Every Englishman needs a Castle

Donnington Castle - a quick scratch-build project

I didn't have a castle so John lent me his gatehouse to act as Donnington Castle in our upcoming bath-tubbed refight of the Second Battle of Newbury, 27th October 1644, in the English Civil War (ECW).

While looking the part, when I put it on my table it was clearly going to dominate the look of the whole thing.  Likewise, the manor I was lent to play the part of Shaw House.

While perfect for some skirmish gaming, e.g. with my Three Musketeers, it made my whole table look like little more than the grounds surrounding the house.

While I had an OO Dapol kit, the Country Inn, that could serve for Shaw House I was lacking anything like a castle.  So, a scratch-build was the only option, but looking at the castle I decide I would only build the gatehouse, which is all that's left nowadays.

A quick scramble through the loft located my foamboard and a suitable cardboard tube that was holding my maps of Spain.  This was quickly cut into two lengths for the gatehouse towers - shown with a few 25mm Hinchliffe ECW figures used to help gauge how small (sub-scale) I could make it without it appearing silly.

The walls for the main part of the gatehouse were made from foamboard with the foam cut out for the corners, and the butt joint where the two ends are joined. 

The folds have a 90° cut-out section (±45°) ...

... and the butt-joint, simply has the foam backing removed from one end the same length as the depth of the other end to be slotted in.

Hopefully, how this works can be seen with the walls folded round into shape and held in there with an elastic band.

The 'towers' then had sections cut out so they would fit around the front corners.

The next task was to come up with a suitable render for the castle, which called for something like a flint wall effect.  Finding a picture online was not a problem.

But, tiling this image to print out and cover the walls is always a chore, involving lots of manual pixel manipulation in MS Paint.  But this time I tried something different, AI, namely ChatGPT.  ChatGPT did the job, albeit I had to go through several iterations of instruction before it did what I wanted.  Nonetheless, it was quicker and a much less onerous than doing it manually.  So, I printed the walling out of A4 sized label paper and applied it to the component parts, and then glued gatehouse walls into their final form with PVA - shown here with more elastic bands to hold it in place while drying.

It was then a case of adding all the features such as: windows, doors, merlons, stone courses, etc.  This was very fiddle and quite time consuming, and with time pressing[1] I stopped taking photos.

It might've gone badly wrong, but it didn't.  And here it is, in place on the field of battle and ready for action.

More pictures should follow in the post on the battle to be fought.

Notes:

[1] The castle was only finished earlier today, and as I sit here typing this, the game is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and I need to do a quick review of my rules to make sure there's nothing in this game they can't cope with - so I cut it quite fine.

Wargaming Projects - 1 of 4 - The Prehistoric

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects

Prehistoric, Past, Present, and Pending

A commenter on a previous post remarked on how many armies I have.  While not as many as some gamers I know, when I thought about it, it came to more than I realised.  So, I decided to list them all for the record and own the shame.

To keep these posts to a manageable size I've broken them done into four categories which will each get their own post, namely: Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending.  

Part 1 - Prehistoric Projects: that date back to the origins of my wargaming (with rules as opposed to just playing with toy soldiers, e.g. my Britain's multi-part Wars of the Roses and ACW 54mm figures - now sold).

Like most gamers of a similar vintage, I started with Airfix 1/72 kits and moved on to HO/OO plastic figures, or 1/76 as they're now marketed.  I have no photographic record of any of these as they were all thrown away when I went to Uni' as I felt such childish past-times should be left behind[1].  Imagine my anguish when I discovered the wargaming society at the Freshers' Squash, AND they had Airfix armies as well as metal ones - D;oh!

My first 'proper' metal wargame figures were Hinchliffe 25mm Napoleonic's, my Dad buying me half a dozen to get me started on what became a small King's German Legion force all based for the Airfix rules by Bruce Quarrie and consisting of: 4x Line Battalions, 1x Light Battalion, 1x Horse and 1x Foot Artillery Battery (each having a gun, crew, limber and team); 1x Regiment of Hussars; ½x Regiment of Light Dragoons; and, a few command figures.  All now sold and being shown some love by another.  As these were only finally sold off recently[2], still in their original Humbrol gloss enamel paint-jobs, I have a few photos of these

My next army, started back at Uni in the 70's, was another 25mm Hinchliffe collection, only this time it was Ancients.  WRG Ancients was the big thing in the Wargaming Society.  With thoughts of emulating one of my heroes, I opted to start putting together an Alexandrian Macedonian army, and by this time I was using Humbrol matt enamels.  As it failed to replicate the success of the original it soon morphed into a more generic Hellenistic Successor army.  This one, is however, still going strong so will appear in a later post on Present projects.

Perhaps the inspiration to move on to a Successor army was influenced by my best friend from Uni who had a Seleucid army.  Sadly, he passed away a few years ago but left his army to me, as it was what had brought us together[3]. 

But while I still have, and still use, these figures, they are now the oldest I have, so I thought I would feature them here, in the beginning so to speak.

They have some really nice painted shield designs.

All I did with these figures when I got them was repair ant wear and tear and re-base them to match my army.  Also, he had a half-painted general that I finished off and added a shield to the base to have a go at the shield pattern and blend him in with the army.

I did repaint the tents from his camp; they were just painted as plain canvas so, I thought they should be jazzed up a bit.

This army also came in for some recent attention, when I expanded the pike blocks.  The original army (not based to DBA/M) were about a dozen figures too few to make 2-element wide blocks so I bought some painted Hinchliffe Successor pike of eBay and re-touched them to match the existing pike; effectively doubling the number of pikes that could be fielded - covered in an earlier post here.

The other really early project was a collection of 6mm Napoleonic's by Heroics and Ros, nice and cheap and easy to paint in those days when I didn't need to wear glasses.  But, like my Hinchliffe Ancients these are still in use and will be covered under Present Projects.

And finally, back in the day, I did buy and paint some Warhammer Fantasy figures to placate my Tolkien urges, but they have been sold off and I can find no photographic record of them anywhere.

Next in this series will be a litany of abandoned projects, often only with a few figures being painted - the lure of the pretty figure range.

Notes:

[1] The fact that my parents were moving house at the same time and obviously didn't want too much of my junk cluttering their new home, also played its part in this.

[2] They were let go, because I was let go and needed to move and down-size, but they hadn't seen a table-top for many a year before that.

[3] I'd heard about someone with an impressive army in the same hall of residence so I tracked him down and knocked on his door.  I was somewhat taken aback when a 6' 5¾" giant opened the door, but, right from the start, we just hit it off; he is still sorely missed.

Old Boys Weekend - Game 3 of 3

The Battle of Neumarkt Sankt Veit, 24 April 1809.

A refight of the action at Neumarkt Sankt Veit (hereafter just Neumarkt) which saw a Franco-Bavarian force led by Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières face an Austrian army commanded by Johann von Hiller.  Hiller's numerically superior force won a victory, forcing Bessières to retreat to the west.

For this we used, a slightly tweaked version of Neil Thomas' "Napoleonic Wargame Rules" (NTNWR) as from an earlier trial games (here and here) we all felt they "had something".

The Scenario

The scenario was shamelessly copied from Jemima Fawr's Miniature Wargames Blog (here) - go to her blog for a map - modified slightly for our 6mm troops.  My interpretation of this is shown below, viewed from the south-west, the top left corner, as viewed, being north.  The roads were all frantically cut out of sheets of coloured card on the Thursday before the weekend - not great but, held down with small tabs of double-sided tape, they do the job.  

And again, from the north-east ...

... and a repeat, this time with the crossings named, and the various formations outlined: the Austrians in yellow; Bavarians in light blue; and, French in mid blue.

While the Austrians were intended to have much of their army off-table, a mistake in setting up meant there were fewer troops than there should be on-table at the start.  This was rectified in the game by them magically appearing in the first turn.

I had intended running this as an open game, i.e. all players aware of what was the scenario entailed, but with the Franco-Bavarian army tasked with getting all its troops across the river, before it could withdraw them to avoid the overwhelming Austrian force.  The other players (Steve, Martin and Keith) all however said they would prefer to play knowing no more than the real commanders did.  So, I briefed them on what was known to their commanders, and, as I was also playing, undertook to act in the same way; they're a trusting bunch.

The Battle

This game was very absorbing, and I was very absorbed.  What I mean by this is that I forgot to take many photos so, this will be brief and front-loaded.

My main issue, as the French, was how to get all my troops quickly over the river as they were all jammed around Neumarkt.  Some of my cavalry, no doubt frustrated by this bottle-neck, were already looking to go home (if you can spot them).

Martin, the Bavarian commander, had the opposite problem, with all his brigades, except his cavalry, across the river, widely spread and in danger of being defeated in detail.

At least he had his artillery nicely deployed and waiting for any Austrians who might show up.

And show up they did, some as if magically appearing from nowhere (courtesy of the deployment cock-up noted above).

Back on the other side of the river, my French were caught on the hop, and lost precious time having to get into march columns.  Realising it would take too long to get everyone over the Neumarkt bridge, they sent their guns and one division to cross the bridge to their right (Hundham), and another division and a brigade of cavalry to the bridge to their left (Kinming).  Their cavalry crossing at Neumarkt, thanks to another terrible staff blunder, only moved at infantry marching pace - D'oh!

The Bavarians, by contrast were expecting something of the sort, and not surprised by the appearance of more Austrians, were ready and waiting.

And their guns bid the Kaiserliks welcome.

Similarly, the Bavarian cavalry was ready in march column to cross the river at Hundham with the minimum of fuss.  Hopefully they would be well clear before my forming march columns of infantry arrived to use it.

The Austrians continued their advance and yet more arrived.  The French were still in some confusion, and their cavalry continued to move at infantry speeds - saving their horses?  Also, it was rapidly becoming apparent that crossing at Kinming and Hundham was going to take longer than doing so at Neumarkt, as the bridge there was already clear.  But, order, counter-order, disorder, convinced me it was better to stick to the plan than change it.  Also, the plan would deliver a consolidated French division with cavalry support to both of the threatened Bavarian wings, or so I reasoned to myself.

In the centre the Austrians had parted like the Red Sea to escape the Bavarian artillery.

But yet more Austrians were still arriving.

The overall situation was starting to look grim, with the Franco-Bavarians pinned against the river and many troops still to cross; one French brigade had been marched past the Hundham crossing and was making for the Wolfsberg bridge to strengthen the right flank currently only held by light cavalry.

And just in case it's not clear which side is which, the image is repeated below with a broken red line separating the two sides, Franco-Bavarians to the right and Austrians to the left.

Shortly after the French started crossing at Kinming to stop the Bavarian right flank being turned, yet more Austrians appeared.  This time on the French side of the river and marching towards the Kinming bridge.  Luckily the second French infantry brigade had not yet crossed so it hastily deployed into line, while that in the act of crossing did an about face and retraced its steps.

The rest of the battlefield at this point is shown in the image below, the leading units of the newly arrived Austrians (actually my Prussian figures masquerading as Austrians) can be seen just on the edge at the bottom right of the image.

At this point it was clear that retreating back across the river was the only safe option for the French and Bavarians, but was it even possible now?  The Austrians weren't helping as they started to press harder in the centre to make any withdrawal hazardous at best - we hadn't been placing smoke for musket volleys but the units in the image were exchanging fire.

On the French right around Hundham, the recently crossed infantry brigade continued to advance to cover the withdrawal of the light cavalry and the guns who were already making back towards the bridges.

On the French left, they had actually gone onto the attack to try and keep the Austrians [Prussians] from taking the bridge at Kinming.  The first French infantry brigade successfully drove back the enemy brigade at bayonet point several times, while, through the most egregiously lucky dice rolls, escaping all harm from the musketry of the second enemy brigade (again a shocking lack of smoke in the picture).

While this was taking place, the French light cavalry (Hessen-Darmstädt Chevauxlegers?), in the absence of the infantry that was to have crossed at Kinming to join them, had to sacrifice itself in taking on the Austrian infantry to protect the Bavarian's flank.

Their sacrifice was followed by that of the gallant infantry brigade that had been fighting to hold the Kinming bridge.  In its weakened state, after eventually routing the opposing infantry brigade, it was attacked and routed in turn by some Austrian light cavalry (Uhlans).

Unfortunately, at this point we had to call time and agree the outcome.

The bridge at Kinming was still heavily contested and not really available to either side to use, but with the French light cavalry destroyed trying to hold off the Austrian infantry, the leftmost Bavarian infantry brigade was about to be rolled up from the flank.

Similarly, their brigade on their right flank, while holding its own against the Austrian brigade to its front, would soon find itself outflanked after the Bavarian cavalry brigade to its right was driven off (cavalry do not fare well attacking fresh infantry frontally).  Also, the enemy infantry to its front was about to be reinforced by a brigade of grenadiers.

To add to the Bavarian's troubles the French on the right flank, despite having only just crossed the river, had, almost all, managed to withdraw back across the river using both the Hundham and Wolfsberg bridges.  This left the Bavarian cavalry exposed and unsupported, other than by the French artillery now safely deployed on their side of the river.

A quick look at the casualties removed, and we agreed that the battle had largely replicated the historical result, albeit with both sides taking heavier losses, a not unusual finding with most sets of wargame rules. 

Post Mortem

While we had not 'finished' the battle (although we had a clear result), and much time was spent manoeuvring rather than fighting, we agreed that it had been an interesting scenario and an enjoyable game.  And what's more, the difficulty manoeuvring brigades through a fairly cluttered environment, was judged to have given a real sense of the command and control problems in trying to get one's force where needed, when required.

In short, we all felt that these rules, despite their inherent simplicity are a very effective set and we will undoubtedly be playing them again.