Bloody Big Battles! - Spicheren

Spicheren (6 August 1870) was a Franco-Prussian War battle which compelled the French to withdraw to the defences of Metz. In the Bloody Big Battles! refight we rolled dice for the privilege of choosing sides. I won the roll and chose the hasty and aggressive Prussians whilst my friend Ian commanded the defensive and well-armed French.

The game was fought over a 6' x 4' table using Hexon tiles to create the terrain. That involved some simplification of the contour lines, but none significant IMO. The river, roads, railway (black), towns, villages and ponds were fashioned from felt. Buildings were from a wooden toy village set. The bridge was resin. Matchsticks at the edges of the hexes were used to indicate steep slopes. Hexes that contain tree models or lichen (not enough trees) were wooded.

Deployment

Deployment

The Prussians (blue) were mostly off-table at the beginning. The main Prussian force came over the river in the north-west. The French (red) were somewhat spread out. A subsidiary Prussian force threatens to enter further to the south at Schoeneck or on the southern edge. The five white counters denote the objectives. The French must be prepared to defend the southern objectives as well as fending off the main Prussian force.

Bloody Big Battles! - Accuracy of Hexon terrain at 2/3 scale

Gravelotte

Ideally one would create customised terrain for each battle directly tracing the contours in the scenario maps, and some people have done just that. Most people, however, probably use ready-made hills of one sort or another and I've been happy with Hexon tiles.

Recently, however, I've been thinking of reducing the maps by 2/3 so they will fit on a smaller table, i.e. 32" x 48", and using smaller base widths (20 mm). The issue that concerned me most was whether Hexon would still work at the reduced granularity.

The battleground in hexes would become 9 x 12 so I superimposed the hex grid on a sample map (Gravelotte) to see how well the contours could be represented. The illustration shows the original map next to my representation in hexes.

I personally think the representation is good enough and, more to the point, is likely to be at least as accurate if not better than using any other system of ready-made hill features.

I'm not now intending to adopt the 2/3 scale in general but it's a useful option and I'll write more about it in a future post.

The cast-pike controversy

15 mm mediaeval Florentine spearmen. All my 15 mm and
25 mm pikemen/spearmen have been re-equipped with
wire/pins, but I wouldn't want to do that with 10 mm figures
unless they come open-handed.

Doing the Thirty Years War with 10 mm Pendraken or 6 mm Baccus figures has been on my wishlist for a long time. For someone in Britain brought up on an Anglocentric view of history, doing the TYW rather than the English Civil War appeals to my offbeat tastes.

However, I am completely put off large pike armies by the prospect of bent and broken pikes or the effort required to replace cast pikes with pins or wire. Replacing 10 mm cast pikes is very tedious and time-consuming, and not always successful. Replacing 6 mm pikes is probably not even an option.

Bloody Big Battles! - basing figures 2

The BBB standard solution for representing a "4S" unit.
This assumes 6mm figures on 1" square bases.

Following my little article on BBB figure basing,  I posted to TMP about what late 19thC warfare really looked like. There were some interesting responses with links to pictures that contributors considered to be realistic. My overall impression was that while the firing line was fairly loose and irregular, the supports were in quite close order.

A parallel discussion recently took place on the BBB Yahoo Group about skirmisher basing. In BBB a unit (Brigade/Division) might consist of say 4 bases, one of which will typically be rated as giving the unit a skirmishing capacity ("4S"). The suggested way of representing this is to have 3 bases of close order troops and 1 of skirmishers.

A "4S" unit using a skirmisher marker.

However, the appearance of a skirmishing base in line with close order troops doesn't look right to me. Another approach would be to have, in this instance, 4 close order bases and 1 skirmisher base as a marker. The marker is ignored for all purposes other than indicating the skirmishing capacity. When the first base is removed as a casualty, you remove 1 close order base and the skirmisher marker.

This makes things a little more fiddly but should look a whole lot better while neatly fulfilling rule requirements. It also inclines me back to my original preference for 6mm Baccus figures...It's a good job I'm allowing this project to mature before hitting the 'buy now' button!

Bloody Big Battles! - basing figures

French infantry in a loose firing line

When attacking, Late Nineteenth Century European armies basically operated in skirmish lines with supports in closer formations. With a large enough base and small enough figures, e.g. 6mm figures on a 60mm x 30mm base, it is possible to suggest both the skirmishers and their supports, but with the 1" bases in Bloody Big Battles! this doesn't really work unless going down to 2mm.

Chickamauga for beginners

An early test game. The ratio of trees and open spaces should really be reversed, but this fulfils the need for a simple participation game.

Tonbridge Wargames Club are putting on the Second Day of Chickamauga Battle Cry scenario as a participation game at the Cavalier show later this month. The game will be played with lead miniatures on Hexon.

This is a collective effort and I'm just one of the people helping with it. At some point I am planning to fight this battle with Bloody Big Battles!, but Battle Cry is a quick, fun game and ideal as an introduction to wargaming for beginners of all ages.

For those not familiar with the 'Command & Colours' series, Richard Borg's Battle Cry is a hex-based board game that comes with its own plastic miniatures and 2D terrain counters.

Bloody Big Battles! Langensalza II

I finally got a chance to replay the BBB Langensalza scenario, this time with a better understanding of the rules. I commanded the Prussians again, but it was a very different game.

In the first game I had failed to get my troops moving and had fallen back on the defensive.  This left the Hanoverians free to cross the Unstrut and assault with their superior numbers.  If attackers are not halted by defensive fire, the actual assaults are resolved without the hardware advantage that would otherwise accrue to the Prussian Needleguns.

Before the battle: view from the Hanoverian side. The wide brown felt strips are roads. The thinner strips are streams. The dark green area to the centre-left is marsh.

In this game I fulfilled the conditions for keeping the Hanoverians at bay by continuing to probe the Hanoverian positions. Under the scenario rules the Prussians have to attack, but this can be very staged and piecemeal. With four units and various stages of 'attack', the Prussians could potentially delay the Hanoverians for 8 turns even without actually assaulting anything directly. The Hanoverians need to disrupt the Prussians to stem this advance. If they succeed the Hanoverians would be released to do their worst.

The Prussians by-pass Langensalza to threaten Merxleben. Apologies for the inverted Prussian blocks. I had attached some hooked pads to the bottom of the blocks to stop them from slipping but they stuck to the felt roads far too well. (They have since been replaced with paper.)

Frustrated by my delaying tactics, the Hanoverians moved two infantry units forward in the face of close-range fire from my Needleguns lining the  embankment of the stream. Luckily, I also took out the two central Hanoverian artillery units. This gave me a big advantage in the developing firefight. Far from stemming my advance the Hanoverian centre was threatened with destruction by fire.

The 25th Regt lines the embanked part of the Unstrut, bringing the Hanoverians under intense fire. One Hanoverian artillery unit has been stripped away.

By the end of turn 4 the Hanverians saw no hope of drawing, let alone winning, and conceded the game. BBB author Chris Pringle reported that he has won this scenario as the Hanoverians even though he was held up for 5 turns, but probably not from such an adverse position. As a small scenario, Langensalza is prone to variable outcomes, but that makes it interesting and worth replaying.

The 11th Gren Regt moves up in support. The second Hanoverian artillery unit is destroyed.

Anyway, I'm very glad to have now concluded a proper game and look forward to trying some American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War battles.

Basing 10mm Seven Years War figures for Maurice

Pendraken Prussian Fusiliers. The ensigns occupy two
touching corners so the flags are at the centre of the unit.

Maurice uses square bases and Base Widths for measurement, so I decided on 25 mm bases so I could use inches in games. Four bases comprise a unit (except for artillery which are single bases).

I'm putting the infantry 8-up (two ranks of four) which means they are packed tight sideways with the figures presenting a continuous line when the bases are pushed together. IMO this density is more historically accurate than spreading the figures out.

The figures are also closely packed front-to-back and this will support my plan to paint only the 'outsides' of the figures leaving the 'insides' in shadow. If I ever get round to doing the American War of Independence in 10 mm, I would probably mount the figures more loosely, i. e. 6-up (except the Hessians).

The bases are made from Pendraken Minibits laser-cut MDF glued with UHU Power to Precision Wargames Supplies steel bases. They are designed to be stored and transported in TUFF boxes lined with magnetic sheet. The figures are applied with PVA glue after trimming off the casting sprues.

Bad hair day for the Vikings

Hairy

After playing a game of The Crescent & The Cross I was thinking about resuscitating my 25mm Vikings for Saga or even Dux Bellorum. This was an army that was literally packed away some 20 years ago and never opened since.

Anyway, on opening the boxes and picking out the polystyrene chippings used to pack them, I discovered that some of the figures had become considerably 'hairier' owing to a nasty instance of lead rot. Some looked like iron filings attracted to a magnet while others had crumbled to dust. Happily, the vast majority are in perfect condition.

Crumbly

As the figures were recruited from a large variety of different manufacturers I don't know which ones rotted, and as the ranges are so old it's water under Stamford Bridge in any event.

AFAICR all these figures would have been undercoated with a polyurethane varnish stained with Humbrol enamel matt black, painted in Humbrol matt enamels and then given a sealing coat of varnish.

That was my standard approach for 25mm figures in those days and I've never seen this problem with any other armies.