A brief update ... Laarden and other projects

It's been a while…! To be honest, in my own defence, I didn't realise it's been quite as long as it has been since I last updated this Blog.  Sorry, everyone!

So what's been happening in Roundwood's World? I've not been idle. The "Laarden 1688" project is still very much ongoing, with painting and terrain making. So far this summer, I've been finishing the Spanish contingent to Laarden's polygot forces. By way of showing something, here's some of the flags I've been painting up, and one of the Spanish "commanders", in this case the Prince of Oviedo (a diminutive 25mm Spanish princeling, converted from a Copplestone hobbit).

 

And the 2mm Thirty Years War project is also very much "on foot". The Lützen armies are finished, and the aim before Christmas 2017 is to finish the Spanish forces for Nordlingen 1634 in their smaller, linear later Tercios.  I've been using my dodgy German to mine some useful information from some of the (very good) non-English books on Nordlingen. Hopefully a playtest for the battle isn't too far away.

I've also had a recent diversion to the Eighty Years War in 2mm, for reasons that might (hopefully) become a little more obvious during the course of the Autumn. As with the Thirty Years War project in 2mm, what has been interesting me is the possibilities of trying to recreate both the host of smaller battles and the campaigning environment in which the battles took place. 

In some ways, the Eighty Years War in the Netherlands looks to offer unpromising opportunities for the grand sweeping campaigns beloved of wargamers. There are few dramatic marches, the battles are tighter, and cavalry are less prominent. Of the Netherlands, the English soldier Roger Williams wrote in the 1570s, “those grounds did not serve for great troops of horsement to fight in”.

More trenchant still was the Englishman, William Davison, writing to Lord Burghley in March 1578:

“Expungne one towne after another, the least of a number wherof cannot cost him less than half a yeres siege with an infinite charge, loss of men and hazard of his fortune and reputation bycause (as men of war are wont to say) one good towne well defended sufficeth to ruyn a mightie army”.

Sieges, field fortifications, river crossing and chess-board like march and counter-march seem to have been the predominant feature of Netherlands campaigning. But rather than abandoning the Flemish and Dutch landscape of the 1570s, 1580s and 1590s, I've been wondering if this might make quite a good location for a very tight, enclosed campaign.  So I made a start on some maps, which may or may not lead anywhere...

Standing on the shoulder of giants such as the wonderful Perfect Captain, I've made a few tentative steps towards thinking about campaigning in the periods of the Dutch Offensive, and Spanish Counter-Offensive in the Eighty Years War, being the 1590-1609 period. 

Being not that far removed from the Thirty Years War, I think there's some possible cross-overs of troop formations.  I'm hoping to create a Dutch army for the campaign, some of Irregular Miniatures' 2mm figures being perfect to represent Maurits of Nassau's and Willem Lodewijk's forces at battles such as Nieuport in 1600.  Hopefully as the summer passes, I can post some of the images from the tabletop of the Dutch and Spanish forces. As a taster, here's this week's Spanish early Tercios, on their way to being slowly painted.

So, plenty of stuff happening. Apologies again for the Blog silence, which is really as a result of a hectic family life and the usual work related excuses. No promises about when the next post will be, but hopefully not in five months! Catch you next time, and thanks for being patient …