Non-Partizan English (and other) Republics

Friday saw another in-person meet up with 'the Ragged Soldier' (Dave B) at a National Army Museum talk on the English Republic. The speaker was Professor Alice Hunt of the University of Southampton.  In common with a lot of the NAM talks, it was a lot more engaging than expected. It can still be viewed online (link below). I know it's not directly related to the history of the civil wars, but there was a lot more going on in the country during that time than 'the Banning of Christmas', and a bit of reading/listening around a subject never did any harm.

https://www.nam.ac.uk/whats-on/republic-britains-revolutionary-decade-1649-60 

There were a couple of first edition near contemporary books on display at the talk.

Professor Hunt can also be heard talking on the same subject on the World Turned Upside Down podcast:

https://www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk/podcast/britains-astonishing-revolutionary-decade/

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It's always good to catch up with David and have a natter over lunch after the talk. He brought along a recent purchase to lend me, Peter Connolly's 'Greece and Rome at War'. This is really useful as it lays out the organisation and formations of both Greeks and Romans at different stages of their respective histories.

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Saturday saw the timely arrival of an order I placed with Pendraken for some more bases and dice holders. Whilst I was placing the order I thought I may as well make the most of the postage charge and ordered some 6mm flags for the French, Dutch and various Holy Roman Empire states. Whilst technically these are for the War of the Austrian Succession, I think they'll do at this scale for the Seven Years War and War of Austrian Succession. I've been meaning to get around to painting the flags on the French figures for a couple of years, without actually doing anything about it. Now it'll be a simple case of cut, snip and glue. I hope.

To return to the ECW, the Pendraken order also included a copy of the Battleground Series book on Naseby.

So quite a haul over Partizan weekend. Only I didn't go to the show.

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Now I have a big backlog of projects to be getting on with. Various unpainted figures (human and animal), buildings, rivers, walls, rebasing, re-flagging etc. I also have some trees and some other odd figures on order (for yet another project). I probably should create a list and challenge myself to get it done by a set date.

Re-basing commences

The decision taken on the hoplites I got to work. First step was to prise them off their original base. That wasn't too difficult.

Then I zhuzhed them up a bit with a little decoration of the shields. That done, I got them stuck down to the bases. The figures were in units of the same shield colour and initially I was thinking about mixing them up so there was no uniformity, but cutting the figures off the strips and glueing them individually would have been a task too far. So they're mostly in units with the same colour shield, just different patterns on them.

I'm waiting for the arrival of the dice trays so I won't texture the bases yet. I had a false start with a couple of bases when I realised that I hadn't left enough space for the dice trays.

Figures as they were once they were off the original bases

I wanted to re-base the figures because they were based one rank deep with a fair amount of space fore and aft, whilst I wanted to have denser formations. In addition I wanted to re-texture the bases in the house style, similar to the Punic Wars figures.

First stage: shields edged in gold (for 'bronze'), white, red or green. Second stage: dab on various 'patterns' in contrasting colours. Some were effectively just blobs and then I started to get a bit more adventurous.

Third stage: figures glued to their final bases. Not quite enough for 8 units.

Close up of the 'Blue Shields'

This unit includes some of the legendary Finnioi tribe.

Unit containing the Grimonids (front right), with their own distinctive alphabet letters displayed on their shields.

Good news story

About wargaming too.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8d73e16qgno.amp

After 1100 years….

…..has England split or was it a myth that Athelstan united all England?

Or is it just a sign of declining proofreading standards at the Beeb?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewnpjjlxx4o.amp

The Big Re-basing: Final Options

I've been going round and round in circles on this for nearly two weeks now. I need to make a decision. So here are the final options swirling around my head.

Option 1: Shallow bases each with 2 ranks.

• 1a: Alala! 2 bases deep. Each row made up of bases 60x15 and 30x15mm
• 1b: Basic Impetus: 1 base deep. 2 bases of 60x15mm.

Option 2: Deep bases each with 3 ranks.

• 2a: Alala! 1 base deep. One base 60x30 and one base 30x30mm
• 2b: Basic Impetus: 1 base deep. Two bases 60x30mm

Oh to clarify....I intend to use Alala! for inter-Greek battles and BI for everything else (Romans-Carthaginians; Romans-Greeks; Carthaginians-Greeks; Persians-Greeks).

Option 1a: Phalanx for Alala! Two shallow bases deep, 2 ranks per base. I might drop 1 or 2 files from this as they are too near the edges.

Option 1a: From above. I might open up a bit of a gap between the ranks on each base so they are equally spaced when they are placed two bases deep.

Option 1b: deployed as a 'unit' for Basic Impetus. 1 base deep. 'Spares' in the background will go towards other units.

Option 1a: Alalas phalanx from above showing how the losses can be taken off. This gives me up to 12 elements so lots of flexibility.

Option 2a (right): 3 ranks per base, 1 base deep. Against 1a. Alala phalanxes. As with Option 1, I'll drop a couple of files off to make them easier to handle.

Option 2b: on the right: 3 ranks per base, 1 base deep. Unit for Basic Impetus.

Options 1b and 2b: Basic Impetus shown against a Roman Principes base. If I were to bring the 3-deep Greeks up against the Romans I'd probably have to beef up the Romans a bit from the odds and ends pile. The Hastati and Triarii (not shown) don't look as underpowered by comparison.

Options 1a and 2a together. To make 2b flexible enough I'd have to split the large base into smaller ones.

What the options mean for Alala!

• Option 1 would give me 7 or 8 units of c.60 for Alala! Roughly 1 figure:20 men.
• Option 2 units would be c.48 strong and I'd be able to make 9 units. 

A unit in Alala! is supposed to be around 1000-1200 hoplites. I suppose 3 or 4 units a side would be enough for battles between competing poleis.

What the options mean for Basic Impetus

• Option 1 units would be 40+ figures strong. Roughly 1 figure:30 men. I'd have enough for 10+units. Plenty.
• Option 2 units would be 60+ strong and I'd have 7 or 8. Probably enough.

This excludes all the Peltasts, psiloi and cavalry floating around that I haven't even got around to thinking about yet!

Post Script

I finally made a decision. Three ranks on 30mm deep bases. Two bases 60mm wide for Basic Impetus and one base 60x30 plus one 30x30mm for Alala! I like the look of 3 ranks best.  A total of 60 figures for BI and 45 for Alala! I'll tackle the weedy looking Roman units at a later date.

I played around with different ideas on how to take casualties from a phalanx. Having more smaller bases didn't really look right because in order to avoid handling damage I'd need to have small gaps around the side, and this led to gaps in the wall of shields. 

I asked myself what other way could I track strength without hordes of casualty figures and the answer was in front of my eyes - use tiny dice in dice holders on the base. I do this anyway for BI. A standard Alala unit is 24 figures, or 6 elements of 4. The 30x30mm base, 1/3 of a unit, would therefore be two elements. So once 8 pips had been built up on the D sixes, the small base could be removed. A total of 16 pips would mean the removal of the large base instead. Sorted!

So an order was duly placed for more bases from Pendraken, plus a few other bits and pieces not necessarily related to the Ancients project.

The Big Re-basing - Thoughts?

I winkled some of the recently acquired hoplites off their bases today and tried them out on different sized bases in different configurations. I want to have a system that is compatible with both the standard basing for (non-figure removal) Basic Impetus and for the figure/element removal oriented Alala! (a hoplite specific ruleset).

Probably the biggest question is whether to go for 3 or 2 ranks. My Republican Romans and Carthaginian heavy infantry are in 2 ranks on 60 x 30 mm bases. Two bases go to make up a unit of roughly 40-45 figures. For the same rules I would use 2 base-units also for the Greek hoplites. Here's a comparison of 2-rank Roman base of Hastati versus a 3-rank hoplite base.

Does the Greek base look too deep by comparison to the Romans? Bear in mind the Greek figures are Baccus and slightly 'chubbier' than the H&R Romans. Both bases are 60x30mm.

A complete Greek unit in 3 ranks. 60 figures in total, so much 'weightier' than the Roman unit of 40-45.

Alternative configuration. Same no. of files per base, but in 2 ranks. In this case I would go for bases only 20mm deep because I might want to use double-depth phalanxes and 30mm would leave too much space. Each base would hold 20 figures so a unit in Basic Impetus would be 40 strong., about the same as the Romans.

The chaps off to the left are in the double-depth phalanx on 20mm bases.

The suggested 'unit' in the Alala! rules is 24 figures in 2 ranks.  Each figure represents c.50 men. For 25-28mm sized figures the rules suggest a frontage of 15mm per figure with a 20mm depth. So the whole unit would be 180mm long. An alternative to individual figure removal is element, with the unit being 6 elements strong.

Rather than simply reducing the frontage to 1/4, I thought I would beef up the number of figures in such a unit and 1/2 the frontage. I'm considering two options:

Option 1

2 bases 60x20mm

2 bases 30x20mm

2 bases deep

2 ranks

Total strength 60 figures (6 elements of 10 figures)

Total frontage 90mm

Total depth 40mm

This would give me about 6 units (3 a side), maybe with 1 or 2 more if I use the Carthaginian heavy infantry too

Option 2

1 base 60x30mm

1 base 30x30mm

1 base deep

3 ranks

Total strength 45 figures*

Total frontage 90mm

Total depth 30mm

* element size might be awkward

This would give me about 10 units.

Wargamers' Generosity / New Project

This feature (generosity) rears its lovely head again. The Polemarch is downsizing his collection, disposing of his ancients figures and ships. I expressed an interest in the Greeks and Early Persians and received them on Monday. As he didn't want any money for them I'm making a donation to Oxfam. I was also tempted by the Macedonians and Later Persians but thought that I would have enough on my hands with the earlier bods. So many thanks and kudos to the Polemarch!

Here's what came in the post on Monday:

Approximately 1000 figures all painted. As well as each other and the Persians, the Greeks will be able to fight my Punic Wars period Romans and Carthaginians. I'm sure there would be differences in Greek kit in the 200 years between the Persian and Punic Wars but who can spot that at arm's length?

I won't be repainting anything (no need!) but I am pondering changing the basing.

1. To try and fit in with the basing convention for the Punic Wars collection.
2. To make them compatible with the Alala! rules that I bought from the Society of Ancients.
3. To make them blend with my 'house style'.

This is complicated because Alala! is geared around 25mm size and figure removal. So I'm playing around with different options on paper.  The suggested unit size in Alala! is 24 figures with a frontage of 18cm in 2 ranks. 

The simplest solution is to reduce the frontage to a third. Which fits neatly with my typical basing convention of 6cm bases. Most of the bases pictured above are 4 x 2 cm with 8 heavy infantry per base giving a frontage per figure of 0.5cm. So that works with 12 figures across 6cm. 

But figure removal would be unviable. However there is an option for element removal. So maybe that 6cm frontage could be made up of more than one base. I'm also pondering whether 2 ranks or 3 would produce the effect that I want. My Punic Wars chaps are 2 deep and they look OK. Finally I could double, triple or quadruple the number of figures per unit. Impressive looking units, but that might leave me short of units with which to field two opposing hoplite armies.

Decisions, decisions!

Out at odd times

Some pics from a recent trip to La Safor, an area in the south of Valencia Province. Mostly of the town of Gandía. These are from the 'old town' area where nearly every building was photogenic. Blogger has uploaded the photos in reverse order, not that they are in any order that matters anyway. Most of them were taken during the quiet siesta hours so there are few people around.

Excerpt from Vicent Andres Edellés, 20th century Valencian poet.
You will assume the voice of a people,
And it will be the voice of your people,
And you will be forever, a people.

Plaque in Valencian to local poet and knight, Ausiàs March. Rough translation:  

Love, love, I have cut (myself) a garment 

from your cloth, dressing my spirit.

More March. Taken from the wall opposite the lines by Edellés.

This reminds me I need to order some Cypress trees for my Italian battles.

Local boy made good. Francesc de Borja, 4th Duke of Gandía. The family are better known to history as 'the Borgias', two of whom became popes. Franny went one better and was canonised. Not sure how much it means given the family's track record.

How the mighty have fallen. From popes and saints to opticians?! Surely the most Gaudiesque shopfront I have seen outside Barcelona.

More detail from the optician's shopfront.

The Lesser-Spotted Margravina enjoying the vista above.

Out on the coast where we were staying, there was a thunder storm late one night. I could see flashes of lightning from the balcony so I walked round to the sea wall and sat taking videos and photos of the sky hoping to catch the lightning. This one came out looking apocalyptic or the scene from the Ten Commandments when the Red Sea was split asunder.

It was actually darker than it appears when I tool this. Bar the blue box on the right it looks like an oasis scene in Lawrence of Arabia or Ice Cold in Alex.

Another Biblical movie shot.

Late night walk along the prom. The lights in the left middle distance are reflections of the lamps on the right I think.

On the last day we met one of the neighbours in the same apartment block. A Frenchman by the name of Juan. The Margravina had previously read that a lot of locals emigrated to France in the 20th century and (they or their descendants) frequently return on holiday. Juan told us that he had inherited the flat from his father who had bought it after returning to Spain many years after going in to exile. The father fought on the Republican side and left in 1939. I'd love to have found out more.

Adéu!