Hooptedoodle #382: Boomerwaffen - not front-line troops?

 This is a very upsetting time, all things considered, and the world does not require yet another smart-ass to try to say something clever or amusing about the tragic horror-show at the Capitol last week, but there is an aspect of the event which everyone seems to have attempted to avoid noticing; so, being naturally stupid and tactless, I thought I'd mention it. 

As I understand things, one protestor was fatally shot by security personnel, one policeman died from injuries received in the conflict, and a further policeman has subsequently committed suicide. All this is very sad and regrettable, and there was mention of three more protestors who succumbed to what were described as "medical emergencies". Again, I was very sorry to learn of this, but I was vaguely interested (not morbidly, I hope), wondering whether this was some kind of woke euphemism for "died of teargas" or similar.

Apparently not. It does shine a light on who these people were who forced their way into the Capitol on 6th January. There were guys climbing up buildings and getting into fist fights and so on, which is what we might expect from urban terrorists, but it is very obvious from the photos that many of them did not look like the sort of assault troops you would hand pick for your Forlorn Hope. Not grenadiers. A pretty high proportion of Mr Trump's enthusiastic followers are, to be blunt about it, elderly or overweight. Frequently both. I deeply regret that anyone should have been hurt or killed at all, though it could be said that they shouldn't have been there - if you stand in the middle of the highway, you will probably suffer for it. One lady died, they think, because she was trampled in the melee. One 50-year old man died of a stroke at the scene - his friends said he was very excited by the events of the day. 

One 55-year old, known to have a history of hypertension, had a fatal heart attack. He is quite an interesting fellow; described by his family as a good man, who would never have harmed anyone, he seems to have had a tendency to post pictures of himself on Parler (now defunct, of course), wielding his automatic rifles, and proposing that like-minded citizens should be prepared to take back their country with guns.

Right.

Didn't work out too well, did it? These people were obviously just not up to being commandos. If the Proud Boys and the Bikers for Trump and all the rest of the Boomerwaffen are going to commit to doing this sort of thing on a regular basis, they had better make sure they have paramedics with them, to look after the "medical emergency" casualties. Or maybe they could discourage their more frail colleagues from coming along.

Once again, I am at pains to emphasise that I do not wish to judge or disrespect any individual, so please don't bother flaming me, and I am sorry that people died or were injured, but Darwin is never far away if you look out for him.

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!

WSS: Playtest Set-Up

 Tomorrow, technology and health permitting, I hope to try another playtest with my homebrewed WSS rules. These have been modified since the last playtest session, so we'll see what's what. I'm working to try to get a C-in-C stand completed in time for the Imperialist force - they may have to take the field without a flag. They won't mind - reduces the risk of getting it captured.

 

Initial position - Austrians (on the left) in a prepared position near Mönchröden.

 

 

Neither they nor the opposition will get the advantage of platoon firing, but the Austrians do have some battalion guns - just saying.

 

 

View from the other end of the table - the Elector of Bavaria's troops (on our left) emerge from the woods to find the Imperial forces waiting for them. Hmmm.

 

 

 

WSS: Quick, Snappy Parade

You want it good, or you want it Thursday?

[Nelson Riddle]

 

I was sorting out some flags and putting the finished boys in a better order in the boxes. Since I am now about a year into this project, I thought some commemorative photos would be appropriate. Time is a bit short this morning, since I have to go to get my car fixed, so there will some grumbling in the ranks about order of precedence and all that, but here are my Austrian and Bavarian armies for circa 1703, in their current state.

The Austrians - they are due to get a proper command stand for the C-in-C, and there are two battalions in mid-refurb, otherwise we are just about there.

The Bavarians - nothing in the to-do list for these chaps, so I guess they are done for Phase 1

Next up? - well I'm keen to get some siege and fortress artillery done, so they can join in with Vauban's Wars, and (to be strictly honest) the Austrians and Bavarians could each use an extra regiment of horse, and after that I have a lot of French and British troops to sort out. Team photos are reassuring - it reminds me that a lot has been done! Many thanks to Goya for help with infantry painting.

No social distancing in 1703.

A Little WSS Painting, and Some Light Reading Matter on Peninsular Sieges...

 Even by my standards, this is probably going to be a fairly shambolic post as far as structure goes. If you're up for it, here goes.

First off, I have finally painted up the dismounted contingent of my first unit of Imperial dragoons for the WSS - nothing remarkable, in any sense, but they have been hanging around, unpainted, getting on my nerves, for some months. The figures are 20mm Irregular castings. The unit is the Aufseß Dragoons, who were not Austrian, but from the Frankischer Kreis. The mounted chaps came from the Eric Knowles hoard, so my task was merely to paint the dismounted element to look fairly similar to Eric's brushwork. OK - good - all based and magnetised and in the official Very Useful Boxes.

Otherwise, I have mostly been continuing my work on preparing for some serious testing and rehearsing of some siege games. The big recent change, of course, has been the eventual publication of Eric Burgess's Vauban's Wars. All very good - I am on my third read-through and I have copious notes, getting ready to go. At this point it gets just a little complicated...

The obvious starting point would be some actual Vauban-style warfare, for which my new WSS armies would be ideal, except that, as yet, I do not have any proper siege artillery for them (though, of course, I soon shall). They could borrow some ECW units to help out, I guess, but that would be a disappointingly shabby compromise for a first effort. Therefore, by default, I shall start off with some Peninsular War actions, for which I have more than enough troops - even the specialists.

In preparation for this magnificent stage in my wargaming development, I have been collecting bits of fortresses, and mortars, and engineers, and all sorts, for ages, and have spent years reading about the sieges in the Peninsular War. The immediate issue arising here is that most of what I have read has been a collection of heavily British narratives about Ciudad Rodrigo (though only the successful Anglo-Portuguese siege, of course), and Badajoz (same qualifier), and Burgos, and San Sebastian - plus snippets about the Salamanca forts and so on.

Nothing wrong with any of this, of course, but two points come straight out of the woodwork:

(1) There were a great many sieges in the Guerra de la Independencia, of which only a few involved the British army. Having read more widely, and given a free choice, I would dearly love to follow the adventures of Marshal Suchet, conquering all those exotic Spanish-held towns in the North East - Tarragona, Tortosa, all that. There were the French assaults on Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, as well, not to mention Sarragossa and some real biggies. OK - that's all excellent - plenty of variety.

(2) Spain and Portugal were relatively poor countries, and never had the resources (or priority) to carry out major programmes of modernisation of their fortresses. If you are looking for something like a modern, Vauban-approved style of fort, then there were very few - Almeida is one passable example. The range of defensive architecture involved was remarkable - which, again, is good for the student and the gamer because of the variety and because of the exotic places involved. Astorga was basically a Roman fortress in 1809, and there were medieval and Moorish-style castles all over the place, with greater or lesser degrees of improvement. 

Here you go - Vauban himself might have recognised Almeida as a viable fortress, though not when the magazines blew up...

Ciudad Rodrigo, as an example, had been modernised (a bit) in 1776 - the old, high, masonry walls were masked by the placement of fausse-braies in front of them - which served to give some protection from siege guns in the plains surrounding the town, but did not achieve the same amount of security from guns placed up on the Teson heights. Gradual patching-up of old fortresses to cope with the increasing power and potential of modern cannon was always going to be difficult, and these botched-together forts were not wonderful - that is why the style of the sieges tended to be "quick and dirty" - Vauban would have been surprised at the rushed timescales and the relative lack of science.

One other thing to think about is that the fausse-braie add-ons were usually made of earth. That's pretty crude, on the face of it, but the great thing about earthworks is that you can fire cannonballs at them all day without knocking them down, so additional tricks of the trade were developed - if you really wanted a hole in the enemy's earth banks, explosive howitzer shells were a necessary part of the assault. If you wanted to dig parallels in the dead of night, you had to use big parties of infantry to get the work done.

That's enough of this sketchy walk-through, I think. I've been doing a lot of reading (I seem to have acquired quite a lot of books over the years), and have enjoyed it thoroughly. One thing for sure is that it would be a bad idea for me to put a huge effort into tweaking Eric Burgess's excellent game right at the outset to cope with the local weirdnesses of the Peninsula, and thus I plan to move onto some proper Vauban-type gaming as early as possible. On the other hand, I have been very interested in the Peninsular War's sieges for a long time, and I am delighted to gain a little more understanding of how they worked.

Many of my English-language books consist extensively of quotes from each other. The most valuable original source (if you are happy to read French) is JV Belmas' Journaux des Siéges Faits ou Soutenus par les Français dans la Péninsule, de 1807 à 1814, published in 4 volumes in 1836. This is (or recently was) available as a set of pdf files from Google Books; if you are really interested and can't find a downloadable copy, get in touch and I may be able to provide some extra information. There are copious tables of equipment, ammunition consumed, losses, materials captured, OOBs and so on. Sadly there are no maps, though Lipscombe's atlas can provide some useful back-up.