"Firing into the Brown" #70 - Navarre reflagged, Dickens and stuff...

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..  just a short one this week as the current Mrs Steve the Wargamer and I have just come back from a few days away in Bath..

...saw this in the flesh (so to speak)..  utterly gorgeous..

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Le Christmas Dickens est finis, mon braves! 😀 A most unusual Dickens being set back in time (slightly) and I have to say I enjoyed it - certainly finished it quick..

Well, this one was an interesting one and no mistake...  set in two parts about 5 years apart, this one is set against the background of the Gordon Riots in 1780 [clicky], an event that I was unaware of until this book...  anyway - the central character is Barnaby, the mentally challenged son of a murderer who had absconded just before his birth leaving him in the loving hands of his impoverished mother. This father keeps popping up, with the assistance of a blind associate they are trying to get money out of her. Elsewhere we have the two Elliot's - senior and junior - one a landlord of the Maypole pub, the other his badly treated son (who runs away to the army and serves in the war of Independence losing an arm at Savannah). We then have Hugh, a somewhat wild and unprincipled man who works for Elliot Senior as an ostler, but who runs away to join the ranks of the Anti Catholic mob as a leader and trusted man. The gentry are represented by The Chester's – the villainous Sir John, Esquire, M.P. (Member of Parliament) and his innocent son Edward and the Haredale's – Mr Geoffrey Haredale (younger brother of murdered Reuben who Barnaby's father killed), and his niece Emma. The stars of the story though are the Varden household, Gabriel the locksmith, his manipulative wife Martha, and his beautiful daughter Dolly and the wonderful (female) servant Miggs (who in my mind resembles Olive Oyl, the beloved of Popeye). Anyway - each has his part to play in the coming riots, some voluntarily, some involuntarily, and some implacably opposed - at the end of the riots some are dead, some injured, and some are miraculously released at the last moment (in the best Dickens way!) - no spoilers, read the book!

8.5

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More time ago than I can possibly remember (well actually it was October 2020, but you get my drift) David in the "Not by Appointment" blog posted one of his lovely flags, this time for the Navarre Regiment [clicky] - and I said then that I would definitely be reflagging my little regiment at the earliest opportunity - and here we are four years later and the job is done! 😏

Old one on the right, brand spanky new one from David's blog on the left - the old one wasn't too bad but the brown is more orange than brown..

While I was doing the standard it also seemed a shame not to rebase them as they were on the thin plastic card bases I used to use, and they had become a little warped..

Rebasing in progress...

...and here they are all resplendent and new.. black edged the flag to blend it in and lose that white paper edge you get otherwise..

Excellent - much better!

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say, but as I'm unlikely to post again until after Christmas - and may be not even until after the New Year if Santa is kind in the way of bottled beers - I would like to wish all my reader a very Happy Christmas, and in the words of the immortal Dave Allen, "Goodnight, thank you, and may your God go with you." 🎄🎅🤶

"Firing into the Brown" #69 - Skirmish Games, Toulouse, Dickens and stuff...

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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Had so much fin with the first game that I thought I'd expand the horizons a little and throw in some of the glitter..  man cannot live by small arms alone.. 😏

The book makes the inestimable suggestion that if armour is used, it's used only on one side as fundamentally the rules are for an infantry/man based skirmish..  but having put the rules for armour in it, it seemed a shame for me not to try them, so for this game the sides of the last game were expanded.. the British with a 2pdr AT gun and an MMG, the Germans with a Pz II and an MMG.

Same battlefield as last time but I switched the axis left to right instead of up to down..  first conundrum, where to position the 2pdr - as a crew served weapon, it can turn on the spot but cannot move..  clearly it can't be everywhere so it seemed logical to place it on the road where it could turn to cover either flank in the event it needed to..

Move 2 following and the British have had a good start before the jokers turn up - the Germans have started slow but the Pz II is deployed to cover their right flank (and more importantly for them out of sight of the 2pdr!)

Turn 3 following and the threat of the Pz II is enough to break up the British advance - note the first two British casualties, one of them an officer - most of the squad have taken cover, but the Germans are filtering forward using the hedge line for cover..

Move 5 following - the Pz II can't be everywhere, and the threat of the British MMG deployed on that flank is enough to get the Germans to switch it to the other flank.. it did dreadful damage as you can see from the number of "downed" stands.. British casualties are mounting...

..abysmal initiative cards.. 😏

Last turn following - on their left flank the British switched to close quarters rather than standing off and shooting, and very successfully too..  now the German casualties are mounting, but in the end of turn morale check the British fail, and the game goes to the Germans.

Post match analysis:

• Another fun game which was far closer at the end than it was a couple of moves in!
• Crew served weapons are supposed to be static - I think based on the the lightness of the weapon I might allow limited movement for some in future games
• Another game that highlights you are better off getting stuck in than hiding and being picked off one by one..

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Madame de Montespan

Another in the occasional "regiments of renown" series featuring the histories of various regiments painted in haste at the beginning of a project but which were not documented here for posterity.. so we come to French infantry regiment "Toulouse", part of my War of the Spanish Succession collection, and one of my favourites simply because of the flag.. 

There is a very (very) good potted history of this regiment on the Kronoskaf WSS site (link below) so there's little point in me repeating the good work completed there, but by way of a framework to hang some 'rabbit holes' on (😏), at Blenheim they were in Tourouvre’s Brigade (under Lieutenant General the Marquis de Sauffrey) as part of the Bavarian contingent facing Eugene on the Franco Bavarian Left flank - they consisted of two battalions for a total of about a 1000 men.

The regiment was created by the regulation of 20 February 1684 for the Comte de Toulouse, the natural son (😏) of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan.

During the War of the Spanish Succession, the regiment was commanded by:

• Jean Comte de Cadrieu from 4 April 1693 (an Inspector General of Infantry, and also titled Baron of Calmont de Plancatge)
• Jean-Louis, Comte d’Hautefort-Bosen from 8 May 1703 to 15 March 1718 (made brigadier on 26 October 1704, maréchal de camp on 8 March 1718, lieutenant-general on 20 February 1734, and died at a good age on 9 March 1743)

Their service during the war was a follows - surprised they weren't at the other big three..

• 1702 - the Battle of Friedlingen.
• 1703 - Siege of Kehl, the attack and capture of Hornberg, combat of Munderkingen and the Battle of Höchstädt. It later participated in the capture of Kempten and Augsburg.
• 1704 - the first battalion of the regiment was at the Battle of Schellenberg, the entire regiment was then at the Battle of Blenheim and it was then besieged in Landau by the Allies.
• 1705 - the regiment was increased to three battalions
• 1706 - the relief of Fort-Louis and in the capture of Drusenheim, Lauterbourg, Haguenau and the Marquisat Island.
• 1707 - the attack on the Lines of Stolhofen
• 1709 - the Combat of Rumersheim.
• 1711 - one battalion was posted to Spain
• 1713 - the sieges of Landau and Freiburg.

I've managed to find very little on the two Colonels - Jean Comte de Cadrieu is the better documented and apart from those facts above it would appear that he was most active in south west France being prominent in a number of the Alps campaigns, and also at the siege of Toulouse.

The records show that a regiment of infantry named Hautefort Bosen was disbanded in 1698 and it's men incorporated in the La Couronne Infantry Regiment - I do wonder if Jean Louis might have been involved with them but have managed to find little or nothing on anything to do with Hautefort Bosen!

These are Minifigs (but not sure about the officer..  Dixon perhaps?) and painted and based my me some time pre-2006 - the flag is from Warflag.com (which currently seems to be down 😒)

References:

Toulouse Infanterie - Kronoskaf Project WSS

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That time of the year again, and my regular reader will know that as Christmas approaches it is my want to read a Charles Dickens, so it's Dickens time again! 

Here's the 'Christmas Dickens' timeline to date...

• 2013 - "David Copperfield" (9/10)
• 2014 - "Nicholas Nickleby" (exceptional)
• 2015 - "Oliver Twist" (8/10)
• 2016 - "The Old Curiosity Shop" (7/10)
• 2017 - "A Tale of Two Cities" (7/10) and "A Christmas Carol" (9/10)
• 2018 - "Great Expectations" (10/10)
• 2019 - "Bleak House" (8/10)
• 2020 - "Little Dorrit" (retired hurt - no score 😏)
• 2021 - "Our Mutual Friend" (8/10)
• 2022 - "Pickwick Papers" - brilliant... (9/10)
• 2023 - "Dombey and Son" - hugely enjoyable.. (9/10)

My top four Dickens novels so far would be "David Copperfield", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Great Expectations" and 2022's absolute joy, "Pickwick Papers" - "worst" (it's Dickens for goodness sake, how can there be a worse?), 'least enjoyed', was without a doubt "Little Dorrit" which was mawkish beyond extreme, but of which my opinion seems to be at odds with most other people - I may have to have another go at some point, as Dickens 'only' wrote 16 major novels (there were a few books of short stories etc), and I've now read 11 (and a bit) of them...

This years Dickens, however, will be "Barnaby Rudge", of which I know nothing, so a bit of a voyage of discovery...

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...

"Firing into the Brown" #68 - Skirmish Games, gibbets and stuff...

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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Le gibbet, ces't finnis! 😁

This one was built completely from scratch.. as you can tell.. 😏

..from bits and pieces in the spares box.. coffee stirrers, dowels, plastic strut, and a bit of left over plastic sheet with the wood emboss..

..plus a bit of old garden wire for the nooses..

Glue gunned together in a hurry - primed black and then dry brushed in the same scheme as the recent Cedar Gulch buildings..

..I also found a figure suitable use as the hangman..

Pleased with that..  maybe it's time for a necktie party!

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I was much taken with some recent posts on Tradgardmastare's blog [clicky] featuring Alan Lambshead's book on "One Hour Skirmish Wargames" and having realised the book was only £4.50 on Kindle decided to invest..  price of a pint* later (well price of a pint round here anyway) and I had obtained what turns out to be an excellent addition to the "One Hour" stable..

It had been a while since I had last had the 15mm WWII project on the table, so by way of a learning exercise, I thought I'd get some figures out and have a go - basically just to see how the mechanics translate to the table top..

Nothing too complicated then; in Skirmish Wargames rules terms (and this game only featured the core rules), two squads/sections each with a +1 leader (NCO) and a force motivation value of 3 (more on what and how those work later)..

* (does anyone else match costs to how many pints it would buy??😏)

Table set up as follows - which was taken at the start of Move 1 after both sides had drawn initiative cards - Germans to the left, British to the right, and they have won the initiative so move first - unfortunately their activation points cards were poor so they didn't get too much. The Germans however had a couple of good cards before the Jokers turned up to end the move..

Start of Move 2 and one of the the German squads have managed to occupy both floors of the house their side of the road, while the other squad is filtering down the covered gap between the hill and the house, covered from enemy fire by the barn to their front..   you'll note that the British activation cards were so poor one of the squads hasn't even got moving yet, and the other isn't doing much better!

Start of Move 3 (following) and the British have had another poor turn for activations - one of their squads is about to occupy the house their side of the road, Those NCO's on the hill are exchanging fire from soft cover... ineffectually.. 😏

..and now on Move 4 it starts to hot up as a fusillade of shots are exchanged between the two houses..  on their separate hills the NCO's have seen sense and headed for cover. The second German squad has occupied the barn, and that British squad has finally got their ar*e in gear and moved up to the hedge line to cover it..

Start of Move 5 and to help track where everyone was in the buildings I have removed roofs..

The tardy British squad is contesting the barn with the German occupants - there's only a single door so it's congested, but there is a lot of fire exchanged and the British NCO (large round base) is making maximum use of his SMG (at this range he gets two shots as opposed to the usual one for a rifle). Note the two lone stands by the Ace of Spades - those are first British casualties

...and here's where the other two sections were..

Move 6 - following - a long move 5 that had used almost the entire deck before the Jokers turned up resulted in a lot of action - you'll note the numbers of casualties - there is still a German NCO and rifle man in their house ready to loop round the back of the British squad to attack from the rear...

Amazingly the British managed to pass their morale check at the end of turn 5, but the writing is on the wall and having won the initiative, decided that for the British, "discretion is the better part of valour", and  would use it, to 'leg it away'..😏

Post match analysis:

• A force motivation of three for such small forces was a lesson learned...  it only becomes obvious after a game what the importance of that value is, it represents the coherence of the force, their motivation irrespective of troop type, quality or training (though these can and do effect it as the author says). It's used as part of the morale check, and you add the value to a card drawn with the aim of getting a number greater than the number of casualties you have suffered..   with a force motivation of 3, you aren't even seeing the possibility of a morale fail before you suffer 4 casualties (and then it's only a 1 in 13 chance you'll fail), and these were forces of only 8 figures.. 😀 Low motivation numbers for small forces going forward I think..  or use bigger forces..
• The +1 leaders mechanic worked well - it represents training and allows the officer in question to pull an extra card with a view to getting an improved result when firing, checking morale, etc.
• No company crewed weapons in this game, or armoured vehicles, both are represented in the rules so next time they will feature..
• Need to buy some full size cards, the one's I use are small one's from Christmas crackers and they are a bugger to shuffle..  😁

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...