What Next?

As I close on the finishing line for the Triples game, which co-incidentally will also mark the very end of the War of the Spanish Succession project (how many times have I said that now?), I'm beginning to ask myself "what next?".
To finish the figures I have the following list to complete:
Casualty figures (20 required 10 complete)
Regiment Artillerie (30 figures to do just need basing)
Staff (2 figures to base)
French Flags (check all flags have been black lined and given ribbons)
Guarde Francais (remove white colonels colour - apparently only carried when the king was present - and replace with second regimental)
Danish flags (check all black lined and been given tassels)

With that lot checked off there is nothing more to add to the project. I have collected a box of odd figures over the years but have no intention right now of doing anything with them.

So what next?

Wars of the Roses? This project falls into the category "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Why do I say that?
Well it's all about the basing. I thought at the time that individually based figures on movement trays were the answer. After playing a few games I'm not convinced I was right. The reason at the time was because I planned to have units of three ranks and didn't want to have nine figures to a base. Now I think I do.
I have over a hundred figures to add into the current array, enough for 5-6 more units depending on the format. I just need to figure out what I really want.

English civil War? Falls into the "I've started so I'll finish" category.
There is a box full of sprues to be completed, enough for two more foot and two more horse I think and that will be all. As yet though the completed figures have yet to see the tabletop which is not enticing me to get more finished.

Great Northern War? With bill getting his mojo back and producing more figures to complete the range I'm inclined to get this moving again.
Right now I'm considering re-organising the whole thing into either smaller units and use "Under the Lilly Banners" or rebasing them onto multiple bases 3x3 to make life easier on the tabletop. Again individual figures seemed like the answer for me with big battalions arrayed on the tabletop. But the movement trays never really looked right to me and the thought of moving 100+ figures every move during the evening was daunting.
Bill should be happy - if I do rebase and re-organise then I'll be needing more figures!

And sitting alongside all this are the Dwarves. With a horde completed (photos appearing on the other blog soon) they are taking shape slooowly.

Triples Teaser

I'm not sure how much time we have left before everything is done only that in five weeks time the game has to go on.
Anyway as a teaser and as part of the process in making sure that the game in my head works on the tabletop we set up the Allied side of the field.
A view down the allied lines looking towards the river. Massed Austrian horse to the fore and then the Austrian infantry, English foot, Dutch foot, Danish foot, and finally the massed Allied horse.

The Imperial forces en masse.

Massed Allied horse, English to the right, dutch to the right and Danes to the rear.

Closer view of the Austrian Imperial foot.

Dutch & Danish foot.

All in all there are twenty six battalions of foot and fifty two squadrons of horse with six field guns present on the Allied side.

Right now we're thinking of moving things around a bit and swapping forces around to balance the field a little. The trees are for effect only and there to give some height to the tabletop so when you visit the game in Sheffield don't be surprised to see things have moved from the photos here.

What I'm not going to show is the remaining four feet of the tabletop. These boards have been created by Andy Hamilton (who also owns the Austrians) and will be a point of focus for the entire game. Teasing I know but that's the point of this post.

Want more then come and visit us at Triples. We'll be happy to chat and hand out copies of the rules we use (which to answer a question on the last post are our own in house rules - fun and easy to play).

War of the Spanish Succession Game

Th French took to the field again last Monday to face the English who also had some dutch support. Advance guard action with only 24 battalions on the tabletop and about thirty squadrons of horse.
The French pinned their left flank on a hedged farm a little south of the ford across the river and massed most of their horse on the right.

The English were more evenly spaced and balanced across their front.

The French immediately launched their horse against the smaller number of enemy horse on the right. Several long and exhausting melees later saw the massed French carabiniers pursue the Dutch from the tabletop, whilst the two French horse regiments were chased off by the Dutch elite.

On the French left the Swiss advanced to keep pace with the lone French regiment tasked with preventing the enemy using the ford by lining the hedgerows along the rod.

Unfortunately they were less than successful in this endeavour as a regiment of English dragoons rode past them unscathed. They then dismounted and caused some discomfort to the French by firing into them across the river.
This in turn allowed the English lines to advance and engage the Swiss on equal numbers. After a long and hotly contested firefight the honours were even.. Half of the first English line retired whilst the other half pushed the Swiss back onto their reserves.
Unfortunately the same could not be same for the German regiments leading the French advance on the right.

Advancing to meet the Dutch regiments facing them the Germans were soon engaged in a firefight that turned in favour of the Dutch quite quickly. The only saving grace was that if the German musketry was less than effective their resolve to stay in the front line was high. Only when they were reduced to half their effective strength were the Germans forced from the field.

By this time the enemy horse had managed to rally themselves on the extreme right flank of the French and the second English line steadied and reformed to tackle the French. Looking across the field the French commander realised that he did not have the numbers to force the enemy from the field and whilst the farmhouse was under his command little else was.

My thanks to Mark for what are always good games.

We tried the casualty markers for the first time and whilst a little fiddly to keep moving them around I thought they worked well and certainly looked very neat behind the battalions. I've made sixty of these now and that seemed to be far more than needed for a game of this size.

The table was only ten feet in length and we used approximately half of the figures we intend to display at Triples in five weeks time. The actual table there will be twenty feet long and with over 2,500 figures on it (if it can support the weight!). Figures used for the night were a mix of Stratagem (Marks English), Front Rank (Dutch and some of the French), Old Glory (all the French horse and some of the Swiss), Reiver (German infantry) and Wargames Factory (Swiss).

Odd thought

So here I am trying to get rid of as much crap (sorry wargaming pieces that are excess to requirements) on Ebay as I can. So far the sales have raised in excess of £250. Some of that has gone on a few more Dwarves and a couple of T shirts. The rest is up for discussion - well apart from the fairly substantial proportion that will be spent on the new GNW Swedish horse from the talented Bill Thornhill at Musketeer which are due for release any day now. Now you'd have thought that after living with a wargamer for over twenty years my good lady would have learnt a thing or two about wargamers and the similarity they have to dragons regarding treasure hordes wouldn't you? Well so would I. But it appears that we're mistaken. Wife: "So are you thinking of something special to spend the money on because you surely can't need any more figures do you?" Me: (need to adopt your best gobsmacked face) "What planet do you live on? There will never be anything such as enough figures, it's a question of which new period to start!" Right now I'm orking on some odds and sods for the big game at Triples. These include some artillery guards for the sige mortars, some more casualty figures and a couple of staff figures. At the same time my dwarven army is expanding (I was gig to say growing but that doesn't seem quie right when talking about dwarves) and I've now got 50 figures completed.

Casualty Markers

You may have noticed in some of the games in progress shots that we, at the Grimsby Wargame Society believe in the main in whole figure casualties. None of the heavy duty book keeping for us - keep it simple & take the figure off. In order to identify "dead" figures we use curtain rings. Easy & simple. The draw back is that they are not particularly attractive and do detract from the visual appeal of our games. This is certainly something we want to avoid for the big display game. We don't want the use of rings to detract from the massed battalions and squadrons of the game. So I've been working on alternative system. Using spare bits and pieces from my bits box and plastic counters I've created the first ten markers. The idea is that we put a marker down behind each unit for every casualty until we can remove a full base of figures. The idea was inspired by the Warlord Games who have something very similar in their ECW casualty pack. I'm also working on developing larger bases, probably using actual casualty figures, to represent "5" dead, purely in an attempt to reduce the number of counters I'm going to need. PS - I've put a "how to" on the Dwarf blog discussing how to make snow.