Bat-oh!

Knocked up a mock up of a ‘bateau’ for the wars on the American Continent. This was a quick test to see if I could do something. The answer was ‘I can’ but there’s room for improvement.

Materials were an empty cereal packet, some cocktail sticks, paper and Blutak to hold stuff in place temporarily. And a sharp knife (after an abortive attempt with a blunt one).

The basic idea was to make something that can hold a base of my AWI chaps (2x3cm base). Functionality is more important than looks. At the back of my mind I had Dave Crook’s stylised ships for the late 29 18th century. What I’m basing the design on is a simple ‘bateau’ of the type used on the rivers and lakes of North America in the F&I wars, the AWI and War of 1812. Bateaux had pointy bits at both ends and were flat bottomed to aid portability across land. Some had sails as well as oars and varied greatly in size. They were used to move men, weapons and supplies. Some even seemed to have little ‘canon’.

The plan is to maybe make a fleet of 30ish for use in amphibious operations - prompted by my reading of ‘These Distinguished Corps’ by Don Hagist. The book is a history of flank battalion operations in the American Revolution. The Lights and Grenadiers seemed to do an awful lot of bobbing about in boats in the AWI, do I thought ‘why not?’

Now on to the critique:

The gunwales are too low for the figures. I need to up these from 5mm.

I need a good method of gluing the gunwales and pointy bits to each other. Not sure how.

Ditto the mast.

The oars and rudder handle could do with being thinner - maybe thick wire is the answer.

And maybe more of them.

And one or two ‘crew’.

Obviously it needs a paint job.

I might need bases for them (c 12x6cm) to protect them from handling.

But overall it looks workable!

Two Side Dishes

Rather than getting on with finding a suitable table and running the ECW siege-campaign I talked about before the Summer, I've been faffing about reading and listening off topic.

The listening has been the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast with Al Murray and James Holland. But at least with a podcast I can get on and do other things.

The reading part has lately steered to the Second Anglo-Sikh War (after reading about the first in Flashman and the Mountain of Light). My book of choice here is Amarpal Singh's the Second Anglo-Sikh War. It's a bit of a whopper at over 500 pages and very good too. The same author has written on the First ASW and on the Siege of Dehli during the Mutiny. I've been thinking of Colonial wargaming for several years without actively doing anything about it, beyond buying A Portable Colonial Wargame and the Men Who Would Be Kings rules.

If I do go ahead, I've narrowed down my theatre of interest to the NW Frontier. As for period, well, I've been thinking of going right back to the 1840s and then following through successive generations right up to the 1930s. The intention is to approach it at skirmish or at most brigade level, playing scenario driven games with named characters. Not to be taken too seriously with silly names and possibly even an Imagination type approach. Expect bad puns. Also there could be an element of the Great Game involved, with devious Russian agents stirring up trouble. All being well, a brave British political officer might return the compliment causing trouble on the Tsar's frontiers which Count Karl Gustav Stutterheim will have to deal with. Suitable Russian figures can be found in ranges covering the Russo-Turkish War and right up to the Russian Civil War. Who knows.

I might stick with 10mm figures, or I might even go up to 20mm since I need new terrain/buildings anyway, I needn't be constrained by what I have currently. Pendraken have a number of ranges that I can probably use as proxies, if not always directly what I want.

The second possible side dish is the Spanish Civil War. Now this is something that has interested me since the early 80s, although I haven't done much reading on the subject since university days. To me the kaleidoscope of factions involved on both sides is a key feature. I was intrigued by Trebian's approach to handling different factions, so I popped in an order for For Whole the Dice Tolls and I'm slowly working my way through that now.

There's a lot to go through. For a start, modern warfare (and by my standards the 1930s is modern) is more complicated than the Horse and Musket era. All the different capabilities of AFVs for one thing, to say nothing of aeroplanes. It's more than I'm used to. If this goes ahead, I'll continue with 10mm ranges since I can use some of my existing stuff like woods. I also already have some T26s and a couple of trucks that could be used. Before taking the plunge, I will have a run through of the rules using my Continuation War figures as proxies. They are already mounted on bases compliant with Trebian's recommended dimensions. There are some spare Finns/Germans in helmets in the box of unpainted stuff. I might even get away with painting these up as Spanish regulars at this scale. Economy is the watchword!

It's time to stop!

Helion I mean. They keep coming out with books I want to read. Seeing the forthcoming book "Every Bullet Has Its Billet" on the Wars of Louis Quatorze blog, I thought "ooh, I'll have a look at that" and tootled off to the Helion website.

Well that led to me registering interest in ten books. So that'll be 250-300 quid by the time they all arrive at some point in 2021. Four ECW titles; one late-seventeenth century; two War(s)* of the Austrian Succession; one SYW; one Colonial (Sikh Wars); and one WWII (Continuation War).

* being a pedantic type I'd incline to the plural because this was really a series of sometimes overlapping wars between many powers, and with each running according to its own logic, the only common connection being that most of the belligerents were trying to take advantage of the accession of Maria-Theresa to the Habsburg inheritance.

Here's the full list with links:

THE ROYALIST WAR EFFORT IN THE NORTH MIDLANDS

THE ARMIES OF SIR RALPH HOPTON

THE BRAVEST BATTELL (Cheriton 1644)

SIEGES IN THE SEVERN VALLEY DURING THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

EVERY BULLET HAS ITS BILLET (wargaming guide to late C17th)

MAURICE DE SAXE AND THE CONQUEST OF THE AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS 1744-1748

YOU HAVE TO DIE IN PIEDMONT! (Assietta 1747)

THE BATTLE OF ROSSBACH 1757

THE SIKH WARS SOURCE BOOK

VYBORG 1944

That'll keep me out of harms way for a while next year. And fortunately, bar the Sikh Wars and late 17th century, I have toys that could be used for most of them.

Also worth noting for budding SYW acolytes is the re-publication of Duffy's great work on the Austrian Army's campaigns of the Seven Years War, By Force of Arms . This won't be cheap (it's sister volume Instrument of War is £49.95) but it'll be well worth the money at over 500 large format (245 x 170mm) pages with detailed maps aplenty.

Finally, spare a thought for us poor Grimsby Town fans. The Holloway Honeymoon is well and truly over. 5:0. Five bloody nil. With one shot on target (which I think my mother would have saved, and we buried her in April). I would have stormed out at half time in disgust but I was watching it at home and there was no where to storm off to.

Plans & Thoughts on AWI and Colonial Wargaming

No, I'm not conflating the American War of Independence with Colonial Wargaming (though come to think of it....). A post by Jonathan Freitag on his Palouse Wargaming blog reminded me of an error I made recently. The post (partly) concerned a game he played via Zoom of Patriots and Rebels. For the unitiated Patriots and Rebels is a set of skirmish rules published by Osprey for wargaming the petit guerre in North America from colonial times to the ACW.

Now if you've noticed I have been thinking a lot about wargaming the AWI lately. Mainly this entailed agonising over base sizes for a long-delayed attempt at loose Files and American Scramble. Maybe that was at the back of my mind one night recently when I was looking at ordering something on my wife's Amazon Plus account (so I could save on postage). I did declare the purchase and offered to pay (which the kind soul declined to accept). Honest!

So I was excited a day later when a slim volume shaped package was delivered. Excitement faded to disappointment and I thought "the plonkers have sent the wrong book".

My reader might be thinking "that book looks apposite bearing mind nundanket's recent blogospherical cogitations". Apposite, but not what I'd ordered. Or rather what I thought I'd ordered. You see I was after this:

Now I'd been looking at this on Amazon and even added it to the 'basket'. I was then distracted by the 'people who bought X also looked at Y and Z' thing. The ordered was duly placed and when I found the 'wrong' book had landed on my doorstep with the accompanying delivery note "'claiming'" that was what was ordered, I rushed to the laptop and dug up the order on Amazon. I was building up for a good old "can't people get anything right these days" rant, but the wind was taken out of my sails. I had ordered Rebels and Patriots. Dimwit!

Any road up, I placed a correct order for The Men Who Would be Kings, and promptly compensated my beloved's bank account without giving her the chance to politely refuse.

I read both sets of rules and pronounced them 'good enough to try'. I will use multiple based figures for Rebels and Patriots since I've got 10mm AWI figures. This will be a side order to my intention to play 'proper battles' using Loose Files. The Men Who Would be Kings, however, I plan to use singly based figures as I'm thinking of making a departure from my usual tiny scale wargaming and venture into something bigger. Both sets of rules have a lot in common, naturally, but each has 'period chrome'. They don't look terribly innovative, but do look reasonably simple and potentially fun. The declared intention with The Men Who Would be Kings is for wargaming with a hint of Carry on Up the Khyber or Flashman. Well that sounds right up my strasse! The Men Who Would be Kings also has a 'programmed opponent' called Mr Babbage's engine, which is spiffing idea.

The exact period of 'colonial', I intend to play is not certain. The location is likely to be the Indian Subcontinent and Afghanistan. Probably 1850s. And maybe with a touch of the Great Game thrown in. I've been looking at Irregular's 20mm range. I might then extend the period through time (got to have some pith helmets somewhere alomg the line) possibly right up to the 1920s. The Irregular range looks good for the 'Mutiny' period but the others are all for the earlier periods such as the Sikh Wars and First Afghan War. Ironically, my usual preferred manufacturer, Pendraken, does the Mutiny, 2nd Afghan, NW Frontier 1890s, plus 2nd Boer War and WWI Middle East which would give me Brits at least for the whole period. That would also give me the opportunity to have a crack at Johnny Turk too. Plus Cossacks from the Crimean and Russo-Japanese Wars, which would do for Great Game Counter-Factuals. Hmmm!

Any suggestions as to other manufacturers with 20(ish) mm figures that cover the periods I'm interested in?