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.

New projects: Black Seas and 6mm Thirty Years War

It's at times like these that I need to think of new wargames armies!

I have lots of ongoing projects to fill in and complete, but most of these are actually now at a stage where I could soon put them on the table, somewhat anaemic (undercoated) though they might appear. There are various 28mm Fantasy armies for Dragon Rampant about which I've so far revealed very little but have much to illustrate, 28mm Buccaneer and Spanish armies for The Pikeman's Lament and 28mm Militia and Insurgent forces (1798) for Rebels and Patriots. I would like to get some 28mm Woodland Indians, Southern Militia and Riflemen in hunting-shirts for AWI (Rebels and Patriots) and some 28mm Sudanese and Bashi-Bazouks for my Colonial Egyptians (The Men Who Would Be Kings) but these would be all relatively small acquisitions.

Since emerging from the operating theatre, I've come up with two new projects to provide retail therapy. The first is the 1/700 Napoleonic naval game, Black Seas from Warlord Games. For those who don't know, this is one of those out-of-the-box games of which I thoroughly approve. I saw it demonstrated at Salute and it looked user-friendly.

It is designed by Gabrio Talentino, author of Cruel Seas and a regular nice guy. Cruel Seas didn't appeal to me and apparently had lots of errors, but I'm confident that mistakes have been learnt. Anyway, I pressed the button to pre-order a Master and Commander starter set, and look forward in particular to the release of the Americans. The ships need a little assembly but are essentially ready-made and the customisation options have been very cleverly thought out.

The other project that has been consuming my attention is Steven Thomas' Tilly's Very Bad Day Thirty Years War rules. Over the years, lots of years, I've have been all over the place with different ideas for scales and basing arrangements, but I woke up this morning with thoughts of 6mm figures on 60mm x 30mm bases and just settling on one generic infantry type! It's the smallest one can go and still see character, and it will be very straightforward to complete.

Walking wounded

Having just survived a condition that would have been fatal (true, but let's not fuss) I'm enjoying an unplanned opportunity to sort out the important things in life. Beyond my love for my wife and family, our family dog, friends, and a lifelong thirst for musical expression, I intend to carve out a firmer place for painting and gaming, which brings me so much pleasure and relaxation.

I'm rarely personal on this blog (beyond exposing my part in our shared obsession with toy soldiers) and I'm certainly not a Facebook type that thinks every trivial aspect of my life will be of interest to a diverse audience.

So this is just something of an interim bulletin and provides a usable excuse for not having posted anything in the past fortnight. In the absence of a Facebook account, I felt I had to write something somewhere.

It remains for me to express my deep-felt gratitude for the kind and brilliant staff of the hospital in whose care I currently lie.

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.

2019 - 6 monthly review

A recent 'cut-down' game of Hammerin' Iron kindly
organised by my friend Ian using his ships. Photo
shows my very bad handling of the CSS Virginia. Ouch.

Of the games I wanted to play this year, I have played:

• The Men Who Would Be Kings.
• Lion Rampant.
• Dux Bellorum.
• Hammerin' Iron.

I have not played:

• Dragon Rampant
• L'Art de la Guerre.

As regards planned projects:

• Worked on the 28mm Border Reivers for The Pikeman's Lament.
• Continued collecting 28mm 1798 Irish Rebellion companies for Rebels and Patriots.
• Got some 28mm AWI Continentals to partner the British for Rebels and Patriots.
• Made some progress with reorganising, rebasing and supplementing my old 15mm Ancient and Mediaeval armies for L'Art de La Guerre.

Most of my collectong/modelling/painting time has, however, been focused on unexpected and unscheduled (!) activity:

• Fantasy armies for Dragon Rampant.
• Buccaneers and Spanish for The Pikeman's Lament.

It's in the nature of a wargamer's life to flit from one thing to another. I'll just have to sell off more books to make room for even more figure-filled RUBs.

My priorities for the rest of the year are:

• To play more Rampant games of all types.
• To play some more games of Hammerin' Iron.
• To base and at least undercoat all Dragon Rampant warbands so they can be tabled.

I haven't spent a great deal of time on the hobby, but I have attended most club game nights and chipped away at a whole load of projects.

I keep a very basic diary of jobs done. It shifts the focus from contemplating an unscaleable lead mountain to enjoying little steps actually taken, and it's a great source of satisfaction and encouragement.