The Legions of Rome; the Catuvellauni of the Downs - Ancient Sharp Practice

“When my mind drifts back now, it is images rather than a coherent narrative which present themselves to me: mist rising from horse lines in the thin keen wind of a morning by the Danube; long marches, the men ankle-deep in mud behind creaking wagons, as the beech and ash woods of Germany enfold us; a hill-top in Northern Spain, when snow fell below us in the valleys but we lay on dry, iron-hard ground under the stars; grizzled centurions lashing at the transport horses, yelling at the legionaries to put their shoulder to a wheel that was spinning as if in mockery of their efforts; a boy with blood oozing from his mouth as I rested his dying head on my arm and watched his leg kick; my horse flinching from a bush which parted to reveal a painted warrior, himself gibbering with terror; the sigh of the wind coming off a silent sea; the tinkle of the camel bell across desert sands.  Army life is a mere collection of moments.” (Augustus, Alan Massie)

*** 

One of the wonderful things about watching a new wargaming period evolve, and a new set of rules coming together, is the impact it has on the imagination of wargamers.  Something along those lines is happening at Lard Island these days.

As some of you might know, Richard and Nick have been play-testing a new set of rules for Ancient warfare.  No doubt there’ll be more of this in future TooFatLardies Oddcasts, but for the moment, let’s just call the rules “Ancients Sharp Practice”.  Or, if you prefer, “Infamy, Infamy” – a name which might raise a smile if you’ve ever seen a particular “Carry On” film from the 1970s.

Both Richard and Nick – but particularly Richard – have been hard at work developing the rules, painting the figures and brushing off some of the terrain we made for Dux Britanniarum.  In doing so, they’ve been building on the terrific work of other Lard-enjoying wargamers who’ve already been using the “Sharp Practice” rules for the Ancients era.

Exciting times indeed, and doubly so when you see the troops being arrayed on the tabletop for the first time.  

Last night’s clash was set three miles from where I live – near the small Hertfordshire village of Wheathampstead.  These days, the village is a very pleasant stopping point for cyclists on the Chiltern Cycle-Way, or a flashing blip on the B653 as you drive past on the way to either the M1 or the A1, travelling somewhere else.  

But in the first century AD (or CE), it was the frontier between Rome and Britain.  The local tribe, the Catuvellauni, were fierce, proud warriors who may well have led the British resistance to Julius Caesar in 54 BC.  The tribe minted coins, and built impressive defences – still visible today at ‘Devil’s Dyke’, just a long stone’s throw from the playing fields where my son’s football team plays on a weekend.  

I digress, but only to mention that history has a way of catching up with you in the most unexpected of places.

On the tabletop, we witnessed a truly impressive array of British chariots, warbands, slingers and skirmishers facing off against a force of Roman legionaries and auxiliaries, advancing through wooded terrain to quell a Catuvellauni insurrection.  Already, some of the features of the game are coming to the fore – the balance between different methods of fighting (Roman corporatism against tribal heroism), the importance of cohesion and control, the focus on the decisive moment of the melee.  It’s shaping up to be a very fine set of rules – and, like Dux Britanniarum, all the more interesting for your humble Blogger being on the ground floor of the Temple of Venus, so to speak.

I know, dear readers, I know – I’m hopelessly biased.  But hopefully you’ll still enjoy some of the battle reports to come….

Take care and fare you all well until next time, Citizens of Rome and proud daughters and sons of the Catuvellauni!

Blog Spring-Clean: Repairing Broken Links

Just a quick post to thank a couple of visitors to this Blog for mentioning that a few of the links under the "Playtesting Scenarios, Campaign Diaries, Play-Aids and Painting Guides" section (on the right of your screen) have become broken over time, including the cards I designed for "Through the Mud and the Blood" (which I know a couple of people have found useful).

I'm very sorry this has happened. It's simply a result of messing around in my Google Drive files - entirely my fault. Hopefully all the links should not be up and running.  Thanks to everyone who mentioned the broken links - much appreciated.

Unfortunately, over the years I seem to have lost the painting templates for British and German Great War infantry. I'll try and find those (hopefully they're useful) and, if I can't locate them, I'll recreate them from my hard copy notes. 

I've also added into the documents you can download a couple of extra "Through the Mud and the Blood" scenarios. "The Wiring Party" is a game we played in 2011, featuring rival British and German wiring parties and also a bold British Anglican Chaplain, searching for a wounded officer. "Rally Once Again" is a frantic search by the British side for troops which have been split up and fragmented, in order to rally them back into the action. I hope they're both good reads - they were certainly fun to play.

I've also added some rule adaptation which we used in 2014, but which didn't quite make the cut into any of the Specials: "Le Cafard". These are a fairly bleak and depressing set of bolt-on rules dealing with battlefield stress, which turned out to be quite fiddly to use in practice. I think there's some useful ideas in here, but they need more work. I've included them really as a work in progress in case anyone's interested in how rules get developed through tabletop gaming.

Going through my files, I realised that there are quite a lot more "Through the Mud and the Blood" themed documents which could be uploaded here.  I'll try and sort that out later this Spring or in the Summer.  Ideally, I'll also try and organise the side-bars in a more logical way to help people navigate through them.

There's also a host of mid- and late-17th Century material (from the Thirty Years War and the fictional Flemish Free City of Laarden) to upload.  Again, I'm hoping to do that when I have some time in the spring and summer of 2018.

The Sound of a Distant Drum: Citizens of Laarden, 1688

Over the past few weeks, I've been having fun painting up some 25mm civilian figures for my fictional Flemish town of Laarden from 1688.  Civilian figures for the seventeenth century are a bit of an after-thought in many ranges.  You have to cast the net fairly wide to find figures which are suitable but, with a little luck, I think I found some very useful figures.

The figures in the photograph above are from Midlam Miniatures, apart from the second on the left which is a rather ancient old-school Citadel Miniature which I've had lying around for just over thirty years.  I knew she would come in useful at some point!

The Midlam Miniatures' women carrying loads of laundry and milk-pails look perfect for a Dutch or Flemish town, even down to the headwear which can be seen in lots of period paintings.

I wanted a few beggars in the town to also add a grimly realistic tone.  I didn't realise when I started, but there is a pretty substantial literature online about beggars and the shifting social reaction to begging in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.  Many Flemish religious reformers and scholars wrote extensively on how to identify fake beggars, on how poor relief should correctly administered and how deceitful begging threatened the public order.  These tensions infused some of the art of the period.  Plenty of artists, including Bosch and Bruegel, seem to have been fascinated by beggars as subjects of their paintings and sketches. 

I converted the (very useful) Midlam Miniatures seated beggar with a head-swap, adding an ECW spare head from Redoubt Miniatures for the representation of an old soldier fallen on hard times. Surely he's one of the deserving poor of Laarden.  Or maybe, just perhaps, he might be a less deserving vagabond, or even a French spy...?

With the forthcoming Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge VIII about to start on the 20th December, I have been busy preparing some more citizens.  These are, mainly, from Midlam Miniatures and from Redoubt.  I've added a few geese from Magister Militum, and even an old Citadel townsfolk rat-catcher (again with a Redoubt head-swap).

Last, but hopefully not least, there's a Foundry nightwatchman, straight from the pages of Rembrandt, with his trusty halberd swapped for a Mordheim lantern.  Here's hoping he might form the last line of defence when the French arrive to besiege or storm the town!

The Sound of a Distant Drum: The Buildings of Laarden, 1688

One of the things I'm looking forward to doing in my late seventeenth century setting for wargaming is matching up my figures with terrain which looks like coming from the same period and place.  As many of you know, this can be a fairly lengthy progress.  Terrain gets built up slowly, with new pieces being added each year to the collection.

I've a vague, general plan to work on a set of Flemish terrain boards next year (probably in the Spring), but I'm still enjoying adding specific buildings and terrain features as I'm paint up figures during the course of this Autumn.

I'm particularly hoping to try and create a "feel" for the lost world of 1688 Flanders.  I've tried to do this by hunting down town plans from the period.  One of the nicest I've seen is the one in this  wonderful perspective map of Harderwijk from the 1670s:

I love the way that the buildings have a communal gardened area, frequently furnished with fruit trees.  I would imagine that within those enclosed areas, vegetables could be grown and poultry might well be kept.  And slightly outside the town buildings, perhaps an old, poorly maintained (and definitely not yet Vauban-improved) town wall, and an open landscape of dykes, poplars and windmills.

The first question is which buildings to use.  I've long been a great fan of the 25 mm buildings produced by Hovels in resin.  These are now pretty venerable, but have stood the test of time very well.  They are little small for modern sized 28mm figures, but fit the Dixon Miniatures and Foundry ranges for the 1680s and 1690s very well.  Although resin can be fragile, the "European" buildings range by Hovels in 25mm is pretty robust and fairly adaptable.  I'm planning to use the range for most of the Laarden buildings - they seem to catch the right feel and spirit of Flemish towns from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and I am sure they will do fine for 1688 at a pinch.

The walled enclosures can be made using some of the 25mm walls available from Hovels.  These are a bit rough and ready, but nothing that some green stuff can't fill and fix.  I doubt that seventeenth century brickwork was universally perfect, especially brickwork used for enclosures and walled gardens.

I've arranged this test terrain piece so that the building stands at the front of a walled enclosure, with plenty of room for a variety of terrain items to be slotted in the back.  More on those to come in a later post.

I'm planning some modest gate posts to finish off the front of the enclosure.  And of course, with every building, comes a variety of Laarden townsfolk.  More of that kind of nonsense to come in later posts.

The Sound of a Distant Drum: North German Foot, Legal Contracts and Oak-leaf brass fret

I’ve been steadily painting throughout September. I’ve finished three battalions of Flemish foot from Laarden (my fictitious town in the Spanish Netherlands of 1688), which are now in the process of being based. More of that in the next Blog post.

I’m moving on to a contingent of allied North German foot, recruited by the civic elders and burghers of Laarden to brace and supplement Laarden's otherwise creaking military capacity. Battalions of foot and horse could still be recruited through private contract and alliance in the late seventeenth century, and these formations have fascinated me for years. However, tracing the history of North German mercenary contingents is an obscure process. The Dutch States General were regular contractors for German and Brandenburg troops in the 1680s. On 5th August 1688, the Dutch States-General concluded a contract with the Elector of Brandenburg for 7,510 troops, a figure adjusted upwards to 7,884 in 1690. John Carswell’s excellent book "Descent on England: Study of the English Revolution of 1688 and its European Background" mentions that the contract, signed by the Duke of Portland, was one of many that summer with half a dozen princes across the North German plain. A treaty with Brunswick-Lüneberg-Celle was signed on 8 August 1688 to provide a further 2,710 soldiers. Agreements were also signed with Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Hesse-Cassel and the Duchy of Wurttemberg in August 1688.

These German mercenaries, hired by their own princes, dukes and electors, replaced Dutch troops which would either accompany William III on his invasion of England, or release Dutch troops to face Louis XIV in the Spanish Netherlands. 

I would love to be able to discover more regarding the actual contractual terms on which these contingents, battalions and squadrons were recruited. Did the contracts specify how long the troops would be hired for? Where would the troops be marshalled in anticipation of the commencement of the contractual term of hire? What conditions of use were stipulated? Was there any detail of any battlefield or campaign deployment mentioned in the contract (such as limitations on use in sieges, or in a geographical area "such troops not to be deployed south of the Sambre", and so on)? What provisions in the contract was made for death, wounding or desertion of troops, or loss of equipment?Did the troops bring any accompanying artillery? What did the contract state about looting, or what would happen if the formation was destroyed in action or on campaign?

Unfortunately, none of the books I have read cover these sort of details. It may be that this is yet another of those mysteries from the late seventeenth century which is probably under our noses, but well hidden.  Alternatively, it is perhaps more likely that the contracts for hire of such formations were fairly simple, just stating that a number of troops would be hired from a particular prince or elector by a certain time at a particular location. 

 But, as ever with wargaming, it’s fun to imagine the terms of contracts which might have been drafted by one of the Laarden civic dignitaries in a candlelight Flemish Voorhuis with the military plenipotentiaries from Emden, Lübeck, Leer or Bremen present in the room and looking on as the contracts of hire were negotiated. 

Here’s some (very draft) ideas which I’m thinking of building into a play-test set of battle rules for the period which I’ve been working on for the past few months:

Hired Battalion Contractual Conditions (roll 2D6)
2	“…the Hirer shall be at pains to ensure casualties are remain as low as can be achieved…” The battalion will seek to withdraw two full moves distant from the enemy once disordered, and rally before being recommitted.
3,4	“… the Hirer agrees that he shall not wantonly expose the hired formations to close action …” The battalion requires an extra command initiative point to be expended before engaging in close combat.
5.6	“… all battalions and squadrons to be marched in good order at all times…” The hired formations require double command initiative point cost to be spent for first move made on the table.
7-10	“… such battalia to be used in the Field at the reasonable discretion of the Hirer…” Troops to be used as desired.
11	“… the hiring of a battalion skilled in the art of the manoeuvres of the Great Gustavus …” The hired formations may make complex manoeuvres at no additional command initiative point to complete.
12	“ … all formations to be well victuall’d at all times…” The battalions are well supplied, with an additional baggage element added to the Trayne.

Turning to the North German troops I have in mind for my formations, I’m again using Dixon’s 25mm Grand Alliance range, mixed with a few Wargames Foundry figures to make up a forlorn hope (or “verloren kinderen”, if you prefer). 

To mark out the troops on the tabletop battlefield, I’ve been adding etched brass fret oak leaves to the soldiers’ hats. This is less fiddly than might appear. As long as you have a very sharp modelling knife of scalpel, the brass oak leaves can be cut out, bent and glued in place using tweezers pretty simply. I know that some figure manufacturers make these, but the etched brass fret are, I think, worth the extra trouble. 

You can pick up the etched brass oak leaves (and other leaves) from either Hasslefree or Scalelink. Both of these suppliers are great to deal with, and come recommended by me. The Hasslefree frets are very reasonably priced and are slightly thinner than the Scalelink ones.

Next time, it'll be a quick look at basing and more flags from Laarden.  Hope to catch you around for that!

African Autumn: "...and you bought HOW many Tirailleurs...?"

There are some days when I sit down at my painting table, pick up a paint brush and start painting almost straight away. There are other days when I sit down, stare at the half-painted jumble of figures  scattered haphazardly across the table - usually at what I like to call the "dull stage" of their painting - and start praying for inspiration.

And then there are the - thankfully fairly rare - days like today.  The day when some of the exciting feeling of a new project disappears like the early morning mist on the Veldt.  The day when you actually count up how many figures need painting...and converting.   The day when reality makes first contact with your dreams!

Oops.  That's the day you look at the little metal figures and shake your head.  Sometimes laughing in disbelief.  Sometimes softly, trying to convince yourself this was a good idea.  And you slowly recount the figures.  No, surely there can't have been that many.  I must have miscounted.  No...I counted right the first time.  Oooops.

Yes, mes braves, its time to show you The Box.

Well, they they are.  Les Tirailleurs Senegalais.  Oh, and there's another layer below them of more Tirailleurs and French Legion Entranger.  And some machine guns.  And some casualties.  And some other stuff I don't need to trouble you with right now.... And some spare heads....actually, rather a lot of spare heads.

I know what you're thinking.  That's quite a few figures to convert ... and that really is a lot of heads to swap....

...and you'd be right!

It's been a slightly subdued morning in the painting room after I realised how much I had to do and just how small those lovely Woodbine Design Company heads are.

But every journey starts with a first step.  I've selected the first nineteen figures for preparation, conversion and basing.  I've chosen figures which are similar enough to give me a feel for how to manage the conversions over a larger group, but varied enough so I don't get bored.  And, because I keep convincing myself I enjoy a challenge, I've included a company command base in the first batch as well (with some Forgotten & Glorious Tirailleur heads).

And yes, that is a lot of modelling putty in the photograph below.  Sadly, perhaps even depressingly, no enterprising figure manufacturer has yet cast anything I can use for a coupe-coupe machete to be glued onto the belt of the figures.  Ahh....so that's what the modelling putty is for...

All done by December?  What are the chances?  Ninety 28mm figures (including the Legion Etranger), in three months.  To be honest, there's maybe be a slim chance of that happening.  Which is just enough of a chance to go for it!

And, although books about the Tirailleur Senegalais are a little thin on the ground, I've plenty of inspiration for wargaming in Africa from other sources - some eminently respectable, some a little more eccentric!

So, wish me luck.  I better get moving.  Those Adrien helmets won't swap themselves!

African Autumn and Partizan 2014

It’s been a busy week at Roundwood Towers. I’ve been busy preparing the first wave of Tirailleurs Sénégalais, and finishing off the last of the horizon bleu coated Metropolitan French infantry. I’ve posted a work in progress shot below of just about the the last of the Poilu.

As you can see, there’s a small number of spare French infantry, a battalion command group (which somehow kept being missed from the painting queue), a couple of 37mm trench guns and another Crapouillot trench mortar. All the figures are 28mm, and come from a mixture of Brigade Games, Scarab Miniatures and Old Glory.

Readers of this blog will know my love of the Brigade Games late First World War French range, sculpted by Mike Owen. These figures are really splendid. I strongly recommend them. I’m also a fan of the Scarab Miniatures command ranges, including the kneeling field telephone operator in the command group. The late war French range from Old Glory doesn’t get as much love online as it might do. The figures are very slightly smaller than Brigade Games’ figures, and certainly do not have the heft and weight of Scarab figures. But they are well proportioned, and in small groups of figures (such as the 37mm trench guns above, or the Crapouillot trench mortars below) they look very fine. On the table top, on a shell-pocked terrain, they really fit perfectly with Brigade Games’ and Great War Miniatures’ French and German figures for the 1916-1918 period. 

 
As for the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, these are next on my project list, along with a demi-section of the Legion Etranger. I’ve been reading as extensively as I can about l’Armée Coloniale and the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. I’ll be bringing the most relevant information for wargaming to the blog over the course of the Autumn, along with the work in progress conversions of a section of the Brigade Games’ standard late war French figures to Tirailleurs Sénégalais.

The vague, as yet not fully formed idea in my mind, is to stage a game at the club in late November or December featuring the African troops of the French Army. Finding the right scenario for the disparate elements is going to be interesting! I like to imagine my wargaming in terms of projects, with the thought in my mind of moving from the “Verdun Project” to an “African Autumn”.

Finally, it was the Partizan show in Newark, England this weekend. I was not able to go for family commitment reasons, but my chum Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner made the trip north. They very kindly provided me with some fine photos of the wonderful early Great War game staged by Aly Morrison and Dave Andrews. Both Aly and Dave have long been hobby heroes of mine, and to my mind they consistently set the bar of excellence with their amazing displays. From the photos, you can see that their game on Sunday was no exception. More photos are available at Phil Robinson’s excellent blog, News from the Front HERE.