Hooptedoodle #315 - The Sun Made It Again

Yesterday, 07:50 - looking more or less due east, East Lothian, Scotland. Another interesting sky - this shot isn't from the usual window overlooking our garden, this was taken by my wife, here on the farm, on the way back from the school run. Our house is somewhere in the woods ahead. That may be my personal raincloud heading this way.

When it got going, the day was fine - a bit blustery and definitely colder, but sunny.

Later I hope to have some pictures of some more troops from the painting factory...

Battle of Eggmühl, 22nd April 1809

Wargaming yesterday; delighted to welcome Goya and Stryker from Up North (or Further Up North, I suppose). Goya brought along an Austrian army (on the train - we are always at the leading edge of technical innovation here at Chateau Foy) and Stryker brought along Marshal Davout. Stryker and I were to command the French forces.

Our game was - unusually for me - one of the published scenarios from Commands & Colors: Napoleonics. This was No.312 - Eggmühl - Day 2 - French Left, which I think must be from Expansion 3 (the Austrian bit). One reason I am always hesitant about using other people's scenarios is because they are usually designed to give both sides a chance of winning, which is OK from a social aspect but sometimes dubious historically, and often (I have found) they give you a grinding match while one side waits for a lucky dice roll or a show-stopping card to give them an edge. I'm sure that GMT Games and their countless fans will not worry at all about my views, I hasten to add.

Anyway, we used the scenario, and it looked interesting, and in fact it gave us a nice game. A feature of the day was that we also used some experimental house tweaks to the rule system. I don't wish to say too much about these at present, since they are still under development, but they seemed promising.

Neither am I going to discuss the real (i.e. historical) battle, since it is well-known, and the portion of it we were playing, though it makes a decent standalone game, is a bit odd in isolation. I will, however, mention briefly the small matter of spelling. If you know better, or can give a better-informed view, please do pitch in here. The locals call the place Eggmühl - I have a locally-produced tourist souvenir of the battle, and there it is - Egg - as in Scrambled Egg. Not Eck, as in Prince of Eckmühl, or as in Bloomin' 'Eck. I assume that the proper German name must be Eckmühl - "the corner mill" (bend in the river Grosse Laabe?), and that the local Bavarian dialect says Egg. The French have always called it Eckmühl, of course, but their track record with German place names is not good anyway. [Ratisbonne? What's that?]

As usual, I'll attempt to fill in a narrative around the photos. In passing, I managed to get hold of some brighter bulbs for the over-table lighting (1200 lumen halogens, two of them, which are supposed to give the same light as old-money 150w jobs, but much less heat), so the photos may be a little brighter than in previous efforts.

As a spoiler, I have to tell you that the French lost [damn]. It wasn't a complete whitewash, but the field is very busy with villages and woods, and the Austrian line infantry, slow-moving and potentially brittle though they are, have 5-blocks-worth of musketry per battalion, and that is a very serious prospect all round. And, of course, Goya commanded his defence rather better than did Rosenberg in 1809. Our rules of the day stipulated 10 Victory Banners for the win, but the situation was sometimes quite difficult to follow, since there were temporary VBs available for possession of the villages, and the exact timing of when these counted was sufficiently complicated for me still to be unable to understand it this morning. I think the final score was about 10-7 to the Kaiserlichs, but I'll take advice on that. French did well enough, but couldn't keep up any kind of momentum in the face of the Austrian musketry.

By the way, if my account of the day shows a little French bias, I hope you will indulge me - the defeat is too recent and too painful. Like all military history, it may take some years for a truthful impartiality to creep into the narrative.

General view from behind the French right flank, at commencement. The French cavalry in
the foreground were always going to struggle to get some open ground to work in. Beyond them
are Von Deroy's shiny new Bavarians, then St Hilaire's Division, and at the far end Friant's boys.
The villages are, in order of proximity to the camera, Unterlaichling, Oberlaichling and
Obersanding, with various arrangements of VBs available for each.

View straight down the middle of the table at the same stage - note that the Bavarians
have some distance to advance across open farmland to attack the village and woods
in the centre.

Unterlaichling - first attack and the Bavarians took the place. A brief moment of glory -
subsequently the village and its neighbouring woods changed hands so many times I
lost count, though our lot never seemed to be in possession when it came time to tot up
the temporary VBs.

On the French left, Friant made a big push through the woods and towards Obersanding.
Heavy going. The dude on the right hand edge, on his own, is Davout, currently Duc
d'Auerstadt and, sadly, destined to remain so.

The problem - too many Hungarians in the Plastic Forest. You're sure of a
big surprise.

Erm - and suddenly the French had a lot less troops advancing on the left...

...and St Hilaire's division in the centre didn't fancy their chances much...

...and the Bavarians, though they are fleetingly back in Unterlaichling here, with some
French légère boys on their left, were running out of men and out of steam. 

Theme for the day - the French needed a bigger superiority in numbers to win the day.
Here they just don't have enough fresh troops left, and we are getting near the end.

After the official VB target was reached, we played on for a little while. I fiddled around
with some of the under-employed French cavalry on the right flank, which was fun but
enhanced neither the result nor the historic narrative. Faint shades of Borodino - some
cuirassiers capture an artillery position on the Bettelberg, but it makes no difference!

Bavarians - 3rd Division Commander

Needed for action on Saturday, here we have General Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy (on the nimble little horse...) and his General-Adjutant; the figures are both from the old Falcon range, now marketed by Hagen. The Adjutant has the Quick-Reference Sheet handy. The gentleman in the cloak is easily recognisable as the ubiquitous Minifigs FNX1, rescued from the spares box and repainted as an officer of cavalry attached to the Bavarian staff - he's obviously seen it all before. The white edging to the base allows quick location of a divisional general.

The mounted figure has a toy-like, Noggin the Nog air, which I find rather appealing. There is a joke here - one of the few stories about Deroy (who was an older officer, and a bit of a traditionalist) describes his fury when he found that his troops were growing all sorts of non-regulation facial hair on campaign - orders of the day appeared very quickly. This casting has a very luxuriant moustache, so poor old Deroy can hide behind a Full Groucho - maybe it's a move to gain the affection of his men?

Sorry the Arctic light has dimmed down the colours a bit - these Bavarian chappies are pretty vivid normally.

Deroy - no whiskers here

Deroy commanded the 3rd Bavarian Division in the VII Corps on the Danube. A well respected veteran and a good leader, he was mortally wounded at Polotsk in 1812.

Hooptedoodle #314 - October - Unusual Visitor (and other stuff)

Nice, sunny day today - cold first thing in the morning, then the sun shone all day. We have started putting some food out for the birds again - starting with a suet block on the apple tree. Much excitement among the humble sparrows and dunnocks, but we also got a couple of visitors we seldom see here. They are not rare locally, but they don't come here.

Motacilla cinerea - Grey Wagtail

Grey Wagtails - despite the name, much more colourful than their cousins the Pied Wagtail, who are regulars here. Whatever the weather did in 2018, it has certainly produced a lot of insects in October, so the Wagtails of all varieties are very busy, and very entertaining they are too.

Photos, as ever, courtesy of the Contesse Foy.

While we are on about insects, this is the time of year when we get one of our visits from Cluster Flies - they arrive in large numbers, but always in the same rooms, on the same windows (how do they know?). They are harmless, in the sense that they don't bite, and they don't contaminate your food, but the sheer number of them is a menace. In October they come looking for somewhere to hibernate, and really they are small enough to go anywhere they want, so they are impossible to keep out if they wish to get in. A few years ago we had a scary episode when the Contesse discovered there were thousands of the beggars wintering in the tiny gap between the window sashes and the frames in a bedroom which overlooks the woods at the back of the house. Regular checking for uninvited squatters, occasional applications of the vacuum cleaner and some understated Raid spray in the crevices in the window, and we have had no repeats.

Don't panic - this isn't our photo - this is just what they look like

Their life cycle is interesting, if you are not eating a blueberry muffin at the moment. They swarm and mate in the early Spring (when they emerge from wherever it is they have been hibernating), and the females lay their eggs near earthworm burrows. When they hatch, the larvae tunnel down, attach themselves to earthworms and spend a gruesome summer in the dark, underground. When the weather turns colder (about now, in fact) the new adult flies emerge in great numbers, and set off looking for desirable winter quarters such as our bedroom windows. So you get two swarms a year - one at this time, when they move into a sheltered winter home, then another in the Spring, when it's time to wake up and mate. As far as I know, that's about it for Cluster Flies - seems a pretty pointless existence, though the earthworms might have something to add.

We also have a fine crop of toadstools in the lawn, which is seasonal - lots of moss in the lawn, plenty of rain recently, and bingo - here they are again. The last mowing of the lawns (which will be a little late this year because the long Summer has meant that the grass is still growing after we would have expected it to pack in) will get rid of them, and things can go to sleep until next year.

Oh yes - Dod the Gardener has planted a load more crocus bulbs in the grass verge in the lane, so we should get a nice show in the early Spring. Something to look forward to.

[I think Dod goes to sleep in the Winter as well, boys and girls.]


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

It is now the following morning, and the aforementioned Dod has already dug out the toadies (they are unpleasantly squishy) and is now applying lawn sand to - that's right, you  guessed - the lawns. This stuff is to be applied by a push-along rotary spreader, so we have jointly been searching out the reading glasses and reading the instructions on the plastic sacks. 

Right.

The instructions on the bag say you should go to the manufacturer's website at www.gardenhealth.com to get the correct setting for your particular job and your particular spreader (ours is a Scott's EasyGreen - I knew you wanted to know this). In fact I don't live too far from our garden, so was able to do this without much difficulty, and took a shortened version of a large printout for Dod's enlightenment. Set to number 30 on the adjuster, it says, and do the lawns twice, at right angles, in a sort of tartan pattern. First problem I had was trying to do the arithmetic in my head, before my first coffee. The table from the website says this will give you about 112-135gm/sq.m - at two passes, I estimate that my 2 large sacks of lawn sand will cover about one-third of one of the 3 lawns, though each sack is claimed to treat 200 sq.m. We have something like 300 sq.m of lawns. Spinning of head - does not compute.

Dod sets the trap-door in the bottom of the spreader to number 30, and can see right away that the thing is going to empty itself far too quickly. Thus he proposes to guess a reduced setting, see how thickly the sand goes on, and go over it again if it isn't enough. That, we agreed, is easier than trying to scoop the stuff back up if we run out. Something bothers me about this. Apart from the collapse of my ability with fractions (which is only one of a number of such concerns...), I have this mental image of a groundsman, half a mile from the nearest electricity, at the end of the cricket field somewhere, probably working in the rain, desperately trying to get a signal on his mobile phone to access the flaming website.

The triumph of gratuitous science.

What are we doing here? The lawn sand manufacturer has instructed us where to get details of the spreader settings (which may or may not be correct), but it isn't exactly handy, is it? Which banana thought this was good customer service? I suspect there will be a big increase in the number of mental health issues among gardeners and groundsmen in the near future.

*******************  

French Cuirassier Division - finished at last

It's taken longer than expected, but what did I expect...?

Command figures all painted, flags and bases sorted out. As ever, cheerful does it every time.

I'd never thought of having a Cuirassier Division, but here it is. Stryker maintains he is going to chase them the length of the Danube. He and whose army, I ask...?

Next week I hope to get a Bavarian general ready for action. Fighting next Saturday. Busy, busy.

2e Cuirassiers

3e Cuirassiers

7e Cuirassiers

8e Cuirassiers

...and the compulsory group photo is faked by the 13e Cuirassiers getting involved in
the background; since they finally got a proper officer out of the figure swaps (after only
30 years waiting) they felt they deserved to be included, even if strictly speaking they
don't belong in the Division.

[I do hope that my old friend Wanko01 does not share this lot with his merry chums on that certain forum that I am not fit to mention, but in truth I don't care a lot.] 

Home-Brewed Flags: French Cuirassiers

In case they are any use to anyone, here are the 1804-pattern flags I've drawn up for my cuirassiers. The real flags were 60cm square, which is about 9mm in 1/72 scale. If I print this image at 58% full size I get 1cm flags, which is near enough for jazz. Click on the image below to get the full size, and save it.

Guest Appearance: ECW Hinton Hunt

Steve Cooney sent me an email, and was kind enough to include some photos, which are definitely worth a look, I think. Steve makes the point that, for devotees of Hinton Hunt, since tabletop Napoleonic battles normally feature large numbers of units, the small matter (literally) of keeping the footprint down, plus the limited availability of figures, mean that there has evolved a standard battalion size of two dozen or so figures. On the other hand, the smaller numbers of units needed for ECW actions have allowed Steve to experiment with larger regiment sizes, with greater emphasis on the look of the thing. His preferred unit size is 42-45 men for foot - you can see the effect in the pictures.

Nice, eh?

Thanks Steve - I for one am now crippled with envy, but I'll be all right...