For King and Parliament

Plain side of the boards now have squares on

So what's all this, Foy?

Well, in common with a lot of other chaps I have been looking at the For King and Parliament rules, which are a recent ECW extension of the popular To the Strongest Ancient/Medieval game, and I have to say I am very impressed.

I am pretty comfortable with my own current C&CN-based ECW game, which handles very large games splendidly, but there are a few characteristic subtleties of pike & shot warfare which I have struggled to build into such a high-level rule set. Having received good reports of To the Strongest, I purchased the FK&P rules, and am currently on my 4th read-through. They look good. They seem to offer a very entertaining game, not too complex, the philosophy of which is very much in the spirit of how I like wargames to be, and they handle some of these aforementioned subtleties rather nicely. Hmmm.

I have reached the point where it would make sense to try the game out. My two overriding concerns are whether it really would handle what I regard as a large battle, and - to be frank - I am a bit alarmed by the amount of clutter associated with it. I don't care for roster systems, so having all necessary information on the table, with the units, is very acceptable. On the other hand, this game involves copious use of playing cards (it is a dice-free system, though there are dice-based alternatives), ammunition chits of three varieties (pistol, musket and artillery -  why three varieties? - is this because infantry may have light artillery attached?), "dash" chits for cavalry, "untried" markers, pursuit pointers, victory "medals", disorganisation chits (= losses in the terminology of most other games) and assorted information about specific leaders and units. I have obtained some half-sized playing cards, but I am concerned that all this stuff might reduce the tabletop (especially if the tabletop has me attached) to a state that in a less correct age would have been termed as like a tart's handbag.

I'm working on it - I have consulted the Jolly Broom Man, who is also looking to adopt these rules, and he has some constructive thoughts on how it may be possible to reduce the depth of laser-printed MDF counters so that one may see over the top.

First practical issue for me is that the game uses a square grid. I have no problem with this at all - I am very much in favour of grids - except that I do not have such a thing handy. Well, I didn't - I do now. I gave some thought to tweaking the game so it would work with hexes (I have boards, scenery, all sorts for a hex-based game). The Northumbrian Wargamer's excellent blog explains the adaptation to hexes, and it seems to work OK. I decided against that, to give the game a fair trial in its intended form.

I came up with a simple way of adding a square grid to the reverse (plain) side of my existing warboards - a solution which could be quickly and easily painted over if I lose interest in the idea, which understates the square pattern in the interests of avoiding dizzy turns, and is subtle enough to be ignored if an un-gridded field is needed. The picture makes it clear what I have done - this is one of the table sections, freshly marked out on the reverse side. To allow room for the 60mm square bases I use with my ECW troops, I settled on 7½ inch squares. This may seem like an odd size, but it works OK with my unit sizes, and it very conveniently divides into a 5-foot table width to give 8 squares deep. I have marked out the boards so that I can have a 12 x 8 cell standard table, or 15 x 8 if I add in the (5th) extension board . That's all fine - I haven't tried it yet, but it seems workable. I will have a problem to solve for roads (which run through the centres of cells, but I don't have any suitable bits for 8" squares) and streams (which run around the edges of squares, a system which seems more intuitively comfortable than the C&CN arrangement, but - again - I will need to set something up). Most of the other scenic bits I can probably hash together from what I already have.

Despite my (predictable?) carping, nit-picking approach, I am enthusiastic. If the rules really do allow very big games to be fought then I am ready to make FK&P my ECW rules of choice. If they work well, but don't handle anything as big as Marston Moor (etc), then I can still turn my boards over to the hex side and use the C&CN-based game for special whoppers. A lot will depend on how comfortable I am with the amount of clutter involved.

From being the only wargamer in the known universe who uses 7-inch hexes, I have moved on to be the only one to use 7½-inch squares. Whether or not this is progress will reflect how the test games go.

Bavarians - The First of the Cavalry

I'm very pleased to welcome the first cavalry unit for the 3rd Division of the VII (Bavarian) Corps of the Grande Armee of 1809. These are freshly painted by my friend Goya, for which kindness I am deeply grateful; he and I agree that painting Hinton Hunt figures is challenging because some of the detail on the old castings is implied rather than in your face - thus the exact location of the piping around the lapels on these chaps (for example) is partly a matter of guesswork.

We are also agreed, however, that the figures really do look very good if they are well painted. I bow to his efforts on this lot! Thank you again, Count G.

This is the 4th Regiment of Chevauxlegers Bubenhofen, all ready to fight on the Danube. This regiment also fought in Russia and in the 1813 unpleasantness, but by that time they had become the 6th Ch-Leg for reasons which are too fiddly to go into.

Anyway, here they are, and very welcome. The officer and trumpeter are both conversions, for which thanks are due to Wellington Man.

The number of new painted units here recently has finally outstripped my stock of bases and sabots, so I have had to order some more from Uncle Tony at ERM. In the meantime I am very pleased to have dug out some pre-used bases which were previously attached to a unit of Brunswick Hussars (now departed). Considering that wargames collections (well, mine, anyway) are a veritable hymn to self-indulgence and waste, I can't understand why re-cycling a few penceworth of old bases would give me any pleasure at all - very strange.

They'll be provided with a smart new sabot of the correct size as soon as Uncle Tony sends some along.

Rapid Fire for Rookies...

Yesterday I made the trip up to the part of Scotland which is known as Perth & Kinross - a title which is not exactly concise, and which probably isn't very traditional either, but at least it's unambiguous. The occasion was a visit to Schloss Goya, the home of the famed Count. I had a splendid trip on the bus, and arrived in time for coffee and a quick viewing of the regiment of Bavarian Chevauxlegers which the Count is very kindly painting for me. Great stuff - I am confident these chaps will be ready to show here very soon. The advantages of getting Goya to help me with painting work are twofold: (1) I don't have to paint them myself, and (2) the quality of the painting is definitely superior!

German force advance out of the low sun of morning - my two Panthers are on the left flank, advancing as slow as necessary to allow the accompanying infantry company to keep up

He was kind enough to lay on a very fine lunch, and in the afternoon we had a bash at a WW2 game he had set up - a small encounter action between German and Russian forces, racing to seize a crossroads. It was the very first WW2 miniatures game I have ever taken part in, and the rules we used were Rapid Fire for Rookies, the two-page babies' version of RF, as befits my experience level. I was the German commander; I'll not attempt to give a coherent narrative, since I had very little idea what was going on most of the time, and I must apologise for the very poor photos, taken with my iPhone. I took a great many more pictures, but most were blurred and horrible. I must also emphasise that the game did look rather better than this sketchy post might suggest! I wasted a lot of time in admiring the 20mm figures - this is all new to me.

Overall view of my "left hook" with the Panthers - heavy weapons group heading into the woods in the middle

I regret to say that this is the only photo of the Russians which was clear enough to make out - this taken from a spotter plane early on. I suspect that it was fear which caused the camera-shake. As you see, the old Russkis are very keen on straight lines

I was pleased to get my tanks into this position so quickly...

...but instantly one of them was knocked out...

...and immediately afterwards my only gun was also kaput - my full repertoire of German swear words proved inadequate (obviously something I'll have to work on)

So my surviving Panther went off on a tour of the battlefield which eventually put paid to all the opposition's armour, and also eliminated a lot of his infantry

My infantry trying to keep up with the advance

Mostly because I wondered what would happen, I sent a single soldier with a Panzerfaust to take on a Russian self-propelled gun which was causing problems. He missed, and you only get one shot with a Panzerfaust. That's what happened...

The unstoppable Panther continued on its tour, mopping up resistance...

Though I suffered almost as many infantry casualties as the enemy, I won on points, as they say in boxing, and I was definitely in control of the crossroads. Very interesting little game - I enjoyed it, but I sincerely hope I don't get promoted on the strength of it

I had a lot to think about on the bus back to Edinburgh. Another grand day out!

Hooptedoodle #322 - Where Are Heroes When You Need Them?

I have lived through the twitterings and the pantomime protocols of our useless, deluded Parliament for too long. A room full of over-inflated, would-be celebrities, who confuse loyalty to their pals and their wretched, outmoded political parties with the job they were elected to do.

They could not run a bath.

I am ashamed - of course I'm angry, but I'm also embarrassed to think how pathetic we must appear to other nations. This, mark you, is the very same Mother of Parliaments we are determined to keep sacrosanct, to protect from the influence of evil foreigners. The bus to Beachy Head is now warmed up, and there are seats for all. We have not yet decided whether the window blinds will be open or closed for the final descent - we'll have a vote on that next Tuesday, after the Bingo.

Bavarians - Where I'm at, and What's Next

The next thing to do is to get the 3rd Divn of Lefebvre's (Bavarian) VII Corps of 1809 finished off. I still need two infantry brigadiers, a brigade of cavalry (2 regts - one of dragoons, one of chevauxlegers - plus a brigadier) and two artillery batteries (including one of Light Artillery). That will be the main components - I can add sappers/engineers and limber teams as time permits.

I may have posted pictures of some of this stuff already. Here are the raw materials for the next steps. The cavalry will all be Hinton Hunt based, and the artillery equipment will be Franznap - for gunners I have a choice of SHQ or Franznap.

The cavalry figures set out here are (L to R) an original HH Chevauxlegers trooper, then conversions produced by Wellington Man of a Chevauxlegers officer and trumpeter, and a dragoon trooper (different-shaped shabraque). I am still doing some experimentation for the command figures for the dragoon unit, but the most likely solution at present is SHQ French line lancer command figures, with HH heads and with the uniform detail re-carved as necessary, mounted on 20mm Garrison horses - we'll see how that goes.

The artillery figures are (L to R) two SHQ figures and three Franznap. Though a good height match, you can see that the Franznap figures are slimmer, and I'll avoid mixing the two breeds in any one unit, though the different makes can co-exist on the table in separate units, I think.

Interestingly, Franznap only make gun crews for the Light Artillery, which brought me back with a bump to the small matter of how the Light and Heavy(?) artillery differed. I have not had a great deal of help on this from the better known modern sources, but in fact it's all OK. The Bavarians did eventually have horse artillery, in the French style, but in 1809 the Light Artillery was simply artillery who were equipped with - erm - lighter guns (6pdrs), and the gunners had a tendency to ride around on those splendid Wurstwagen things. Uniforms? - no real difference, as far as I can tell. So that simplifies matters a bit - I might think about getting a Franznap Wurstwagen - sounds like Phase 1(c) to me.

At risk of sounding like the Golden Globes, I thought I'd mention a few people without whose help I couldn't have made the progress I managed to date - not even close, in fact. Flipping back through this blog, I see a first mention of a possible Bavarian contingent in my State of the Union report in August 2017. By 2nd April last year I was experimenting with preparing some Der Kriegsspieler castings for the first infantry. This week I have 10 battalions ready to fight - I'm really pleased with that. For help with sourcing figures, painting, encouragement, consultancy, charitable donations of effort and castings I have to acknowledge sincere thanks to Evan, Stryker, Ian P, Aulus Grammaticus, Goya, David M, David Y, Old John, Matthew, Uwe and Andreas (die Spielzeugmacher, or Brothers Grimm) and to Chuck Gibke in the US for his knowledge of the old DK ranges. If I've forgotten to mention you, then you know I'm grateful anyway - in particular Jonathan, Lee, Peter A, Ray, Aly, Ross and those others who have egged me on by making encouraging comments as the troops appeared.

Thanks very much!

Bavarians - 3rd Divn Infantry now complete

Bavarian 10. LIR "Junker"

The infantry for the 3rd Divn of VII Corps of 1809 are now finished. Both battalions of the 10th line regiment were based and provided with flags and sabots this morning, and photos taken for the Catalogue.

1st Battalion - that'll be Oberstleutnant Von Poellnitz on the cuddy

2nd Battalion

The cavalry are still to be painted, as are the artillery, but I now have the figures in stock. I'll put some photos of the artillery castings up here in a day or so. I still need to paint some brigadiers, and some sappers would be nice. It's all gone rather well thus far - I'm not sure when (or if) the 2nd Divn is likely to get started, but I have figures ready for that as well. One project at a time, if you don't mind.

And because it seemed a suitable occasion, here's a picture of all the finished infantry - here you see General Deroy, with the 5th (Buttler) and 7th (Gunther) Light Bns, and the 9th (Ysenburg), 10th (Junker), 5th (Von Preysing) and 14th Line Regts, all the line units being of two battalions.

Deroy with the infantry of 3rd Divn, VII Corps, all ready for the Danube campaign

Battle of Aspern-Essling (Day 1) - 21 May 1809

Wargaming yesterday - early start to get to Schloss Goya for 10am kick-off. My idea that it would be amusing to arrive with fresh custard tarts was stillborn, since I couldn't obtain any. No matter, in fact, since our host laid on the customary excellent food and refreshments.

View over the battlefield, early on, from behind the Austrian left flank

Our game was the Commands & Colors: Napoleonics official scenario for Day 1 of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, which I guess is just the Battle of Aspern, when Massena attempted to hang on to the town, waiting for the bulk of Napoleon's army to hurry up and cross the Danube; thus the French have IV Corps plus some of the reserve cavalry. Lannes and all that stuff belongs to the second day. One big advantage of Day 1 is that it is small enough to make a good-sized game, though the number of built-up areas promised to give the beta-test Ramekin rules [I'm up to version 1.7] a decent workout and sanity-check.

I was Massena, while Goya and Stryker shared the Austrian forces, their overall commander being Archduke Charles. I took along my own French troops, and the Austrian forces were Goya's. We followed the published scenario very closely - the only (insignificant) amendment was that we replaced the mystery French "Guard Heavy Cavalry" unit with a third Cuirassier regiment - it has been suggested to me that whoever designed the scenario identified the Carabiniers as a guard unit - no matter.

Because we stuck to the published set-up, my artillery was mostly stuck in the wrong places. What I should have done was get busy right away with the double-moves which Ramekin allows, to get my artillery better placed. Didn't happen, of course, because I was immediately up to my neck in muck and bullets as the Kaiserliks set about the village.

The big Austrian line units have a scary amount of firepower, and they performed well - their only disadvantages are that they are slow, and are not allowed double moves, though they can certainly get a shift on when they are retiring, since they get double retreats for the C&CN flag symbol rolls. Their distinctive battaillon-masse tactic also proved to be a major discouragement to my late cavalry attack - without horse artillery (or aerial support) there was not much I could do against them.

The Austrians made excellent use, throughout, of the Combined Arms Attack rule, using artillery (including one particularly effective Grand Battery on the little hill north of the village) very effectively to support infantry attacks on the various bits of the town. I took heavy casualties very quickly, and was steadily pushed out of the town - I hung on to the extreme east end of the place, and I held the church for a while, until, again, the Austrians brought up a foot battery and blew me out of there.

So the French were very quickly well behind on Victory Points, including extra ones for possession of the majority of the town, and I only made the margin of defeat anything like respectable with a grand charge of cavalry (historically authentic, by the way) which took out the pesky Grand Battery and wrecked the Austrian cavalry. With everyone beginning to show signs of fatigue, Bellegarde's troops eventually claimed the necessary 12th VP, and the French were beaten [but only until the following day!].

Yes, it was pretty decisive. Once again, my sincere thanks to my colleagues/opponents for their company and good humour, and to Goya for all his hard work organising and setting up, and for slaving in the galley.

Austrian High Command caught in the act of setting up the Grand Battery on the ridge. On the left edge of the photo is visible Massena [that's me] in a rather snazzy little [S-Range] carriage - yes, that's only correct for Wagram, but the thing would never get a run out at all if it weren't for a little historical licence...

Already some casualties, but the Archduke isn't hanging about here

The French left was protected by the church and some woods, and some impassable marshes. I put some crack light infantry in there - the boys in the church seem to have lit enough candles to hold out for a while, but the fellows in the wood were shot to bits very quickly

Grenzer troops and Jaegers - good shooting...

Discouraged French troops falling back after being routed from the first bit of the town; the strange circular base is my version of one of C&CN's new-fangled "Garrison Counters" which we re-named "Detachments" since it seemed more appropriate. These are a useful little addition to the game, and I might say some more about these some time. Yesterday we used unpainted MDF, with the soldiers attached with BluTack,  but they are to be smartened up a bit. They are a most excellent way of finding a job for some of your substandard figures - give me your battle-worn, your bayonetless, your OOP misfits, your oddments from the Spares Box, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... 

Austrians well-established in Aspern

French cavalry getting moving on the right flank

General Legrand brings up some fresh troops from his division (not easy to find) to try to take back part of the village; they failed, and he himself became a casualty in the attempt

Massena still hasn't moved, but he can see that the village is a lost cause - he gets the cavalry advancing on his right flank (far right of the table)

Looking from the Austrian right, round about the same stage of the battle

D'Espagne mops up the rest of the Grand Battery (half of it has already gone) with the 2nd Cuirassiers. Archduke Charles looks a bit close to the action in the background. Note the impressive row of white VP counters...

But the heavy cavalry had no answer to the battaillon-masse tactics of the Austrian line infantry, so concentrated their attention on the cavalry - this went far better...

As D'Espagne's French cuirassiers attack the mounted Austrians, Marulaz brings up the French light cavalry to attack the uhlans on the hill

Some things can just be relied on - like death and taxes, the 15eme Chasseurs are always around somewhere

The battle is more or less lost, but Molitor attempts to take back part of the village - borrowing the successful Austrian tactic of supporting the infantry with artillery in a Combined Arms attack

Situation at the end - the French cavalry have pulled back to avoid the fire of the Austrian infantry. Massena is running out of friends, but he knows Lannes is coming to sort things out tomorrow!

Special mention - Goya's new Landwehr unit are plastic (gasp) - very nice too - they did well. Goya is reluctant to spend too much on figures for the Landwehr or militia, since he is uneasy about making much of an effort to arm the masses.

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

Since the only reaction to this post thus far today has been a couple of emails which indicated that at least two of my readers are confused, I must offer my apologies for a very poor bit of editorial work here. Having thought further about the matter, I confess that I am now a bit confused myself. 

To clarify: this is not a description of the first day of a 2-day wargame (I wish it was!), it is a description of a wargame based on the first day of Aspern-Essling, which was a real battle which lasted two days, and my suggestion here that the French might go on to win after two days is not based on history, it merely expresses the French commander's expectation after wargaming the first day's action. After all, the French would probably not have chosen to fight on if they had expected to lose, I guess.

Which brings me to the second point. Was Essling actually a French defeat? I have always believed it to be so - famously so, in fact. Yet Prof De Vries points out (correctly) that Essling was a battle-honour on French Napoleonic battle flags - the 1812 issue of flags showed this honour for a great many regiments. The Professor reckons that the French (like everyone else, he says) only awarded battle honours for victories - the later example of La Moskowa (Borodino) being explained since the French regard it as a victory. Thus, says he, Essling must be another disputed result.

I confess I have always been sort of aware of this apparent paradox, but had managed to avoid thinking it through. I did a quick bit of reading today, and it seems that battle honours were awarded to regiments which performed well at battles commanded by Napoleon himself (which is why you will not find Tarragona, for example). The small matter of whether or not he won was not normally an issue, as we know.

All fine - looks like I learned something I should already have known, and if it turns out that the Professor is mistaken (an event rarer than a Napoleonic defeat) then that is indeed icing on the cake.

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