Boye

Here's a very dramatic and convincing contemporary ECW illustration of Prince Rupert's poodle, "Boye", who, sadly, was killed at the battle of Marston Moor. You will see some dastardly (left handed?) Parliamentarian musketeer shooting him at very close range. The bullets are thick and fast. Don't know who the odd-bod is on the left - maybe a witch, obviously a dog lover. There were dark Puritan tales of Boye being protected by evil magic - I hope he had some form of money-back guarantee clause in there.

Like every ECW newbie ever, I have been pondering the idea of adding a suitably sized Boye lookalike to my Prince Rupert figure (one of the few celebs who made it to Lancashire), but am now thinking that the idea, while cute, is likely to pall after about two weeks. I think Lord Byron made it to Lancs as well, so I could give him a parrot - no, on balance that might be a tad controversial. Most of the high-profile Royalist generals gave Lancashire a miss, apparently, because they didn't care for black pudding and couldn't play the ukulele.

My second picture, below, suggests that it is likely that Boye met his end through being trampled on, which is less glorious than stopping a bullet but still unforgivingly terminal.

My few days in Liverpool went well - a good balance of the familiar and the new, with some good food and beer. By a complete coincidence, my visit coincided with the announcement of the Hillsborough findings. I refuse to say anything at all about Hillsborough, apart from the fact that the findings - while still deeply upsetting - are exactly in line with what has been common knowledge on Merseyside for 23 years.

Now I am getting my kit and my knees ready for the assault on Hadrian's Wall - we assemble at base camp on Wednesday. Because this is only incidentally a sightseeing tour, it seems likely at the moment that we won't have the time or energy to get to Vindolanda, which is a bit out of our way (off the wall?...), which would be a shame - I'm working on it. This is the time at which I suddenly realise that my back-pack is in a very bad state and may need to be replaced. And then there's my socks...

Hooptedoodle #64 - A Little Holiday

On the whole, I much prefer the conflict in my life to be restricted to the wargames table.

Although I enjoy my occasional Hooptedoodle rants on this humble blog, they are normally intended to deflate through humour, and as often as not – when it comes down to it – it is me or my own inability to cope with the changing times that is the real butt of that humour.

Outside of the blog, my recent saga of attempting to do business with Falcata Miniatures has been a disappointment. Not a big deal – really not a matter of any importance at all, in the overall scheme of things, but it has made me more fed up than I would have expected. I like my toy soldiers and my little wars to be a happy place, not another source of stress, and not a reason to fall out with anyone. The episode is closed now, but it will take a little while to get the sunshine back up to full brightness – wargaming and soldier collecting are rather touchy areas for me, it seems.

I’ve also been getting a few strange, hostile emails again and the odd torpedo in my blog comments. I would rather not think of myself as thin-skinned – my self-indulgent way of expressing myself probably means that I deserve to have people shoot back occasionally, and normally I would enjoy the exchange. Some of this stuff is disturbing, though. Since my blog writings are not fired by any dark intent, and (especially) since they are of no real consequence at all, I would have hoped that anyone who came across them and was irritated would simply move on and read something else. It comes as a surprise when someone takes the trouble to explain to me, in detail, what an asshole I am.

Must keep the thing in proportion. I have made some very good friends through blogging, and I’ve learned a great deal and received a lot of real help. It has all been overwhelmingly positive, but I think I – and the world at large – could maybe do with a bit of a holiday from Prometheus. Next week I shall be away on a short trip to visit the city of my childhood, and the week after that will be my walk along Hadrian’s Wall. I expect I’ll put something here about The Wall, but in the meantime this station will close down to give the transmitter a rest. I’ll still check incoming comments, and if anyone else wants copies of the pdf files for the C&C-style ECW game please do get in touch – it might take me a few days to get back to you, but I will.

On a completely different theme, I’ve been asked a couple of times why Prometheus in Aspic anyway? – does it mean something? Is it simply the most pretentious name I could come up with?

Not sure, to be honest. I’ve always had a very soft spot for the Promethean legend – the idea of someone who did his best and was tortured for it is an easy one to be moved by. The portrayal of Napoleon as Prometheus is something of a cliché, but there may be a trace of that association in there. It is also possible – though I would rather not think about it too much – to identify with Prometheus at a personal level. The truth of the matter, as I remember it, comes from when I was trying to set the blog up in the first place. I had so little success finding available names that were anything like what I had in mind that in the end I went for something that was so unlikely and so stupid that it hadn’t been used before!

Spanish Uniforms on Alfons Canovas' Blog

Cazadores of the 1st Bn Voluntarios de Valencia, Oct 1811

It's a bit feeble to produce a blog post which merely points to someone else's blog, but Alfons Canovas, on what must be the finest military uniform blog in the entire cosmos, has produced more marvels for us. For fans of the Peninsular War, like me, there are some wonderful plates of Spanish troops in his last 3 posts, and the series appears to be continuing. If you are not a regular visitor to Alfons' blog, then do yourself a favour and go and have a look at this latest post and start working backwards - make sure you have a comfortable chair, some coffee and plenty of time...

Without any apology, I reproduce the illustration of Valencian light troops - a rare enough sight - as a taster, if only to share with Mr Kinch one authoritative solution for how to dress their officers!

ECW - C&C Based Rules

Over on his lovely ECW blog, Lee has published the first working version of the ECW rules which we have developed, based on Commands & Colors: Napoleonics. These have still to be properly playtested, so are likely to change a bit over coming weeks. My ECW armies are not big enough to playtest anything at all yet, so such testing as I have done has been attempted with counters on the original C&CN board.

These are the rules which came from the sketches and preliminary posts I did while on holiday (here, here, here and here), and it is only correct to thank Ross, Martin, Ludovico, Pjotr, John C, Allen De Vries and - most of all - Lee himself for suggestions and discussion which helped to shape them and make sense of them. The biggest debt of all, of course, is to Richard Borg and the guys at GMT for the original C&CN game. The extra Chaunce Cards pack also shows the influence of Tony Bath, Doc Monaghan and The Perfect Captain among a host of others - if anyone detects some of their own intellectual property in there anywhere then thanks very much - you have always been a hero of mine...

Once again, bear in mind this game is just an amateur-produced freebie - I intend to use Victory without Quarter rules as well as these, but I strongly fancied the logical feel and quick cycle time of a Richard Borg-style game for the ECW, so am pleased to have been able to get a prototype game together. If and when Mr Borg produces his mooted 30YW period C&C game, I shall be happy to see our little effort blown without trace into the undergrowth.

The Command and Chaunce cards exist as pdf sheets which can be printed and cut out, and they are designed (when the playtesting suggests that they are pretty stable) to be laminated in 95mm x 65mm laminating pouches.

This is really only a fun game intended for Lee and myself, but if anyone would like pdfs for the extensions to the C&CN rule set and for the two packs of cards, please send me a comment with your email address (mention if you don't want it published) or email me through my Blogger profile. What you will get will be the latest version - there won't be any ongoing customer support (!), though naturally I'll be very pleased to get feedback or suggestions if anyone wishes to contribute them. Please, though, don't bother to take the trouble to tell me that it is not as good as Forlorn Hope, or that I am an idiot - I already know these things.

Late edit: I hope the following links to Google Docs work for you - if not, please let me know - you should be able to download the extension to the basic C&CN rules, the Command Cards and the Chaunce Cards - if you do not have the C&CN rules they are available for download from GMT Games' website.    

The Klutz’s Guide to Flag Texturing

Plain, untextured, “flat” flag

I’ve been drawing and printing my own wargaming flags for a few years now. It’s fun, it’s cheap, you can print them whatever size you want, and it doesn’t matter if you mess one up during the fiddly job of gluing them onto 20mm scale flagpoles – just print another!

Recently I’ve started doing some ECW flags, which – again – is fun, but the flags tend to be more plain than the Napoleonic ones I’ve done before, and the commercial stuff you can buy (and the best of the freebie downloads that are available) look all the better for a bit of texturing. Three personal observations about texturing:

(1) A mixture of textured and untextured flags on the battlefield doesn’t look good

(2) ECW flags were taffeta (which is sort of silk), so it is not going to be possible to get that effect by curling the paper flags a bit at the corners

(3) Although I’ve played around with graphics tools for years, I’ve never found out how to do textured flags. There are tutorials on YouTube and elsewhere which I’ve sat through, but they are always presented by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, and mostly I don’t even understand the jargon they use. If someone mentions “layered objects” or “the feathering tool” I find my attention starts to wander.

So I’ve produced some pleasing, but plain, flat flags, and I’d really like to be able to use some ready made ones as well, so I set myself I little objective – I have Photoshop 7, why not learn how to do texturing? Then I would be able to mix my own flags and other people’s with cheerful abandon. First big help here was that one of my grown-up sons does a lot of graphic design as part of his job, so I commissioned him to come up with a short tutorial which even I could understand.

And he delivered. I felt it might be a nice idea to share my new knowledge here – if you wish to have a go then you will need Photoshop or some graphic editor of similar functionality – what follows explains the job in terms of Photoshop. I will mention some types of graphic files, but only because I need to, not because I’m an enthusiast. OK?

The first picture, at the top of this post, is a flat flag called YellowTest. My flags are 1270 pixels wide by 600 pixels high, as it happens, which – as you will see – gives me a wraparound flag with a bit of sleeve in the middle (to go around the pole). If you want to try this out, right click on the flag picture, choose “open in a new window”, then – when the big version opens up – right click on it again and select “save image as”. That will give you a full size copy of my flat YellowTest flag, called YellowTest.jpg

Texture Samples

Now you need a texture sample – you can easily find good examples on the internet. You need one that has the right sort of look, isn’t too violently textured (if it looks like it has come out of the washing machine spin cycle, don’t use it). You also need one that isn’t watermarked, and is large enough to have decent resolution. At this stage, it doesn’t matter much what file format it uses, either, though it will have to be in Photoshop psd format before we finish with it. Oh – and it doesn’t matter what colour it is, as long as it is only a single colour.

You need to download your texture sample, and you will need to crop out a piece which is about the shape of one half of your flag – try to get a fairly calm side edge where the pole will be. I’ve supplied one here – it is the texture for the right hand side (or obverse) of my flag, and I’ve chosen a calm side for my left hand (pole) edge. I’ve resized it (that’s “Resample” in Paintshop Pro) so that it is 635 pixels by 600 (half-flag sized), made it grayscale, and darkened it a lot more than you would expect – it’s important that there is no white at all left in the texture sample, or you get some very strange highlighting effects in the final flag.

Right (obverse)

Righto – first really nerdy bit. Because Blogger does not allow me to put a psd-type image file on here for download, I’ve had to upload it as a bog standard jpg, but otherwise it is correct. If you download it (same way as for the flag image), you will have to open it up in Photoshop and then save it again as a psd file – keep the name the same, just choose psd as the file type when you save it. My file is called Flagtexture1_R.jpg (for Right).

[By the way, the small versions of the images on this blog post will not be to a constant scale – Blogger makes the images the same size – but the big versions you download will be fine. That is why the half-flag texture samples on this screen are not half as big as the full-flag one.]

Left (reverse)

The next thing I had to do was to produce a mirror image of my texture for the other side of the flag – here it is. It is Flagtexture1_L.jpg (L for Left), but you’ll have to resave it as Flagtexture_L.psd using Photoshop. Keep both the Left and Right versions. Next step is to make a big new blank image, say 2000 pixels square and white, and carefully copy and paste the right-hand texture and the left-hand one next to each other, so that the left one is on the left (duh!) and the join is the calm edge. I cropped it and resized it back to 1270 x 600, and I’ve now got the full flag texture file. The downloadable one is called Flagtexture1.jpg, but again you need to re-save it from Photoshop as Flagtexture1.psd. Here is my version.

Full texture pattern

Textured Version of the Flag

My flag – just textured

In Photoshop open up both YellowTest.jpg (the flat, basic flag) and Flagtexture1.psd and click on the Flagtexture window – from the menus at the top, choose Select > All and a dotted rectangle will appear around the edge of the texture image. Now choose Edit > Copy.

Click on the flag image, and then choose Edit > Paste, and your yellow flag will suddenly look exactly like the texture sample.

Now the clever bit – on the right hand side of the Photoshop screen you will see a series of little editing screens, and the bottom one should have a tab with the word Layers displayed on it.

There is a little pull down menu on that bit, which will probably say Normal. Click on that pull-down and select Hard Light. And you will get a nasty mix of the two images. There are two slider controls in that same area of the screen for Opacity and Fill – adjust them to 50 and 50 and things will look much better. Try 80 and 40. When you are happy with the textured flag, save it under a new name as a jpg file.

Displaced and Textured Version of the Flag

Displaced and Textured

The textured flag is fine – that is what most of the downloadable stuff is. There is an additional step you can take to distort the pattern a little, so that the ripples on the flag show both in the lighting and in a slight stretching of the pattern.

We have to do the distortion before we do the texturing. Now it would be nice if you could do this for the whole flag in one go, but unfortunately the distortion will probably cause the middle of the flag to shift a bit, which will give odd results when you try to fold it around the pole. So we have to do it as two halves – which is why it is good we kept the Right and Left halves of the texture files.

Open up the original YellowTest.jpg in Photoshop, choose the pointer tool (you should get a little cross for your cursor), and draw a rectangle to select the right hand side of the flag – doesn’t matter too much if the middle is not quite exact, as long as you get the whole of the right hand side.

Now if you choose Filters > Distort > Displace a little menu appears. Keep the settings at 10 and 10 with 'stretch to fit' and 'repeat end pixels' highlighted.

Photoshop will then open a new window looking for a file to use for the displacement. Select the Flagtexture1_R.psd file you saved, and something a bit nasty will happen to the right half of the flag.

Now choose Select > Inverse and the other half will be highlighted. Go through the Filters > Distort > Displace bit again – just the same, but select Flagtexture1_L.psd this time. Your flag is now definitely looking a bit distressed.

Now choose Select > Deselect (so that the next job is done to the whole flag), and open up the full texture file Flagtexture1.psd. The rest of the job is the texturing, exactly as I described it above – copying and pasting the texture pattern on top of the (distressed) flag, then working with the Hard Light option in the Layers window and adjusting the sliders to 50/50 (or whatever you prefer). Job done – save your finished flag as a jpg under whatever name you like. You can lighten/darken it or alter the contrast to taste, and you can even use a Blur filter to soften the wrinkles a bit if you want – that is getting into the realms of playing with it.

I do not want to get into online support here, but if anything really doesn’t work get back to me.

Solo Campaign - Battle of Carpio de Azaba

Troops from D'Arnauld's brigade in Carpio Village

The Battle of Carpio de Azaba, 18^th June 1812

With a letter from the Minister for War in his saddlebags, urging him to press on, the new Allied C-in-C, The Earl of Aigburth (better known as General Banestre Tarleton), advanced very rapidly from Almeida, over the border into Spain, along the road towards Ciudad Rodrigo. His intention was to attempt to surprise Clauzel, with the portion of the Armée de Portugal which had been ordered to protect Ciudad Rodrigo, defeat him, and move on to attack the fortress before the French had time to make good the defences damaged during their own successful siege a month earlier.

Aigburth’s force comprised the Anglo-Portuguese Third, Seventh and Light Divisions of infantry, the cavalry brigades of Long, Viktor Von Alten and De Jonquieres, a single battery of foot artillery and no less than three troops of horse artillery, a force of 16,600 men with 22 guns. Some regiments in the Seventh Divn were severely reduced in numbers by their efforts in the campaign to date. The few remaining fit men of the Brunswick-Oels Jaeger battalion, the 51^st Foot, the 68^th Foot and the 2^nd Light Bn of the KGL were attached to other regiments. The army made good time on the march, the spirit of the troops was excellent, considering what they had been through in past months. On the night of Monday 15^th June the column bivouacked near to the old battlefield of Fuentes de Onoro, which was seen as a positive omen by the men. Always wakeful and urging more speed, the Earl impressed his staff by his energy and the clarity of his orders.

As had been the case just three weeks earlier, his army was opposed by Clauzel, with his own and Maucune’s Divisions of the Armée de Portugal, plus the cavalry brigades of Col. Picquet and Treillard and 4 foot batteries – a total 13,550 men with 32 guns. Having recently retreated from Almeida after being defeated there by Wellington (with a very similar OOB for both sides), Clauzel had assembled his force with considerable haste from its wide-spread billets. At 9:30 in the morning of 18^th June, with his infantry still shivering from fording the Rivera de Azaba during the night, Aigburth advanced to attack the French position – Clauzel had placed his line with its centre in the village of Carpio de Azaba.

[This game was played using CCN rules but, because the forces were rather too large for the Command Card system, an additional rule was added whereby the “Probe” Section cards could be played, instead, as a single move of all units and leaders in the named section – this movement could not result in contact, and the moved units could not carry out any combat. This option was exercised twice during the action. Being the attackers, the Allies had first move throughout, 6 cards each, and 10 Victory Banners for outright victory.]

The field is part of a plateau adjacent to the Spanish border. There are a number of small hillocks and some wooded areas, but the field is generally open. The village of Carpio was roughly triangular in 1812, with a population of approximately 250.

Aigburth positioned Picton’s Third Divn on his right, with the Light Divn, supported by all the horse artillery and with the Seventh Divn in reserve behind them, on the left and opposite the village. Clauzel had Berlier (with Clauzel’s Divn) on his left, and Maucune’s Divn in the village and extending to his right. Both generals placed most of their cavalry on the flanks – aware that the open ground would make cavalry a threat.

The Allied attack began on the left – riflemen and horse artillery to the fore, in a style which must have been very different from Tarleton’s experience in America 30 years before. The Rifles came into their own, using their extra range to harass the French gunners and cause loss to the French infantry. This stage of the attack was mainly an exchange of artillery fire, while some rifle units on the Allied left flank cleared a wooded area of French infantry, but progress was halted abruptly when the French, led in person by Baron Maucune, rallied strongly and pushed the Allies back again. This counter-attack was so vigorous, and for a while so successful, that at one stage it was difficult to see which army was the attacker, but – once again – the unsung heroes of Eustace’s Chasseurs Britanniques held things together, established themselves in one of the disputed woods and allowed time for the reserves to come up. There was some frenzied cavalry action on this flank at this point – the Duke of Brunswick-Oels’ Hussars performing in outstanding fashion, defeating both the 14e Chasseurs a Cheval and the Lanciers de la Vistule, who were routed very quickly – admittedly General Cotton was present in person, [and he brought a fine Cavalry Charge card with him].

Once again, the cavalry conflicts did little but wipe out most of the cavalry [mental note: I really must try to have a solo wargame some time which does not involve so much pointless slaughter in the cavalry]. However, the combined Portuguese cavalry unit did well to force one of the battalions of the 82e Ligne into square, a situation from which they were chased by the combined fire of Ross’ Troop of the RHA and a battalion of the 95^th Rifles.

At this point, as a result of artillery fire on the advancing British, and of the cavalry actions on the flanks, the French held a 7:2 lead in Victory Banners, a situation which did not really reflect the balance of advantage. The French were defending stoutly, and Clauzel was generally successful in pulling tired units out of the firing line and bringing in fresh ones, but – despite his apparent advantage in Victory Banners – he now had many units which were reduced to a single base/block, and were no longer able to contribute to the battle. If the Allies could avoid suffering the critical 10^th Banner, they had enough troops to win the day.

In the end, the result was (in boxing terms) a points win. The Allies never did roll over the French line, nor break into Carpio village – as the attack developed, the Victory Banners score came to 8-all, then 9:8 to the Allies as a battery was put out of action, then 9-all as the French replied in kind, and silenced MacDonald’s RHA troop. Then the last of Montfort’s battalions on the right were broken by the Allied fire, and it was 10:9 to Aigburth. Rather closer than he would have hoped for, but a clear enough win in the end.

Clauzel withdrew in good order, the 3 battalions of the 15e Ligne determinedly holding the village to cover the retreat, but his lack of cavalry meant that most of the wounded had to be left on the field, and there was an element of panic among the troops as they fell back – leaving the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo exposed and heading to join with Jourdan’s forces at Salamanca.

General de Brigade Berlier, commanding Clauzel’s Divn on the day, was seriously wounded late in the day, and  General de Division Maucune was struck by a canister ball while at the head of the 86e Ligne, and he died within minutes.

The Earl of Aigburth was clearly elated at the end of the action, but was shaking with fatigue. The Portuguese cavalry, the KGL heavy dragoons and the heroic Brunswick Hussars were dispatched to keep the retiring French moving, and to assess the situation at Ciudad Rodrigo.

    

OOBs

French Force – Gen de Divn Bertrand, Baron Clauzel

2^nd Divn, Armée de Portugal (Gen de Bde Berlier, acting)

Bde Berlier (Col. De Conchy) – 25e Leger & 27e Ligne [3 bns]

Bde Pinoteau – 50e & 59e Ligne [4]

15/3e Art a Pied (Capt. Pajot)

5^th Divn, Armée de Portugal (Gen de Divn Antoine-Louis Popon, Baron Maucune)

Bde Arnauld – 15e & 66e Ligne [4 Bns]

Bde Montfort – 82e & 86e Ligne [3]

11/8e Art a Pied (Capt. Genta)

Cavalry

Bde Col. Picquet – 6e Dragons & 1er Dragons Provisoirs (4e & 11e) [6 Sqns]

Bde Treillard – 14e Chasseurs, 7e Chev-Lanc (Vistule), Dragoni Napoleone [9 Sqns]

Reserve Artillery

10/3e & 19/3e Art a Pied (Capts. Dyvincourt & Gariel)

Total force engaged approx 13550 men with 32 guns. Loss approx 3200 infantry, 875 cavalry and 10 guns. Gen. Berlier was severely wounded, though he is expected to recover. General Maucune was killed leading his Division.

Allied Force – General the Earl of Aigburth

Third Divn (Maj.Gen Sir Thomas Picton)

Col. Wallace’s Bde – 1/45^th, 74^th & 1/88^th Ft + 3 coys 5/60^th

Col. J Campbell’s Bde – 2/5^th, 2/83^rd & 94^th Ft

Palmeirim’s Bde – 9^th & 21^st Ptgse + 11^th Cacadores [5 Bns total]

10/9^th Bn Royal Artillery (Maj. Douglas)

Seventh Divn (Maj.Gen JHK Von Bernewitz, acting)

Col. Halkett’s Bde – combined Lt Bn (1^st & 2^nd Lt Bns KGL & 68^th Ft)

Von Bernewitz’ Bde (Col. Eustace) – Chasseurs Britanniques & Tomar Militia Bn (attached)

Troop E, RHA (Capt. MacDonald)

Light Divn (Maj.Gen Karl, Baron Von Alten)

Col. Beckwith’s Bde – 1/43^rd, 1/95^th & 3/95^th + 3^rd Cacadores

Vandeleur’s Bde – 1/52^nd & 2/95^th + 1^st Cacadores

Troop I, RHA (Maj. Ross)

Cavalry (Lt.Gen Sir Stapleton Cotton)

                Long’s Bde – 3^rd Dgns, 5^th Dgn Gds [6 Sqns]

                Viktor Von Alten’s Bde – 1^st Hussars KGL, Brunswick-Oels Hussars [6]

                Provisional Bde (Col. De Jonquières) – 1^st Dgns KGL, Prov Ptgse Cav (dets 1^st & 11^th) [6]

Troop A, RHA (Maj. Bull)

Total force engaged, approx 16600 men with 22 guns. Total loss approx 1100 infantry, 725 cavalry and 4 guns disabled.

Detail losses:

French – 1/27 (-3 blocks), 2/27 (-1), 2/50, 3/50, 4/66 (-2 each), 15/3 Art a Pied (-1), Arnauld’s tirailleur bn, 5/82 (-2 each), 1/86, 2/86 (-1 each), 6e Dragons (-2), 11e Dragons (-1), 10/3 Art a Pied (-3), 4e Dragons, 14e Ch-a-Ch (-1 each), Lanciers de la Vistule (-2)

Anglo-Portuguese – Wallace’s combined lt.coys (-2), 5/60^th (-1), Troop ‘E’ RHA (-2), 1/95^th (-1), 1^st Cac (-2), 1/52^nd, 2/95^th (-1 each), 3^rd Dgns (-3), 5^th Dgn Gds (-1), KGL Hussars (-1)

General view at the start, from the South-East (behind the French left)

Clauzel's position, from his left - Picquet's dragoons in the foreground

Treillard's light cavalry, on the other flank, with the Vistula Legion

Lancers in evidence - they did not have a good day  

Hanging about - some of Picton's troops

First time in action since the previous century - the Earl of

Aigburth watches anxiously

State of the Art - rifles and horse artillery - slow going, though

95th Rifles - the Qualiticast Battalion

Cotton supervising the Riflemen clearing the woods...

...with the odd setback

Fine fellows all - the Chasseurs Britanniques, who have done very well

throughout the campaign

Assault Center - and about time too

The Brunswick Hussars upset some elite opposition.

Bearing in mind his fondness for a bet, we can only hope

the Earl had some money on this one

With everything updated for the battle, here are the returns and the map for 21st June 1812 (Week 22)

ECW - The Rabble

I believe I may have mentioned this matter here before. I have already had some valuable advice from Clive, John C and others – for which many thanks – and I have a short term plan which I shall say more about in a moment, but I thought it might be a good move to air the topic more widely, to see if anyone has some good ideas.

While reading about the ECW in Lancashire and other, similarly provincial parts of Up North, I have come to understand that a proportion of the infantry - especially Parliamentarian town guard and militia units, were often just citizens armed with anything they could get their hands on. Of course, there are no suitable figures available in 20mm (which serves me right, I guess), so I've been having a good think what I could use for such characters. The idea is that they should be compatible with my Les Higgins/Hinton Hunt armies – a size range that also includes SHQ and (some) Tumbling Dice things.

Irregular are too small, as are Niblet. Mainstream old-style 25mm such as Minifigs S-Range (and there are two very nice armed peasants in the range) are too big, as are Art Miniaturen and the forthcoming Falcata 30YW figures, and so are all 1/72 plastics, sadly – I was impressed by Dux Homunculorum’s clubmen converted from the Imex “Pilgrims” set. I am happy to consider figures from a different (though similar) period.

My present plan is to convert some Les Higgins ECW artillerymen, and maybe some Hinton Hunt artillerymen if I can find spares – give them the odd new hat, remove their artillery tools to give them open hands, animate them a bit and fit them with pole arms (bits of florists’ wire, plus any suitable axes and bits and pieces I can get). I probably need 2 or 3 units – I would go for normal ECW figures for the command, on the assumption that the leaders would be better dressed, so I would need about 60 suitable clubmen, preferably in a suitably disorganised mixture of poses (i.e. at least 3, for preference).

If I can make up some decent converted prototypes I can arrange to get some copies made, but this is all a bit of an unexpected challenge. I knew I was going to have to obtain some Scots at some point, but there are suitable figures by both Hinton Hunt and SHQ. If you are aware of any (21mm tall) 20mm ECW figures which I haven’t mentioned, or you have any good ideas on good donor figures for cunning conversions, I’d be very pleased to hear from you.