Thirty Years War 6mm progress

Swedish pike-and-shot, Swedish horsemen, Detached shot, Cuirassiers,
Dragoons, German pike-and-shot, Croats, Arquebusiers.

I've based all the figures I had for Steven Thomas's Tilly's Very Bad Day. The the photo shows most of them (except for Commanders and Cannons), but it was only about half of what I need. Baccus was closed for renovation so I had to wait a while before placing a third order.

The bases are 60mm x 30mm MDF and steel, and the figures were glued on with PVA which gave me plenty of time to manipulate them into position. PVA is hardly the best glue for metal, but I've found it adequate for small scale figures. The figures are not perfectly aligned. This was deliberate.

Thirty Years War 6mm basing: Commanders, Cannons and Dragoons

Commanders and Cannons

I had originally intended to put three mounted figures on Commander bases but sometimes less is more and I think two figures actually looks better.

Cannons were one of the easiest basing decisions and will be represented by a single Saker and 4 crew. The officer and the figure with the linstock will be positioned behind the cannon and the figures with sponge and cannonball in front.

Dragoons

Dragoons were the most challenging decision. Dragoon bases represent the same number of men as Horse bases, but cramming the same number of figures onto a base just doesn't work.

I think the best way of representing Dragoons is to have a skirmish line at the front, with a horse-holder and horses positioned behind. This would look better if the bases were deeper, but I don't intend to do that so it's a question of doing the best I can in the limited space.

I need 3 units of Dragoons in total and I happen to have one packet of Baccus dismounted Dragoon figures, so I decided to split the packet between them and this just about provides a reasonable look. However, I think the skirmishers would look better with perhaps two or three more figures so I'll just have to get some more.

Thirty Years War 6mm basing: Horse and Light Horse

Original plan for Horse

Original plan for Light Horse

These photos show my original plans for Horse and Croat Light Horse. The top one shows 24 mounted figures which is in the correct ratio to the 48 figures I'm using on Pike+shot bases. The bottom one shows 16 Light Horse.

I had second thoughts about these ideas. I didn't think it was really necessary to use 24 figures for Horse, and I also felt that the Light Horse base looked a little overcrowded. I also thought it would be useful to use (subtly) different numbers to indicate Arquebusiers, Cuirassiers or Swedish Horseman. So I'm now planning to use 20 figures for Arquebusiers,  18 for Cuirassiers, 16 for Swedish Horsemen and 12 or 14 for Croats.

The Croats are acually  'Unarmoured Cavalry' (GNP08) from Baccus's Great Northern War Polish range. I understand that TYW Croats had a proportion of lancers but most would be pistol-armed so most of the spears need to be snipped.

Thirty Years War 6mm basing: Non-Swedish Pike+shot and Commanded Shot

German and Spanish Pike+shot

The non-Swedish Pike+shot units include Imperialist, Catholic League, Spanish and other German Foot fighting against the Swedes as well as Germans allied to the Swedes, but not regiments of German origin under Swedish command which I'm treating as Swedes!

These are going to have the same overall numbers as a Swedish Pike+shot unit, but I'm giving them a higher proportion of pikemen. The proportion isn't necessarily historically accurate but there are only so many ways to juggle 48 figures. It's all about giving an impression.

The front rank will be armoured pikemen and the shot will have a number of helmeted figures. This will make them look a little more armoured than the Swedes.

Commanded Shot

The Commanded Shot bases represent the same number of men as a Pike+shot units but I thought that 48 Musketeers would look a bit boring so I decided to use three ranks of Musketeers with four command figures at the back. It's useful with these small scale figures to provide some visual clues to distinguish unit types at a distance. Swedish Shot will include figures in Monmouth caps.

Thirty Years War 6mm basing: Swedish Pike+shot

A test base of Swedish Pike+shot sitting temporarily
on Blu-Tac. Command strip forms second row of
the pikes.

I've been looking forward to receiving my first orders of Baccus 6mm figures for the Tilly's Very Bad Day Thirty Years War project, not least because I wanted to see how many figures I'd actually end up putting on a 60mm x 30mm base.

But firstly let me say that the Baccus figures are very nice and remarkably well detailed for their scale. I'm no fan of cast pikes, however, and hope that enough layers of paint and varnish will provide a little protection for them against floppy spaghetti syndrome.

First up to consider, and most importantly, were the Pike+shot units. As my friend Ian pointed out, it's good to have the pikes looking really solid and I can't see that being achieved without having them at least four deep and roughly square. (There's enough room to have five ranks but that would probably an unnecessary extravagance.)

A slightly more aerial view. For the Swedes, some figures
in Monmouth caps will be mixed in.

Historically ensigns were placed somewhere behind the front ranks. With four ranks of figures, I can have the command strip with the ensigns as the second rank.

There isn't enough room to have any supernumeries standing outside the ranks. In theory these could look good, but I think you would need vastly more figures in rank to prevent the extra figures from over-balancing them.

Distortion of ranges in Grand Tactical wargame rules

Swedes with muskets circa 1660

(The original version of this article failed to acknowledge my debt to Chris Pringle's Bloody Big Battles! and added insult to injury by inadvertently - and inexplicably - misrepresenting BBB itself. I have therefore eaten humble pie and amended it. doctorphalanx, 16 March 2020.)

Tilly's Very Bad Day doesn't have a declared ground scale. Some may notice, however, that Horse have a Shooting Range of 2TUM and Pike+shot of 4TUM. As a TUM is half a base width and as bases represent brigades, it means that Horse can fire a distance equivalent to the frontage occupied by a Brigade and that Pike+shot units can fire a distance equivalent to the frontages of two brigades.

In correspondence TVBD author, Steven Thomas, explained: "Inside the game, there are several related mechanisms that interact. The key ones are shooting distance, normal movement, charge movement. The relationships between these are complex. We play tested a bunch of options."

The large ranges are, therefore, a compromise and a result of trial-and-error tests made during the development of the game mechanics. They can, to some extent, be justified on the grounds that a brigade base is not a solid body of men but rather 'an operational centre of gravity'. The actual units that it represents may be rattling around within its perimeter or spilling over its edges to approach enemy brigades doing the same thing. They may indeed come a lot closer to shoot at one another than appearances suggest, in which case the 2 TUM may to some extent reflect their reach as much as their range. This concept is inspired by Chris Pringle’s Bloody Big Battles! See his comment below for a full explanation.

(Cf Horse, Foot and Guns in which musket-equipped troops have ranges varying from 200 to 400 paces, the higher range representing an invisible skirmish screen notionally thrown out in advance of the visible parent unit.)

It would be a mistake, however, to push this rationalisation too far. At the end of the day we have to recognise that hobby wargames are games, not simulations, and we are kidding ourselves if we think any of them are ‘realistic’. They reference realism in the same way a novel might, but they are not real: they are games of chance with a military flavour.

And if you do try to create rules that are trudgingly ‘realistic’ you may also find that the small increments and lack of dynamism lead to a game-play that is arthritic.

Rather than simply leave things there, however, I thought it would be interesting to look at ground scales and ranges in other rules with which I am acquainted. The results are a mixed bag and I’m not really sure what conclusions to draw. Some hit the mark or make a reasonable attempt at realistic ranges, others certainly do not.

I’ve played most of these games with a range of other players and none of them have ever questioned the ground-scale or ranges. Nobody, of course, is going to question the length of a ‘normal move’ because it’s part and parcel of the game and we don’t specifically know what it represents, but if you are looking for holes in a game because you are looking for holes in a game, ranges are an easy target!

Altar of Freedom

I haven't played these rules yet but I'm very impressed by their approach. The ground scale is 1" = 150 yds. The bases are 60mm x 30mm and represent  brigades.

There is ranged fire and close combat. However, the ranged fire represents only skirmish fire and the close combat principally represents point blank shooting. The skirmishing fire range is 2" inches so 300 yds, and may include the distance of the skirmishers from their parent unit as well as the range of their weapons.

This approach exactly captures the unique nature of battle during the American Civil War but I don’t think it’s applicable to other times and places.

It may also be noted that although  the firing aspect and the close combat aspect may be defined differently from other rules, game play still includes these two aspects. As such, AoF is not radically different from other rule sets.

Bloody Big Battles!

Ground scale: 1 inch = 150-250 yards/metres. Smoothbore musket range  is 3 inches which equals 450-750 yards/metres. (The Dreyse Needle Gun is given a range of 6” and the Chassepot 12”.)

BBB author, Chris Pringle, explains this approach in his comment below, a reaction to the original and misleading text in this section.

I accept Chris’s concept but have some reservations about the ratios between the respective ranges, a subject I might return to another time. As with TVBD, the outcomes at the macro level are, in my opinion, more important than strict simulation at the micro level.

Horse, Foot and Guns

Musket range is 200 paces if 'Musketeers' and 400p if certain other types, representing the reach of skirmishers. A pace is 30" so that means 166 yds and 332 yds respectively.

Impetus (first edition)

1U = 6-7 m. Unfortunately the U is sort of tied to the scale of figures used rather than the size of the bases. However, if you have 6-15mm figures on the suggested 8cm-wide bases, 1U is 1cm and your 8 cm base frontage will represent say 6.5 m x 8 = 52 m (about 57 yds).

Interestingly a heavy Infantry unit in Impetus represents 600-1200 men, roughly equal to a cohort or double cohort. Assuming that each cohort is eight lines deep, and that each legionary has a 1-yard frontage, one 480-man cohort would have a frontage of 60 yards (100 yards for the oversized first cohort). This from here. All of which goes to show that an Impetus HI unit is a fair match for a Roman cohort. Now on to ranges.

Ranges in Impetus typically go out 30U, about 195 m or 213 yards which seems long but not absurd.

The new, second, edition of Impetus uses measurement related to BW, a much more rational and increasingly universal approach for pre-Twentieth Century warfare.

Maurice 

No ground scale. Musket range is 4BW, equivalent to a unit’s frontage. If the unit is a battalion in two ranks it might have a frontage of 500/2 x 2’ which would be 500 feet or about 167 yds. However, Maurice uses bath-tubbing with no alteration to range so a unit could just as easily represent a brigade.

At battalion-level (my preference) Maurice is not a grand-tactical game. At brigade-level it is, but the numbers go out of the window.

Above all it is a game, and a very good one, not a pretence at simulation. It gets by because it splendidly captures an Eighteenth Century look and feel. And IMO that's more important than claiming some notional representation of accuracy in a small arms table.

Rules of Battle 

Forgotten now, perhaps, but apart from DBA and HOTT I think Neil Graber's Rules of Battle was the best implementation of the DBX-style design ever achieved.

The ground scale is 1" = 500 ft. Each 40 mm by 20 mm Foot base represents 1000 men (and a frontage of 267 yds).

Apart from artillery there is no ranged shooting. All combat is point blank, i.e. base to base contact.

Of the rules reviewed here, Rules of Battle is the only one not to have ranged infantry fire.

Twilight of Divine Right 

1BW = 150 m. Foot and dismounted dragoons have a range of 1/2BW = 75m. Ranged pistol fire at 1/4 BW is used and it is potentially a very small measurement. ToDR units consist of two bases so the ¼ BW measurement is actually only 1/8 of a unit’s frontage. This drives the need for bases (and a table) that are relatively large. In comparison with TVBD this set has realistic ranges but I find the small size problematical.

Irregular Wars

Irregular Wars is a much lower level game than the ones above, but I’ve included it for comparison. Bases represent companies of 125 men. It has a ground scale of 1U = 30 yds, and long range for most weapons is 6U or 180 yds. I suspect that the smaller the scale represented, the easier it is to avoid distortion without crippling a game.

Thirty Years War: Provisional 6mm basing plans for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Suggested unit basing for 15mm etc in Tilly's Very Bad Day

In Tilly's Very Bad Day each base represents a brigade. When I was going to do this project in 2mm I had intended to model different infantry formations, even though they all count the same under the rules. Now I'm doing this in 6mm, I'll just create generic basing designs and apply them to all armies.

Rules author Steven Thomas is an enthusiast for Impetus-inspired 'Big Bases' and I completely share his tastes. Steven's Thirty Years War armies are 15mm and his infantry are mounted 12 up in two ranks on 80mm x 40mm bases. That's fairly generous in comparison with, say, standard DBX basing and allows plenty of space around a unit to give a dioramic effect.

I’m doing this project using Baccus 6mm figures. The infantry come in 20 mm wide strips of 4 figures. For the pike-and-shot era with pikes flanked by muskets, there's a strong pull to put these figures on 60mm wide bases unless you want to do a lot of extra clipping. I could have gone for 80 mm x 40mm bases but I want to keep the table size reasonably small.

TVBD is measured in half-basewidths called TUMs. For 60mm wide bases a small table is 3' x 2' and a large one 5' x 3'. Those are very convenient sizes for not having to stretch too much and/or for playing at home. I can erect a 6’ x 4’ table but it’s a lot of trouble. 5’x 3’ is slightly larger than my dining-room table (which is 4’ 5.5” x 2’ 10.5”) but perhaps it will do at a pinch. If not, I’ve long been thinking of constructing a light-weight hardboard playing  surface which can be stored against a wall somewhere and dropped on the table as needed. (It might be made in two sections hinged with gaffer tape.)

Anyway, the bases I will be using are:

Commanders: 30mm rounds.
Cannons: 30mm squares.
Else: 60mm x 30mm rectangles.

Bear in mind that I'm not trying to suggest any faction-specific or period-specific formation. I just need some pike flanked by shot to suggest a pike-and-shot unit. The bases will never be 'realistic': they are purely symbolic - they are game tokens!

Arrangement of figures:

Commanders

3 mounted figures.

Horse

HHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHH

Light horse

These are supposed to be the same strength as Horse, but will look better with fewer figures irregularly placed. Exact number to be decided.

Dragoons

These also represent the same strength as Horse but may also look better with fewer figures. They will be depicted skirmishing with horse-holders and horses behind. Exact numbers to be decided.

Pike+shot

SSSS PPPP SSSS
SSSS PPPP SSSS 
SSSS PPPP SSSS 
 
Notwithstanding what I said in the opening paragraph about generic basing designs applied to all armies, I have been wondering whether I should take the opportunity to depict the Imperialists with a higher proportion of pikes. It doesn't affect their status under the rules. It's purely aesthetic. The obvious arrangement would be:

SSS PPPPPP SSS
SSS PPPPPP SSS
SSS PPPPPP SSS

Shot

SSSS SSSS SSSS
SSSS SSSS SSSS
SSSS SSSS SSSS

Cannons

4 crew around a cannon.

I have not shown any officers, ensigns, sargeants or drummers in any of the above diagrams. I do intend to have them but haven't yet decided where to put them.

Thirty Years War: 6mm Paint Plan for Tilly’s Very Bad Day

Some of my 10mm American Civil War figures:
I am basically following the same methodology.

This is a rough and incomplete draft of my plan for painting 6mm Thirty Years War armies for Steven Thomas's Tilly's Very Bad Day. I’ve been creating paint plans privately for years, but I thought it might be interesting to share the experience with readers. It's fairly provisional in its first form but will firm up over time. I will add a little explanatory detail here which I wouldn't necessarily do just for my own benefit.

Once I actually start wielding a paintbrush I'm always very careful to list paints used so I can match them if more models need to be added at a later date. I also mark jobs done so I know where I am and give myself encouragement.

The general approach for this project will be similar to the 'Base before painting' approach that I used on my 10mm ACW armies (see photo above). Last time I found that approach hard-going but it has its advantages:

• Once the preliminary basing, texturing and undercoating is done, the bases can be used on the table in games.
• You begin to gain a very good impression of what the figures are going to look like as you go along. You don’t have to wait till the last part of a process (e.g. a ‘magic dip’) before the figures look right.
• You can balance the colours used on each base.
• The result is effective.
• The method is potentially quick, but you need to be relaxed about the parts you can't reach and the lack of detail. You are basically just painting the outsides and the tops.

The main stages are as follows:

• Base figures.
• Texture bases.
• Undercoat with a wet application of Acrylic chocolate brown.
• 'Pop' figures with light, bright block painting that contrasts sharply with the brown background. If it doesn't stand out it's not worth adding.
• Leave brown in the shadows between ranks and for anything else that can be left brown e.g. legs, muskets, bags etc.
• Detail is minimised – overall impression at a distance is maximised, e.g. Faces will be painted but not hands.

The following section is a detailed painting ‘to-do’ list. Some of the detail below is not quite finished. I'm publishing it as it is. I was thinking of posting this a live document but I decided that would be too awkward.  It’s shown here as a list but my working document will be a Word table and some sections will be placed in parallel.

PRELIMINARIES
Make temporary trays for sorting figures into units. DONE
Decide on basing arrangements. TO BE FINALISED
UHU MDF and steel bases together.
Clip and sort into trays by unit. (Note Imperialist infantry have armoured front rank and some musketeers in helmets. Swedes have some musketeers in Monmouth caps.)
Clean castings if/as necessary.

BASING AND UNDERCOATING
PVA all figures (except cannon) to bases.
Tetrion bases.
PVA fine sand to bases.
Supergell cannon in place.
Undercoat with wet application of acrylic dark chocolate paint.

PAINT LARGE AREAS
Paint horses that are *not* brown.
Paint Imperialist cannon carriages…
Paint Swedish cannon carriages…
Do blackened armour on Imperialist Cuirassiers and Imperialist front-rank pikemen (Dark grey? Gunmetal?)

COAT COLOURS
Using light, bright paints, pick out coats:
Buff coats on Swedish Cavalry.
Swedish coloured infantry  uniforms:
Yellow, Blue etc
Paint Scots in hodden grey (brown) and light blue bonnets.
Remainder of Swedish infantry: pearl-grey.
Paint Swedish Commanded Shot – all pearl-grey or split into three colours/sections.
Paint remainder of Swedish cavalry in random colours...
Paint Imperial Pike+Shot, Shot, Harquebusiers, Dragoons, and Croats in random colours...

DETAIL
Dab faces flesh.
Paint Swedish hats....
Paint Imperialist hats...
Paint Swedish Monmouth caps...
Paint Imperialist pike helmets and shot in helmets as blackened.
Paint some Swedish Horsemen with blackened armour.

FINISHING DETAILS
Paint all pikes light wood.

METALLICS
Bronze cannon barrels.
Silver swords, pike points, burnished armour on remaining Swedish Horsemen.

BASE DECORATION
Static grass, ballast, tufts etc.

FINAL
Spray varnish to fix and protect.
[Ink wash and re-highlight???]
[Very light white feather-brush to lift???]
Add flags.

REFERENCES
Balagan's TYW Imperialist Painting Guide
Balagan's TYW Swedish Painting Guide
Balagan's TYW Spanish Painting Guide

Thirty Years War: Provisional unit plans for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Thirty Years War musketeers

I'm not sure exactly what units I'm going to end up with at this stage but I can make some provisional assumptions. In order to check storage needs at the same time I used CorelDraw to create an A4 grid of 60mm x 30mm rectangles, the size of the bases I will be using.

In each grid division I wrote in a particular type of unit and I was then able to play around with the the numbers and balance.

I know that each army will have one unit of Shot and one unit of Dragoons, 4 Generals and 2 Cannons. The Imperialists will also have a unit of Croats. The rest will be made up of more-or-less equal proportions of Horse and Pike+shot units but I won't know exactly how many until I have sorted the incoming figures and, where appropriate, mixed in additional figures.

All the Swedish cavalry will be Horsemen, whilst the Imperialists will be split between Cuirassiers and Harquebusiers.

The Imperialist Pike+shot will include a front rank of armored pikemen and some musketeers with helmets. The Swedish Pike+shot will include some figures in Monmouth caps.

One Swedish unit will be Scots in hodden grey and bonnets, 7 will have coloured coats and three will be in pearl-grey.

And so, making a best guess I reckon that the armies will look something like this:

Swedes
12 Pike+shot
10 Horsemen
1 Shot
1 Dragoons
4 Generals
2 Cannon

Imperialists
12 Pike+shot
5 Cuirassiers
4 Harquebusiers
1 Croats
1 Shot
1 Dragoons
4 Generals
2 Cannon

Each of these is exactly 30 bases which is bang on target.

Roughly how big were Thirty Years War battles of the Swedish phase?

Battle of Lützen 1632

As I eventually want to use Tilly's Very Bad Day to play historical scenarios, I thought I'd better get a handle on exactly how big the major battles were during the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years War (1630-1635).

This is a ‘quick and dirty’ exercise so I’m happy to grab figures where I can. I started with Steven Thomas's timeline of the war before moving on to Richard Bonney’s The Thirty Years’ War 1618-1648. I also have William Guthrie’s two-volume Battles of the Thirty Years War but that’s rather too detailed for this purpose.

Where I have only crude totals, I’ve converted as if the men were all Pike+shot. The various different labels given to factions may need improvement.

The numbers show (1) Actual men, and in parenthesis (2) Representation at the lowest rate where 1 base = 1000 Pike+shot, 500 Horse or 8 Cannon, and (3) Representation at the highest rate where 1 base = 2000 Pike+shot, 1000 Horse or 16 Cannon. The results have been rounded to whole bases.

It can be seen that the numbers of bases required is reasonable and can be tailored to suit what players have available by changing the conversion rate. The default pick-up game in comparison is set at 15-30 units per army which gives comparable numbers of bases. In other words, if you have armies of 15-30 bases you should be able to play scenarios based on these battles without any problems.

Battle of Werben 1631

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League

Swedes
16,000 entrenched (16) (8)

Holy Roman Empire
23,000 (23) (12)

First Battle of Breitenfeld 1631

Swedes & Saxons vs Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League

Catholics
21,400 infantry (21) (11)
10,000 cavalry (20) (10)

Swedes
14,842 infantry (15) (7)
8,064 cavalry (16) (8)

Saxons
13,000 infantry (13) (6.5)
5,225 cavalry (10) (5)

Battle of Rain / Battle of the River Lech 1632

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League

Swedes
40,000 (40) (20)

Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League
25,000 (25) (13)

Battle of Lützen 1632

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire

Swedes
12,786 infantry (13) (6)
6,210 cavalry (12) (6)
60 cannon (8) (4)

Holy Roman Empire
9,870 infantry (10) (5)
6,900 cavalry (14) (7)
38 cannon (5) (2)
Reinforcements: 2,300 cavalry (5) (2)

Battle of Nördlingen 1634

Holy Roman Empire/Catholic League/Spain vs Swedes/ Heilbronn League

Catholics
23,000 infantry (23) (12)
13,000 cavalry (26) (13)
32 cannon  (4) (2)

Spanish
13,500 infantry (14) (7)
4,500? Cavalry (9) (5)
Reinforcements: 3,000 Catholic cavalry (6) (3)

Protestants
16,300 infantry (16) (8)
9,300 cavalry (19) (9.5)
62 cannon (8) (4)

Battle of Wittstock 1636

Swedes vs Holy Roman Empire & Saxons

Swedes
16,000 (16) (8)

Holy Roman Empire and Saxons
22,000 (22) (11)

Thirty Years War: Additional 6mm figures for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Scottish musketeers.

After some more thought I decided get some additional figures types:

WEC05 - Musketeers, Shoulder, Monmouth cap
I hadn't realised these were also appropriate for TYW Swedes, but Monmouth caps are mentioned in Steven's Thomas's TYW Swedish painting guide.

WEC17 - Horse - Hat
Just an additional pack so I have more Swedes in hats than pots. They'll all be mixed together

WEC 19 (mounted) Dragoons
For Imperialist harquebusiers. I'm not otherwise using this pack. They've got carbines and look like a reasonably good match for later harquebusiers.

WEC31 - Lowland Pikeman, advance
WEC33 - Lowland Musketeers, shoulder
For Scots in Swedish service. This is a very expensive way of filling one base,  but I couldn't resist them and I'll just sell on the surplus (or start a Scots ECW army?.

GNP 8 - Unarmoured cavalry
From the GNW Polish range for Croat and other irregular light horse.

POW02 - Large Church and churchyard
POW03 - Large House
These look fairly Germanic and are for a village feature.

These will probably not be my final purchases as I still need to confirm how many figures I'm actually going to put on the bases and how many bases I might want to field in order to create the largest historical scenarios.

Thirty Years War: Bases for 6mm figures for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Battle of Noerdlingen 1634

My normal practice for basing multiple figure stands is a combination of 2mm MDF and sheet steel. This gives the figures stability in transit when I put them in boxes lined with magnetic sheeting and on the table because of the additional weight. The depth gives you something to pick them up by.

However, I was not keen to use 3mm+ deep bases for figures that were themselves only 6mm high. Because of my firm requirement for steel over MDF, my friend Ian suggested using steel alone but that seemed fraught with difficulties as it is actually very awkward to prize a thin steel sheet from the magnetic plastic without having long nails or damaging the figures.

Printed template for mass-producing storage trays.

Ian suggested that if I inserted a sheet of paper between the surface of the storage boxes and the bottom of the bases, the bases would remain adequately in place but I could use the paper to 'peel and lift' them away when it was time to deploy them.

This worked a treat - thank you, Ian - and I've even started to create little paper trays so that the bases can be lifted out even more easily. Trays made from 80 gsm paper are a little weak and probably won 't last. 160 gsm card interferes with the magnetism. Somewhere in between I expect 100 gsm or 120 gsm paper to provide an optimum trade-off.

This arrangement would save me 2mm of unnecessary, artificial height. But something still tells me that it is a risky idea. Bases 3mm+ deep will give me (and others) something to grab - other than the figures themselves - when moving them around the table. Perhaps I will add the MDF after all!

Thirty Years War: Choosing 6mm figures for Tilly's Very Bad Day

Baccus 6mm Cuirassiers

My immediate wargaming priority has been to get to grips with Steven Thomas' Thirty Years War rules, Tilly's Very Bad Day.

I gave them an intense read which also doubled as a proof-read and raised my queries with Steven. He took valid points on board while putting me right on others, and the result is now Version 1.2 (09 September 2019) which you can download here.

It is not a substantive change, but I think it will be of significant assistance to me and others not immediately in Steven's playing circle. It's inevitable when developing new rules that some part will be carried in the practice of play rather than explicitly expressed in text. Which is why rules should always be subjected to fresh eyes and play testing in isolation from the original developers.

I have previously contributed to proof-reading the Peter Pig Samurai and ACW rules, and, with my friend Ian, contributed to extensive play-testing etc of Irregular Wars. It's good to be involved in this sort of work once again.

Parallel to studying the rules, I am also giving myself a crash course in Thirty Years War military history, including wargaming priorities like troop type and function, tactical doctrine, and uniforms etc. This is on-going.

Next step was to choose a specific historical peg (thirty years is a long time in war) and order some figures. Although I had originally been looking at the Eighty Years' War and the early part of the Thirty Years War, I subsequently decided to do what most other people do and that is focus on the Swedish period.

What and how many figures would I need? In detail that depends on how many figures I actually want to put on a base. That is currently uncertain but I can still get a fairly good handle on overall requirements.

For pick-up games the rules tell you to choose an army size of 15 to 30 units. A couple of 25-unit sample armies,  one cavalry-heavy and the other infantry-heavy, are given in the rules.

For individual historical scenarios - and that for me is the main point of Grand Tactical games - the requirements will need to be researched.

There is some leeway. Foot units, for example represent 1000-2000 men so you can convert historical numbers at a rate of 1000 per base or 2000 per base or any number in between.  In other words you can go small for the big ones while maximizing the number of bases in small ones. This will even out army requirements.

Realising that I would probably need to end up with about 7 packets of Baccus infantry and cavalry to produce an army, the easiest next step was simply to choose about 14 packs as my starting point.

In the end I ran with 4 packs of pike, 4 packs of musketeers, 4 packs of cavalry, one pack of artillery and two packs of generals, together with 4 sheets of Swedish and Imperialist flags. Included in these numbers were some armoured pikemen for the Imperialist front ranks and some helmeted musketeers to mix into the Imperialist shot. The Swedes will be less well armoured.

For the cavalry I was less sure and needed some quick education. The Imperialists had Cuirassiers and  Harquebusiers whilst the Swedes had Horsemen resembling the popular image of both Roundheads and Cavaliers.

Unfortunately, Baccus do not yet do any Harquebusiers, so I settled on two packs of Cuirassiers for the Imperialists and a pack each of hatted and pot-helmeted cavalry for the Swedes.

Once I've played around with the basing options I can always get more figures.

Balagan's Thirty Years War

The prolific Steven Thomas (of Balagan.info) has just published a free set of fast-play Thirty Years War rules called Tilly’s Very Bad Day. You can download them here. As readers may know I've been musing about Thirty Years War rules for a very long time but have never actually got round to trying any of them.

My first consideration is to see if a game is compact enough for my tastes and resources. The last set I was seriously looking at was Twilight of Divine Right but it requires an on-table measurement for mounted pistols which is only 1/8 of unit frontage. This means that unit frontages need to be fairly large if this measurement is not to become impractically small.

Unfortunately, large bases need to be filled with a large amount of lead or plastic, and need to operate over a large surface area, but my current preference is to use 2mm blocks, small bases and a small playing area. TVBD would allow me to use 2" wide bases which provide a good fit for 2mm blocks, would facilitate on-table measurement in user-friendly inches and would require a table size of only 30" x 20" for a small game and 45" x 30" for a large one. In that respect the rules tick all the boxes.

My second consideration is unit types. Many rules covering this period (Eighty Years War, Thirty Years War and English Civil War) differentiate 'gallopers' from 'trotters' etc and early, large formations ('Tercios') from later battalions with a variable number of intermediate troop types. TVBD has only one category of Horse and one category of Pike+shot.

It may well be that other rule authors have overemphasised (or even invented) distinctions, but this is quite a radical step. I won't go into the arguments for this simplification here, but I believe they may well be justified. However, Steven is considering an early, large infantry type on a deeper base and I'm rather hoping he adopts that. For the early part of this period, the Bastioned Square is a defining icon.

The rules themselves appear to be simple, clear and elegant and l look forward to trying them out with counters or substitute figures. My regular sparring partner is particularly concerned that 'Pike and Shot' rules should handle 'pike and shot' warfare. While, at this level, pike and shot are combined and not separately modelled,  we will be looking closely at the 'paper, stone, scissors' interaction of infantry, cavalry and artillery.

'Rebels and Patriots' for 1798?

The latest and last set of Rampant rules - Rebels and Patriots - is due out in January 2019 and will fill the gap in the Rampant range between The Pikeman’s Lament and The Men Who Would Be Kings. The rules have been written by Michael Leck and Daniel Mersey.

Osprey wanted the rules to be focused on North America for commercial reasons, but they should be perfectly applicable beyond. One possibility amongst many hundreds is the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in which I have had a long-standing interest, especially since watching the TV mini-series The Year of the French which was shown in the 80s. I go back a long way!

At one point I started collecting 15mm figures for this conflict with the intention of using the Maurice rules, but it would have meant doing another mass army and the rules weren't really suited to pitching a predominantly pike army against musketmen.

So I was quite excited by the prospect of a Rampant set for the horse-and-musket period which would once again allow me to satisfy an historical interest with a relatively small game. I had assumed/hoped that R&P would have some type of 'charging infantry' that would accomodate Irish pikemen but from what I can tell the 'Natives' type in R&P is essentially a shooting type.

At first this put me off and I was wondering about creating a custom unit type or maybe using The Pikeman's Lament instead. However, it is possible to increase Aggression and make Natives Poor Shooters. This would represent a small number of firearms mixed in with the pike in addition to the firearms otherwise fielded by skirmishers, so I think I should be OK after all.

Trent Miniatures (currently available from North Star) do a good range of 28mm figures specifically for this conflict, so I've already begun to use my £5-a-month Wargames Illustrated credit to (slowly) accumulate forces.

Croppy Boys: Trent Miniatures 28mm Irish insurgent pikemen.

Twilight of the Sun King and some thoughts on generic armies

Promising but not perfect

The Twilight of the Sun King (TotSK) rules cover the period from 1680-1721. They were originally written by Steven Thomas of Balagan fame but authorship subsequently passed through other hands. I'd been meaning to try them for ages but never got round to it. So I already had an interest when the new, third, version was published by the Pike & Shot Society.

It's a high level game, there are historical scenarios, and, uniquely, it combines different forms of combat into a single unit reaction test. The game has, I believe, great promise but I'm not intending to play it just yet.

My Marlburian armies are currently 'between basing' and my 1690 armies turned out to be too small. For grand tactical games with historical scenarios, this has really concentrated my mind on the desirability of having reasonably generic armies that can be used for a range of historical battles (and rules). Time to look again at 2mm, possibly on 25mm square bases?

The other stop factor is the large number of problems with the rules. The TotSK Yahoo Group is awash with queries and an errata (currently 5 pages long!) is in preparation. Sadly this new version of the rules was obviously not adequately tested or proofed. On the plus side, however, there is a lot of interest in and support for the rules from people who want them to work.

There are two lessons for rule-writers here: get them tested by different groups of people who approach the rules in isolation and get them proof-read by someone like me!

The Men Who Would Be Kings

There aren't many gaps in my wargaming interests but 19th Century Colonial conflict is one of the more obvious. I do have some old 6mm Anglo-Zulu War figures I completed many years ago but I don't now find them particularly appealing.

Besides the Zulu War I have at one time or another been interested in the Sikh Wars, the Indian Mutiny, the Second Afghan War, the Urabi Revolt, the Sudan, the Second Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion. There's no shortage of choice there, but I've never really committed to a particular set of rules.

For large battles, and many Colonial battles were very large indeed, Bloody Big Battles! is now an available option and I'm planning to try out a couple of BBB Colonial scenarios with my block armies. However, the prospect of endlessly refighting one particular battle does not really provide me with enough incentive to paint up two large armies.

At the other end of the scale (1:1) I recently got a copy of Dan Mersey's The Men Who Would Be Kings rules published by Osprey. I haven't played all Dan's rules, but I was very impressed with Dux Bellorum.

28mm Afghans from Artizan Designs

TMWWBK takes an unashamedly Hollywood approach, but why not? While the simulation of historical tactics and the reliving of historical battles has great appeal, you sometimes just want to play a game with military flavour and complete it in an evening without undue preparation or stress.

TMWWBK looks simple, fun and requires only a modest number of figures, another winner in my book. I don't know if it will go well as a multiplayer game but I can foresee that the officer characteristics (which govern unit activation) could be very entertaining in the context of a club night.

I was considering doing the Boxer Rebellion using 28mm figures from Redoubt Enterprises but that is already covered by another club member, so I have been revisiting other options. My current favourite is the Second Afghan War using the beautifully sculpted figures from Artizan Designs.