Guest Contributor Issue - Jean-Marc's 18th Century Fort

Always good value; I was delighted to hear from Jean-Marc last weekend. Apart from being an invaluable and knowledgeable friend (he is, among other things, a noted author and Professor of History at the University of Tours), Jean-Marc is also my link to the obscure world of Le Kriegspiel, an early hex-based French miniatures game (not the German map-based game much studied by the Prussian Officer Corps and others). You may have seen photos of some of his Napoleonic 20mm flats here in the past.

Our exchange of emails this week was mostly about sources for the original rules of the game, which might be a topic for another post sometime, but J-M was also kind enough to send me some photos from his archives of what seems (thus far, at least) to be an unfinished project!

A brief quote from Jean-Marc himself: 

[I made] a good starfort for 18C games with 6mm Heroics and Ros. I have the troops (see attached pics, on one you'll see the Royal Ecossais regt), the guns for battles, but, alas, not the rest: siege guns, gabions etc. And no rules that I can remember any line!

Fantastic stuff, Jean-Marc - many thanks for sending these - I am impressed and fascinated by your work. 6mm scale sieges seems a very appealing idea; I am not sure where you might get siege artillery in this scale (maybe someone got into this in the interim?), but it looks brilliant.

***** Late Edit *****

Very kindly, Jean Mark emailed a follow-up to the comments sent in, so I've cut-&-pasted him into this edit:

Hi Tony, 

I have read the comments. As regards on how the Vauban fort was made :

a) I had tried first what you see on the left of the pic: wood frame parts for picture frame for walls. it's very hard to work with this kind of wood, damaging the parts is easy, the results was not very good though I liked the "old fashioned" look of these walls. I tried twice, and stopped, and destroyed the forts. I suppose the engineers were exiled or shot! I suppose this method would be better for 15mm or 20mm scale.

b) 3rd and 4th times:  the way I worked was completely different. From the beginning I wanted a starfort which could be put on a single 30cmsX60cms terrain tile I used.  I believed in very modular terrain at the time!

So, I used one of the simplest plan of a fort I could find, enlarged it to the scale you see, and worked from the plan and on the plan (I suppose this makes sense) with card, balsa, some pieces of light wood and some green stuff. The 3rd attempt was not that good but I was happy with the 4th. You just have to be careful to have at least 4/5 plans because, well, with blades and such, the plan can be quickly damaged. So it's a rather 1/500-1/600 model not 1/300 even if the walls are not to scale, (they are larger than they should have been, but it's deliberate).

I also made a few buildings in this scale (again card, balsa, and also plasticard) for "Army level games" and could reduce the scale of old H&R buildings card stuff or use tourist cards (the castle on the pics is a well known Loire chateau).

c) I never finished the siege project, as I have said no siege guns, gabions etc. Only the SYW troops are ready, (but many H&R WSS packs remain unpainted). On the right of the wooden picture frame-wall you see the prototype of an artillery siege emplacement using card and wood pencil round pieces cut in half , and masquerading as gabions of some sort. 

Best Regards, 

Jean-Marc

 

******************** 

***** Even Later Edit *****

Jean-Marc sent some more photos, of a different project, which I thought were interesting enough to add to this post:

Hi Tony, 

That's me again, 

Just for fun, some pics of a Canadian wooden stockade, SYW, way too much reading about Montcalm and the Last of the Mohicans when I was young and after. I loved the movies: Last of the Mohicans, North West passage etc. 

So in 6mm, the fort needs some repair, but you'll see that British and French troops can use it. If you look carefully you'll see Redcoats,  Rangers, French trappers and Canadian militias, and French regulars. Iroquois have a red piece of wood on their stands, Hurons have only a green one...

Best Regards, 

Jean-Marc

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

 

 

New Blog on 25mm Ros figures!

Iain very kindly drew attention to a blog which I had not seen before, which is dedicated to the (legendary) 25mm Ros wargame figures, which were a brilliant idea in principle but disappeared quickly.

The picture at the top is borrowed from the blog, which you will find here. I am very impressed - this is what blogs should be - celebration of the rare and the obsolete and the vanished - works of true affection. Humbling. My own short post on Ros was some 4-and-a-bit years ago, and is here, and I hope that it captured my appreciation of Ros's efforts - obviously their 6mm figures are very successful and rightly celebrated, but most wargamers and collectors are unaware that the 25mm range ever existed. Well they did, and it was a splendid idea - deliberately cheap and cheerful - you got 10 infantry or 4 cavalry to a bag, and the idea was to enable rapid build-up of inexpensive armies.

Not sure why they stopped making them - the "true 25mm" approach meant that they were a bit big for the 20mm collectors and were also rendered obsolete by the sudden growth of mainstream 25mm into something rather larger. Maybe they arrived on the scene a couple of years late - they would have made comfortable table-mates with S-Range and Lamming. I had a few units - the only one I have left now are my ferocious Chasseurs Britanniques, who have, admittedly, some non-Ros command figures - these chaps have been the heroes of many of my battles over the years; there is something especially satisfying about the occasions when they see off much more prestigious units, manned by more revered makes of figures.

Here they are.

Anyway - best of luck to the Ros blog - I would follow it officially if it did not require me to be recalibrated to Google+ (which a friend recently described as "the Betamax Facebook" - I would not have a view on this). I shall watch the blog with friendly interest.

Beauties & Beasts

I've been putting together some mixed bataillons de marche, and I was rummaging through the spares boxes - reaching layers that usually don't see the light, and I was also thinking of the very pleasant email I received from Jean-Marc recently, in which he noted his disappointment at my lack of enthusiasm for ROS 25mm figures - he being a big user of their 6mm chaps.

So this is simply a small collection of pictures of odd figures which caught my eye - not particularly significant or collectible, but some of them are examples of things which I like very much (sometimes for reasons I would be pressed to explain) and some are things which are somehow classical in their - well, simplicity, shall we say. I criticise nothing here - these are just a tiny sprinkling of the rich variety of wargames figures which have been available to us over the years.

Scruby OPC infantry colonel

Scruby infantry drummer - you can be a sculptor too

Qualiticast Rifles Officer - you can't do this, though

NapoleoN Light Dragoon officer

Minifigs 20mm Brunswicker - why is this such a satisfying figure?

ROS 25mm - the French were the ugliest

And, lastly, simply because they were well received when glimpsed in a recent wargame pic, here's a proper view of the Phoenix Model Developments Royal Horse Artillery. Guns are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the mounted officer is the notorious Minifigs BNC20, which sold in surprising numbers because a bunch of optimists like me hoped (vainly) that they might convert into Light Dragoons. Painting is by the great Jez Farminer, slumming it a bit to conform to my house style!

Ros

I really don't know a lot about these. I believe they are the same Ros that did the 6mm Heroics series. They were very cheap - they came in multiple packs, I think you got a dozen infantry or so in a plastic bag. There were Austrians and Prussians available in addition to Brits and French, and there was certainly a French command pack. They disappeared pretty quickly - last time I looked, there was no mention in VINTAGE20MIL.

They were a bit crude, and a bit hefty, but they did make British soldiers in stovepipe shakos, which was very unusual. The range extended to flank companies, and there were riflemen. I think the French infantry must be the ugliest wargame figures anyone ever made - I'll try to find a picture for a future posting.

Anyway - all I have left are my bold Chasseurs Britanniques, shown here. The officer on foot and the drummer are both re-headed Minifigs, the mounted colonel is a Kennington figure on a NapoleoN horse, and the standard bearers are by NapoleoN. A motley crew indeed.

It pleases me to still have these - for all their lowly provenance, they are still with me after all these years, and it is somehow appropriate that the Mongrels of the 7th Division should be Ros - probably the least prestigious figures I have.

Quick nerdy note about the Chasseurs Britanniques: you will read in various places that they were a light infantry unit. Not so. The colonel, Eustace, apparently had pretensions of turning them into glamorous light infantry, and in late 1812 he sent the colours and (some of?) the drums into storage in Portugal, and some companies received new uniforms, but the process was never completed. Since they were not allowed to perform outpost duties (because of desertion rates) for much of the war, they would have made dodgy light infantry anyway. My guys are depicted (correctly, I maintain!) as line infantry, circa 1811, the regimental colour being an exercise in creative licence based on a rough sketch someone sent me showing an early flag incorporating the arms of Conde. As ever, if you have a better flag, please get in touch!