76), apart from the colonel, who is an Irregular chap (?) on a Higgins horse (that's how we do things around here).

Thanks again, Goya, the boys are raring to go.

WSS: More British Foot Completed

 After a day's delay, occasioned by my deciding I really had to produce my own version of the flag for North & Grey's Regiment, the three new units are now ready for war. This is all Blenheim period...

 

On what looks rather like Joe Morschauser's breakfast table, here is the regiment of Baron North & Grey (surely one of the sillier titles?), also known as the Earl of Bath's Regt. I refuse to discuss these chaps in terms of regimental numbers which weren't thought of for another 50 years (although it seems everyone does...). The flags were quite a lot of work, but worth it.

 

This is the Duke of Marlborough's Regt (aka Edward Dering's)

 

And this is Scrope Howe's Regt (aka Sir Wm Clifton's). Scrope Howe not one of the great names, either, really

Since it seemed a pity to miss out on the opportunity, I fetched Ferguson's Regt out of the Really Useful Boxes, and lined up a group photo of what could be my first British brigade - if they only had a general...

It's OK - all in the pipeline. I'm waiting for cavalry figures and guns to arrive in the mail, and I have the next couple of battalions ready to go on the bottletops. Coming along nicely.

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

I've been using flags from Warflag and the War Office for my WSS armies, though I had to put in some original effort for my Imperial troops. For the French, my intention is to use Warflag, and I'll maybe dust off my blog note on texturing using Photoshop. There are also some lovely flags on the Not By Appointment blog, of course, (though they tend to be more towards the SYW) and I always keep an eye on Ray's smashing work on Don't Throw a 1 (though his are usually a bit earlier than the WSS).

Since I couldn't find flags for North & Grey's regiment with high enough resolution in a decent size, I had a go myself. If you're not offended by the stock clip-art "Sun in His Splendour", I thought they might be useful for anyone else who, like me, couldn't get hold of the appropriate Robert Hall sheet(!).

I might texture them, in fact, if I get into texturing the French ones, but for the moment I'm pleased enough with this - at 20mm scale, the textured flags sometimes look as though someone dropped them in the dirt!

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

WSS: The Refurb Factory Chugs On, plus a "Missing Link"

 I'm currently working on a British contingent for my WSS collection - I've been lucky enough to get some figures painted by Goya, but at a more humble level I've been working on refurbing some bought-in troops - these are variously sourced from eBay, from the old Rye Soldier Shop and from that all-round Good Egg, Albannach. The ex-Eric Knowles collection I bought in 2019 did not include much in the way of British troops, since the British were one of the nations which Eric had been in the process of replacing with Hinchliffe.

Anyway, today I've varnished a batch of refurbed musketeers, these are for the regiments of Wm Clifton, Dering and the Earl of Bath, and the grenadiers and the rest of the command, to complete the battalions, will be painted from scratch, from fresh figures. Using this procedure, I also plan to add the Royal Irish and the Buffs, plus (probably) two battalions of the Royal Scots, and I will source the Foot Guards from fresh figures. Still a load of cavalry and artillery needed, but this is shaping up.

The musketeers here are the Les Higgins MP15 "at ease" pose, and the officer is one of the castings from the MP19 pack. With an unusually seamless glide, I shall now move onto my second topic, which is all about this very MP19 pose...

 Collectors of old figures invariably become nerdy about the history of the poses, and the changes and variants (is it all right to say that?) which appeared over the years of production. I am getting into this situation with the Les Higgins/Phoenix Model Developments Marlburians, which I had hardly seen 18 months ago, so nerdism obviously sets in quickly. There are a number of figures in the range which were replaced after the changeover to PMD (early 1970s) - a couple of poses which were standing on one leg (and therefore fragile) were modified, and the drummer figure was completely replaced by a new one, sculpted by Tim Richards (who became chief designer after Les Higgins' death), as was the advancing/charging musketeer (MP16?).

One of the figures which was modified is the charging officer from the MP19 pack (as mentioned above). It was never one of Les's best, to be honest, and at some point it was improved. I have specimens of the original and the improved production castings...

Here you see, from left to right, original (front), improved (front), original (rear) and improved (rear) - you can see that the wig and the ornamentation on his coat have been modified, and his coat has been restyled at the back so that it now drapes over his sword scabbard. OK - that's a nice example of an upgrade, and it probably dates from when the Higgins ranges were re-branded as PMD (with changed logos on the bases).

However, in this particular case I happen to have in my possession the actual altered master figure, with added sculpting in beeswax and Plasticine (or something), which came with an assortment of oddments from Tim Richards' old desk drawer in the old PMD factory at Earls Barton - here it is - the Missing Link - the step between the original and the revised production charging officer in MP19. You can see quite clearly what Tim has done. Notice that the face is still Les' original sculpt, but that the shape of the back of the hat has been tweaked.

 

That's probably enough of that - I've put him back in the official Nerd's Drawer - Box B...

WSS: First of the Brits!

 All hail to Goya, who has very kindly painted some more figures for me. Very nice too - if it wasn't for him, there would be no painting at all going on here this last couple of weeks.

Here we have The Earl of Angus's Regt of Foot*, also known as Ferguson's Regt by 1704, also known (unofficially?) as the Cameronians. The figures are Les Higgins/PMD 20mm, as usual, while the mounted officer (though not his horse) is from Irregular. Photos give a choice of with or without flash, since I couldn't make my mind up. These are not refurbed figures - all fresh castings.

Very pleased to add these chaps to the boxes - at last I have a "Dutch school" unit to join in the games!

Thanks again, Goya. Lovely job.

* Historical Clap-trap: The Earl of Angus in question was James Douglas, son of the 2nd Marquess of Douglas. He raised the regiment in 1689, when he was 18, and died at its head at the Battle of Steenkerque, in 1692, when he was 21. He was, of course, one of the "Red" Douglases, a family I take an interest in since they owned Tantallon Castle, which is next door to where I live. By the 1690s, however, after George Monck had wrecked Tantallon in 1651, following the Battle if Dunbar, the Red Douglas lot were living in their other castle, at - well, Castle Douglas...

WSS Rules - work in progress

 After the recent playtest, it became clear that something has gone out of whack with the draft house WSS rules, so I'm working on some changes. One fairly drastic re-think is taking place in the small matter of combat. I've now reduced the range of muskets to something which is less exciting but more reasonable, and - since infantry didn't normally get to sticking bayonets in each other when fighting in the open - all combat apart from artillery fire has now been subsumed into something called Close Combat, which will include all melees and all musketry (which is only effective at close range anyway).

I've been reading a few sets of rules which I own which use this kind of system - in particular Mustafa's Grande Armée, Doc Monaghan's Big Battalions, and Polemos's Obstinate and Bloody Battle. I used to employ a similar combat system in a house Napoleonic rule set I ran fairly successfully for many years, so I know it works - though there is an implied backing away from Old School turn sequences.

That's OK - the generals can concentrate on running the battle, and trust the invisible sergeants to look after fitting of bayonets, cavalry firing pistols and all that. I think it has something to do with getting the scale of the game right.

I'm now trying to glue some changes into the previous draft. Typing - it's what wargaming is all about, really.

I should have more to say about this before too long!

WSS: Beutelbach Playtest (via Zoom)

 

Ready for the off - counters and markers and cotton-wool smoke. Even some Lucozade.

 As planned, the playtest game went ahead on Friday - 10am kick-off.

Stryker and Goya arrived promptly (and remotely), and after some fiddling about with camera settings we got started. The revision to my WSS rules this time had been quite a large one, following on from what had been a pleasingly successful playtest back in December (or whenever it was), so we had quite a few new bits to assimilate. I, as umpire, had no choice to make a good fist of this, since the umpire is the guy who has to understand everything - especially if he is also the author. Nowhere to hide. Bright lights.

Let me say, straight away, that it was a very pleasant day - certainly I enjoyed the interaction and the company and all that - and we achieved a great deal on the rules workout. Overall, I am pleased, but am rather concerned that I presented my guests with a rather lengthier and more arduous experience than they might have been expecting! I can only praise their courage and good humour, and thank them once again!

Playtesting your own rules reminds me a little of the old home-brewed beer days (anyone remember them?) - the whole thing is driven by enthusiasm and good intentions, but it is also very easy to inflict on one's friends something which tastes ghastly and gives them terrible headaches, which is not a kind thing to do to anyone. I hasten to assure my gentle reader that our session was not so awful as this might suggest, but some of the things I learned about my new rule changes will require a day or two to digest. As is always the case, a lot of the problems unearthed are merely a question of tweaking the numbers to get a better balance, but I definitely got a few things wrong. Humility is required.

For a start, we had rather the rough end of circumstances - I had about 2 hours sleep the night before, because we had howling Easterlies rattling the slates here at Chateau Foy, with horizontal rain and sleet on the roof-windows, and at about 2:30am I had to get up to shut the gate, to prevent our garden chairs from rolling into the lane. So there was a lot of caffeine in my bloodstream by around 10am.

Next - Zoom. It is less than a year since I had no experience of remote gaming at all, and of course we have to be grateful for what is possible. Games via Zoom are a poor substitute for a proper face-to-face game, but they are a hell of a lot better than nothing at all, so it would be stupid to complain. On the other hand...

Well, on the other hand, I am one of that often-forgotten fringe of UK residents who do not live in a city. Our broadband arrives by radio transmission, believe it or not, and it is astonishingly good, considering, but in absolute terms it is a bit marginal for streaming two cameras simultaneously, especially when my locked-down neighbours are confined to barracks, and seem to spend their days home-schooling (via Google Classroom and similar) or just watching Netflix. The radio bit means that we are relying on line-of-sight contact (a familiar wargaming concept?) with a mast on a hill about 8 miles away, which also means that really wet weather can affect things adversely. [It also means that one of my neighbours can't understand why the broadband works at night, when he cannot see the hill where the transmitter is located - but this is quite another story...]

One way or another, our broadband is slow enough to make Zoom default to what it considers a manageable picture quality, which is not very exciting. Well, John Logie Baird might have been excited, but these days we expect high definition at all times, and don't you forget it. This means that, though I get to see the toy soldiers close up in the real world, my guest attendees have a real fog-of-war problem trying to see what's what, they get a very poor visual presentation and involvement level (they don't even get to roll their own dice!) and, of course, they also have to put up with hours of me charging about, talking too much and pointing at things. You may be getting a glimpse of why I was so grateful for their stamina on Friday! Zoom also kept hanging up on us - we had maybe 10 or a dozen instances when a broadband blip froze everything; I am getting surprisingly handy at recovering hangs, though on one occasion we lost the Zoom session completely, so I had to join again and admit everyone back in, but we also frequently lost time when someone's conversation would break up [the well-known Stammering Dalek Effect] and we had a lot of checking and repeating. I'm not going to say any more about Zoom, except that it occurred to me late last night that we could maybe get some improvement by shutting off the video links from the remote attendees - once we've said hello we don't need to see each other, as long as the battlefield views are working. It's a theory - I'll ask my son if it will help...

Righto - that's the excuses out of the way. The next bit has to be the things I got wrong. Last test game, I became aware of a few points in the game where the rules were vague - mostly about things like the exact timing of a morale check, or just what happens when a unit breaks from melee, so I had tightened this up, and had inserted some clarifying detail, including expanding the Turn Sequence to incorporate a specific Rallying Phase, between Activation and Movement. Great. In fact, it was a lot tighter, but I set up a big, encounter-type scenario, and the game was slow. I mean really slow. The melee rules worked a lot better (though they still need some tweaking), but it was all far too laborious for a big game. I also screwed up the formula for numbers of Order Chips, so that we had too many orders, which is like not having Activation at all. We had great, long player turns which must have been heavy going for the non-phasing player, who didn't even have any dice to roll.

OK - fair enough. All good - that's what a playtest is for - provided your friends are still speaking to you at the end!

The actual battle? Well, it took hours - much of which is down to lack of familiarity, of course, but it meant that we didn't finish. The target for a win was 8 Victory Points, and we had got to 4-all when we had to call it a day. As I say, I'm very happy that I learned a lot of good stuff, but one thing I learned is that the rules as they are now will not handle a big game, and I am really partial to big games, so some rethinking has started!

The armies seemed to spend a long time firing muskets at each other at 400 paces, which is not very effective, but there was a vigorous cavalry fight quite early on. The manoeuvre rules were not much of a problem - there seemed to be too many morale tests, considering not much was going on for most of the time. I can fix all that, but there are some fundamental issues which will need some surgery. That's OK too! I am pleased with what we achieved,  though as an actual game it was not the best.

I'll work on it!

Starting position, from the Imperial right flank - aggressive moves from the cavalry in the foreground...

...and from the opposite side, behind the Bavarian lines...

...just like the ECW all over again - the first cavalry clash was indecisive!

The Bavarian right flank was pretty quiet throughout - the battery on the hill was busy, but Goya seemed to have a great many 1s and 2s that he didn't get to roll last time out.

The cavalry get themselves sorted out, ready for another go. Note some dragoons sneaking through the wood on the left of the photo.

The Imperial forces, complete with battalion guns, came across the field to take the initiative, but a long range firefight ensued, which mostly didn't hit anyone, though a couple of units took fright

Bavarian artillery - working hard

Things were building up nicely, but we ran out of time before we reached the real crisis

General view, from the Imperial right, at the point at which we were forced to close. It'll be a lot better next time - trust me...

WSS: Set-Up for Another Playtest

 Gaming via Zoom on Friday, so I've been setting up the table. This will be the little-known Battle of the Beutelbach, which must have been in 1703, I guess, on an unusually flat area of  Bavaria. I needed some photos for the participants, so it seemed sensible to post them here as well.

This is the first-cut set-up, still a little adjustment allowed before we kick off on Friday. Here is the view from the Bavarian left flank. That stream is just a little watersplash.

And now from the Bavarian right flank. Since the micro-dice will be completely invisible on the Zoom session, there will be an issue of coloured counters, to denote unit status, before we start.

A drone shot from behind the Imperial position - no-one in the little hamlet of Staubhof yet, so the residents can shift the glass and china into the cellar.

10am start Friday - better read the rules again - there are some changes in the turn sequence, so a quick guideline note to keep me right would be a good idea.

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

 

And now an extra photo for Nature lovers - here are Die Schwäne von Staubhof...

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

Dondaine

 Moving swiftly on (before I get a glimpse of Mr Trump's pardons and have an aneurism), here's a workmanlike wargaming picture. My original reasoning for my WSS basing scheme was that, since the units only have 3 bases and they'll be doing some Old School tactical manoeuvring, I wouldn't bother with sabots, though I've become very used to using them of recent years.

After just a few test games, I confess I have changed my mind. Sabots there will be. They will not be magnetised, and - since my cunning WSS base sizes give a standard footprint (approximately) - I have adopted a one-size-fits-all plain sabot. Current thinking is that sabots will be a resource for the battlefield, and will be issued when needed. My Napoleonic units each have their own magnetised sabot, and they spend their lives on them, so this is a conscious departure from my standard system.

Because the sabots are a bit long and narrow, I was worried that 2mm MDF might warp if painted on one side only. I ordered in some samples from Uncle Tony Barr at East Riding Minis, and am pleased to find that they give no problems, so a bigger order will be on its way.

 Here's a quick photo, to give the idea. These should save time and broken bayonets.

Infantry and cavalry in line or column of march - even one of my strange limbered batteries 

 

Oh yes - dondaine. One of the many French nursery rhymes my mother taught me when I was an infant was En Passant par la Lorraine, a lengthy tale of a peasant girl who may or may not have captured the heart of the King's son (the song has a quirky, uncertain ending) through her fetching appearance, complete with clogs. This song contains the chorus hook-line:

avec mes sabots, dondaine,
oh! oh! oh! avec mes sabots

I have never been able to find out what dondaine means - and still haven't really got to the bottom of it. I am assured by one of my French relatives that in fact it means nothing - it is just a song-filler expression (equivalent to "tra-la-la" or, I suppose, "hey-nonny-no"). That's kind of an anticlimax after all those years of wondering, but I guess life is a bit like that.

If anyone knows different, please shout.

Here's a noble rendition of the song - just to prove it exists. I am confident you will not last to the end of the clip, but - take my word for it - this version only uses about half the verses my mother taught me. Obviously French kids had a good attention span in the days before Instagram.

 

WSS Flags - looking for clues

 Very quick post today - I'm looking for a bit of information, if anyone can help. I don't think this is at all complicated, but I've read different opinions on this topic, and am uncertain about what to do.

 

Photo of flags of a French regiment from someone else's army, someone else's blog. Two flags is a nice look - colonel's colour on the left here - is this applicable to all battalions in a French regiment?

My emerging WSS armies use a vanilla, one-size-fits-all-nations establishment scheme. I know that this is probably not awfully clever, but the convenience suits me nicely.

In particular, my infantry battalions consist of 3 bases; two of these have 5 other ranks and 1 officer/NCO (and one of these two bases may contain grenadiers, depending on national practice), and the third one contains 3 other ranks, a standard, a drummer and a mounted colonel.

I'm now starting to plan for the French and British contingents. For each of these nations, I am tempted to be swayed by "the look of the thing" and go for 2 standards per battalion. Now that I've started to read about the French, it is suggested that a regiment's first battalion should carry the colonel's (white) colour and the ordnance (patterned) colour, but the other battalions did not carry the colonel's colour, so that my planned two-battalion French regiments would have 2 flags for the first battalion, but only 1 for the second.

Of course, I've also read sources which say two for each. I'm happy to do two for each anyway, but wondered if there are any strong views? All ideas welcome!

WSS: The Missing Flag Appears

 Quick footnote to yesterday's game - I've now fitted a 75cm (in scale!) flag to the Imperial C-in-C stand, and photos are necessary. I've also added the requisite magnetic sheet, and the chaps are now safely stored away with their army in the Really Useful Boxes.

I'm pleased because getting this group painted and based has been another hanging-around task, but am also interested because it gave me a chance try out some combinations of figure makers.

Here they are - the gentleman in the brown (civilian) coat is the boss - he could be Prince Eugene himself if it weren't for the moustache. Mind you, old PE wore some pretty outrageous wigs, so a false muzzer can't be completely out of the question? - maybe it was Mo-vember?

The commander is a Les Higgins casting on a Higgins horse, which is an obvious and standard arrangement hereabouts; the adjutant in the blue coat is an Irregular casting on an SHQ (ECW period) horse, and the standard bearer is Irregular on a Hinton Hunt ECW horse, and I'm delighted to see that these all work nicely, and are happily compatible with each other.

 

The flag - if you have exceptional eyesight - is the correct edition of the arms of the Holy Roman Empire for the time of Leopold I. It would be a terrible thing, I'm sure you'll agree, if I had got that wrong.

WSS: Playtest at Mönchröden - the Game

 Yesterday's playtest by Zoom went ahead - Goya very kindly commanded the Austrians. The game went quite nicely - I'm a little disappointed by how some bits of the rules played out, but that was the whole point of the exercise, and the labs are tooling up to engineer some fixes! The photos of the initial set-up can be found in my previous post.

 

General photo, quite early in the action, showing the legendary General Graf Von Fugger lining up the Cuirassiers of Jung-Darmstadt and Gronsfeld, next to the small village of Hopf, which was manned by the 2nd battalion of the I.R Scharfenstein. A minor spoiler: the cavalry pictured here eventually won the day for the Emperor Leopold.

Playtest for Prinz Eugen - Mönchröden 1703

 

Imperial Forces

 

GL Graf von Limburg-Styrum

 

Cavalry Bde (Fugger): Cuirassier Regts Gronsfeld and Jung Darmstadt and Aufseß Dragoons (3 sqns each)

 

Brigade Mercy : Infantry regts of Lothringen and Thürheim (2 bns each)

 

Brigade Bibra: Infantry Regts of Scharfenstein and Baden-Baden (2 bns each)

 

Company of field artillery plus 3 light battalion guns

 

 

Bavarian Forces

 

Elector Maximilien of Bavaria

 

Cavalry Bde (Arco): Cuirassier Regt Arco and Monasterol Dragoons (3 sqns each)

 

Cavalry Bde (Wolframsdorf): Leibgarde Regt and Santini Dragoons (3 sqns each)

 

Brigade Lützelburg: Infantry regts: Leibregiment and Bettendorf  (2 bns each), Lützelburg and Boismorel Grenadiers (1 bn each)

 

Brigade Maffei: Infantry regts: Haxthausen, Spilberg, Octfort, Tattenbach, Leib Grenadieren, Maffei (1 bn each)

 

2 Companies of field artillery

 

Status: All field artillery units 2; Bavarian Leib Grenadieren and Leibgarde zu Pferd 4; all else 3

The Bavarian infantry got themselves all sorted out into line, safely out of range, and started to advance on the Imperial position. The Boismorel "Red Grenadiers" in evidence - first time out - surely things were bound to go well for them?....

Over to their right, near the village of Sankt Johann am Röden, more infantry are busy countermarching, under the watchful eye of the Elector and his staff. The leading column has just come under fire from the Austrian battery opposite, of which more later.

 

View along the Austrian line, from their left. Fugger's cavalry getting organised on this flank.

 

And here comes the Bavarian infantry attack - the bad news is that it was directed at some earthworks which the Austrians had dug the night before, but it was a playtest, after all, and everyone was keen to see what happened.

 

General Maffei (yellow coat) is devastated to watch the I.R D'Octfort rapidly accumulating hits from the artillery opposite, especially with the Elector looking on.

Back to the left flank - here goes! - in goes the charge - head first into the earthworks...

 

Oo-yah! That didn't go awfully well - both units repulsed and shaken.

 

 

Meanwhile, on the other flank, not much is happening, but attention must be drawn to the Austrian battery on the ridge, marked with an ivory counter. This unit performed absolute miracles with the firing dice - all at long range, they quickly eliminated one infantry unit and an enemy battery. It was quite late in the game before this battery missed a shot. If this sounds like a severe glitch in the rules, let me reassure you that the Bavarian artillery, on the other hand, never hit anything all day. Chance does even out a bit over time, but sometimes the balance is not shared fairly by the two sides!

Things pretty quiet still at St Johann - the troops there not keen to venture out to face the artillery fire?

1/Bettendorf still not happy at all following their experience at the earthworks - they refused to rally, and eventually were swept away by the Imperial horse at  the end of the day.

 

The Elector and his staff admire his troops at St Johann - note the grenadiers in the background, performing warm-up exercises for throwing grenades.

 

On the other side of the village, GM Wolframsdorf has his cavalry brigade all ready, waiting for orders. Household cavalry [Status 4!] in blue, Santini Dragoons in red.

  

Somewhere across the valley, the Imperial C-in-C stand is present, smelling of fresh varnish. FM Styrum definitely displeased that the expected Imperial flag did not arrive in time - I've promised that I'll post a photo when the flag is done. It's only a small flag, for goodness sake.

 

Back at the earthworks, the Bavarian horse has sneaked around the end - General Arco with his own regiment of cuirassiers about to eliminate some of the Emperor's boys from Lorraine. Yes - they should have designed the earthwork with end-bits, shouldn't they? [note technical terminology - I've been reading Chris Duffy again] 

And Arco's brigade subsequently continued their attack on the Austrian right flank - the cuirassiers are on the right, Monasterol's Dragoons on the left - the cuirassiers did rather better in their melee. This is significant since it gives further evidence that dragoons are probably best when not used in this role, and also serves notice that these cuirassiers did very well, with a string of successes, taking the VP count from a 4-1 deficit to 5-5 [very nearly winning the day all on their own] and will be the chief argument for a major revision of the melee rules subsequently, so it is to be hoped that they enjoyed the experience.

Still at it - the Arco boys continue on their merry way - here they are at this end of the picture, about to take out a battalion of the Thürheim regiment from the flank.

 

But Fugger, with the Jung-Darmstadt cuirassiers, mopped up enough damaged infantry units to win the day for the Emperor. His late bid for man-of-the match failed because he was overshadowed by the Holy Roman Artillery mentioned earlier.

 

Some of the Elector's reserve troops, disappointed not to have figured more prominently, are left with nothing to do. The Empire has won 6-5...

 

...as you see.

General view from behind the Austrian left, at the end of the game. Not much happened on this flank, but the Sacred Battery is still in position (practising misses at this stage), and Fugger's horse have cleared the area in front of the ridge, at the far end of the table.

Goya has promised (no - too strong - has offered) to send his thoughts on the rules. There were definite clunkinesses in a couple of areas. The game was still OK, in fact, but there were times when I was distracted, thinking what a nice, smooth, logical game Commands & Colors is. I'm sure it will be fine - I'm not really discouraged, but  there is a fair amount of sorting out to do. I'll put a rules discussion in a subsequent post.

If I don't get that published before Christmas, I hope everyone has a relaxing time. All good wishes!