Tomar Militia Battalion

This evening I have mostly been fixing flags to my recent new units. A healthy dose of the commonplace after the giddy excitement of last week's Pommeranians. Here's a humble unit of Portuguese militia - I had enough odd NapoleoN and Kennington figures to make up a battalion. The more observant may notice that the Kennington boys are out of step with the NapoleoN figures, but this is the militia, after all. These chaps will come in useful for all sorts of duties, but one of their jobs is general labouring for the Allied siege train - heaving things about, digging holes, all that.

Once again, my clever but over-enthusiastic camera has brightened the colours - they are not really as psychedelic as this.

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.

More Guerrilleros

Another parcel from David the Painter came yesterday - a fair amount of finishing touches and basing to do, but I have a few quiet days coming up so I can enjoy getting on with that.

First off the assembly line, here's some more of the excellent Qualiticast guerrilla infantry - yes, they include women and slingers - faintly reminiscent of my days with my Iceni/Trinovantes army (long departed).

And here's something you don't see very much - the first of my irregular Spanish cavalry units. These are cobbled from the leftovers of the garrocheros in the Falcata boxes after I had cherry-picked the best for my Lanceros de Castilla, which will be in the next shipment for painting. A pile of spare weapons from Musket Miniatures, a lot of hacking and filing and much Superglue, and here they are. Pleased with them, in fact - they turned out better than I expected.

Hooptedoodle #31a - The Newspaper Boat

I remember it clearly. A couple of years ago, driving north past Newcastle upon Tyne in pouring rain, listening, transfixed, to my car radio. Live, a House of Commons committee was grilling some of the former deities of the UK banking industry, and had reduced them to stuttering, cringeing foolishness. Very satisfying - I cherish the recollection, and I'm not altogether sure why - the economic disaster had arrived and was clear for all to see, there was no prospect of good news for some time to come. Whatever the shortcomings of our system of democracy, however disenchanted I may be with politics in general, there was something deeply gratifying about the elected representatives of ordinary people really sticking it to the bad guys. Something not unlike a war crimes trial, I guess.

It is unworthy to seek the downfall of the rich and mighty - it smacks of envy and schadenfreude and a number of other things that I claim to despise, but I had a very strong urge to pull over, get out of the car, and punch the air and shout "Yes!" - right there in the rain.

Here it is again. The public humiliation and ridicule of the Murdoch family and their unpleasant associates promises to be the subject of more roadside air-punching. I look forward to it with some relish, but in the meantime I am interested to observe the polarisation of the newspaper reporting of the saga. The non-Murdoch parts of the press are showing more than a little glee over events, but they must surely be aware that the hole in the far end of the boat will threaten them all eventually. The BBC still mentions "the media" as though it were speaking of someone else.

Let me (as always) attempt to draw a (debatable) parallel from my personal experience. I worked for many years in the UK insurance industry. I worked for a mutual company, which is mostly an extinct species now, but at that time was alive and well. One day the unthinkable happened - one of our mutual competitors was suddenly, and very publicly, in big trouble. Solvency doubts, dreadful mismanagement, cavalier disregard of customers' interests, alleged falsification of regulatory returns - very big trouble indeed. My boss of the day, a man of academic grandure but great silliness, was absolutely thrilled that a competitor should be removed from the list of people we had to worry about, and could not - for the life of him - understand that the entire industry was now tainted. Public confidence was damaged - no-one smelled good; this was, in fact, the beginning of a downturn for insurance which eventually wrecked a number of other firms, including the one we were working for.

I believe we are seeing something very similar. Surely the shockwave in the newspaper industry will be far-reaching. Something fundamental has changed - the game as we knew it is, I think, bust. There is no real room for anyone to feel smug or safe, it will affect them all sooner or later. The long term effect on individual rights, privacy and the public taste for tittle-tattle remains to be seen.

Andreas Hofer

Rather belatedly, I've organised a family holiday - this year we are going to Vorarlberg, in Austria. Since this is, as near as not worth bothering, the Tirol (I'm sure I will be killed on the spot if I suggest such a thing when I get there), I thought I would do a bit of planning for holiday reading material of an appropriately regional, Napoleonic nature. I know little or nothing of Andreas Hofer, for example, so am on the lookout for a good book in English about the troubles in the Tirol in 1809 - if anyone has any recommendations I would be very appreciative. I don't expect to spend a lot of time visiting battlefields, but a day or so in Innsbruck looks a good bet, and the Berg Isel must be worth a visit. Ideally, I am looking for a book which will not require excess baggage charges on the plane (so my Elting & Esposito atlas is out). All recommendations would be most welcome.

The subject of Napoleonic holidays has always tickled at the back of my mind - I have a fantasy of taking a leisurely motor tour down the Danube, Ingolstadt via Ratisbon down to Wagram - that sort of thing. The odd battlefield, the odd glass of beer, lots of reading. Such a holiday might well be grounds for divorce, so I have not suggested it seriously to Mme Foy.

The picture at the top is Andreas Hofer ohne Hut, which is a lot less well known than Andreas Hofer mit Hut (below). I've also managed to download a very large illustration of Hofer suitable for putting on a T shirt - I'll maybe give that a miss. Of course, I could be the only visitor to the area who is not wearing such a shirt - how embarrassing would that be?

Hooptedoodle #31 - The News of the Bloody World

Thank you - now piss off

I don't buy a daily newspaper. I listen to the daily news programme on BBC Radio 4 before I get up each morning, and anything I need more detail on I can get from the Internet. I do not buy a newspaper because I am too stingy, and because I live some distance from the nearest newsagent, but also for the following set of personal requirements.

(1) I need to be told what is going on in the world. I do not want lies, or wild rumours, or politically biased misrepresentations.

(2) I can use a little contextual or reference material to help me form opinions or judgements, but I'd like it factual, please.

(3) I have no wish at all to be told how I should react to the news, or what I should be thinking about it, especially if there is an attempt to involve me in some phoney community-spirit collectiveness - "our boys" - all that.

With a very few exceptions, newspapers do not seem to be able to handle my requirements, so I reject them. In the days when I really did need to be very well informed, I used to read the Economist regularly, and I still buy it when I need more insight - mainly because I think it is outstandingly good, but also because it is a weekly publication, which gets you away from all the daily yes-he-did-no-he-didn't nonsense which passes for up-to-the-minute reporting. I guess a good Sunday paper might achieve the same objective, if you can find one, but I am put off by the excess and the waste of trees.

I make occasional reference to the sayings of my grandmother - she was not actually a village witch or anything, she was a very intelligent and well-read lady, but she also had a wonderful collection of North-of-England pithy sayings and proverbs - mostly rather disapproving in tone, to be sure. She used to say, "Fools may dance, but bigger fools look on", which does not preclude the possibility that the bigger fools may actually have paid to commission the dancers in the first place. She also used to say, "Them as canna do nowt will tell tales about them as can". I find that interesting - where is the real world, then?

I wonder how The Press (a strangely anachronistic term these days) evolved from being the man who stuck bulletins up in the town square to being the multi-billion, multinational monster of today - an industry which devotes untold resources to spreading salacious gossip about the people whom it has created as celebrities, which engineers and sponsors its own stories, which sets public opinions and tastes and - so they claim - wins elections and dictates national policies. The papers will claim that they are merely feeding public demand, but they themselves have mostly created that demand. I do not spend a lot of time worrying about this - it just seems to be one of the inescapable ills of modern life - but occasionally things happen which make me wonder why there is no backlash.

I was not a particular fan, but I never understood why, when the late Princess Diana was literally hounded to death by press photographers, the public outpouring of emotion did not include a greater revulsion against the newspapers. On a more trivial level, there seemed to be a strange disconnect during the last football (soccer) World Cup when the purportedly patriotic English press did their very best to destabilise the English team with lurid revelations about their private lives, while (presumably) preparing outraged reports in anticipation of the team's inevitable failure. This sex-scandal stuff, by the way - who is it that actually wants to know this stuff? - it isn't me - is it him/her? - is it you? I just shrug and get on with it - one more incomprehensible element of life among so many.

Waving the Watergate banner when necessary, the great cause of investigative journalism is used to justify all sorts of unlikely revelations about all sorts of rubbish. The people have a right to know, the papers have a right to do (and spend) almost anything they can think of in support of this. Well, maybe - but you would hope that at some point the same people might tell the papers this is out of order, and that they should try to come to terms with some sadly outmoded concepts such as public decency.

What has struck me in the last few weeks is that there really does seem to be some unspecified public view on what is acceptable. Out of the blue, we have widespread outrage because the phone-tapping, memo leaking, information stealing world of hypocrisy which feeds public appetites for unconstructive gossip and sleeze has overstepped some unstated limit. The private telephones of dead soldiers and murdered children, apparently, are out of bounds. They have gone too far this time - it seems that there was a limit, after all. There may be some hope out there.

We have to be aware, of course, that this is all being reported by - well, the press, in fact - but something may have changed. Maybe the backlash is coming. Don't hold your breath, but that really would be something.

CCN - Street Fighting needs a Tweak

Experimenting with my (beta-test) solitaire variant of Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, I was looking at an action which involved a dispute over a larger (multi-hex) town, and I found that the standard game doesn't cope with this very well.

The rules were written to cover the situation where a single-hex village or farm is attacked from open country, and it correctly gives a heavy weighting toward the defenders. Infantry defending a "town" hex suffer no disadvantage, while the infantry attackers themselves suffer a pretty severe 2-dice penalty. My problem is that, if you have a larger built-up area, consisting of a number of adjacent "town" hexes, then this is too harshly in favour of defenders, if you abide by the standard rules, and the action quickly resolves into a stalemate, since there will be a tendency not to risk an attack.

This is not a unique problem for CCN - I cannot recall using a ruleset which handled this comfortably. As ever, I have not thought everything through fully, but my first-cut effort at a tweak is that a village-hex-to-village-hex melee should involve a 2-dice reduction for the attackers (as published), and a 1-dice reduction for the defenders (if they get to fight back). I reason that guys who take the initiative and expose themselves by attacking will still gain some advantage from the cover they have available.

I'll do some more work on it, but I do think it needs a change.