The Wargames Room

Most wargamers long for a place to call their own, the Wargames room. I now have mine. It is not strictly speaking mine, I have to share it with the kids, but its pretty close.

I have a good sized space in my recently converted garage, with a table and plenty of storage.

Table from far end of the room, painting desk in the background. Lots of military history and rules in the book cases.

Table and storage (Kids TV and Sofa)

Storage for figures etc

The table is made up of two 6 foot trestle tables from Amazon. They are very sturdy and a bit wider than I expected at 2 foot six each.



On the table is a solo game using Black Powder and my 28mm ACW figures. These are a mix of Perry, Sash and Saber, Redoubt, Crusader and just a few Foundry.

View of the table, Two brigades and a battery each side

The Zouaves are Redoubt figures

Perry Union troops peer across the teddy bear fur field

Perry Union artillery

Front regiment is made up of Redoubt "Ragged Reb" figures

Confederate firing line of Sash and Saber miniatures

These Rebs are a mixture of Crusader and Foundry figures. Home made fences.

The game ended in a draw. Both sides had a brigade break in the same turn. With the stats I use for ACW with Black Powder the games are pretty attritional. Units tend to blaze away at each other trying to do enough damage to make a charge worth-while. (I lower the hand to hand value to 5).

Next step. Play some real games in the new room.

WoTR Ready to Paint

I have now assembled, based and undercoated all 120 figures for the first part of the project. I have organised them into units as show in the photograph.

 

I know that there are only 118 figures in the picture, I had two casualties as I set up.

I have painted a few of the fully armoured nobles already as they need no livery colours.

I have been researching the livery colours and badges that I am going to get started with. They are as follows:

Yorkists:

Edward IV – Blue and Murrey, Sun in Splendour

George, Duke of Clarence – Blue and Murrey, Bull (Black)

Richard, Duke of Gloucester – Blue and Murrey, Boar (Blck) or White Rose

William, Lord Hastings – Murrey and Blue, Lion in Yellow

Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers – Green, Trefoil in Yellow

Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk – Red, Lion Rampant in white

Sir William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele – Orange and Red – based on shield ! Or White ? Unicorn Head badge ?

Sir William Blount – Blue, Sun Bursts in Yellow ?

John Bouchier, Lord Berners – Yellow and Green, Bouchier knot in white

Sir Humphrey Bouchier, Lord Cromwell – Black and Green, Badge ?

Lancastrians:

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick – Red, Ragged Staff in White

Sir Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter – White and Bloody, Wheat Ear in Yellow

Sir John DeVere, Earl of Oxford – Orange, Boar (Black)

Sir John Neville, Lord Montague – Red and Black, Griffen in Yellow

William, Viscount Beaumont – White, Broom Cods in Green

Sir Richard Tunstall – Black and White, Cockerel in ?

All of these nobles appear to have been at the battle of Barnet on 14th April 1471. The information is mainly from "Standards, Badges and Livery Colours of the Wars of the Roses" by Pat McGill and Jonathan Jones.

The first retinue on the painting table will be King Edward's, attired in Blue and Murrey (purplish-red).  I will probably use Lord Berners for the other Yorkist retinue here as they do otherwise seem to have a lot of Blue and Murrey.

For the first Lancastrian retinue I will go with Warwick's, followed by Exeter.

The mercenaries are a problem. They were supplied by Burgundy but were probably Flemish. I could put them in cool Burgundian Blue and White with a red cross. But, my guess is that they would have had Edward's livery to make it clear to all who they belonged to on the battlefield. So I will paint them up in Edward's colours.

Next time I should have some figures painted.

Wargaming the War's of The Roses

It is all the fault of those Perry twins! I keep on seeing blog posts, forum entries and magazine articles about their plastic Wars of the Roses figures and I want them.

So before buying any I thought that I had better start to understand these "wars".

Books

So, what books do I have. Well I hoard books so I already had some. But of course why read those when I could buy new books. So I bought two books on the military history of the wars. First John Sadler's "The Red Rose and the White". Then Philip Haigh's "The Military Campaigns of the Wars of The Roses". Read them in double time. Both very good, Haigh has the edge in writing style and detail but Sadler tries to bring in more of the first hand experiences of the politics and the fighting.

Then I pulled out the Terry Wise men at arms book, the WRG Armies of-the middle ages book, the army lists (WRG, FOG, Impetus). More army and troop type information.

So I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, now I need to start building an army.

What Side and When?

These are a complex series of wars. People change sides, change alliegency, they even change their titles as the wars go on. I first leant towards the Yorkists, after all Edward IV was never defeated in battle and they wear cool colours (more on that later). But, I don't have an opponent in mind yet, so best to collect both sides.

Now the side changing and treachery comes in to help. Warwick, the arch Yorkist, changed sides in 1469 and was suddenly a Lancastrian (actually I think he was always on his own side and changed his allies). So collect both sides for 1469-71 and you have a larger Yorkist army for the 1455-64 war. Genius!

Another plus for this particular phase of the wars is the presence of Burgundian supplied mercenaries on the Yorkist side. That gives me an excuse to use the Perry Mercenaries box to add in pikes, crossbows and handguns.

Figures

As is usual for me, this has been opportunistic. I went to Colours 2011 at Newbury and found Dave Thomas selling the Perry Plastics at 15 quid a box. So I bought two of the WotR infantry boxes and a mercenary box to get me started.

Once home I started to assemble them. I actually enjoy assembling plastic figures and these go together like a dream. The parts in the two boxes are interchangeable, so you get great variety.

After assembling a few figures I sat back and thought about actually organizing the little chaps. Many troops were raised as retinues for the various nobles so I decided to work on a number of these. How many figures? For no real reason I settled on large retinues (for kings and the main magnates like Warwick) of 24 figures, standard retinues of 16 and small ones of 8 or 12.

I cannot find a definitive view of the relative proportions of bows, bills and men-at-arms in the books or online so am going for 50% bows and a 3:1 ratio of bills to men-at-arms.

Basing

It is going to take me a while to get these painted and it would be good to get some gaming done early on. That means that I need to be able to use the figures for skirmish games. So they need to be on individual bases. Whilst thinking about this I came across Warbases. They have movement trays that will take figures mounted on UK 1 penny coins. So I collected all of the 1p coins in the house and started sticking the figures onto these. I have covered the coins and bases with PVA and bird cage sand before painting. Once I am ready to move to big battle systems (I am open minded about rules as long as I can base things my way) I can pop the figures into suitably decorated movement trays.

Next ...

For the next post I will share my thoughts the retinues that I plan to build, the colour schemes involved and get started on painting. Pictures will be posted of my progress.

Paper Banners for Normans

I have been playing about with hand painted banners for my Normans.

All of my shields are hand painted as are the cast on banners for my cavalry.

I made these as outlines on the PC (using open Office), printed them and then painted with Vallejo paints. I have cut them out, tidied up with paint and attached them to figures. I will take some pictures of the figures once the varnish has dried and I have them based up.

Norman army is looking pretty good now. I bought 80 Crusader infantry at salute and these are just about painted. I will have 40 cavalry, 72 Foot and 24 skirmishers pretty soon, should be enough for Hail Caesar, WAB, Clash of Empires or whatever rule set I end up with. Hail Caesar looks pretty good.

Thoughts on Modelling 1809 Austrians for Black Powder

I am now fully committed to a lengthy relationship with the 1809 Franco-Austrian war. Figures are being painted and books avidly read.

One thing that I want to get right is the modelling of the Austrian army of 1809 for Black Powder (the chosen rule set). So here is some of my thinking.

Command
Austrian commanders seem to have a major trait of avoidance of risk. They will obey their orders, even when the orders are daft. This is because obeying orders, and failing exposed them to less personal risk then disobeying and succeeding.

Austrian commanders were unused to handling large bodies of troops. The corps system was totally new and there had been effectively no peacetime manoeuvres with formations of Divisional or Corps size prior to the Austrian invasion of Bavaria on April 10th. So bodies of troops moved slowly and commanders could not coordinate attacks by formations larger than regiments. Whilst the Austrians threw in individual cavalry regiments the French were handling them in coordinated divisions.

For Black Powder most Austrian commanders will rate as 6 or 7. Some (Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Nordmann) will get an 8, Karl and Radetzky get 9's. I am working on a comprehensive list of generals with Black Powder ratings.

But low ratings wont simulate the strict adherence to orders or the lack of ability in coordinating larger formations. To cover this I will use the Low Decisiveness and Low Independence rules from Page 95 of the rule book. These rules will apply to any 6 or 7 rated Austrian commanders. I will assume that the 8's and 9's are above this sort of behaviour.

Low Decisiveness means that the commander has to re-roll any triple moves (unlikely with a 6/7 but will happen) and abide by the re-roll. I am using this to reflect poor handling of large bodies of troops. I thought of applying a -1 dice penalty for brigade orders to more than two units, but felt that this might be too harsh. The Low decisiveness option should effectively eliminate triple moves for these commanders, which I hope will have the desired effect.

Low Independence means that if the commander issues his orders before the C-in-C he will suffer a minus one dice penalty. If he blunders he will take two blunder tests and choose which to take. If the C-in-C has this rating he drops one command level. I like the effect of this rule in modelling a strict adherence to hierarchy and orders. It will also have a nice side-effect. If the C-in-C is Karl and he blunders and the orders phase ends prior to subordinates giving orders, then it will simulate Karl having an epileptic fit.

Troops
Austrian Line infantry units appear to be fairly ordinary. They are brave, they try hard and they are a bit out of date. So I am rating them as bog-standard. They have the form square rule (probably Battalion Mass really). They cannot form up as skirmishers; I don't believe that they formed whole line battalions into skirmish formation. I am not allowing them to form "mixed" formation. If I allow French line and leger units to do this it will differentiate them in combat.

Some Austrian line units will be large. This will depend upon the unit and the order of battle. As I develop scenarios I will include large units as appropriate.

Austrian Grenadiers were Elite troops. I am going to give them "Elite" with the ability to negate disorder on a 4+, and "Reliable" which gives them a +1 when they are given an order.

Austrian Jagers were pretty good although I think rather poorly trained. I am making them Skirmishers (they will only fight as skirmishers). I am giving them "Sharpshooter" (re-roll one shooting dice) to reflect the rifles with which a proportion were armed. I am not, however, going to give them the range benefit of rifles.

Grenz were not what they had been in the Seven Years War. I may need to experiment with them a little. They need to be headstrong and a little fragile. The "Freshly-Raised" rule may reflect this. This rule requires the unit to test the first time it shoots or engages in hand-to-hand combat, with unpredictable results. Initially I will use this rule. I will allow the Grenz to form as skirmishers. I am going to make them Marauders (no negative effects for being distant from a commander) to reflect their independent nature.

The various volunteer units seem to be a mixed bunch. Freshly raised seems like a good option. Some will be treated as skirmish only units.

Landwehr: Most of them ran away before the battles, so not too many about. I am planning to be harsh with them. They will get "Unreliable" (No move on equal command roll) and "Wavering" (break test on taking a casualty). I could have used "Untested" instead but that works on randomising their Stamina (ability to absorb casualties) which could create a really good unit, and we don't want that to happen.

The Cavalry were pretty good when handled as squadrons and regiments. The problems came when they tried to operate in larger formations. I am going to treat all of the Austrian cavalry as standard Napoleonic troops as laid out on page 127 of the rule book. Light cavalry regiments could be large, so I will field them as such when required.

Cuirassiers only wore breastplates, not back-plates. Some accounts say that this was a disadvantage when facing French Cuirassiers. I am going to ignore this for now.

Position and field batteries are fairly standard. I will allocate a proportion of lighter guns to reflect the use of 3 pounders.

The cavalry artillery is a problem. They are sort of half way between foot artillery and horse artillery. I plan to give them horse artillery movement without the ability to limber, move and unlimber with a single order.

This covers commanders and the common troop types. I am starting to work on some scenarios and the best ways to play the battles as solo games. I will post what I come up with here.

Black Powder in 6mm

I now have a quorum of 6mm Austrians and Franco-Bavarians. I have been through all of my Adler figures and painted everything in sight.

This came about because I played a couple of games with some lovely 18mm AB figures. Really inspired by this but daunted by the lead time and expense of doing 18mm. Then I remembered the mass of painted and unpainted Adlers that I have. Quite a few French, some Austrians and lots of unpainted; French cavalry, Austrians of all sorts and a Bavarian "brigade".

So they are now painted and I am on my third solo game with Black Powder and have just ordered some more figures from Adler.

My next post will cover my thoughts on using Black powder for solo games.

Attached are some pictures. I am using two stands for standard size units at the moment. This works fine, I will go up to three stands when I get more painted. Three stands on a 40mm per stand frontage is about the same as 6x28mm stands of the same frontage at the scale I play. I play 6mm Black powder in CM instead of Inches.

Thanks for looking.







Some Austrian Grenadiers have just gone haring off towards the nearest French after a blunder.

Loving Black Powder

I dug out some 6mm Napoleonics last night and took them to the club for a Black Powder game.They are based for "Warmaster" on 40x20mm stands. We used them in 3 stand units (about 30-36 Infantry, 9-12 cavalry, single gun) with 4 stands for large Austrian units and 2 stands for small units (rifles and Austrian grenadiers). We converted distances to centimetres and played with 4-5 brigades/side (20-25 units) on a 6x4 foot table.

All worked perfectly and I am planning to paint and base the mass of 6mm Adler figures that I have had in a box for years so that we can play bigger games.

I am really getting into these rules now. I must say that as written they work very well for Napoleonics and the measurements were the only thing that we changed in last night's game. It looked right, played as I would expect a napoleonic battle to play out and was fast enough to for a club night.

We are even bringing around a couple of sceptics who initially didn't like the order system.

Having played two games with smaller figures (15mm on an 8X6 and the one described above) this week, both using centimetre measurements, I am liking the rules more than I have done when trying to cram 28mm figures onto a 6X4 and using half distances.