In the last posting (here) I set out what this blog posting would be about:
Blogpost 98, w.c 02-Apr-18. Some completed stuff for Horka 1708, this will be pictures of the completed Russian Infantry – the 64 bases required. I just need to complete the basing and add flags to the final ones in the next few days.
For once I seem to have managed to live up to at least my own expectations. I spent the first day of the Easter Break finalising the basing and then added some flags the following day – boring at hell at times but I figured it would be worth the effort. Here are some pictures (there is a listing the completed unit at the end of this posting). All models are from Baccus (link here).
Aerial shot of the Russian Infantry element of the Horka 1708 army, 64 bases and each base represents a battalion. There are another 91 bases of cavalry to add as well as some artillery and leaders. Note that I have tried to avoid the lines being too straight as I think this adds a better feel of “movement and maneuvering”. The units without standards/flags are grenadiers.
A few dudes with flags from Baccus and Tiny Tin Troops
The majority of the Infantry have Green Coats with Red Cuffs, but there are some more colours on offers.
A lot of the Russian had Karpus/Kartuz it is a type of hat worn by Swedish and Russian Soliders – you can find more on headgear on a blogposting by Boris Megorsky here
I am doing the final cavalry elements and hope to be able to inspect them on the parade ground shortly before I get onto to finalising the Swedes.
Last cavalry unit drying following application of Windsor Newton Nutbrown Ink.
In other news I have ordered some stuff over the last few weeks for my Mutant 1984 project (1980s roleplaying in a world that most certainly was), I would like to give a little shout out for the miniatures from Space Vixens from Mars. They regularly show up at shows and do their games and invite anyone along for a hilarious ride. Here are a few of the models that I will be using for my Mutant 1984 project (taken from their webpage – link here).
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I wanted to have a rock band with mutated Beetles but had to go with Plan B, the Mutated Beetles. They are famous throughout the Pyri Commonwealth and I will try to find a Walrus head and do a headswap!
Here is their typical set list (length of the show tends to be dependent on the capacity of the steam powered electrical generator of the local venue).
Here comes the Burning Sun, For the Benefit of Mr. Rijn, Baby You Can Ride my Horse, Mutant on the Hill, Got to Get you into my brain, Happiness if a smoking blunderbuss, I am the Mutated Walrus, I want to hold your four hands, Mental Mystery Tour, Mean Mr. Ketchup, Roll Over Justin Beaver, September in the Acid Rain, Three cool mutated cats, Two of Me and finally (and I suppose you also grew tired of the list!) You’ve Got to Hide Your Mental Powers Away.
Anyway, hope that was of some interest. We have also been playing some games over the Easter Break but those will be presented in some future blogs as per the plan presented last in the last blog.
Saga in 6mm played over the Easter Weekend using the new Saga rules – good times were had!
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As you may be aware the next Great Northern War installment of the Towards Moscow Trilogy (TMT) is the Battle of Horka in 1708. The battle did not happen but was inspired from reading Nick’s book on the Russian campaign and with the addition of some artistic, or should that be historic, freedom I think we have something good enough to work on and present at the next Joy of Six in 2018. As always I will try to write a fair few installments here on the blog as things progresses (you can follow us here or like us on Facebook if you want to keep up with the developments or just come back every now and then). Anyway let us do a little bit of an intro so we are all on the same page (as per normal I have included links to previous posting and some external sources that may be useful if you are interested).
The Battle of Horka
Having ousted the Danes out of the Great Northern War (see more here) by the invasion of Zealand and crushed the Russians with the decisive victory at Narva, the young Swedish Monarch, King Charles XII (Carolus Rex, Karl XII) had decided to turn his efforts to deal with the final member of the coalition that had challenged Sweden’s Baltic supremacy – Saxony / Poland. It took him another 6 years before he had secured a treaty with Augustus the Strong. However the King still had unfinished business with the Russians and the time had come to march towards Moscow …. (you can read more about the TMT project and some of the background here)
In the beginning of July 1708, shortly after his victory at Holowczyn (see more here), the King had reached the Dnieper river with the Crown Army at Mogilev. It was, he believed, the last major physical obstacle on the road towards Moscow. The Russians had not made the advance easy as they had applied an scorched earth policy (the same policy that both Napoleon and Hitler would come to know later in history) destroying or removing supplies, burning bridges, withdrawing from villages, harassment of the moving army by irregular Cossack and Kalmuck light horse and dragoons, in combination with the constant rain (it had rained for about 4 weeks almost every day) that destroyed the crops and the hay and also affected the roads that further slowed down the March. The Russians would not give the King the decisive battle he needed. An army does indeed not only march on roads in knee deep mud but also on its stomach and there were still another 300 miles to Moscow – but as we know hope was on the way.
“So once the Swedes had secured the area around Mogilev they stopped to wait for Lewenhaupt and his vital supplies to arrive. … Meanwhile the Russian army had also halted and encamped, as the next obvious destination of the Swedes was the city of Smolensk, the Russians occupied a strong position on the road from Mogilev to this city. The camp was at Horka, sometime called Gorki, a short distance east along the road to Smolensk. … The Swedes considered attacking the position but in the end did not. Had the done so it seem likely that the Russians would have stood and fought.”
from The Dawn of the Tsarist Empire, by Nick Dorrell
We know the King would have liked to get on with it.
“Charles XII wanted to march on and put further pressure on the Russians after their disappointing defeat at Holowczyn – the sooner the better – before they had a chance to recover.”
Translated from Katastrofen vid Poltava (The Catastrophe at Poltava) by Peter From
So in our scenario the King gave the order to break up the camp and “Gå-På” towards the Russian position at Horka and the Russians did not slip away.
I will detail more about the assumptions on the armies that will clash on the day of battle in later postings. In the background I have been working away on the Russians and they are in various stages of completion. I had Chris from the excellent Marching in Colour helping me with a large part of the Lesnaya Russians last year and I also sneaked in a few ones for this project in the Order – so I had a good head start on these, but there are still a lot of work to do.
For the Swedes I had enough painted lead already from various project to cover about 45% of the bases needed – so there is a little bit more work to do on this front as well. Took out the miniatures from the Storage and took a few pictures whilst doing the inventory.
Here is the current list of units required for the Swedish side, this is based on the 35,000 strong army as at Grodno in 1707.
Unit – Name of the Regiment/unit
Type – Infantry or Cavalry
Ref – Reference
Polemos Bases – 60 by 30mm base with 9 riders or 24 foot (60 by 60mm bases with 7 for the light cavalry) – 2 of these are a normal unit in Twilight of the Sun King rules. 1 is a small unit and 3 a large unit. The X/Y indicates how many I have already and how many I need to do.
Class – GH/GD – Galloping Horse/Dragoon (Swedes with Aggressive cavalry), GP – Swedish Infantry with Pike.
It seems like ages ago that we went to Sheffield for the Joy of Six 2017 and I have had my head down into work and some neglected duties like 1800mm terrain modelling (gardening) and real life painting (some feature walls instead of shield walls) with a limited amount of any useful hobby time. However, there is always some progress on some front in the Roll a One world (but more on that next week).
This is my take on the fantastic spectacle that is the Joy of Six – it is very biased as I frankly spent most of the day around the two tables I had brought. I had a few round trips but failed to take more than a few pictures of the other offerings – mainly because I ended up having a chat and then feeling bad that I had left the tables and rushed back. However, this was a little bit of an unnecessary mitigation as the games were running pretty well without my interference. The Wyre Foresters running the Lesnaya Table and the Little One the Lechnaga bash. So as far as a proper show report goes it is a limited one. For a better overview check out the report on Baccus page (link here and here).
A tale of two tables
It was a nice and sunny day in Sheffield and we woke up early as we actually managed to get to bed relatively early. The mat for the Lesnaya Battle was rolled out and it was so refreshing compared to the usual 2 by 2 feet boards I have been using in the past – that invariably have warped a little bit and/or the underlying tables being uneven leading to some interesting and unintended elevations.
I had some fears about the varnish and the rivers but it all seemed to work very well – I think I have convinced myself that I will do mats from now (more on this adventure here).
When we had put on all the trees, the houses, the wagons and the starting units I took a step back and I have to admit we were pleased. “It is GEFAG!”, the Little One said – Good Enough For A Game!
View with Lesnaya at the far end. There was a nice shine in the river and the simple bridges (made from thin Spaghetti) worked really well! In the middle Freijbourgs rear-guard awaiting the onslaught of the Russian war machine.Side table for the Russians as they were coming onto the table during the Battle from the directions – Golitsyn’d Division with Tsar Peter, Menshikov’s Divison and Bauer’s Division. There were also few Swedish enforcements (on the top left hand corner).Bauer’s eventual entry point in the left corner.Shot showing the defensive lines of Wagons, Lesnaya and Stackelberg’s Infantry (Swedish) as well as some of the Cavalry.Another AngleWith the Cavalry commanded by General Lewenhaupt himself.The density of the forest really worked
The Wyre Forrester, under the guidance of Nick Dorrell, got on with the job. Most of the time was spent talking about the table, the war, the mat and the Twilight of the SunKing Rules that was used on the day (the basing I use is the Polemos “standard” but this works equally well for the TotSK rules – one base is a small unit, two bases a normal unit and three bases a large unit).
At the latter part of the day the game started moving in earnest but did not reach a climax before we packed up.
Here are a few pictures from the action.
For the Lechnaga battle (see background here and here) we used one of the mats I did for the Saga stuff last year and the canopy forests (see more here on this terrain). The actual gaming area was the middle half of the 3 by 4 foot mat.
We decided to run the game (using Dragon Rampant Rules) with a war band/force sheet for each player and did a bespoke measuring stick based (we used centimeters instead of inches) on the units in the war band. We also did cards that to use to agree the order in which a player had a go – this created another layer of friction to the game. All, of course, colour coordinated! I have provided the files if you are interested in doing something similar.
I bought some cheap 20cm rulers for 50 pence each and printed out the file (download files here in PDF and Powerpoint – Dragon Rampant Rulers and Dragon Rampant Rulers) on some sticker paper (normal paper and glue may do as well!) and put them on the rulers where appropriate.
A then the file with the factions used on the day here Factions and here Factions .
We had a few good games – the Little One was in charge. Here are some pictures – a big thank you to the few who dared to sit down and roll a few dice with the kids. The future of the gaming community and industry salutes you! The Little One would like to give a special thanks to Oliver and Chris!
Other tales
It was a very good day, but it always seems to end too quickly, here are a few of the things that I managed to capture.
Arguably the warmest smile for miles!, but this is how we most commonly see Dr Mike in action. His posts on the Baccus forum in the old days got me inspired enough to get on with painting my first set of 6mm units. Grey primer, black wash, block and Nut-brown ink and base it nicely and consistently.My first contact with Waterloo was through that famous Abba Song and my mother moving like a Dancing Queen in front of me. Dan Hodgson’s (on the front left) Waterloo was equally brilliant and was an absolute treat. Chris Grice, on the right who wrote the Polemos Napoleonic rules, looked like a true General pondering on his next move of the day. Here is the blur from the Baccus page. I am a fan of Dan!Mr Peter Berry himself doing the Raffle and the many thanks session! Never in the field of human table top conflict have so many had so small toy soldiers to thank for so much!
Cold War Commanders – Landjut 1989 (Always having a good time and game, link to their blog here). As a Swede I love when the Danes get a little harmless kicking on the table top.
Mailed Fist – Last Train to Berlin (always very nice games and detailed terrain). I should have taken a picture of the town but got star struck and just stared!
South London Warlords – Neustadt Crossing 1985 (Excellent!). More about it here. Iain we should meet up for a game at some point!MADgamers – Eastern Front 1700 (Trevor, thanks for the little chat). Always happy to see you Gents at Joy of Six!
WW1 Grand Style (I think the sign had a slight error – I let you go and figure). Very nice!
Salford 1642 – Excellent and so many houses! Link to some more blur here.
Of particular interest to me was the Battle of Issus using Command and Colours (or is it Colors!) by the Wyre Forest gang. This really got me inspired to do something similar for the Punic Wars (but I save this discussion to another time – when I have not clue what to write about!). There is a picture of it on the Baccus link above.
Yet again a very good event indeed. Thanks to Baccus, Wargames Emporium and all the other people that makes it all happen. I have to extend the thank you to my two Little Ones – one doing her second year in the Yellow Joy of Six Jersey, selling entrance and raffle tickets, and the other for running one of the games. Also a big thanks to Nick and the other merry men from the Wyre Forest!
Finally and big thank you to all of you who came around and said hello and told me you were reading this blog and liked it. I really appreciate it and all you others who seem to come by every now and then!
We will back next year!, did I say thank you?
/ Have a good week!
Postscript (15/10/17): I have had a few queries on the sources of the trees I used for this project, I got these from various sources on eBay. Here are a few screenshots done on the date indicated above of what I used. None of these are based (apart form the Orbicular ones have a little of a root section) and I did it by using washers with a bit of Milliput and make a hole in, let it dry, glue on some sand and paint it up, flock it and stick in the tree with some glue. Some boring hours of work but I do think it is well worth it.
The fir trees were from Busch and I think I got 3 or 4 packs of these – shop around as I recall I got mine somewhat cheaper.
The other main tree was of this variety.
I also got a few packs of the following:
Another postscript a little bit later:
These are the blur for the two games we ran on that day.
One of the highlights of every Joy of Six is Per Broden’s annual exploration of his Swedish heritage as he stages wonderful games with a distinctly Scandinavian feel. At the Joy of Six 2016 he went one further and produced two games.
He is repeating this feat this year, with two very different offerings in scope and subject matter.
Here is what you can expect to see this year in Per’s own words:
‘Lesnaya 1708
I, Nick Dorrell and the very decent chums of the Wyre forest Wargames club will be doing three battles (two that took place and one that could have been) from the Great Northern War covering the, from a Swedish perspective, ill-fated Russian campaign 1708 to 1709. Each of these battles will be presented at the Joy of Six show over the next three years.
The campaign is the invasion of Russia by Charles XII of Sweden starting with the crossing of the frozen Vistula river in early 1708 and ends with the Swedish defeat at the Battle of Poltava in the Summer of 1709. It is the beginning of the end for Sweden as a dominant military power in north-eastern Europe.
The first battle is Lesnaya 1708 and is interesting as it is, in effect, an ambush by a Russian flying detachment, led by Tsar Peter himself, on a smaller Swedish army that is travelling through the forests of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Swedish army is led by General Lewenhaupt who is escorting a supply column of more than 4,500 wagons to support the main Swedish Army. From the perspective of doing the battle we need a lot of forest as well as about 40 or more bases to represent the supply column itself.
In writing this the miniatures (from the Baccus range) are about 95% complete with a few more Russian dragoons to go. The main thing remaining is the gaming area itself and a large number of trees is being finalised (there will be about 500 trees on the table!).
Overall the forces consists of:
Russians, a few leaders and artillery as well as 10 bases (24 miniatures, on 60 by 30mm bases) of infantry and 57 bases of Dragoons (9 miniatures, on 60 by 30mm bases).
Swedes, a few leaders and artillery as well as 10 Polemos bases (24 miniatures, on 60 by 30mm bases) of infantry and 57 Polemos bases of Dragoons (9 miniatures, on 60 by 30mm bases)
We will using Nick Dorrell’s adaptation of the Twilight of the Sun King Rules published by the Pike and Shot society, to play the game.
The game, and it’s very uneven progress, is being reported on the roll a one blog (rollaone.com) – you can follow it there and see if we make it over the finishing line in July.’
So game number one, is another of Per’s GNW epics. His second production couldn’t be more different both in scope and subject matter, although I do detect a little Swedish influence creeping in…
‘The Skirmish at Lechnagha in the Year of 708, since the birth of Suecia, during the Gigantic Northern War 700-721
A black arrow with red feathers suddenly hit one of the pack mules and it fell violently to the ground as its legs gave away to the heavy load it was carrying. This was shortly followed by hideous laughs and taunts from the surrounding forest – the same damn laughs he had heard so many times before. With the black and red arrow signature there was no doubt what was coming next. Prior Lewen Hauptmann of the Knights of Suecia, threw his red cloak over his shoulder, raised his warhammer and turned to his men and screamed; “Get ready for the Greenskin’s attack! Push them back to their rotten holes! Give no pardon as it shall not be given to you! From earth they have come and to dust they will go!”. He pulled down the visor of his helmet and gave a short prayer and looked around at his men – ironclad battle hardened Knights ready to fight to their last dying breath. “For the Glory of Suecia, give us your strength of battle!” he yelled out the blessing and his brothers responded concurrently; “We accept your strength”, to complete the linkage to the divine plane. For a moment a reddish glow could be seen from their swords and spears as they were imbued with the spiritual power.
The Prior reflected for a moment on the stupidity of this wretched mission and how he had been forced into it by the Knight Marshal Carrophlus following his failure holding the Fort at Narvay. He had chosen to spare his men from slaughter and made a deal with the treacherous Steward of Polesh, Arghaust the Strong who, he was the first to admit, surprisingly had let them go after opening the gates. The enemy had grown stronger under the combined leadership by Arghaust and the mighty Warboss Pethor the Brute, a tall Orc whose organisational skill, cunning and patience was remarkable for his kind. Pethor had manage to organise the Goblin and Orc rubble into a formidable fighting force. It had only been a matter of time before the Fort would fall and enough of his brothers had already been slain and reinforcements had not been forthcoming. The Fort was of limited strategic importance and he had chosen to live to fight another day.
As penance for this “disloyalty”, in addition to the demotion to Prior, he and his surviving men had been ordered to bring supplies to the cut-off townspeople of Lechnagha. He had no retinue of servants, squires, men-at-arms or Sergeants as was the custom for these kind of soul purification missions. It had been a hellish journey through Goblin infested forests with constant harassment. He had lost half the men they started out with and only half of them still had their horses. If their calculations were correct they were only a few miles away from the Town itself. It had a small regular army garrison and since he had felt the presence of evil watching them for the last few days he had sent a rider for some enforcements. But now that seemed to have been in vain. He thought back on the situation at Narvay and how his death there would have qualified his name into the songs of the minstrels but instead he was facing death here in the middle of this despicable forest – for what?
He was quickly brought back to reality as yet another arrow hit another mule. He looked around and could see Greenskins on both sides of the road riding their growling dire wolves closer. They always got excited at the beginning of the fighting and intensified their laughter, reminiscent of that of a raving lunatic, that normally stroke fear into their opponents. However, this was not what frightened him the most, it was the otherworldly scream he could hear from within the forest itself.
This is a participation game using the popular Dragon Rampant fantasy wargame rules by Dan Mersey (played to satisfaction not perfection). The main purpose is to have fun but also to showcase that 6mm can be used for games normally associated with the larger scales not just replacing individual miniatures with bases of many (like we did for Saga last year) but also scaling it down and still being able to enjoy a game. With a 2′ by 2′ board (the size of a small coffee table) playing in centimetres instead of inches is in fact like playing on 4’6” by 4’6″ board. We figure if you can have a few blokes taking a flag for a walk representing a regiment in some scales, why not do skirmish in 6mm?
We (the Little One and I) will run a few session over the day (with up to 4 participants each time) and welcome anyone to have a go. 1 to 2 players will control the Knights and 1 to 2 players will control the Greenskins. It will serve as an introduction to the rules and we will limit each session to about 45-60 minutes (including a high level rule go-through). We happily mix fantasy miniatures from Baccus, Rapier, Irregular Miniatures, Perfect Six and Microworld on the table.
We have blogged about 6mm skirmish extensively on the roll a one blog (rollaone.com) – I will bring some of the other miniatures for other periods for you to have a look at should you wish.’
We had a very nice weekend up in Sheffield with the Better One and the Little Ones going to the Joy of Six show – now back to work and a hectic week ahead. Will write about any potential thoughts in due course, over the weekend. In summary we had a great time and even had time to sneak into Conisbrough Castle just outside Doncaster. I had wanted to go there for some time as it is the setting for the classical novel Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott.
Ivanhoe has a special place in modern Swedish tradition as the 1982 movie (with Anthony Andrews, Olivia Hussey, Lysette Anthony and Sam Neill) has been shown every New Years day since 1988.
We did set up the tables and had a fantastic time – the mats worked well!
/ A proper reflection this weekend, all the very best
After having banged the 6mm skirmish drum for a while I have no choice but to get on with the big battle of the Year as Joy of Six is getting closer.
In creating a battle board for gaming a known battle there are a number of steps I take to allow me to create a reasonable area that creates the right balance between four elements – historical accuracy, playability, available space and overall visual impact. Remembering important issues such as the difference between the ground scale and the figure scale for large scale battles (and building scale) – this is why you see towns represented by just a few buildings next to rivers that looks like the models could just jump over.
The Lesnaya Battle was not a straightforward “line-them-up-and-attack” battle but happened in stages where the Russians first attacked the Swedish rearguard that was reinforced in stages but the front line of battle constantly moved back towards Lesnaya – it quickly became clear that the battle would be best played length wise on the table.
I have used the map below as basis for the battle board and it was produced by Örjan Martinson on his absolutely brilliant Tacitus Webpage that contain a lot of useful information about the Lesnaya as well as other battles of the Great Northern War (link here http://www.tacitus.nu/gnw/battles/Lesnaya/ ). The map show the position of the opposing sides at the start if the battle (Note the name of Lesnaya in the traditional Swedish spelling – Ljesna).
Map from the Tacitus Webpage at the Start of the Battle
The first thing I wanted to do was to overlay my conceptual 4 by 8 feet (120cm by 240cm) battle board space over the map and see what area this would cover – would it be enough to play the battle on? In this case I simply use the Freijbourg Rearguard as the basis for my battle board (marked in the red circle) for my calculations. The Rearguard consisted of 2 No. battalions of De la Gardie’s Regiment and 1 No. battalion of the Närke-Värmland 3-männing Regiment. In the Polemos Rules each battalion is represented by a 60mm frontage base and in the Twilight of the Sun King rules this is (at battalion level) represented by a normal unit (2 No. 60mm frontage bases) and a small unit (1 No. 60mm frontage base). Giving some space between the battalion I used a length of 20cm for the 3 bases.
The Rearguard Battalions
In the PowerPoint files I used to do the exercise the length of the Rearguard Box (in the picture) was 1.4cm and I multiplied this with 6 to get the equivalent of 120cm (or 4 feet) length, this is 8.4cm and I created two squares (with 8.4cm sides) and overlay these on the map to represent the area the board would cover. To my (happy!) surprise the area covered (as shown in the picture below) was spot on for where the fighting actually occurred. Sometimes it does not work and you may not have enough space – you could easily cut this board down to a 6 by 4 table by taking away 2 feet of on the left hand side. The first notable encounter between the opposing armies was at the location of the rearguard. In addition it could be possible to reduce the depth as well but we did not have those problems on this occasion. All the Russian forces will not start on the board!
Following a deeper review of the overall battle from the start to finish with regards to the known locations of fighting, the area covered is sufficient to represent the fighting on the day.
The area captured!
But wait!, you may say… In the In the Twilight of the King Rules a base width (60mm, or 6cm, in our case) is about 150 meters, meaning that the frontage for our 3 bases (18cm) is about 450 meters. As we measured 20cm this equates to about 500 meters width for the set of three bases with some space in-between. We can clearly see that the width of the rectangle is far less than the 0.5km length based on the ruler in the to left corner. So in terms of adherence to real scale it does not work but in terms of ground scale and playability it does – I think that makes sense?
Case Study: Fraustadt 1706
Another example is when I did the wintery Fraustadt 1706 Battle a few years ago where the main feature was the line of Saxons and Russians between the two Villages (Rörsdorf and Geyersdorf). The key design feature of that battle board was to be able to fit all the based miniatures for this line the space available. I physically put all the bases on the table and used this to draw the features on the board, this gave me the “correct” measurements to play the game efficiently. I recall that I took some liberties on the Saxon/ Russian left flank to make the it work, but overall the battle board reflected the terrain features of the battle.
Working on the Fraustadt Board in 2012
Joy of Six 2012 – Battle of Fraustadt 1706. The Saxon-Russian line was not straight as it did not fit the available space. You can find the Ordre de Batallie (OdB) here. It is a map from the excellent book (Fraustadt 1706 – Ett fält färgat rött) on the battle by Oskar Sjöström (only available in Swedish). I used this OdB and the map as a basis for doing the terrain boards. The only change I did was to make move Rörsdorf to make the overall line slightly straighter. All in all the table showed a (1) historically feasible set-up with the key terrain feature present, rivers, roads, pond villages, etc (2) it was playable and the table was based on the frontages used for the battle, (3) it fitted on the table allocated and (4) I think that although the table perhaps leaves you cold (with the pun intended) it is spectacular enough!
Back to the Lesnaya table and the next step which is to highlight the key features of the battlefield that are needed on the final battle board. The board will contain a lot of forested areas (!), roads (important as they cut through the forests), rivers and bridges and the elevation around Lesnaya and the river.
Key Features
After this I mark out the features (I did not include the bridges or Lesnaya itself at this stage) and we are ready for the tools and the materials.
Sketch for further works
I have previously made the Great Northern War tables as 8 No. 2 by 2 feet boards but decided to do a mat this time in the same way as the Saga mats last year (See link here https://rollaone.com/2016/06/19/saga-in-6mm-part-7/ ).
The mat will incorporate the forest areas and make these darker than the general white areas (these will incorporate a few fields) the marshland will be a in yet a different colour and I will create separate river tiles to put on top of the mats (with bridges), including the elevations around Lesnaya.
I have not yet started the mat, instead focused the weekend on basing some trees – I will need a fair few.
Hope to show some mat progress soon.
I am working on some 6mm fantasy stuff in the background, here are a few pictures of work in progress (I will do a write-up later).
I do apologise if you are a follower of this blog and got sent an update earlier this week. I did a draft based on what I intended to do this week and instead of saving it to add some more text and pictures to over the weekend (when I actually had something to show) I pressed publish. Anyway here is the real update, hope it is of some interest.
Back to basics again and a update on the progress with the Lesnaya battle, this time the hard-hitting Swedish Cavalry. All based in a wedge formation. This formation represents the way in which the cavalry (and dragoon units) attacked (knee-behind-knee) as part of the overall Gå–På–method focused on aggression and shock.
Picture by Krigsarkivet (Swedish War Archives) from 1707, Public Domain (link here)
All these miniatures were part of a commission I received from Chris at Marching Colour (link here), this is the third batch he has done for me and I have nothing but praise. I know I said it before, but it has given me time to explore some alternative stuff I normally have no time to do.
My remit to Chris was “Block painted neatly not with layers, hightlight, varnish or basing”. I also asked for the flags/standards to be left blank.
My job is the pleasurable task of doing some final touches (including flags), ink them, some highlight and base them up. Before I show the individual overall units, I will go through these steps. The models from Chris are more or less ready to be based without doing these additional steps – but to me it makes a difference and adds some satisfaction in having provided some kind of input into the overall production process, whether you can actually see it on the table when you stand up and look down at them. A kind of flat pack approach to miniature painting, but hopefully more enjoyable than those Billy Bookcases from IKEA. I am using the brave riders of the Åbo och Björneborgs Kavalleriregemente as an example. With regards to painting guide there are some reasonable information but a lot of gaps (see the discussion here, on the Tacitus webpage that also shows a reasonable interpretation of the material available for this and many other battles). I am also lucky enough to have copies of the eminent Acedia Press books The Great Northern War 1700-1721 : colours and uniforms Part 1 and Part 2 that contains a lot of further information. The books are long since out-of-print.
Step 0 – Done by Chris – block paint miniatures neatly (the longest step)
Step 1 – do the flags and any repainting (e.g on some occasions I have changed the colour of a horse etc)
Flags (a orangy standard for these guys)
Trumpeter (or drummer) details
Light Silver on the swords (adds to the overall effect)
Highlight the hat lace (in this case yellow)
Horsetails in dark grey (german grey)
I changed the schabraque and pistol covers to Orange although I had told Chris something different (no information and perhaps unlikely but Orange it will be).
Step 2 – Paint the bases of the miniatures brown (I use a burnt umber or chocolate brown for this – same as for my base terrain colour)
Step 3 – Apply Nutbrown Ink – let it dry. Apply generously, avoid the metal parts (no soldier would keep his, mostly men in this case. sword rusty). I sometime add some highlights if the ink makes it to dark or messes something up.
Step 5 – Prepare base. I paint the edges brown as it saves time later. I use 2mm laser cut 60 by 30mm bases.
Step 6 – glue to base. Well first you have to cut the strips into the individual riders, make sure each of them can stand on a flat surface so they do not fall in the glue later. Apply glue all over the base when you are ready to put them on the base. Note: The miniatures forms a shallow wedge shape (in line with the picture above) with the trumpeter on the right and the Kornett in the middle and furthest ahead holding the standard. The Kornett, or Cornet in English, was the lowest commissioned officer rank equivalent to a Second Lieutenant (or Fänrik in Sweden) . The rank was also used in the British army up to the late 19th century. It has nothing do with the family of wind instruments with the same name.
Step 7 – Apply sand as soon as possible. Carefully flip it slightly so that excess sand falls off. If any bare metal still shines through or the bases are too obvious apply a little bit more of glue in these places and apply some more sand, “flip away” the excess carefully and then let dry.
Step 8 – Paint the sand brown (I do not as I have some chocolate coloured sand)
Step 9 – dry brush Colour 1 to 3 (decide on a set and stick to it, all your stuff will look the same whether you do them today or several years ago. The picture does not really come out well. The colours are a very pale brown, a little more yellowish brown and fnally a light yellow. But try out your own combo.
Here are the colours I use.
Step 10 – add PVA glue where you want the static grass. Apply Static grass and shake off excess (same here get a lot of a brand and stick to it, I use Busch light and dark grass. Mostly the light) I then stick on some flowery tufts when I feel for it (they are a little bit overwhelming scalewise, but I like it!).
Step 12 – Add base to your collection (here with the other three bases of the regiment).
Anyway here are the other ones I have done this week in no particular order,
Cavalry Regiments
Karelska Kavalleriregementet (4 bases)
Adelsfanan i Sverige och Finland (1 base) – a company was part of Lewenhaupts army. So a base may be excessive. But why not.
Adelsfanan i Livland och på Ösel (1 base), this is the Cavalry Corps of the Nobility in Livonia and Ösel. Strictly speaking Adelsfanan means the Nobel Banner.
Dragoon Regiment / Squadrons
Skogh’s Dragon Skvadron (1 base)
Karelska Land Dragon Skvadron (1 base)
Damn, forgot to this one. Well…..
Schreitterfeldts Dragonregemente (2 bases)
Schlippenbachs Dragonregemente (2 bases)
Upplands Ståndsdragoner (2 bases)
Öselska Land Dragon Skvadron (1 base)
Light Horse Regiment
Vallack / Vollosh Regementet (2 bases) – light cavalry unit formed from Polish and Lithuanian Free Companies. I have plenty of these from the past already so I will be using a few of those on the day.
I did the Swedish infantry before (see here). So all that remains for the Swedes are some commanders and that dragoon base I forgot!
Nick and I had a fantastic day at the Salute Show and my thanks also goes to Rob and Laurent who provided some priceless support in helping out before, during and after the Show. We basically talked to people about the table, the game, the battle and the rules all day – it was brilliant!. We did not have time to do more than a few token moves on the table.
Rob, Nick and Laurent
I also would like to thank all of you who have read this blog that came by to say hello – I really appreciate it. In addition to all of the others who stopped by to have a look, ask a few questions or take a picture. Finally, I have to say that Warlords are very good at organizing this massive event and we had no problems this, or the last time, we attended Salute in 2015.
I had a quick chat with Peter Berry of Baccus who said that Joy of Six in July was now full and that he had to turn away games – this is brilliant news! Not for the people who get turned away but that there is a huge interest in putting on 6mm games. I just wonder why there are not more 6mm, or smaller scale 2 to 10mm, land battle games at Salute, or should I say, wargames shows in general? I have not heard many people say that they have a decent table worth of figures and some terrain in 6mm – but that have been turned down setting up a game by a wargames show. But I will leave that thought for this moment.
Apart from our table there was one more 6mm game, the Battle for Neustadt that is a cold war scenario set in West Germany in 1984. This was a nice table run by Iain Fuller and others from the Warlords Club. They will also attend the Joy of Six in July so there is another chance to catch them there. I have had some e-mail communication with Iain in the past so it was nice to have a quick chat and say hello.
I also got a chance to see the new Baccus TYW/ECW sculpts and I let the battalion of pike and shot talk for itself. Wonderful stuff from Baccus yet again. Peter gave me a copy of the new Swedish flag sheet for the Thirty Years war – it is very tempting indeed.
PIke and Shot from Baccus – Wonderful!
I also talked to Peter Riley and David Pead who are the men behind the wargames calculator that I have mentioned before on the blog (see here). They told me they have some interesting stuff coming up so I would follow them on Facebook and see what they are up to.
I also said a quick hello to Neil Shuck but did not get a chance to give him the Sharp Practice stuff for Joy of Six as I had planned.
I also had a chat with an old friend of mine, Michael Leck who put on a really nice game using his Pikemans Lament rules called Fort Mosquito 1654. This was a battle between Swedish and Dutch colonial forces set in mid 17th century Delaware, involving native tribes, attempting to wrestle control of the river and the important fur trade. Incidentially they grabbed two of the prizes of the day – well deserved. For more information see his blog (link here). I had a very useful discussion with Jan (who did the terrain and buildings) on how to make log cabins and the trees using steel wool that I will have to try out some time in the future.
Fort Mosquito 1654Here are a few shots of our table in no particular order.
In addition Nick has put on some pictures on his facebook page (here) and on the Wyre Forest Wargames club page (here).
We produced a few organization charts to simplify the proceedings, they turned out being very useful and look good too. There were made using SmartArt Graphic in Excel and then pasted into PowerPoint with some added pictures etc.
We also handed out a leaflet with a few notes about the Battle and the Game, here – Kalisz Leaflet Salute 2017.
Now getting ready for Joy of Six in July.
Finally, the 1914-21 Society (link here) who was attending had a Maxim machine gun on display but, in my view, the key piece was the Madsen Light Machine Gun. I knew the Madsen as the LMG of the Norwegian and Danish soldiers of WW2, but did not know it was the first true light machine gun produced in a major quantity and that it was used extensively by the Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese war and during the Russian Civil War. Thanks for your time gents!
The 1914-21 Society Table (Laurent, thanks for the Picture)
This is the 50th blog post since we started last year following Salute 2016 (here is a link to the very first post) – no big parties lined up or memorial statues being carved but there is a certain level of satisfaction involved – I am celebrating the occasion rolling a few ones and having a few crafty beers.
We spent last week in Southern France visiting some friends with the compulsory sampling of the local produce to the small hours. The Little One practiced his camouflage skills and apart from the bright NERF rifle it was difficult to spot him and his friend in the undergrowth.
On the Wargames front there is not much new – all the Stuff for Salute is packed.
We have told you where to look for us at Salute in the last blog entry (see here) and here is the general blur about it (see here) – hope we will see you there!
I had to rearrange a little bit so the Russians got out of their box anyway in their full glory. Here are a few shots showing 24 of the total 32 bases that will be present on the day.
And finally and most important to create some dimension on an otherwise relatively flat battlefield – the trees.
Below is a link to an PDF file with the details of the bases for the Battle and game statistics for both Polemos GNW as well as The Twilight of the Sun King. See the notes below on regards on what each bases represents in the Polemos rules which should make it relatively easy to translate the overall list to whatever rules you are using. Note that this list is slightly different to what I have presented in previous postings as some corrections in the list have been made.
I think we will run the Demo game using the Twilight of the Sun King rules on the day, see more here.
With regards to the Polemos Basing the following act as guidelines. Note that the leader/commander bases are markers indicating where the leaders are located on the field of battle and not active combat units. I tend to base them with 1 to 3 models on the front row representing quality (1 – Poor, 2 – Average and 3 – Excellent) and models on the back row representing Tempo points (used in the Polemos rules).
The extract below is from the Polemos GNW Rulebook (Page 5).
“The actual ratio of figures to real men will vary depending on how many figures you put on a base. A base represents the following: A base of infantry, except skirmishing infantry, represents between 400 and 600 men. They can be a single large battalion, a pair of smaller ones or a group of subunits up to this approximate strength. A base of cavalry, dismounted dragoons and skirmishing infantry represents two to three squadrons or similar groups, representing 200 to 300 men. A cavalry base is assumed to include wide intervals between squadrons, allowing friendly cavalry bases to pass through each other. An artillery base represents four to eight guns. The number of guns that a base represents varies depending on the size of the real guns. Four heavy guns will be represented by one base. While eight light guns will also be represented by one base. “
And there was another thing…
A delivery of some Corrugated Sheet Metal
I get a fair few deliveries from Amazon (google it if you are not familiar with them) and I noted that their packaging have a very nice and tight corrugation. I have seen this being used in the past to simulate corrugated sheets but had not tried it myself. I wanted to give it a try as I want to expand on the terrain I have for using with the Scrappers Mutant 1984 project I am working on (See more about it here).
Armed with a sharp knife I set slowly cut away the cover sheet on one side (I hope it is bleeding obvious but be careful when you use a knife).
After a few minutes I had plenty of uncovered sheets (I only cut them on one side).
After this I cut out small 40 by 20 mm pieces.
I got a nice pile of them.
I then built a simple test structure using some coffee stirrers (like the ones you get at Starbucks), matches, and my corrugated sheets. Using superglue and PVA to stick the things together, The two colorful pieces on top are made from some Kinder Egg rubbish the Small One had lying around – I and the Little One speculated that these could be part of some semi-portable wind based energy system. They had some interesting detail that will look good when drybrushed later.
I gave it a spray with a grey primer and I think this will paint up reasonably well (here with some unfinished miniatures to understand scale) and I think it looks ok with the 28mm figures.
Next week the Scrappers rules should arrive (from Amazon) with some new building materials! (although the little structure hardly caused a dent in the pile).
I recently found out that there used to be a Lager named after the famous Swedish Field Marshal that is one of my favourite soldiers from the Great Northern War era, namely Stenbock (there is a very nice online article about him here).
Stenbock at Helsinborg 1710
I could not find out who the brewers were but stumbled across a few others with slightly different spelling.
Stepherd Neame used to brew a beer called Steinbock Lager that was described as “…a light, crisp, refreshing lager with an underlying sweetness, a slight floral tang and a clean finish”. It is no longer produced (see more here).
Monsteiner Steinbock is another Lager. This one is made in Switzerland with nice artwork on it (more here). And another one, but I digress…
I really wanted to talk about Laagers, defined by Wikipedia as…
A wagon fort is a mobile fortification made of wagons arranged into a rectangle, a circle or other shape and possibly joined with each other, an improvised military camp. It is also known as a laager (from Afrikaans) (English: leaguer).
At the battle of Kalisz the Pro-Swedish Polish-Lithanian Army established a Laager outside the town (of Kalisz) with a square of Wagons and some quickly raised earthworks. To represent this I used some of the Wagons and tents from Baccus and made a small (fully modular) representation of the Camp.
The Saxons
The Saxon contingent are all Cavalry and are commanded by Augustus the Strong Supported by General Brandt.
Augustus at the Battle of Kalisz 1706
Dragons
The Dragon units (all red uniforms with facing/cuff colours in parenthesis) –
Leibregiment (white), Milkau (yellow), von der Goltz (black)
von Brause (lemon yellow) and von Schulenburg (straw)
Cuirassiers
The Cuirassiers units (all red uniforms with facing/cuff colours in parenthesis)
Chevaliergarde/Garde du Corps (blue/red/white), Leibregiment (white), Kurprinz (yellow), von Damitz (Bleumourant), Königin (straw)
Kurprinz (yellow) ,von Eichstädt (Coffee Brown), Gersdorff (grey) and Prince Alexander (green).
That leaves us the Russian contingent of 32 dragoons that I packed before I took any pictures. I suppose you have to come to the Salute show to see them!
A Map!
At Salute we are the Wyre Forest Wargames Club and we are in location GG15 – it is just below the upper red G (in the circle) on the floorplan/map of the show. It is only 2 weeks to go and if you do go, come by and say hello. Further details on the show and how you can get tickets can be found here.
On the Lager thread I did find a nice little bottle at the Tank Museum last week (more here) – it is made by the Dorset Brewing Company (DBC) and is called Landship. The name comes from the Landship Committee that was established in February 1915 by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, with the purpose of developing armored fighting vehicles to use on the Western Front. The work culminated in the development of the first tanks. Tank, by the way, was a code name for the vehicles.
I found an inspirational review of this beer on the net (link here) and decided, for research purposes, to have a go myself and I do agree with the sentiment of the review. If nothing else it is a cool bottle.
/ Until next, Cheers and do not drink (too much) whilst gaming!
Appendix – Below is a little summary of the units that will be present on the table, 207 bases in total including small bases for leaders and artillery. The basing are in line with the Polemos Rules where a base is about 200-300 cavalry (about 2 squadrons) or 400-600 (one battalion) infantry. In Twilight of the Sun King two of these bases, in general, forms a fighting unit. Leaders are Poor, Average or Excellent, The second value is the tempo contribution as per the Polemos rules.
Long weekend of Rugby with the annual ‘long distance’ tournament with the Little Ones – this year held in Bournemouth. The Little One had a blast and made us proud as always. A weekend in Dorset is never wrong and we had to sneak into the Tank Museum in Bovington for a quick look. We did not do much hobby related this week, so in no particular order a few shots of the (a) Kalisz Battle boards for Salute and some Swedes, (b) some pictures from the Tank Museum and (c) some progress on the Mutant 1984 project.
Kalisz Battle boards and Swedes
I got the 2″ by 2″ boards out this weekend. They have been in the attic since the table was laid out at Joy of Six in 2014 – some warping evident and a damaged bridge but not beyond unacceptable and the bridge can be fixed. Now I have to find the buildings for the two villages and Kalisz itself – I wonder where they are?
I also got the Swedish (few) elements out and realized that I need to do some flags for the infantry – it seems like we ran the game last time without infantry standards (Perhaps that was the reason the Swedes lost?).
Bovington Tank Museum
We went to the Tank Museum in Saumur last year and loved it (see blog entry here), the one in Bovington is equally impressive if not better. From the perspective of telling history and putting the tank into a perspective the Bovington experience is brilliant. Here are a few pictures of what we found particularly interesting. Go there if you can (link here). T(h)ank you Bovington – we had a great day!
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Mutant 1984 – Ulvriket Patrol – Work in Progress
Work in progress on the next unit for this little diversion. This is the Ulvriket Patrol with some further detailing and basing remaining but a small step forward. As discussed in the previous blog entry (see here) basically WW2 Americans in Greatcoat and a WW2 German Officer. I used a Russian WW2 Vehicle Green for the Coats and Khaki for details and helmets. Looks familiar but odd.
The infantry unit based on Artizan Design Americans and a German Officer.
Then the mutated element with conversions (I will give further details for what I used in the blog update for these when they are finalized).
The Mutants – A gorilla (Crooked Dice head swap), the wingman (do not remember where the wings are from), the pig (again from Crooked Dice) and the Goat (head and leg swap with a Moonraker miniature).
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