The Dining Table Napoleon

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  • Recreating Ligny 1815

    The French mass for the attack on Ligny – this is the trial set up at home

    My most recent club game was a “small Ligny” – excluding the action on the eastern flank, and the final commitment of reserves by Napoleon. This was not in fact a serious refight – the main aim was to familiarise ourselves with the Horse, Foot, Guns rules, which we are due to use for a “big Waterloo” game (including Wavre and Grouchy) in a month’s time. This latter game, put on by somebody else at the club, promises to be very interesting. We will use 2mm troop blocks with the lovely Ferraris map as the playing surface.

    Still, Ligny (two days before Waterloo in 1815) is an enduring fascination of mine. I want to do a full version of it using my own rules – and a “big Ligny” too, incorporating Quatre Bras. It is a very demanding test of a grand tactical rules system. To date I have tried Blücher and my own adaptation of Bloody Big Battles; both failed – the French didn’t stand a chance. There are two big challenges: fighting in the villages, and Prussian command and control, where the two and eventually three corps became intermingled, and where the (division-sized) Brigades were sometimes broken into pieces ad-hoc. How would HFG do?

    The game in progress with Gerard’s division attacking Ligny village in the foreground. Chateau Ligny is on the wrong side of the stream…

    We used my own version of HFG, which I produced nearly 10 years ago – as the original’s scope was too wide (1700-1910, naval support, etc.) and densely-written (by Phil Barker of Wargames Research Group fame). These were designed to work with my basing system. I felt it would be easier to use these rather than the originals, which were slightly updated (V1.1) since ten years ago. I fought two battles with the system (Waterloo and Salamanca – both described on these pages – search for HFG) before moving on.

    Each element was about 2,000 infantry, 1,200 cavalry or 20 guns. The bases corresponded to French infantry brigades or cavalry divisions – with a couple of extra bases for Vandamme’s corps. For the Prussians I used one element for each regiment – though in practice they mixed the regiments up. On numbers they should have had a couple of elements more – but the OB I was using did not account for losses at Gilly the day before, and I gave them an addition of Chateau Ligny as a strongpoint, without deducting anything for the garrison. The landwehr I graded as inferior, but all other troops on both sides were standard. This is a bit generous to the Prussians. The French were probably better quality in general, and some of the newer Prussian regiments were not tip-top, especially where they represented elements of different formations thrown together. Still HFG has only three quality grades, so fine-tuning was not possible. Elite would have been reserved for the French senior Guard (at Ligny, but not on my table). For the Prussians I got a lot of pleasure from using my collection to get figures closely approximating the actual regiments in 1815. The French were my hard-working 1809 miniatures, so not especially realistic.

    The board was thrown together quickly. The playing area is just 3ft by 3ft. It was thrown together very rapidly from elements that I had in stock – the hills in particular only vaguely reflect the actual terrain. Ligny brook was treated as an area of slow-going. Ligny village was treated as two built-up ares (BUAs), separated by the brook. St Armand was treated as parkland/orchard (slow going, cover from artillery, but otherwise limited impact), with Longpré, where most of the fighting on that flank took place, was treated as a single BUA. I used my new Geek Villain “Field of Glory” battle mat – which was glorious, in spite of not being to scale. I used 6mm buildings, as anything bigger doesn’t work at this very compact ground scale. I shouldn’t be using 18mm miniatures – but I’m not building 6mm or 10mm armies up from scratch! There is more than even the usual disconnect between figure and ground scale (but if that’s all right for Rapid Fire!…).

    We played for about 3 hours, packing up for the club AGM, which took place at 2pm. I wasn’t counting the number of turns. HFG turns represent a short time interval (10-15 minutes), so there are meant to be lots of turns, but it was inevitably slow at first. We only really got as far as the opening stages of the battle. The French, played by Malc, massed all their artillery in the centre, and proceeded to drive off the outnumbered Prussian artillery opposite. Meanwhile Gérard”s corps tried to pile into Ligny, Girard’s division into Longpré, and Vandamme worked round the French left, eventually joining the attack on Longpré. The Prussians, played by Rod, gradually moved their second line – from Pirch II’s corps – round to the right flank. Gérard repeatedly tried to break into Ligny, and only succeeded in the last move before we broke up. He only lost one element – but not to the fighting in the BUA but to a single Prussian artillery battery posted on their left, out of range from the French artillery. It was the only destroyed element on either side during the game.

    Girard and Vandamme’s attacks on Longpré were just as futile, and never broke in. Given that historically the French did break into both places fairly quickly and then started a seesaw battle, sucking in almost all the two Prussian corps’ infantry, this didn’t seem to be reflecting history. It was also rather dull and slow game play. HFG was not a good system for this battle. A more appropriate trial game would have been smaller and on more open terrain.

    On the two Ligny problems, I don’t think HFG handled the first (BUAs) at all well. Part of our problem was unfamiliarity with the rules. In HFG there are two phase of combat: “firing”distant combat” and close combat. Infantry can’t move into close combat without starting from within firing range. When attacking BUAs this initial firing combat is critical, and the defenders start with a big advantage. It’s important to get this right, or otherwise your attack won’t get to the close combat stage – which is also at a significant disadvantage unless you can get a “silenced” result in firing combat. If the French had got this sequence right, they would have done much better at Ligny – not so much at Longpré.

    Still I don’t think the rules capture Napoleonic BUA combat well. Fire combat before the sides closed was not important historically. In practice defenders could only mount skirmish fire at the edges. Most of the combat in the interior took place in the streets, without much cover. There was a lot of close-quarter fighting with little or no advantage to the defender – unless they could organise on a strong point with a secure perimeter, such as a churchyard (and even then this usually needed to be prepared in advance to be properly effective). The rules seem to framed for later 19th century warfare, with far more effective firearms, and where soldiers used the local cover to much better advantage.

    On command and control the rules did pose a challenge. The corps commanders were “command parties” which were mobile but only have a small command radius. Army commanders can’t give direct orders to units not under direct command. With Prussians’ large corps this made it hard going. That wasn’t unrealistic – though historically the battle was controlled by the army command, with the corps commanders having only a limited role, it ended up in a similar place.

    Another thing to learn from the rules is that because the turns represent a short time period, you can be patient, building your position before launching an attack, and using long artillery bombardments (five or six turns, even).

    My earlier criticisms of HFG stand, however. The biggest of the is that it doesn’t capture attritional combat well – the gradual wearing down of armies. It is a low-probability/high impact system, which I don’t really like, though this works better the armies and timescale. The fact that both sides must dice for each combat and add up combat factors slows things down, though this speeds up with practice; this matters when you need to get a lot of turns in. Although I can think of ways of improving the system a bit, I’m not investing in it – I’m going a different way.

    The journey on my big battle rules continues. I got quite a long way with a new activation system inspired by Lasalle II on my BBB-based system, but I realised this was not going to work in the multi-player games that I want to play. Instead I’m working on some other ideas:

    • Instead of multi-based units in contact, in formations analogous to lines and columns (following BBB), I want to try moving each base as an individual element – a bit like HFG, except that the elements are smaller (say 1,000 infantry rather than 2,000, with a 30mm frontage rather than 50mm), and each subject to damage before being removed. This follows Bruce Weigle system for his 1870 series.
    • I want to use a card system for quick resolution of morale. A bit like the Twilight rules, combat will be resolved by alternating morale tests.
    • I’m thinking of using a card system to drive the turns too – but this is undeveloped in the Napoleonic context. The central idea is that all moves are standard (say 6in), but not all units can move every move.

    My idea is the develop a series of systems with common elements to cover WW2, Bismarck’s wars, Napoleonic and the Great Northern War. I’m close to testing the WW2 system, and I am thinking of moving to Bismarck’s wars next. Meanwhile for Napoleonics I’m playing very enjoyable mid-sized battles with Général d’Armée 2.

  • More Prussian infantry

    GDA2 uses a lot infantry miniatures. Fifteen or more battalions on the table is commonplace, and often more in their scenarios, and there are 24 figures in each one on my basing system (not counting large battalions). I didn’t have enough Prussians for some of the 1813 or 1815 published scenarios – except perhaps using some Landwehr as line infantry. I have similar problems for the French, where I have had to use Guard units in the line. So I needed reinforcements!

    My immediate focus was on the GDA Lützen scenario. For this I needed lots of bog-standard Prussian line. Four regiments were involved (two Silesian and two West Prussians), with up to four battalions each and 13 altogether – plus two battalions of grenadiers and one of Silesian Shützen. And that’s not the full game size – though I doubt we will ever play the extended variant with another 3 battalions of late reinforcements. I have but three battalions of standard line infantry (from the 2nd, Pomeranian, regiment). In addition I can rustle up seven odd-looking battalions from the 1815 new regiments – previously reserve units (plus 8 Landwehr) – and I had a couple of bases of Silesian Shützen.

    My plan was to put together another six and a half battalions. Four of line infantry – painted as the 2nd West Prussian regiment – and two of grenadiers (West Prussian and Pomeranian) and an extra couple of bases of Shützen. The line infantry and shützen I could cobble together from Old Glory figures in my lead mountain, with a few AB officers which I also had in stock – which would leave me with only a handful of unpainted Old Glory figures. I bought the grenadiers and some extra skirmishers from AB. AB do them in campaign uniform, without the fancy shako plumes – but with a couple of details different from line infantry, like badges on the cartridge box.

    This project is especially significant because I bit the bullet and decided to change the basing. Until now my infantry (and cavalry) have been based on 25mm squares (and skirmishers on 25mm by 15mm bases). I decided to move them to 30mm wide, with the same depth. The tipping point was the decision that in my future grand-tactical rules I would articulate the bases individually, rather than forming them into lines and columns like individual battalions. When a base is on its own it looks a lot better as an oblong, so you can see readily which way it is facing. The difference is not so great that I can’t use them alongside my smaller bases: indeed a I have some British units, bought from a friend, on 30mm squares, which I have used successfully co-mingled. A second decision was to use pre-cut MDF bases (bought from Pendraken) rather than cutting them myself from thin cardboard. I use these bases on my smaller scale figures (6mm and 10mm) for ease of handling, and I have decided that the thicker bases aren’t so bad visually. The handling issue still applies, and the cardboard can warp.

    This first picture shows the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 2 West Prussians. Each line battalion comes with a skirmisher base, and to these I have added a couple of bases of volunteer jagers. The 2nd West Prussian regiment actually contributed little (one or two battalions out of a possible four) to the Lützen order of battle for the GDA scenario – but I already had the flags in stock.

    Next come the Fusiliers and the 3rd battalion. The Fusiliers count as a light unit for GDA purposes, so I did five skirmish bases. When fully deploying the unit my plan is to take off two bases from the main unit and put on four skirmish bases; this is not in the rules but has an almost identical effect. The 3rd battalions of Prussian infantry were only used at the start of the 1813 campaign. After Lützen they were folded into the other battalions. However, since all my 1st and 2nd battalions are standard sized, I can use bases from this unit to make them into large units (and the Fusiliers too if I just add a single base), typical of 1815, and even later in 1813.

    And finally the grenadiers and shützen. The Pomeranian grenadiers are in the front rank. I chose this regiment rather than the Silesians (who were actually in the order of battle) to match with the Pomeranians I already have. Also there was Frederick the Great’s quote about Pomeranian grenadiers. The AB figures are lovely, and a cut above the Old Glory ones (though these are not bad – and quite characterful). The shützen are a combination of my old two bases, rebased and touched up, and two new ones. Likewise with the skirmish bases (where as a light unit, they get five – plus I did three bases of jagers for the other regiments). They integrate pretty smoothly, though getting them off the old bases, covered in static grass was less straightforward.

    Doing seven units of infantry as a single project was easily my biggest at 18mm – but I it felt necessary to get the troops table-ready in reasonable time. I based and primed the units all together. I then did the basic painting by individual unit, so as to be able to see progress more easily. After the first four units, I finished the bases and gave them the final coat of varnish/wash for the ones completed so far. I then moved on to the final three units. Because I thought the wash dulled down the white webbing and the white/red facings a bit too much, I did this earlier in the process for the second batch, and did the final paintwork (the webbing, facings and metallics) in one big batch afterwards. I also did a little highlighting on the first batch to lift them a bit – including on the flesh parts, which looked a bit dull. I’m no expert at highlighting (getting the right weight of paint on the brush is a real skill) so I don’t think this added that much.

    Incidentally the wash is one aspect that I have been experimenting with. This time I mixed a bit of sepia acrylic ink with acrylic airbrush matt varnish (from Liquitex). I have used black ink before, and found it a bit too strong. The sepia is better, and the finish of the varnish (if properly shaken before use) is exactly what I want. As I said, I still think the figures needed final highlighting – but this is not a big job.

    How about the new bases? I’m not a total convert. The figures still look a little loose for close order infantry to my eye, especially in the “march attack” pose. When posed advancing with lowered weapons (only the shützen this time), and the ranks slightly offset, then the extra space works. For the light infantry I did try to offset the ranks, though this is barely visible. However, by modern wargames standards these units still count as densely packed, and the wider bases do look better on their own.

    The first batch of units were finished in time to take part in one of my club games, mixed with my older units. You can see from this excerpt:

    The shützen are on the front left; 3/2 West Prussian is the right of the limber (which is from the artillery batch described in the last post). There’s no problem mixing the two. But the big question lurks: do I rebase my old units? Not for now.

    My Prussian lead mountain is now substantially reduced. I have some packs of AB Landwehr that I will paint up as Silesians. I have a couple of AB cavalry units that I don’t really need but would look good. My next Napoleonic project is French infantry reinforcements: six battalions in late uniform, including two of Young Guard.

  • Prussian artillery galore

    My new 1815 Prussian artillery and limbers – on my new Geek Villain Fields of Glory mat.

    Apologies for the long silence on these pages. I’ve been quite busy. In 2025 I’ve had two games of Général d’Armée at the club, one with my figures, and one based in 1800 with a fellow club member. I’ve been working on some new ideas for my WW2 rules, some of which I will apply to other periods. And I’ve been busy painting reinforcements for my 18mm Prussian army for 1813 to 1815. I’ve also revamped this website, though not so sure about how much better it is. Today I am going to describe my new Prussian artillery an d limbers; next time it will be the turn of seven battalions of infantry.

    I started with the artillery, not because I had any special need for my GDA2 games, which are not intensive of artillery, but because I had been planning this as part of my Ligny project – for which I will use my own grand-tactical rules – which use a lot more artillery models by comparison. I had gone as far assembling all the figures and models ready to complete this aspect of the project a year ago – but then got distracted. I actually finished this in January, but not got round to photographing the results – I am actually a bit vague about what I did! There are ten bases of deployed artillery – three horse artillery, two heavy artillery, four field artillery and one howitzer. In my system I denote horse artillery with two-figure bases (and the howitzers too), field artillery with three crew figures, and heavy with four. The historical batteries were all the same size – 8 guns. In addition I painted eight limbers – three with two pairs of horses, and the rest with one.

    The first image shows the heavies on the left and one of the field batteries on the right. The figures are all AB – much nicer than the Old Glory ones I have been using before. The 12 pdr pieces are also AB; the one on the right (in paler blue) was not painted in this batch, but left over from before. The 6 pdrs are Blue Moon – these are chunkier than the AB ones, and I’m using them for foot artillery. Apparently there was a bit of variation in Prussian artillery in use.

    The next picture shows three horse artillery bases (far left, and both on the right) and the howitzer. The base on the left is meant to represent a battery from the Lützow Freikorps , which was still wearing the old uniforms in 1815. These are old Battle Honours Austrians with head swaps from Old Glory Prussians. Nothing very impressive, I have to admit. All the artillery pieces are from AB, with the howitzer in the lighter colours of my earlier batch. Incidentally I replaced the howitzer barrel with one from a Battle Honours Austrian 7pdr howitzer, and the AB one appears to represent the heavy 10-pdr howitzer.

    What to say about the techniques used? The bases were cut from some packing plastic that I had lying around, after trouble with cardboard (even mount board) warping on bigger bases. They worked out in the end, but the material is too flexible and not very easy to glue. I needed to fix the magnetic material on the bottom early, and cure on a steel surface to make sure they were flat. In future I will use polystyrene plasticard – more expensive but more reliable. The figures were finished in the fast-drying oil medium I have been using before, with some raw umber mixed in – but the result is a little too glossy for my liking. Next come the limbers:

    I have used Blue Moon Prussian heavy limbers and limber horses (with riders) for the foot artillery. The two horse artillery limbers – at the left end, are Minifigs – whose more dynamic pose works better for that arm (though I’m not a fan). AB limbers are works of art but fearfully expensive. For bulk buying wargames use Blue Moon are a much better source. If I didn’t have substantial numbers of Minifigs horses and riders already in stock (from more than a decade ago when the choices were more limited) I probably wouldn’t have used them. To date almost all my limbers have been with a single pair of horses (which would only have been used for manoeuvring – two or three pairs was the norm for normal use) – this because I was worried about the table space they would take up. This is not an issue for GDA2 games, so I have introduced a few larger models with two pairs (though without any attempt to represent the tackle).

    I tried a new technique for the horses. I built up the colour in thin glazes of acrylic on a white base, using acrylic airbrush matt varnish as the medium. I thought this might give the horses the more luminous quality I have been searching for. It was a lot of faff for not especially striking results. I will be back to oils next time – have picked up one or two ideas from Yarkshire Gamers’ You-Tube tutorial. The horses will need a bit of touching up – in the hurry to finish I forgot the white markings. Looking at the photo I also notice than one horse doesn’t have the tackle painted.

    The bases were covered in my usual sand and acrylic medium mix, coloured with white and raw umber for a pale dried mud colour. This is then covered with a mix of flock and sand to give a rather paler green-beige ground that in my earlier efforts: dark bases don’t show the miniatures to best advantage. Though the strong PVA adhesive I use to fix the flock mix is pretty good, I still felt that it could do with fixing with a mix of PVA and water. I thought mixing a bit of raw umber paint in would help bring out the texture. Disaster – the paint made the bases too dark. I tried rescuing with a bit of light brushing with beiges and lighter green. The result is OK but not great.

    That may finish my Napoleonic Prussian artillery for all time. I have lots of it.

  • Terrain in Wargames 3: built-up areas

    Hougoumont, 1815 – seems to tower over British ideas of fighting in and around buildings. This portrayal shows combat just outside the gates. Picture: Denis Dighton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Happy New Year to my readers! As part of a general change of year tidying up, I have changed the Theme on this (WordPress) site. This has not gone entirely as I hoped – the process is so much more complicated than last time I tried it. I probably picked the wrong template – but anyway it feels a bit fresher. The biggest change is that I have made the blog home page the home page for the whole site.

    In this post I am continuing my series on wargames terrain with one of the trickiest topics: built-up areas. By this I mean areas of terrain dominated by buildings, from farms or manor houses, up to urban areas. These are often tricky to represent on the table, and their role in warfare is often misunderstood.

    Historical view

    Built-up areas feature in ancient warfare mainly as fortified cities. These have a hard perimeter – city walls. Once an attacker had breached this perimeter it was usually game-over for the defenders. Thus the military actions were primarily sieges, as attackers built up to attempt a breach, or to starve the defenders out. These generally don’t make great wargames, though city walls make a good backdrop to a more conventional battle game.

    We need to consider this a bit. Unless there is a fortified perimeter, built-up areas are hard to defend. My contention is that this is true right up until modern times (by which I mean well after WW2). This is a bit more debatable in the world of firearms, but it is certainly true before that. The buildings themselves were quite hard to defend unless built with defence in mind. Perhaps a bigger issue was that they were mostly quite small (and poorly constructed) – and that breaking up your army to defend them was very risky. It would be very easy for defenders to become isolated and cut off; moreover small unit command was more of a modern development – so detailing a couple of dozen men to look after a building was more of a risk. Defensive tactics worked much better in open ground before firearms. Open ground was obviously not the death trap it became in later times. Shifting a serious body of troops with missile weapons alone pretty much never happened. An early cannon did more damage with their noise than their projectiles.

    This pattern seems to continue right into the 17th Century. Urban battles did happen – with the fighting taking place mainly in the streets rather than anything akin to modern house-to-house fighting – but not very often. Fortified manor houses played an important role in the English Civil War – but these were sieges involving relatively small numbers of troops. I don’t have any kind of detailed command of history in this era, but by Blenheim in 1704, villages are starting to play an important role in the course of at least some battles, and by Napoleonic times built-up areas are a feature of most battles. Battlefields were much bigger, and so villages and or farms were an inevitably encompassed. But once part of the field of battle, it is less clear why they should be so significant – and they clearly were. I have read several theories. If left undefended, they might offer the enemy an opening. And if defended they were perhaps easier to attack than open ground. Or perhaps their dominance of the geography offered a psychological marker of progress. Anyway, if in earlier periods wargames rules can get away with ignoring built-up areas, this cannot be done from the horse and musket period onwards. Still, even in the horse and musket era true urban battles, with house-to-house fighting, are a rarity. I know of just one: Saragossa in 1808. The Spanish defenders were largely irregulars, though, and had the numbers to provide breadth and depth of defence, making it very slow going for the French, with heavy casualties on both sides. It is hard to see that regular troops would have been used in that fashion. The retreating French troops did not make much effort to defend Leipzig, for example, in 1813. When it came to towns and cities, most fighting took place outside (think of Dresden), or at the perimeter. The rule that once the perimeter was breached, the town was lost still held true almost all of the time.

    Saragossa 1808 – a rare early example of of a true urban battle. Picture: January Suchodolski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    As weaponry advanced to include breech-loading rifles and machine-guns, buildings took on a new significance: they provided cover. But at the same time, explosive shells were developed for artillery, and indirect fire techniques were developed. While buildings provided cover, they were also an easy target to locate. If an artilleryman sees a building, his first instinct is to blow it up. This became even more prevalent once air power came into play. Towns in particular seemed to have a magnetic attraction for bombs – they were such easy targets to locate, and the effect of bombing was reassuringly visible. The odds still favoured the attacker in urban combat – as it was so easy to bypass and isolate defenders. This was the conclusion of a data study (reviewed by me here) into 19th and 20th Century infantry warfare. I’m not sure how much this was understood by soldiers of the time, though. Some clearly did. At Salerno in 1943 the Germans held the town of Battapaglia at the start; as the British Fusilier brigade approached, they withdrew. The Fusiliers duly occupied the town, but then suffered heavily as the Germans counter-attacked. The Germans clearly understood how it worked, and the British were more naive. Interestingly, the study I quoted found that once buildings were reduced to rubble, the advantage to attackers was greatly diminished; it became much like other rough terrain.

    By the time we reach Ukraine, or even Gaza, however, it is clear that something has changed, and that the odds have shifted to the defender. That, however, is well beyond the scope of this article on wargames rules up to WW2.

    Fighting in built-up areas

    I think we can draw some general observations here. Buildings can either be used as cover for skirmishers – and abandoned once the enemy approach in force – or used as fortresses, with an all-round defence. In the former case, escape routes need to be well-understood. And only a limited number of buildings are appropriate for the latter role. Most buildings, especially in earlier eras, are too small or too flimsy, or have restricted outward visibility. If used as a fortress, you need to have enough men to do the job, and a decent supply of ammunition. And morale needs to reasonably good.

    So buildings actually have relatively little direct combat value. What has real value are the streets. The combatant who controls the streets controls the whole village or town. And if you read battle accounts closely, up to the 20th Century it is clear that most combat took place in the streets. Witnesses of speak of them being strewn with bodies from both sides. Barricades were important tactical features, and a small number of buildings might be turned into fortresses (the church in Aspern or in Planchenoit, for example; the granary in Essling; there were two farms in Ligny – not counting an almost entirely separate battle for the chateau; but nothing in nearby St Armand, which was barely defended).

    This general rule is less true of more recent times, where small groups of soldiers often defended fairly ordinary houses, and fighting in built-up areas often took the form of house to house clearance. That is presumably down to the extra firepower of modern weapons and the greater development of small unit command. If he who controls the streets controls the town, it became the case that he who controlled the houses on those streets controlled the streets. Even so, streets would be the central focus of any plan of attack.

    On the table

    Representing built-up areas on the wargames table is not easy. We start with the problem that figure scale and ground scale are of a different order of magnitude. The scale of my 18mm miniatures is 1:100. Usually the lowest ground scale for such figures is 1:1,000 (1mm to 1m) – and often it is much more. The figures are mounted on bases 25mm wide – which is narrow by wargaming standards. That means to fit one base width a street would need to be at least 25m wide in ground scale. This is much wider than the typical village street, especially in the earlier eras. If you try and represent the street plan of a typical village, you will often have little space left for model buildings. And these tend to be enormous in ground scale terms.

    There are two types of solution – not counting skirmish games where the scale discrepancy is much smaller and everything can be 1:1. In one buildings are scaled down to be representative, and then the game is played as if what you see on the table is what is there is in life (this is typical of WW2 games). The other is to be abstract: built-up areas are represented by zones, which represent both buildings and streets. There is then a set of arbitrary rules about occupying, moving through and combat. Obviously the greater the scale discrepancy, the greater the attraction of the zone method.

    Big problems happen when the two methods are in effect merged. A built-up area zone is represented by a single model building, and the rules deal with it as if it was a single building with a secure perimeter. Of course that is visually intuitive. And when we remember the heroics of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte at Waterloo (or Rorke’s Drift in a later era), this might appear realistic. One example is Sam Mustafa’s Blücher rules, where the playing units are brigade strength. Each zone (referred to as an urban area) is only slightly bigger than the unit base (though square). If a unit occupies it and takes up “prepared” status, which is very simple to do, it becomes a garrison – and “garrisons are very difficult to dislodge” as the rulebook says. I experienced this when I tried the rules out on a scenario loosely based on Ligny. The Prussians garrisoned Ligny village, and the French simply didn’t have enough infantry to stand any chance of victory. Repeated attempts to take the village ended the way of attacks on Hougoumont. Historically the French did take a long time to win Ligny, but they had much greater economy of force than the Prussians – it cost the Prussians more to defend than the French to attack, and the former became exhausted, in spite of superior numbers. It is my biggest criticism of the otherwise very clever Blücher system. Interestingly by the time Sam came on to rewrite his Lasalle system (where units are battalions) he changed the balance, though it uses the same zonal system. It is harder to attain garrison status, and no so difficult to wear down and shift a garrison. And garrisons may not “un-garrison” themselves – which is easy in Blücher (which to be fair is representing longer periods of elapsed time). Moreover he explains what his rule system is trying to represent much more clearly.

    The current rule system I use for Napoloenics, David Brown’s Général d’Armée 2, operates at similar scale level to Lasalle and also has a zonal system for built-up areas. It works in a not dissimilar way – but the general practice seems to be for the zones to have a much bigger footprint. In the Mustafa systems you can’t have your model soldiers and the building occupy the same table space -you remove the building when the troops get there. In GdA2 the practice seems to be to fit them both in the same space (something which I allowed by house rule when I was using Lasalle 2, as in the picture below). GdA2 also has the concept of “stronghold” for a more robust zone – something that can be used to represent the cores of the two famous Waterloo farms/manors.

    On the tabletop, even when using the zonal system, I like to represent streets and make them big enough to take all the occupying troops with at least two building models. The buildings need a small footprint (which can be achieved by using suppliers such as Total Battle Miniatures Big Battalions Range, one scale size down from the miniatures)and should not need to be moved. Buildings look so much better in groups.

    In this game you can see two of my built-up area zones in a Napoloenic game (Lasalle 2). The figures are 18mm (Old Glory and AB), and the buildings 10mm, mainly from Total Battle Miniatures.

    Rules

    If I was writing my own rules for the battalion-as-unit level (I won’t be – my creative activities focus on much bigger battles), I would try to use a much more representational approach (which is typical of WW2 games played on similar ground scales, though with a much lower density of troops). The basic street plan of the area should be represented, with the streets big enough to take infantry bases (though perhaps sideways if people insist on wide bases). Some buildings would have a stronghold capability, and these may be occupied – and generally only skirmishers could move through building models without being disrupted. I think this is just about doable at 1mm to 1m ground scale and 18mm miniatures. A village would have quite a large footprint – but remember that it also includes back-gardens, allotments, sheds, and so on. It would be more complicated than current systems, but at least it would present players with more realistic choices. It matters where the entrances to villages are. At Aspern (1809), at one point the Austrians were advancing up one street, while the French advancing down the other, parallel street in the village – such complexities are beyond most rules systems. Alas this is fantasy and I don’t think any modern rule-writers will want to take this up.

    Once you scale up, then the zonal model is the only workable one, and realistically this will be the system used most of the time. The rules need to represent the ebb and flow realistically. I think that it is OK to give defenders some kind of initial combat advantage, but they must also be exposed to higher risk if forced to retreat – to represent the risk of elements being cut off. This should apply right up to WW2. I think this should achieve the high defender casualties shown up in battle studies. Strongpoint battles, like Hougoumont, are harder to represent, because the garrison is much smaller than the typical brigade-level unit. But remember that to last out the garrison will need refreshing (if only with ammunition supplies). If you look a little more deeply, those heroic battles at the Waterloo farms, you will see that many more troops were involved in the defence over the course of the battle than many accounts suggest. It should also not be so easy to bypass enemy-occupied villages or farms, however. Waterloo was not unique in small-ish farm complexes delaying the progress of large bodies of troops. This happened at Marengo in 1800, for example, with an occupied farm delaying an Austrian flanking move. But setting up a strongpoint does require a degree of preparation – it isn’t just a case of moving in. Zone of control rules, designed to prevent bypassing of units in the open, can do the job well enough here, I have found. It also helps if villages, etc, can be assigned as objectives with victory points – this relates to the idea that they are important geographical reference points, with psychological significance.

    When it comes to WW2, I am less of an expert. But I think it is even more important to represent streets – as these provide transit for vehicles. These are not always wide enough to accommodate tanks, especially German Tigers and Panthers (one reason that the Panzer IV was more popular I some settings, apparently). Tanks would also be wary of ambush, especially after bazookas, PIATs and the like came into being. On the other hand, covering fire provided by tanks should make the life of attacking infantry much easier. How about reducing buildings to rubble? I am wary about this – I think this was generally quite hard work without the heaviest guns (say 150mm and up) – and even this should be quite slow work. Demolishing a building clearly puts its occupiers at great risk – but if defenders are allowed to occupy rubble, they can be quite hard to clear.

    Conclusion

    I think wargamers can be misled by two things when representing combat in built-up areas. The first is the temptation to play the terrain on the basis of what they see on the table. Typically a single building model represents a group of buildings- something that is altogether more complex – it is one place where bath-tubbing really doesn’t work. For one thing troops tend to occupy the streets between buildings rather than the buildings themselves. The second temptation is to turn all such combats into reruns of Hougoumont. But real Hougoumonts were rare – and depended on having the right building in the right place. Hougoumont favoured the defender – but in most cases combats in built-up areas favoured the attacker.

    And a final point: remember that the old buildings we see today are the survivors – the ones that were well-built enough to survive the vicissitudes of time. Most buildings were much flimsier and are long gone. They were often constructed of wood or wattle-and-daub. More robust construction methods, using mass-produced bricks, only emerged in the 19th Century.

    For the next time in this series I will look at water features – but before that I will return to my painting projects and latest games.

  • Terrain in wargames 2: Woods

    Woods are major feature in this game based on Shiloh – with Napoleonic troops!

    Woods are a common feature in European battles, and even more so for battles in Eastern America. They weren’t an ideal spot to actually conduct the fighting but wooded terrain in some shape could not be avoided. I want to think about the European context especially – but some of the observations will apply more widely.

    It is natural to think of wild forests as dense, impenetrable and overgrown and contrast them with navigable, managed woodlands- indeed such a contrast is the basis of what little Clausewitz has to say on forests in On War. It was often the reverse – which shows how little even military people took to consider the matter. So we need to start by trying to understand what woodland is.

    Real woods

    Woods are collections of trees. Our natural understanding of how trees look is based on the ones we see on their own – with all round foliage coming down nearly to the ground – and model trees typically follow this. Trees in woods are different; they compete with each other to reach the light, growing on upwards, and not wasting foliage where the light is poor. Typically they comprise a long trunk with a relatively thin canopy of branches and foliage at the top. The visual impression in a wood is of a dark place with lots of bare tree trunks. The canopy blocks out the light, inhibiting growth in the lower storey, which is often also kept in check by forest animals as well. How easy this is to traverse depends on the development of this understory, how close the trees are to each other, and any other terrain covered by the wood. In the case of many European wild woods (from Poland eastwards), there is little understory and the trees are reasonably spaced – and I expect this is true of North American woods too. So it is actually quite easy to traverse, except at the margins, where there is more light and vegetation, or where other types of terrain – rocks, slopes, marshes, streams – intervene. Hardly a parade ground, and close formation isn’t possible, but not necessarily slow going. Horses would have little difficulty (ancient forests were roamed by big beasts) – but horses with riders perhaps not so much. The main problem is maintaining a sense of direction, as there would be little in the way of external reference points and few tracks.

    A scene from Bialoweiza Forest on the Poland/Belarus border. This is one of Europe’s biggest wildwoods and shows how wildwoods are often not impenetrable. Photo by Robert Wielgórski a.k.a. Barry Kent – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2052575

    It is not quite as simple as that for wild woods, of course. There is a reason that Clausewitz describes them as impenetrable: that is because they are often associated with other difficult terrain, such as steep slopes. That is why they are left uncleared or unmanaged in much of Europe. But in the American Civil War we often find infantry pushing through ancient forests, little managed by man. Uncultivated does not mean impenetrable. Of course as in all terrain, there would be some areas more difficult to traverse than others.

    In Western and Southern Europe, there was little in the way of wild wood in well-populated regions. Woods were a resource used by a rural population that was often much denser than in modern times (not counting commuters and retired people in villages). One important land use was wood pasture – where animals such as pigs would roam the forest eating what they could. This was often common land (like the New Forest in Hampshire now). There was little in the way of understory, and the trees were generally well-spaced. In Southern Europe I believe this type of woodland was commoner – and certainly accounts of the Peninsular War suggest that Iberian woods were relatively open (the French retreated through one with little difficulty after Salamanca). Cork forests, where the pigs roam to eat acorns while the trees are harvested for their bark, are often so open that they can’t be considered to be woods at all. It may also be that regular fires kept any undergrowth in check – something that doesn’t happen further north.

    Wood pasture can be as dispersed as this example from Spain – actually classed as Savannah. Photo by Ardo Beltz – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=749372

    Otherwise woods would be managed for the trees themselves to be harvested by felling. We typically think of timber, for use in building and carpentry, coming from the felling of mature trees. But in pre-industrial times charcoal, firewood and hurdles were very important. Hurdles were an important building material, latticed for fencing and even walls of buildings (e.g. in wattle and daub construction). These last products came from poorer quality wood, from smaller trees. These were typically harvested using coppicing – with smaller trees such as hazel cut to the stump, and growing into a thicket of small branches, suitable for hurdles. Another method was planting potential timber trees such as oak densely and thinning them out as they grew – with the thinnings used for firewood and charcoal. My father managed such a wood in the traditional style, and did both. The significance for our purposes was that these woods were (and are) dense, except for the odd clearing where recently harvested, because the understory has economic value. This made them hard to traverse, and impossible for cavalry. This is mitigated to an extent because they would be traversed by a network of trackways (“rides”) so that the resources could be accessed, but it was still very easy to lose any sense of direction – as I know from walking in my father’s wood. This type of wood is the default in Northern Europe.

    Freshly felled coppiced woodland. This illustrates European managed woodland well – some cleared areas, but look at the density of the forest on the far side. You won’t get cavalry through that! Photo by Charlesdrakew – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41974308

    The two types of wood – common land with a history of wood pasture, and the much denser managed woods, can be illustrated in the Waterloo campaign. The Forest of Soignes, to the north of battlefield, was an example of the former. It was quite open, and some troops, including cavalry, traversed it to avoid the congested main road on the approach. Napoleon’s famous comment that it blocked Wellington’s line of retreat was mistaken – though doubtless artillery and baggage would have been challenged. The Bois de Paris, through which the Prussians advanced to the battle seems to have been an extension of this, as cavalry units seemed to have traversed it. On the other hand the Bois de Bossu at Quatre Bras was a managed wood. Cavalry avoided it, and even the infantry often struggled. The British Guards were able to push through, but took heavy casualties.

    Forêt de Soignes – cavalry can move through this without too much difficulty. Photo by GdML — own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84543885

    In more modern times there are conifer plantations, used purely for timber. These can be extremely dense when recently planted, but when mature the pine needles kill any undergrowth and they become much more open – though the trees might be planted quite close together. Sometimes these are planted in rows, allowing you to see quite a distance when looking between them. The Reichswald in Germany, site of one of the 1945 battles in Germany, was such a place. These typically use non-native species, and would not have been around in Napoleonic times or before.

    Then there are orchards and olive groves – though it is probably not correct to call these woods. The trees are spaced widely enough apart so that they can branch sideways as well as upwards, and typically they are managed so that there is no undergrowth; the trees aren’t very tall, and may be pruned so that the fruit is easier to harvest (as my grandfather did with his apple trees). These are quite easy to traverse, though the lowness of the trees might give cavalry pause. They are often surrounded by fences and walls. Closely related, but definitely not woods, are vineyards. Wargamers need to be careful about how they represent these, as viniculture has evolved rapidly in the last two centuries. Modern vineyards look nothing like the older ones. My knowledge of how these older vineyards looked is very sketchy. I understand that they consisted of mounds of vine, and not trained into neat rows until later in the 19th century. If a reader can point me in the direction of some research on this, I would be interested! For wargames purposes they are quite similar to orchards, but probably provide less cover. Vineyards would be much less of an obstacle in winter, when the vines died or were cut back; at Austerlitz cavalry was able to penetrate them. This would be true of temperate orchards too.

    Combat effects

    The main importance of woods is that they make it hard to see and control troops, and impossible for them to hold close formation. Clausewitz didn’t like them because they might conceal an enemy advance, and advised woods to be kept in the rear when on the defensive – unless they are impenetrable and block and canalise the enemy. In more modern times, concealment is a much greater virtue (amply demonstrated by the current horror in Ukraine), as it makes it much harder to attack with artillery or from the air – and close formations are irrelevant. Woods do stop most vehicles though.

    The extent to which woods provide cover to small arms fire (or mortars and artillery if they do find you) is perhaps exaggerated in our imaginations. There is typically not a great deal of undergrowth, and the wood can give off nasty splinters. By breaking up close formations they would have made hand-to-hand combat more deadly. In modern times you definitely still need to dig in.

    On the table

    The commonest way to represent woods on the wargames table is with patches of dark green cloth or textured paper, with or without model trees scattered across them, as in my Shiloh terrain at the start of the piece (an excellent subject for a war-game, incidentally). This does the job, but lacks something visually. Another method is to have loose groups of model trees placed straight on the table. All these model trees, of course, represent stand-alone rather than forest trees – but at least they are easy to move around to make way for you model soldiers. A few people have constructed detachable canopies with which to cover an area of woodland. This offers the benefit of concealment. What you can’t do, though, is represent a wood by populating it with a realistic quantity of model trees (even if you could find models with long trunks), as that would leave no room for the troops.

    My favoured compromise is that used by my hero Bruce Weigle. Here is his Kissingen board, representing a battle in 1866 in Germany:

    Credit Bruce Weigel https://grandtacticalrules.com/gameboards/

    He represents the edge of the wood with a line of touching tree models whose foliage comes practically down to the ground. The interior wood is represented by foliage-coloured cloth. I particularly like this because it replicates the denser foliage usually found at the edge of woods, which is a genuine physical obstruction. This may work a bit better in his 5mm scale. Here’s how it looks in one of my games with 18mm figures:

    The dark green felt looks a bit ropey, I admit. One question when modelling the interior of a wood like this is whether it should be coloured like the canopy – green, or grey in winter – or the forest floor – various shades of brown.

    The loose model tree method works much better for orchards and olive groves, where the models look more like the real thing. Boundaries can be represented by fences or walls. Vineyards are much harder. Bruce Weigle simply paints in rows of dark green on the base cloth (by the time of his later 19th Century battles doubtless this was how they looked). For larger scales you could try something more textured, or else movable models for the vines.

    In the rules

    Most wargames rules recognise two types of wood: dense and open. The latter category would include orchards. Troops move more freely in open woods, and cavalry is (usually) permitted, but not artillery. Usually movement is slower in woods for all types of troops, except perhaps skirmishers. This is fair enough. Even where the ground and vegetation is less of a physical obstacle, the need for orientation would slow troops down.

    In all rules woods block line of sight; there is usually a reduced vision distance within a wood. Thicker vegetation at the margins, and the light contrast, make it hard to see into woods from outside, and within the you had to push right to the edge to see outside the wood. Visibility in woods is limited in even the more open ones, unless the trees are in neat rows – a rarity. There should be more visibility in orchards, where trees are much more likely to be in rows, but these are usually relatively small, and not worth making special rules for.

    I am more sceptical of any defensive advantage given to troops in woods as cover against various forms of fire, or in close combat. I don’t think this is worth bothering with – except that the edges of woods can realistically be treated as hedges. Having said that, at Quatre Bras the British Guards suffered heavy losses when pushing through the woods – and it is safe to assume that the French suffered much less. These French troops would have been light infantry, though, and much more skilled at this type of warfare – and the Guards were in a hurry.

    A further consideration is the way that woods would break up close formations – and even make looser formations harder to maintain because of reduced visibility. If advancing through woodland, troops would need time to sort themselves out once they emerge, if in any bigger unit than a platoon.

    And finally it is worth remembering the effect of woods on command and control. There is much more friction for troops deployed in woods. It is harder to see where they are; it is harder for them to know where they are, or where anybody else is – and it is quite easy to lose your sense of direction unless you are familiar with the ground. Where woods feature as relatively small patches – which is typical for most games – then obviously it is less of a problem.

    Conclusion

    The main thing to learn from all this is that it is important to do research on any woods that feature in your historical battles. See how the armies used them, or not, at the time. If they didn’t feature at all, then they are likely to be dense. Also be aware of other terrain features – such as slopes – which would impact their use. If woods are extensive, consider how the affected command, consider how to reflect this in the scenario. The Waterloo campaign shows that both dense and open woods can be in the same landscape, and can look very similar from a distance.

    Next time – built-up areas.

  • Terrain in wargames 1: Hills

    Classic sculpted terrain – from Bruce Weigle’s San Martino 1859 game. This consists of a cloth covering a sculpted base. The trees are pins holding the cloth in place. The figures are 5mm.

    This is a new series of posts when I set out my thoughts on a broader subject. I am moving from mixing colours to something more directly to do with warfare: terrain. Everybody knows that terrain is critical to the course of battles – but representing it on the tabletop, or allowing for its effect in rules, presents particular challenges. In these posts I want to do two things: consider what these terrain effects are – based the landscape as it was historically, rather than the very different place we typically see today. The second is to consider how to represent these effects on the tabletop. In this I will have a strong bias towards Europe, and the eras that I play, from Horse and Musket to World War 2.

    I will start by looking at hills – or relief. At least this aspect of terrain is virtually timeless. The shape of hills has changed little over time. Their effect on warfare has changed though. In ancient times, when a lot of warfare came to big shoving matches between close packed bodies of men with shields, with few casualties until one side broke, the physical effects of gravity were clearly important. This would have diminished once firearms started to dominate, and physical contact became less important; contemporary accounts still talk of the tiring effect of marching uphill towards the enemy, but it is harder to discern whether this had much effect on actual combat, unless combined with disordering terrain. The effect of hills on line of sight started to become much more important: hills could block the path of a cannon shot. And when modern howitzers and mortars allowed the indirect fire over the hilltops, hills became critical to observing and directing such fire. In the 1943 battles in the Mediterranean that I am studying this was often central to the way the armies fought: the advancing side had to capture the commanding heights, which could render defensive positions untenable. In addition steep hills were an obstacle to the passage of troops and especially vehicles. The biggest battle in Italy (barring perhaps Anzio – though this was fought largely on the flat) was centred on a mountain: Monte Cassino.

    The shape of things

    What about the physical characteristics of hills? Firstly the shape. Here the biggest challenge for wargamers is that they rarely conform to nice isolated blobs on the landscape. The whole ground is shaped in features that can extend for miles. In fact there is rarely such a thing as completely flat ground: and it doesn’t take much of a fold in the landscape to affect what you can see. If you take a walk in the countryside you may be surprised how short it your line of sight – unless you are above the features you are observing. Visibility on level ground is in practice restricted by small folds, to say nothing of trees, hedges, walls and buildings. When visiting the battlefields outside Ypres, the ground at first seemed to be flat and nearly featureless. But standing where the British would have stood, we were looking at a German controlled ridge that was considered to be of great tactical importance.

    Two key points arise here: first, don’t think about “hills” so much as “relief” – shape of the whole landscape. And second, height is a relative concept. It doesn’t matter how high you are in absolute terms – it matters whether you are higher than what you are trying to observe. Or lower. If you can see, you can be seen. If you are descending a hillside you are exposed to the whole landscape in front of you. A slope neutralises the effect of other terrain obstacles.

    Linked to shape is steepness, and this can be considered next to ruggedness – or how broken the terrain surface is. Slopes are mostly gentle outside hilly regions, but occasional steep slopes can surprise. The countryside near Devizes is mostly gentle and rolling – but Roundway Down, the site of a Civil War clash, stands out as a low hill when approached from West, as the Parliamentary army did, but conceals a 100m precipitous drop, enhanced by Iron Age fortifications, that caused havoc to their cavalry when forced onto it. In hilly areas steep slopes become more common, of course, as well as rocky and other rugged terrain which hinder close order formations and vehicles. When thinking about all this, I conflate slopes and other ruggedness into a single concept of “difficult terrain”.

    Roundway Down: innocent-looking rolling terrain can conceal surprises: [Picture by Doug Lee, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8328899}
    Like this, which caused mayhem in the ranks of Parliamentary cavalry. It became known as “The Bloody Ditch”[Picture by Brian Robert Marshall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14278373]

    Incidentally there is an interesting debate about horses and hills. In traditional rules, cavalry would get a +1 for charging downhill – and you would station cavalry units on hills. People that actually ride horses (not me, I must add) find this highly dubious. Quadrupeds like horses find it easier to go up hills (though exhausting) than down. At Rolica in 1808 one of the British officers ascended quite a steep hill on horseback and got into trouble because the horse ran ahead of his men. One rule-writer went as far as not allowing cavalry to charge downhill, or giving it a disadvantage – though this was usually house-ruled away, apparently. It would be interesting to know if anybody has done any systematic research on cavalry and hills.

    On the table

    How to represent this on the tabletop? The best way is to sculpt terrain, directly modelling the features of relief. But this is a huge investment, which usually cannot be re-used for other battles. This is appropriate for show games rather than more ordinary fare. There are three broad approaches: avoidance, separate hills, and cloth over contours.

    Avoidance is a common approach. I see a lot of games without any representation of relief at all. This can be justified if you think that relief did not play a significant role. If historical accounts don’t mention hills, they probably aren’t important. We have an idea that a lot of ancient battles were fought on flat, open ground because controlling armies in other terrain, or enticing enemies into battle, led to this. I’m no expert on ancient battles, so I can’t really comment. The exact location of battles is usually unknown anyway, so going back to the historical ground isn’t an option. Indeed when setting up setting up scenarios using historical forces but indeterminate locations, you can simply design out the hills. This seems to be what happens with many skirmish games. But there can be a stronger justification, especially with the smaller games: other terrain features can trump the effects of relief. The main effect of hills is to block line of sight. But if there are plenty of other obstacles – forests or buildings – the additional effect of hills is pretty limited. This would apply if refighting Shiloh, say, or parts of Stalingrad.

    A short step from this is to use the traditional approach of placing separate hills on the terrain – sculpted or contoured, on top of the mat or under it. If the historical account mentions a hill, you can just find one from your box terrain and plonk it on the table. In fictional scenarios you can place them where you like to present particular tactical opportunities or problems. In many cases it is possible to achieve the tactical impact of more complex relief this way.

    Typical club game treatment of hills. This might represent the key features of much more complex terrain. It’s not hard to see how this setup could represent something more complicated.

    But very often this will not do. The features are simply too big or too complex to be represented by some blobby hills. Waterloo is a case in point if you are trying to recreate the whole battle. The best solution, I think, is to try and resolve the terrain into a small number of contours – two above the base level is often all that is required. I have found this to be perfectly feasible, but putting it together on the basis of a contour map or other information can do your head in. It is not a question of precision, it is judging what is and isn’t important. I love this kind of doing my head in, though, and I have found that attempting it always adds profoundly to my understanding of the terrain and the battle. With a bit of luck you can find that somebody has done this for you. Bruce Weigle does this in his scenario books for the Bismarck era wars, even though he usually goes for the full sculpt himself (as in the lead picture). Chris Pringle has done it for his Bloody Big Battles rules.

    My Vitoria game with contoured terrain used direct (with 6mm figures)

    What you then need to do is recreate this contoured terrain. This can be done in some appropriate material and directly painted, and used as the playing surface. A friend did this for me for my bicentennial game of Vitoria – using some cardboard type insulating board – though he said that it proved difficult material to work with and he wouldn’t recommend it. Much easier to use styrofoam board (high or low density), and place a cloth on top of it. The under-layer can be as bitty and messy as you like – though it’s a good idea to tape it to the table before placing the cloth on top. You sometimes need pins to get the cloth to lie in the right way. Alas the foam board is unlikely to be usable for other battles. You either need to throw it out afterwards or store for a future rerun of the same game. If the latter you need to mark the pieces so you can figure out how they fit together. Relying on memory won’t be enough.

    This cloth over styrofoam terrain is from a Waterloo game I did in 2015. Rather crude, but it demonstrates the principle. Note the use of map pins to hold the felt cloth down

    In the rules

    Mostly the treatment of hills in rules is quite straightforward. They block line of sight. Some slopes may be steep or rough enough to constitute difficult terrain. Being uphill of an opponent may give a tactical advantage in combat. Or not. Still, there are a small number of issues which I think can be neglected, or which are difficult in practice.

    In the first category comes the effect on visibility. Being uphill does not just help visibility, it transforms it. Visibility along the same level is usually quite limited – not least by small folds in the terrain that it is too hard to represent on the table. Small gains in height, such as from a first floor window, or railway embankment, can transform the view. This needs to be allowed for, especially in 20th century games. On those country walks, test yourself to see how far you can actually see without the object being on a higher or lower level. Often not much more than a few hundred metres. This is not just important for directing the fire of longer-range weapons, but it is important for the situational awareness of commanders, including in earlier eras. Whether or not this justifies a ” +1 for vantage point” in command friction tests is another matter: you can have too many modifiers. The important point is that control of vantage points confers a tactical advantage which makes them worth fighting for – and that can be reflected in the scenario set-up.

    One potential complexity is the question of dead ground. This applies where some hills are high enough to overlook other blocking terrain. This is sometimes ignored, or sometimes you get very elaborate tables. I’m very much in the keep it simple camp – and probably scenario specific rules are the best way to go. A fixed distance of dead ground is easier to live with than having to refer back to a table.

    Then there is the question of rounded hills and ridge lines. This is a particular problem for contoured terrain – such as I have just recommended above. A good general rule is that units on the same contour are treated in the same way as those on “flat” terrain, and can see through any ridge line. But troops on a lower level can see units in front of the ridge line but not behind it. Likewise troops behind a ridge line can’t see units on a lower level across it. The ridge line can be marked in some way, or you can use a simple half-way rule. Or if that doesn’t feel right, units need to be within a certain distance of a ridge line to see through it. Something similar applies to plateaux. The ability to see beyond the edge into valleys or other lower ground is limited unless you are close to the edge.

    Another issue that can vex people is the ability of cannon to fire overhead in the Horse and Musket era. Some people, like the great rules designer Sam Mustafa, say that this didn’t happen – or not often enough for it to be important. I disagree – based on my reading of the Battle of Ligny in 1815 in particular – where I think both the French and Prussians used overhead fire, and this had important consequences for the conduct of the battle. It was one way the French were able to isolate the village of Ligny, hindering the ability of the Prussians to withdraw troops to regroup (which the French were able to do very successfully) – and the ability of Prussians to reinforce without running the gauntlet of cannon fire. Howitzers had a better ability to fire overhead, but they were a far cry from their more modern namesakes – their main advantage was in the use of explosive ammunition.

    Conclusion

    The shape of the landscape can be tricky to represent, but it is important if you seek a historical understanding of the battle you are recreating. It can provide important insights. At Waterloo the shape of the terrain is critical to understanding the battles for Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. They are in hollows and/or screened by woods. They aren’t so easy to target with artillery – though the French eventually managed to converge some howitzers to attack Hougoumont and set it on fire, not a tactic that most wargames rules cater for.

    Next time: Woods

    This table for Albuera shows a more subtle use of the styrofoam and cloth technique. There is a single contour, using higher density insulating foam. You can see some offcuts on the char at the back. A bigger table, a nicer cloth (Geek Villain Sicily fleece) and a slightly thinner contour sheet combine to make this look much better than the Waterloo game. Still a bit small for 18mm figures though!

  • Weissenfels 1813 in GDA2

    Situation after Turn 1. The French are attacking from the left and have just got their cavalry across the stream at the far end of the table

    This game was a bit of a landmark for me. It was my fourth game played with Général d’Armée 2, and the third at my club. We played it to completion (we had started the 13th move out of a possible 14 when we decided the French had won), giving not much more than 20 minutes a turn. This is the sort of fluency I have conspicuously failed to achieve so far. It was also the first game I have played based in 1813, rather than 1815. The system is now firmly established as my favourite for Napoleonic games, and I’m still happy to play it virtually without modification.

    I have been taking GDA2 games from the published scenario books (though these are designed for GDA1). These may be a bit questionable historically, but they have been designed as playable scenarios. Having played the Gilly scenario from the 1815 book twice, and not ready for the much bigger St Armand or Planchenoit, I thought I’d look at the 1813 book – the other period when I can field my late war Prussians against the French. The first scenario in the book, and the obvious place to start, was the one for Weissenfels. This encounter, just before the Battle of Lützen, is described as a “skirmish” by Nafziger, and historically it is noted for two things. First, it featured the death of longstanding French Marshal Bessières. Second it showed the fresh French Marie-Louises standing up capably to swarms of French cavalry. According to Nafziger the battle was largely about the French infantry beating off swarms of Russian cavalry – with only a single Russian jager regiment present as infantry.

    The GDA scenario is very different. Russians have seven battalions of infantry (three of Line jagers, four of Reservist line infantry), two brigades of cavalry (four units) and one of Cossacks (three units). The cavalry looks faithful to the historical order of battle, though not quite as overwhelming as those historical (and doubtlessly French) accounts suggest. The French order of battle is closer to history: Souham’s 8th Division, with 15 battalions of infantry (historically two brigades; four for games purposes) supported by a brigade of cavalry that was stronger than any of the Russian brigades. The Russians are defending the Rippach stream, and the French need to get to the village Rocken at the far side of the table by Turn 14. This is a very interesting scenario, with the defenders deployed much further forward than typical, and so more ground to play with, but without enough forces to mount a full defence of the stream. The French have plenty of troops but are constrained by the stream, and half the troops they have are Recruits.

    The first problem is that I don’t have any Russians. I could simply have substituted the units for Prussians of the same quality, turning my Landwehr cavalry into Cossacks. But I wanted to field historical formations, and since this wasn’t really a historical battle I saw now reason not to use Prussian troops from the Lützen scenario. I took two brigades of infantry from that source, but dropped the grenadier battalions. That gave me seven battalions of infantry (two of Reservist quality, the rest Line). I gave them two brigades of cavalry from the Lützen scenario, plus another brigade that was at the battle but not in the scenario; I also topped up the dragoon brigade (consisting of one cavalry unit and one battery of horse artillery) with an extra small unit of dragoons. Each of the Prussian cavalry brigades consisted of a standard-sized unit and a small unit, reflecting the Prussian use of four squadrons of one regiment in their brigades, and two from another. This makes the Prussians slightly stronger than the Russians in the scenario, but with one fewer units of cavalry (but no Cossacks) and a weaker horse artillery battery. I also let them have the horse artillery from the start, rather than it turning up later.

    The French forces in this scenario feature in the Lützen scenario too – though some have been upgraded in quality, and I used them unchanged. The advantage of this is that I can print out a full set of labels for Lützen, with a few extras. That means I will be set up for the Lützen, if and when we get to play it. I sampled a video from a GDA2 veteran, Scott Driscoll (Check Your Leader TV) who played Reisswitz. He made the village on the Russian side of the stream, Göhren, a Tactical Objective, which would certainly affect the character of the game. However this isn’t in the main scenario – and I don’t think it was really appropriate for a delaying action like this.

    It’s worth talking about the rules. GDA2 is often criticised for the way it is written – the book is 112 pages long (or 99 plus appendices on army choice and the index). It sometimes quite hard to find the rule you want to look up – we spent a lot time doing just that in our October game. It would be wrong to say that it is badly written. I found them to be always clear, and although rules are often repeated in different parts of the book, these are (almost always) consistent. I can’t think of any typos or obvious mistakes. It has an index. All this is a wonder by the standards of modern rule-writing. Still, I much prefer a more compact style. I decided to write my own summarised version (I actually do this quite often). I left out the preliminaries of the battle (up to scouting and deployment), and the procedures and tables summarised in the four-page quick reference sheet. This came to ten pages of fairly compact script. I did use it a few times in the game, but I had missed a couple of things, and often I wanted to assure myself with the original. Its main value was that it helped me thoroughly familiarise myself with the rules. I knew my way round the rulebook much better, especially since I had discovered the index! For copyright reasons though, I don’t think I can publish it here.

    And so to the game. I took on the French, with Rod, my usual opponent at the club, taking on the Prussians. My scouting was good enough to show that he had placed one brigade of Infantry to cover the crossing on my right, while the left looked thinly covered. I had rather assumed he would might cover the right primarily with cavalry, so I adjusted accordingly. My plan was to seize the crossing on the extreme left with my cavalry brigade, and follow it with the smaller of my two more experienced infantry brigades, so try and sneak around his flank and on to the objective. The other more experienced brigade I put on the right with its artillery on the hill. The two brigades of Marie-Louises were to come on in Turn 2.

    Rod had two brigades of infantry, but three crossings to cover. He covered the one on my right, and Göhren and its associated crossing on my centre-left. He possibly could have tried to cover both bridges with his right-hand brigade. Anyway he decided to leave it open. I had the initiative in Turn 1, gave may cavalry Forwards tasking, and got across the bridge, with the infantry following. Meanwhile the other brigade engaged in bombardment and skirmishing at the other crossing. the photo above shows the game at this point. In Turn 2 I moved the two brigades of Marie-Louises in, one to advance on Göhren on my left, and the other to support my right.

    On my left I pushed the cavalry forward and it encountered a Prussian brigade sent to meet it – and decisively beat it after two rounds of combat (it was quite a bit stronger); it got a Falter result and eventually dispersed entirely. Meanwhile I tried wearing down the nearest Prussian infantry unit with canister from the horse battery – which was much slower going than I expected. However disaster befell the Marie-Louise brigade in Göhren. The first unit got a toe-hold in round one, in spite of coming in with a two dice disadvantage, and brought in a second battalion as reinforcement. But the tables turned, and the Prussian won in spite of the advantage having turned against them (they had a three or four dice disadvantage – I hadn’t remembered the rule about a two to one advantage in dice, though it may not have applied). Both French units retreated, putting their brigade onto Falter, and then it broke as it failed its Falter test. It required my CinC to intervene (Stand with Me!) to stop the remaining two units being lost.

    Lunchtime. The Prussian cavalry and French Marie-Louises have both been forced to retreat after two-round combats, causing their brigades to Falter. Both failed their Falter tests next move.

    On my right my infantry brigade tried forcing the crossing, but only being able to push across one unit at a time, and without especially good luck, I made little headway. The Marie-Louise brigade could only contribute its skirmishers, though these did manage to destroy the Prussian screen, rashly not withdrawn, and cause a Falter – which forced the CinC to intervene. My battery eventually destroyed the horse artillery battery (which had mauled one of my infantry units), causing another Falter on the dragoon brigade, which eventually recovered.

    Meanwhile Rod started to move over his remaining cavalry brigade help shore up his right. My cavalry was on the edge of being worn down, so might have been vulnerable, and as time was moving on, I decided that this was the moment for a decisive move. My two battalions of my left infantry advanced towards Rocken. They then went onto a Forwards Tasking while my cavalry charged the Prussian cavalry to keep it diverted. This was enough for the leading French unit to reach Rocken. It was now Turn 13 and there was no way the Prussians were going to retrieve the situation. My plan had actually worked. They rarely survive contact with Rod’s deployments.

    At the end, with added coffee mug for authenticity. The French have reached Rocken at the back, while the Prussians have held on on their left, and even still hold Göhren, just.

    This game was a major success. Going forwards it leaves me to deal with a few things. I need more troops. With 24 figures in a standard unit of infantry (though only 8 cavalry), these games use a lot of infantry figures. Of course that gives them a satisfactory visual appearance. The last two games stretched my French collection. I had to bring in two units of Young Guard to stand in for line infantry for the Gilly game, and both those units and a unit of Middle Guard for this one. I need to put together a brigade or so late period French infantry to bolster the numbers. The Prussians are looking a bit stretched too. I could do with some more regular line infantry.

    Also my terrain needs work. I have bases and buildings for two “villages” – I needed four this time, and the result was a bit threadbare. My homemade cardboard river pieces need an upgrade too. I think I might have to buy in some latex ones, though there is a bit too much regularity in their shapes. And while the table mat is OK, I could do with more fields and things to add a bit of visual interest.

    The Lützen scenario is a way off at the moment. The French army is the much the same as for Weissenfels, if we go for the smaller game (some of the troops get upgraded). But the Prussians, now on the attack, need more than double the infantry (though less cavalry). And the game is 20 turns. This is a much bigger game and it would have to be played more quickly if it is to be completed in a day – a maximum of five hours playing time. More players would doubtless be a help. But it is something to aim at. There are three other Prussian-French scenarios in the two books – Mockern in 1813, and St Armand and Planchenoit for 1815. These battles are even bigger, though the 1815 games are 18 and 16 moves respectively. Something to aspire to! It’s a pity there are not more smaller scenarios like Gilly and Weissenfels.

  • German infantry for 1943 Tunisia

    After the German vehicles, I will describe the accompanying infantry. I need two battalions for the Rapid Fire style game I am planning for the battle of Medenine. Exactly how many figures this is I haven’t finally determined – but the starting point is 24 (three groups of 8) plus supporting weapons. I had enough already to cover one battalion-plus, but needed more.

    Until now I have been using AB Figures’ standard Germans for further north, and simply painted the uniforms in tropical colours. It’s not too far off. But Medenine is one of the last desert battles, and features the Afrika Korps (DAK). I noticed that the AB range for the DAK did not feature troops in shorts – really not appropriate for the winter battles in Tunisia – so I thought I would give them a try. I bought three packs of infantry (ten in each), one of tripod-mounted machine-guns (two models) and one of officers (6 figures). All of the infantry are in helmets (good from my point of view), though there are caps for some of the others. Some of the infantry have sand goggles (which you don’t see in Sicily or Italy) and some are wearing gaiters, a feature of the German tropical uniform that you tend to see in pictures of earlier in the campaign – but also in the occasional one from Tunisia. These are fine for Medenine, and acceptable for the later 1943 campaigns.

    I painted up all of the infantry (two groups of “advancing” and one of “prone”) and the machine-guns, along with most of the command group, along with figures I already had in stock, especially to provide the radios. I painted four command groups of two figures, three with radios. This will serve either as command groups at battalion or more senior level, or as artillery observers.

    A closer look at one of the advancing infantry groups:

    And the other one:

    And the prone section (I entered this in my club’s monthly painting competition – it was voted 3rd out of 3 in its category…):

    The main uniform is olive, made from mixing black with Oxide Yellow and white, I attempted a little variation in the amount of white, but this is hardly visible. The helmets for two of the sections are in the Braun used for the vehicles, and the other one was the Grau. Vehicle paint was often used to paint the helmets, and there are surviving examples with both of these colours. I darkened down the skin tones to reflect sun tans – but the result is still a bit on the red side, suggesting a bit of sunburn.

    Here are the two machine-guns:

    My photography doesn’t bring out the weapons themselves. Normally for medium machine-guns (i.e. medium calibre mounted on sustained fire mounts) I put just two crew on the main base, with a third crew member available on a separate one (rule systems can require individual crew members to be accounted for) – but these AB figures were obviously designed to go on the same base, and separate bases would have made little sense. They are a bit strange, in that they aren’t actually engaged in combat, but rather waiting for the action to happen. They are rather nice, though.

    Finally the officer groups:

    After the initial paint job, I applied my wash/glaze (a bit thick for wash, but thin for a glaze…) of Liquitex airbrush matt varnish with a little acrylic black ink. I thought the black would work better with the olive colouring than brown, and the brown ink I had was a bit bright. I tried to use less ink than on the previous occasion (with my British) but the ink is so powerful that it didn’t really work. It made the figures too dark. I touched up the uniform high and middle lights with fresh paint, and also the faces, which I think is good enough. The ink brings out the AB mouldings beautifully, almost to the level of the cartoon-style appearance which used to be very fashionable (though often achieved with a black undercoat). But I’ll have to try something less dark next time.

    The bases are steel washers or mount board. The latter isn’t ideal as it can warp, and sometimes fray if over-handled. Pendraken do excellent pre-cut MDF bases and I may move towards these in future. Initially (and before any painting) I cover with a mix of acrylic medium, sand and a white-raw umber mix, with the edges painted in the same paint mix – quite pale with the idea that this would act as countershading (but not with the lighting in the pictures…). After painting they are covered with a mix Woodland Scenic flocks and sand. This gives a sort of generic arid finish. I have learnt the hard way how easy it is to make bases too dark.

    I’m nearly ready for Medenine so far as miniatures are concerned. I need a couple of 2-pdr antitank guns for the British, and I need to find a way of making my die-cast Dorchester command vehicle table ready. The bigger obstacle is that I’m still working on my hex-based rules. While I’m loosely basing my order of battle on Rapid Fire, I don’t find those rules very satisfactory. I love the tabletop look of Rapid Fire, but not the extreme bath-tubbing of the rules.

    So far as painting projects go, I’m being pulled in two directions. Do I continue to build up my Napoleonics for club games – now that I am converted to the Général d’Armée 2 rules. Or do I resume my 10mm 1866 project? Some time ago I prepared a large batch of Prussian Napoleonic artillery. I don’t strictly need these (GDA2 scenarios are quite light on artillery), but I think I’ll do these next anyway. If nothing else I want to try out new techniques on the horses.

  • My latest Germans for Tunisia 1943 – the vehicles

    The AFVs in this recently completed batch

    I’ve been working on. my most recent project for quite a few months, interrupted by the usual series of things – including a focus on completing my Journey Through Colour series. Now they are battle-ready I can introduce them. These are the Germans I will need to enable me to play the Medenine scenario I have been planning. It includes 30 infantry, plus extra tripod-mounted machine-guns, and four bases that can used as leaders or artillery observers; topping up the motor transport with three medium trucks and three heavy cars; three Panzer IV tanks (though I will only need one this time); three self-propelled guns; and a command tank Panzer III, a light tank and an armoured car HQ vehicle. A lot of stuff, so not surprising it took a long time to complete.

    Today I will look at the vehicles. First the Panzer IVs

    :

    I need eight tanks to form the main assault force for Medenine, the last major German attack of the desert war, representing a whole regiment. Following the Rapid Fire scenario, I’m splitting them 50/50 between Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs. I already have three Plastic Soldier company (PSC) Panzer IIIMs with the long 50mm gun (with schurzen on the turret only, as characteristic of tanks in Sicily and Italy), which are close enough to the IIILs actually in use (no schurzen), and a Pz IIIN, with the short 75mm gun, converted from one of my ancient 1970s models. The IIIN was certainly in use in Tunisia in 1943 (often associated with the Tiger units, apparently), and the Rapid Fire OB has two. For the Panzer IVs I have three of my old Airfix F2s, which are the right model (though not quite the right paint finish), leaving me one short. I wanted to have some later model Panzer IVs for Salerno, so I decided to assemble and paint up three of these from PSC, with the turret schurzen, and to use one of them for this scenario.

    To be honest, these PSC models were a bit of a disappointment. They are early releases from that company’s range, and modelled on early versions of the Panzer IV, with gestures to the later ones(mainly the schurzen parts, included track ones that I didn’t use). The minor details, such as the vision slits (largely removed in later models as blocked by schurzen), aerial (moved to the back and changed to whip format) and hatch lid (becoming one-piece) are all for the earlier models, and there is no attempt to reflect the slightly longer gun barrel of the later version. These later versions were the G and H, but that is an altogether too tidy a representation of what happened. The changes were brought in piecemeal, and older models converted, and this transition is visible in 1943, with only early versions of the IVH making an appearance. For mine I cut off the surplus vision slits, and the old (retracted) aerial. On one of them I even created a one-piece hatch lid. The result is good enough for wargames, but if I want more I will try something different. In fact these traditional plastic kits are being phased out by PSC, replaced by 3D printed models. These may be more accurate – but they aren’t visible on the PSC website – which may be because of the great website disaster that has affected so many wargames suppliers. I fitted some stowage from stock, and tank commanders from AB Figures – so much nicer than the PSC ones.

    Next the command and recce vehicles:

    These consist of a Panzer III command tank and a Panzer IIF from Early War Miniatures (EWM), and a SdKfz 263 radio vehicle, an option on the PSC SdKfz 231 kit. The command tank, and the Panzer II (equipping the reconnaissance platoon) were lifted straight from the Rapid Fire OB; I also wanted a radio vehicle to add to the HQ, and opted for this armoured car. In fact the vehicle was used to act as the HQ for a reconnaissance unit – but it is an interesting vehicle and I thought it would work well enough here – improvisation was so often the name of the game in Africa.

    The Panzer II was an incredibly disappointing model. It is a metal one from PSC, and the turret looks just wrong – it is too flat. Not only that it is moulded with a closed hatch, so I can’t put a commander in – it really should be open-hatch for a recce vehicle. I didn’t really need this tank – whose role in the scenario is surely peripheral – I could have used an armoured car. But I like the look of a Panzer II, and it was the only way I was going get one in my 1943 project. I’m so disappointed that I am on the lookout for a better model, though I probably will never get as far as actually replacing it.

    The Panzer III is another model from EWM – a special Afrika Korps model with lots of stowage moulded in. The turret is also a little flat, but I can have the hatch open, and somebody in it – and the overall effect is tolerable. While I’m not bowled over with the model – and it is probably is more appropriate to 1941/42 – this will do. The most serious problem is that the moulded in stowage makes it impossible to put in the vertical struts of the aerial at the back, even though these are provided. Like the Panzer II it is a small model ( a small 1/76 compared to the large 1/72 from PSC – more on that later), but I’m going to have to tolerate these scale variations.

    As for the armoured car, it’s a classic PSC job – a big brute and a bit clumsy in places, but a good wargames model. Unfortunately all the hatches are moulded closed. I have two more models in the box – one of which I think I will make up as a 75mm SP gun, and the other the conventional armoured car.

    All these vehicles are finished in the Braun/Grau camouflage scheme in use in Africa at the time. Usually German vehicles are portrayed as being in a single colour (the Braun or the earlier Gelbbraun) – but the German policy up to this point was for the camouflage stripes/blotches to contrast in hue but not shade – so the patterns don’t pop out on black and white photos. My Grau is probably slightly dark but even so you can see what I mean from this:

    And so to the self-propelled guns:

    From left to right we have a Grille, an early Marder III and a captured M3 75mm GMC. The Rapid Fire OB only has one SP gun in it: a sIG33 150mm infantry gun. The Grille stands in for this; I don’t know if any Grilles were deployed in Tunisia, but they certainly featured at Salerno, and its characteristics will be the same as the more ad-hoc vehicles they did have (mounted on ex-French tank chassis, or perhaps Panzer II). But a German account of the battle I bumped into over the internet talked of a motley collection of self-propelled artillery being taken along for this attack, so instead of the towed weapons in the OB I decided to include some extras (though actually more powerful). This early variant of the Marder III was certainly in Tunisia, even if it wasn’t at this battle. And this battle was shortly after Kasserine, when the Germans acquired a lot of American equipment, so taking the 75mm M3 GMC was certainly plausible.

    The Grille model came from EWM: though small it is a delightful. I didn’t think the crew provided really came up to scratch (though I did use them on the M3), but I found alternatives from my various PSC kits (even though these are made to a bigger scale…). It was painted in the later war Dunkelgelb, befitting the Italian campaign.

    The Marder III was from PSC. As usual it was a bit of a monster (it has the same Pz 38t chassis as the Grille, so you can get an idea of the scale difference from the picture. But it’s nice enough model, which I painted in the Braun/Grau scheme.

    The M3 GMC was an Italeri kit, at the smaller end of the scale range (it’s about the same size as my old Airfix halftracks). For some reason I always wanted a couple of these in my collection – I think they occupy a tactically interesting niche. They were used by the British in Italy – though I not sure that was before 1944. There were two models in the box, and I thought a captured German one would add a bit of variety. One did make an appearance at the battle of Hunt’s Gap, which I have in mind to do a scenario of. And the paint scheme I used was from that vehicle. The Olive Drab base colour was overpainted with Braun, to cover over the US markings, and create some rather crude crosses, along with a general mottling. The model is OK, except that the floor of the driving compartment is too high, which makes it impossible to put anybody in the driving seat (or passenger seat, come to that.

    And so to the transport. The German infantry arrived on the battlefield in lorries, which came under artillery fire, forcing them to disembark rather further from the action than they had hoped. For two battalions of infantry I needed six medium trucks – and I only had three painted up. I did have three more PSC models in stock, though I had a vague plan to turn one of these into a mounted AA gun. The simplest thing was to commandeer them for this. In hindsight it would have been more interesting, and perfectly realistic, to do some captured US trucks, which would have given a very Tunisian flavour to proceedings. I made them up as standard tucks, two Mercedes and one Opel. Two were painted in Braun and one in Dunkelgelb.

    And finally some lighter transport:

    These are three Styr heavy cars (or light trucks if you prefer), from another PSC box. This is one of the more recent PSC offerings, before they went the 3D printing route. I needed them as transport for mortars, antitank guns and so on. And there’s a problem. They are massive, even by previous PSC experience. PSC’s scale creep has gone mad; there is no way they are 1/72 – though the crew figures are consistent with earlier models. To see what I mean look at the comparison here:

    On the left is a Milicast Horch heavy car, which should be of comparable size, although admittedly in 1/76 scale. On the right is one of the Mercedes medium trucks, which should be heftier. The Styr overshadows the Horch and is getting towards the medium truck in size. The Styrs look OK in isolation, but start to be problem when mixing them with my other models. I will have to think about replacements. I could press into service one of my Airfix US halftracks, but I would still need a couple more. I don’t want to go down the Milicast route again: their models are expensive and very fiddly to assemble.

    I have already said quite a bit about my painting and finishing technique in the Journey Through Colour series. After the paint and decals, I was quite sparing with my matt varnish black glaze/wash, given the rather over-heavy result on my infantry figures. I still needed to do a bit of light overpainting with my original paint mixes, which fortunately were still alive. Finally they got a heavy dusting in ground pastels. The result isn’t refined, but I have achieved a weathered campaign look that works on the wargames table.

    Next time the infantry!

    Postscript: I entered the Marder III for my club’s monthly painting competition and it won its category… out of three entrants.

  • A Journey Through Colour – Part 6. Scenery, inspiration, reading and conclusion

    Most of my Napoleonic infantry is on display here, along with a couple buildings that I have painted. It is the Gilly scenario for General d’Armee – played with V2 of the rules. This Geek Villain Autumn battle mat isn’t too dark

    In this post I conclude my series, which has been longer, both in article length and number, than I thought it was going to be, by timing some loose ends. I will consider scenery, inspiration and reading.

    Scenery

    Colour mixing skills are, of course, applicable when painting scenic items, such as buildings, roads, rivers, etc. Here I differ less from other hobbyists. Scenery usually requires quite a bit of paint, but less precision. Hobby paints for miniatures or models are needlessly expensive for this, and so are artist quality paints. So people typically resort to cheaper paints, including household emulsion – though again with a tendency to use colours that are close to the final result. But mixing seems to be common enough, as is the use of artist-originated colours, such as Naples Yellow. I use student quality paints. These are similar to artist grade pigments, but made with cheaper materials. I’m not sure exactly how they differ. They don’t seem to be as sharp, so it can be harder to create edges; they collapse into pools on the wet palette; I have also seen it suggested that the colours tend not to dry as true as higher grade pigment – in other words the dry colour differs from the wet colour (though I occasionally have this problem with the artist paints); Liquitex paints don’t come in the high quality, long-lasting tubes. Anyway, they are significantly cheaper, especially if you buy them in bigger quantities. I have already mentioned my use of this lower quality paint on bases.

    What I haven’t tried yet, though, is to use paint to colour the ground, except in my 6mm bases (with mixed success). I use flocks, and ready-printed fleece battle mats instead. These can have the disadvantage of being a bit bright and saturated. I go for duller battlemats – Geek Villain’s Sicily and Autumn, or Tinywargames’ Arid. I have had quite a big issue with the flock (or grass) on my bases being a bit dark. I have now found some paler products to mix in – I also mix in sand quite often. As I have said before, I find greens quite tricky, so representing swathes of grass in paint is distinctly intimidating. But I often paint buildings, where the browns, dark greys and dull reds are in the comfort zone. The same basic rules apply as for miniatures: mix in plenty of white. Streams and rivers present their own challenge. Many gamers seem happy to revert to primary school bright blue (which, to be fair, is how water can look when reflecting a clear sky). I prefer dull greys, browns and even greens – but I can’t say I have found a winning formula.

    Inspiration

    Emile-Jean-Horace Vernet; The Battle of Montmirail; 1822; Oil on canvas, 178.4 x 290.2 cm
    Bequeathed by Sir John Murray Scott, 1914 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG2965
    Wonderful evocation of troops en masse – but challenging light (if beautifully rendered)

    I have said that one my aims is to paint miniatures and models so that they look right – a subjective idea – rather than pursuing the false idea of accuracy. That rather leaves the question as to what “right” is. What drives my idea of how things should look? I have already said one thing that doesn’t: Hollywood movies and their saturated colours. Well, not all Hollywood movies – some try to portray some of the gritty reality of war (Saving Private Ryan comes to mind). For World War 2 there are photographs – but the trouble is that almost all of them are black and white. Colourised ones are now more frequent, and though the colour on them is far from reliable, they do convey a feel of colour. But then again both real life colour pictures and colourised ones can have a slightly washed out quality, arising from the photographic process in the former case, or mimicking it in the latter.

    Art can be a source of inspiration. This often faces similar challenges to the wargames table – and especially the need to convey a lot of action in a small space. There are some wonderful painters from the 19th Century. There is Vernet – and in particular the quartet of paintings at the National Gallery in London. My favourite is the depiction of Montmirail (above) – but this depicts action in the evening light, so rather a treacherous guide to colour. It remains a beautiful representation of the massed ranks of infantry, though. Another is Lady Butler (otherwise known as Elizabeth Thompson) – I especially love this depiction of a square at Quatre Bras:

    By Elizabeth Thompson – Artrenewal.orgNational Gallery of VictoriaFile:Elizabeth Thompson – The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras – Google Art Project.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4082016
    Peerless. Lady Butler took huge trouble to make her works look authentic

    Another 19th Century artist I really like is Edouard Detaille:

    By Édouard Detaille – uQHHEYw3tHfkcw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21997544
    This is the French 4th Hussars at Friedland. The grass colour is clearly a bit off though!

    Modern artists are rarely in the same league as the 19th Century greats (presumably because less subject to the natural selection effect of time…), but you do see some wonderful renderings, but also a bit of a Hollywood tendency. The interesting thing about the pictures I have shown here is that the lighting is muted, which means that the colours don’t aren’t that bright. The red and white stand out only because they are next to very next to very dull colours. Incidentally, if you are representing action in the tropical sun, in Sudan say, then there is a good case for brighter colours. Of course as wargamers our miniatures will be called upon to represent battles in all weathers, so this is bound to be a bit of a compromise.

    For WW2 we are reliant on more modern art, if we put aside photos. This one, representing an episode from the 1943 era that is my focus, is one of my favourites, also showing that Tunisia is not just a continuation of the Desert War:

    A WW2 picture from the era that I’m following. Longstop Hill April 1943 by Peter Archer, in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum.
    This depicts Major “Jack” Anderson in the action that earned him a VC and the British a dramatic victory. I wouldn’t swear to the German uniform colours (which look like Field Grey), but the British uniform colours and terrain look authentic. Note how pale the ground is.

    I will be doing well if I evoke these paintings with my miniatures, and scenic representations on the tabletop. But taking control of the colour palette, and toning down the tendency to brightness and saturation, is an important part of it.

    Reading

    Here are some of the books that have helped me. First is Betty Edwards’s Color. This what it says on the cover – a book that is American and didactic. I am troubled with some of the mangling of the language (I have already sounded off about the use of “tertiary”), and the ultimately I haven’t followed her thinking on light and dark, preferring to focus on saturation instead.But I found it a fantastic introduction – and pushed through the mental breakthrough required to think about colour.

    Next comes Lexi Sundell’s The Acrylic Artist’s Guide to Colour. You need to have got through the basics as described by Edwards’s book before you are ready for this. But this gave me the concept of colour wheel, with an interior of complementary mixes, that is part of my mental map. And it talks pigments. There is a wonderful plotting of pigments on the colour wheel (actually by Bruce MacEvoy here). This book led me down rabbit hole of buying bright pigments, but, having put it away years ago, I find myself rereading it.

    The next book is a bit of an antidote to the layers of theory pushed forward by the above. I found it in my late aunt’s things – she was a keen amateur artist, especially in watercolour: Michael Wilcox’s Blue and Yellow don’t make Green. This is written from an artist’s perspective and I haven’t followed much of his specific advice (though I have given a second look at Viridian) – it’s about the use of bright pigments, when I have gone down a rather different route. He absolutely hates ready mixes (Payne’s Grey, etc) – you should be mixing your own. The big takeaway for me is that the pigments behave very individually when mixed. If you are interested in colour theory or how artists mix colour, you might find this an interesting read.

    Conclusion

    I have greatly enjoyed writing this series of articles, even though it feels as if I have rambled a bit. If I had tried to write a magazine article it would have been much sharper, but I would have left so much out. But looking back on it I think the “journey” is the operative word.

    I started in the world of ready-mixed paints, with no artistic training. Mixing colours was a question of finding the closest shade, and then trying to tweak it, perhaps with another colour quite close to the result I wanted to achieve. This was often much harder than I thought. In colour mixing two and two don’t necessarily make four – mixing colours creates something duller and darker than the average of the original ingredients.

    So my eyes were opened when I finally started to read up on colour theory and how modern artists mix paints. Modern artists tend to base their palette on bright pigments to combat the tendency to dullness. So I rushed out and bought a lot of bright paints. But then I realised that what most modern artists are trying achieve, and what I am trying to do as a wargamer are different. I am composing pictures made up of various shades of dull, and making no artistic statement with a palette tilted to one colour with a particular emotional resonance. No obsession with purple in the natural world, for example (look at a David Hockney landscape). This is bit more like what pre-modern artists were doing, they mainly had to work with duller pigments, reserving brighter, more expensive ones for moments of high impact.

    Since the duller pigments, like Raw Sienna or Prussian Blue, are actually a bit brighter than needed in the end result in most cases, it is fine – and easier – to work with these for the most part. I was coming back to where I started (using duller ready-mixed paints) – but with a much smaller basic set of colours (a couple of dozen rather than well over 100). But the basic theory of mixing remains very useful – and especially the use of complements to dull down colours without affecting the hue.

    The other big thing I have learnt is the battle against saturation if you want to get a “realistic” feel for colour, especially in smaller scales. I have learned this only slowly though – and much of my Napoleonic collection was built before I had really grasped it. This is where hobby paints tend go wrong, though, to be fair, you can unsaturate a paint by mixing easily enough, but trying to go in the opposite direction is difficult to impossible – so a tendency to saturate is perfectly understandable.

    My journey continues. I am still looking for a good way to finish the miniatures with the minimum number of steps. I will continue to experiment with horses. I’m sure I will discover new mixing combinations – and the hobby will take me into new colours to create. But this is all part of the fun.