...and Just One More

 While I had my head in eBay I also spotted a Tey Potteries building from my old wish list, so I bought that as well - very cheap - these must not be trending now.

This one is Oliver Cromwell's house, which I believe is in Ely (is that Cambridgeshire?).

It amuses me to have my battlefields and siege towns sprinkled with National Trust properties from all parts of the UK. I don't know that much of the ECW took place in Oliver's actual garden, but the house will be useful for 17th and 18th Century scenarios in various parts of Northern Europe. MSFoy's Rent-a-Landmark Productions at work.  

Another Ornament - Sulley Ceramics

 I don't buy many of these now, but I have a soft spot for ceramic buildings - especially churches. To make certain there is no misunderstanding here, I happily confirm that these are ornaments, such as you might find on your grandmother's bookcase; I like them because they have a nice, rather rough charm, and introduce a welcome organic touch into my battlefields, with their eternal silly hexes. They appear to me, in fact, as being like real buildings, an impression I do not get from plastic or MDF kits.

This new one is not another Tey Potteries creation (I have quite a few of those, but I find their churches are generally disappointing); it is by Sulley Ceramics, and it is the church of St Michael and All Angels, Brantham, Suffolk. Sulley are fairly hard to come by at reasonable prices - the principal potter/artist was Marjorie Barton, who passed away in 2021 - an interesting listing of her churches is here, if you are a collector or simply a resident of Suffolk. There is an interesting history of Sulley's here.

 

Complete with the regulation two coats of matt varnish, to tone down the potter's glaze (heretic), the church of St Michael is ready for morning prayers (or the little-known Battle of Brantham)

Unlike the Tey Britain in Miniature range, there is some variability in scale with Sulley products; if it is a miniature of a big church, the scale may be a tad smaller, to keep the footprint within the bounds of grannie's bookcase. This particular one is somewhere between 10mm and 15mm scale, which works nicely with my "one size down" policy for buildings for 20mm figures. My ECW troops would certainly have to stoop a bit to get in the door, but the overall size is about 7" long, 4" high, which is fine.

Each of my 20mm toy soldiers represents 33 real men anyway, so the whole set up is just a massive compromise!

 

Sieges: Digging and Fiddling About!

 I have the house to myself this afternoon, so I can spread out and make a bit of a mess. Good opportunity to play around with trenches and glacis slopes [flat glacis slopes...].

First off, I did an audit of my trenches and battery emplacements. There are some cast resin pieces in there, but most of the stock is hand-made by Fat Frank, of whose work I am very fond.

 

Here's the full stock - the straight trench pieces are 150mm (6 inches in old money). It becomes obvious why real besieging armies dug their earthworks on-site, rather than arriving with them ready-made...

 

Fat Frank must have made many thousands of these, but the general build quality is very nice - I ordered mine without modern sandbags

 

 

Then I played around with my Vauban fort, to see what could be done with glacis "plates"

 

This is the basic fort, as supplied by Terrain Warehouse (years ago) - all this is made in expanded resin foam - see how pleasingly the glacis slope fits with the walls and bastions. This is all fine, but attempting to vary the layout (add a gate, for example) is complicated by the implications for the glacis, and digging trenches across the glacis is always a bit of a balancing act. Bear in mind that the vertical scale (15mm, or 1/100, for my buildings) is about 10 times the horizontal scale (1mm represents a metre), so the slope of the glacis is very much exaggerated 

 

Here's a drone shot of this same basic fort - note that the brown areas are the terreplein, behind the parapet, and covered way, not the moat/ditch - the ditch is green

 

So I removed the moulded glacis pieces, nudged the ravelins out a little, and laid out some hex tiles for the glacis, just to see what happens. I've used unpainted mdf tiles for the moment, just for visibility; the idea is that a working version would have the glacis painted a grass green shade which would contrast a little with the baseboard colour. The glacis slope is about 200 paces deep, which is sensible

 

 

And here is the adjustment if we remove the ravelins - it's still looking all right. In fact it could be used like this, but there are some things to remember: (1) however it may look, the wall behind is sheltered by the glacis; (2) the edge of the glacis nearest the fort is the covered way, with a firing platform. Troops behind the edge of the glacis are hidden/protected. It would please me to add a simple trench element at the edge of the glacis, to remind me of these properties, but I would have to remember that any trench pieces in this position would not be a valid target, since they don't really stand above the glacis...

I'm having a think about the paint colour, and also about possible terrain pieces to represent the covered way. Some numbers: my hexes are 7 inches across the flats, which is near enough 180mm. A 7 inch hex has sides which are 4 inches long (close enough for jazz), so I'm considering getting some custom trench-type pieces 90mm long, with rounded ends and a pretty low, flat profile to represent the covered way. I've sounded out Adrian at Fat Frank, to see if he would consider doing some made-to-order trench pieces; that's as far as I've got today, but nothing is scary yet.

Sieges: More progress - the dirty end of the equipment!

 This is definitely going to be a post of rather specialist appeal, but if you like this sort of thing then you may like it.

Here is my enhanced collection of gabions, now painted, and ready for - well, whatever it is that I might need gabions to do...

 

Some of these are bit oversize, but that's OK, and they will be harder to lose in the field. The small objects on the right look rather like Minifigs 5mm troop blocks, but are officially wooden chevaux de frises [I mention these with some trepidation, since last time 5mm troop blocks came up here some idiot had a conniption, for reasons which still mystify me]. Now that I have some chevaux de frises, I need to think how they might feature in the game - Chris Duffy doesn't mention them in the Sandhurst rules...

Next job is to start experimenting with designs for flat glacis plates - a future post may feature some of this.

Sieges: More Preparation Work

 This is good fun, and a rather different way to spend an evening, but there is still a lot to do to prepare for my solo "practice" siege using Vauban's Wars (VW). After a couple of (short) evenings, I've worked my way through the official start-up checklist from the manual, decided on the forces involved (points-based purchase system), and set up the battlefield (approximately). I still have a lot of stuff to work on - jobs like photocopying and laminating the game turn markers, and making up damage indicators from gravel and PVA glue. Once I have these things in stock, the overheads of putting on a game should be much reduced. I've also laid out my stock of trenches and gun emplacements (mostly from Fat Frank) on a series of canteen trays - it's a bit like a weird tray-bake.

To be going on with, for this evening, here are some photos of the field, and the checklist, including the OOB.

The besieging troops are laid out along the First Parallel. Yes, it does look like a road, but it is a proper trench - since it is out of range of the fortress, and cannot be the objective of a Sortie or a Trench Raid, and since it is assumed to be complete, to get the game off to a flying start, the convention is that it just looks like a road, but if you screw your eyes up a bit it will look fine. There will be plenty of digging coming up, that's for sure. I'm working on a positioning convention for infantry on the walls or covered way - I may need to revisit this, but at present the rule will be that bases touching the parapet are on the firing step, and thus are exposed and may fire. If they are down below then they are in cover and may not fire. OK - I'm on it.

If it's possible, I'd like to add a small table extension behind the fortress section, to include part of the town, including a Rallying Point. I'd also like to add a little Artillery Park for the besiegers, outside the lines (if only to add a little scenic value to what is a very bleak terrain!).

 I've used my old Terrain Warehouse fortress with the supplied glacis pieces, which is pleasing, but does place restrictions on the design of the fort. I may (reluctantly?) opt to use trench pieces to lay out the glacis - most VW users seem to do this, and what it loses in visual brownie points it probably makes up for in flexibility.

I'll knock together another post when I've made sufficient further progress to justify it.

More soon - I think I've got an evening or two of this prep work before any shooting starts!

*************

Trial VW siege - British attacking French in the Peninsula.

 

3-bastion fortress - no mining (ground too wet or something)

 

Initial set-up, as per VW manual   * = "hidden"

 

Checklist Item	Attribute	Besiegers (British)	Garrison (French)
1	Season	Spring
2	Powder Supply (D6 + 6)	8*	11*
3	Supply Dice	D6	D4
4	Food Supply	-	17* (Average)
5	"Popular Support" [low is good]	-	D8* (fairly hostile)
6	Security	D8	D8
7	Strength of Fortress	Assumed "Poorly Maintained"	Walls 6*. Ravelins 5*, Bastions & Gates 7*. Earth Walls 2
8	Location o f Magazine & Sally Port	To be determined when layout is done	Keep hidden
9	Mining/Countermining	No (too wet)
10/11	Forces	[36 points] Genl & CinC               Free 3 Siege guns              Free 1 Spy                           Free 4 Sappers                    8pts 3 extra Siege Guns    12 2 Heavy Mortars        2 2 Lt Shrapnel Mtrs     1 2 Medium Guns           4 6 Infantry                      6 1 Grenadier                  2 1 extra Spy?                  1 Total exp                     36pts	[18 points] Genl & CinC         Free 3 Fortress guns  Free 1 Spy                      Free 2 Sappers             4pts 2 Heavy guns       6 1 Light Gun           1 4 Infantry              4 1 Grenadier           2 1 extra Spy?           1 Total exp            18pts
12	Leadership Dice (LD)	D10 [Average]	D12 [Average]
13	Siege Morale Pts (SMP) (decided not to use "Army Specials" for this game, to keep things simple)	23 units => 26SMP	13 units => 14SMP

 

Wargame on Thursday - Sorauren

 On Thursday, Stryker and I will play a Zoom-based Napoleonic game. This one is a scenario snappily entitled "Sorauren (French Left)", which neither of us has played before, and is taken straight from the commandsandcolors.net scenarios. It looks like a slugfest, and I noticed after it had been chosen that there is no cavalry on either side, so Stryker and I are going to be wondering how to spend the first 15 minutes of the game, if there are no cavalry units to throw away.

I spent this evening setting up the field, while listening to a football match which I shall not mention again. There is something quite liberating about using someone else's scenario; whatever happens, it will not be my fault. I think these things probably do matter. It is different from my usual scenarios, since the field is quite bare and there are far fewer units than I'm used to. I may learn something here.

 

Initial view from behind the Allied left flank

 

And from the Allied right

 

From behind the French left. There are bonus Victory Points for possession of the ridge just above the centre of the picture (with Spaniards on it). The French had better get cracking...

On the scenery front, I am delighted to announce that I've finally found Wellington's Tree (yes, it was in the wrong box), so it will be appearing, as is required by the terms and conditions of my franchise, and I was also delighted to find the missing top for one of my Iron Age Merit fir trees, this time in a box which has nothing to do with scenery at all. I have superglued the tree-top into place. 

Ha.

 More on Thursday - rural broadband permitting, we have a 10:00 start.

Featherstonia: Wargames Terrain [part 2]

 As promised, here is the remainder of the Wargamer's Newsletter booklet on terrain. I certainly hope you will be attempting sloping battlefields sometime soon. And you know you always wanted a sandtable, though they always remind me of my kids' sand-pit in the garden when I was with my first family - whoever lives in that house now must still be getting ancient Matchbox Toys rising mysteriously out of the depths. Would you really put your lovely soldiers in a sandtable? - really? Well, you're a brave chap.

Once again, many thanks to Albannach and his private museum.

Featherstonia: Wargames Terrain [part 1]

 More from the old Wargamer's Newsletter - this time sent in by Albannach, fine fellow and avid collector that he is. This is WN's publication on Wargames Terrain; because it's a biggie I'll do it in two parts.

This item is more for the interest of seeing what the current thoughts on the topic were in the 1970s, rather than offering anything which is likely to change your way ahead now, but please enjoy...