LittleWars1913

 

 I played another SYW game at the Guildford Club this week using Honours of War rules.

Chris and I took the Prussians against the Austrian hordes.  We had 4 brigades a side with a single independent Hussar unit.  I asked Chris at the start if he "wanted to make the futile cavalry charges" or he wanted me to.  He said he would.

I hadn't realised that he meant it quite so literally and with poor die rolling for Prussian Dragoons against Superior Austrian Curassier, he managed to lose the entire Cavalry Brigade AND the independent Hussar unit by the end of Turn 2 (and thus the left flank)!  We were only on a 4' wide table which meant that things happened quickly.

Things didn't really improve for the Prussians despite some changes of fortune and the Austrians finally broke the Prussian army after a fairly hard fought 2 hour game. Leaving quite a lot of time for the Pub.

An enjoyable game despite the carnage.

 

Next up on the painting table is 20mm Early War British Boyes ATs, HMGs and 2 x 25pdr guns...

 I haven't managed to do much painting over the last 3 weeks due to other calls on my time - managed some gaming.

I have been trying to work out how to organise my 25mm Marlburians so that I can use them for sieges as well as the occasional field battle.  I tried basing them individually on 2mm bases so they could fit into movement trays but they looked "odd" on the battlements. Also I would need to add a fair amount of cavalry that wouldn't be any use for the Dendermonde project.

While mulling this over I remembered that someone on facebook had offered a collection of 25mm Minifigs SYW figures for sale a few weeks ago.  I got in touch and they were still available so after some haggling I now have a Seven Years War collection that worked out around £1.20 a foot figure painted and based.

The collection is missing some items so I have topped it up with Artillery and some cavalry from Ian Hinds - also Minifigs.

I am in the process of rebasing everything so the whole collection matches.  progress for far:

Prussians so far - some have had the bases finished and flocked.



Austrians so far.

The collection is being based for Honours of War which we use at the Guildford Club and should end up with 10 infantry units, 3-4 cavalry and 4 gun batteries for the Prussian, Austrian and French forces.

32 Austrian cavalry are up next, followed by the rest of the Prussian cavalry and both sets of artillery.

There are then all the French units to sort out.

I am slightly short on some things and will probably add more Prussian Cavalry, some Austrian command and some more medium artillery in the short term.

The french will need artillery, cavalry and commanders adding as well.

I am pleased with the figures, the level of painting and style and the look of the armies for what was a very good price.

 

Finished repainting the first French Unit that I bought on Facebook - also added 4 grenadiers to bring it up to 24 figures.

Repainted coats, facings and faces to match the style of my other figures...

I very carefully sorted out some grenadier and officers to expand the units with and put them to one side but still can't find the bag! I did find 8 grenadiers, so I have 4 more painted for the next regiment.

 

 Spent some time today design the citadel for Dendermonde - or at least the small part of it that appears on the table.  This is the edge of the citadel and one of its bastions.  There will also be the corner of the main tower at the back of this piece.

 Finally got back to painting some figures and finished off a 25mm Minifigs battalion of French Marlburians for the Dendermonde project.

 

 

 

Test paint of one painting strip of Minifigs 25mm French Marlburians - trying to get a colour I like.  Happy with them so on to the other 19 in the unit..

 First Austrian WSS unit for the Dendermonde project - 25mm Minifgs. Just need flag adding and bases tidying. (Figures from a very generous Alan Gruber).

 The Siege of Dendermonde, which took place in the War of Spanish Succession and saw the allied army besieging the French, was the subject of a famous article by Ron Miles that ran in Battle for Wargamers magazine from December 1976 and covered his reconstruction of the siege by building Dendermonde in his wargames room.

As a 13 year old when this article came out I was fascinated by it and eventually did play out a siege similar to it using 1/300 Heroics and Ros Napoleonics and drawing out the city and siege waorks on a large piece of paper.  I cannot remember which side won in that refight.

Henry Hyde has made the original series of articles available as a scan into a single PDF download here:

https://battlegames.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Siege_of_Dendermonde.pdf

for those people who have never seen it before.

I have always continued to be fascinated by the article over the yers have have dug out the original issues and reread the articles on a number of occasions.

As I now have the time and (at the moment at least) the space I have decided to finally press on with a project to recreate the siege in the article and play through the siege in my own wargames room.

The original article shows the figures that Ron Miles used which were around 1,000 Minifigs S Range figures.  They are not easily available (I know that John Cunningham has been recasting them but I don't believe the range is complete and friends have had no response to enquiries to him) so I have decided to go with the current Minifigs 25mm Marlburian range which is available from Caliver Books.

I am hoping to pick up some older figures (so if anyone has some they no longer want, I am interested) in order to keep the cost down but I have bought some samples to paint up from Caliver.  

These are 3 British Infantry.

Gloss painted (of course) and I have also gone for the 1970s black-lined look - very quickly painted so could with some tidying and I haven't yet decided what to do about faces.

I did consider the Irregular Miniatures 20mm range and did order a battlepack, but decided that true 20mm Marlburians are scarce and that the range doesn't offer some of the extras that I wanted.  Also Minifigs have the "Old School" look that I want to have.

This is intended to be a long term project (probably 1-2 years before it is ready to play) and the first stage with the scenery for the game is to decide on what size to build the town to...

The original article has this map of the town

which, from Ron's suggested measurements of 1" to 10 yards gives a model 10 foot square!  He does say in the article that he realised that was too big and he couldn't fit it in so he planned on building only half the town.

That would imply he built something that was 10' by 5' which he then had to cut down to enable there to be space for the attackers.

I think, looking at the photos and from the description that he cut it after the 3rd bastion on the side wall and produced a model that ran from table edge to table edge.

At his scaling (16" for a bastion, 12" for a wall. and 10" for the moat and 12" for the Glacis) the model would still have been something like 7' long by however deep he made the town.

I can fit a maximum table size of 12' x 6 at a push'  (but 5' wide is really the largest practical size) into my wargames room but for practical reasons I don't want to leave that size table up for a year or so while the game is played out (which is how long Ron Miles took!).

So, I am likely to limit it to 8' x 5' as a maximum and plan to make it in sections so it could be moved out of the way to provide table space for other games.  

The question is going to be can I make it 6-7' wide and 3' deep and then have only 2' for the attacking forces or should I try to give the attackers more space?

Lots of things to think about!