The Swiepwald - translation into English

[cameronian]

Delighted to be able to inform all that Ernst Heidrich's book on the 'Battle in the Swiepwald 3rd July 1866' is now completed and in manuscript form; publication planned for late 2015/early 2016. I am equally delighted to inform you that the translator has accepted my commission to translate volume 1 (Bohemia) of Theodore Fontane's Der deutsche Krieg von 1866 , publication date to be announced.
Thank you 

[Leman]

Sounds good. Who is the publisher.

[cameronian]

Helion.

[Hertsblue]

Awaited with anticipation.

[mollinary]

Well done, Cam!  I look forward to getting a copy as soon as it is available.   Fontane will be quite a task, but well worth waiting for.

Mollinary

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice news!

[cameronian]

You're not joking, 700 pages but I think its going to be worth it. Thanks for the order  

[Chad]

Count me in for both. 😃

[holdfast]

The news about the translation is good. Can I encourage you to include a really good version of all the maps on as large paper, and in as much colour, as technology will allow.

[cameronian]

You missed the bit about cost, but yes, we will do our best.

[Hertsblue]

Whilst we're on the subject of books in the pipeline, Holdfast/Mollinary, any news on the Koniggratz volume mentioned in previous posts?

[holdfast]

Ref the Swiepwald book, I would say that 60% of the value lies in the maps, which is what makes the book so remarkable. The text is welcome, but there are a lot of regimental histories out there, and they do tend to reflect the distilled memories from many years later, some of which are just occasionally different from the memories of other people who were also there in a slightly different situation. The Russian saying 'he lies like an eye-witness' comes to mind.

[holdfast]

Ref Hertsblue's post, Mollinary has asked me to answer it; so here is a long answer to his short question, which I hope puts it in context. (if I could post it a sentence at a time it would doubtless make me a Pendraken lance corporal, but we must not confuse our ambitions with our abilities).

The Opening Battles of the APW was Volume 8 of Richard Brown's magisterial series, Wargaming in History.
Since then Vol 9 was written by Charles Grant, and is out there. Charles is also working on his next offering which will be Vol 11.
Volume 10 is by myself and Adam Poole (though with lots of input from Mollinary) and returns to the ACW and covers Jackson's 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. We have alternated ACW with APW to give ourselves some variety, and indeed Richard Brown wanted us to do the Shenandoah before the APW but we were ACW'd out at that stage. It has taken us nearly two years to do the games and to write it up. That is  because we began by tackling the five 'classic' battles of the Campaign: Kernstown, McDowell, First Winchester (more properly Winchester since at the time it was not clear that there would be other battles there), Cross Keys and Port Republic. Given that they are multiplayer games, each one was played twice, that was a year's worth of gaming for us, with the start of the series delayed beyond April 2013 because we nobly agreed to run a demo game of Nachod at Salute. (And are still waiting for someone, anyone, from SELWG to say thank you, but that's another matter).

As we worked our way through the Shenandoah we realised that the bits in between the battles were as important, if not more so, as the actual battles. This led us to stage three further games:
a kriegspiel of the whole campaign based on the logistics, which showed that lack of fodder was as much a factor as any inspired leadership.
A kriegspiel of the 36 hours leading up to the Battle of Winchester, when Banks and Jackson both had to work out what the other was doing and then do something about it.
And a skirmish game to deal with the Union raid into Port Republic on the day of the Battle of Cross Keys, which demonstrated the risk to Jackson himself from the raid, and which fantastic fun.
All this amounted to another 6 months of events to stage.

So the 1862 Valley Campaign is now at the printers and should be available from Ken Trotman in time for Xmas if you stir yourselves.
It has been generously reviewed by good ole Henry Hyde in Little Men's Monthly and he says that it is A GOOD THING. At this point I would insert a smiley face if only I knew how to.

Returning to the Koninggratz Volume, it will be Vol 12 of the series.
Mollinary and I walked the ground twice over the course of the summer of 2014 to resolve some questions we had on the terrain. Cameronian came with us on one jaunt, so he has also walked the ground.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago and Mollinary emerged, blinking into the daylight, from translating the Austrian Drill Manual and tweaked his rules tweaks some more, which enabled us to test them on the small action at Podol, which is well served by regimental histories and detailed maps, and which Mollinary and I had also crawled over.
We are now comfortable with the rules, and we have begun to chop the large battle into smaller pieces, each so small that it is about Ligny size with 12 stand battns and 50 yards to the inch. We think we will end up with 5 pieces and hence 5 games.
We will probably do the Swiepwald in a larger scale so that each of the trees can be individually represented, perhaps at 24 stands to the battalion and 25 yards to the inch; finally we hope to do the entire battle as a one-off at a smaller scale, probably 4 or 6 stands to a battalion and 100 yards to an inch.
This will take a little time, so we are aiming to get it to the printers in early 2015 and into your grubby hands for Salute in April 2016, just in time for the 150th Anniversary.

Finally, for Hertsblue, we have it in mind to stage one of the games on  Sunday 26 April 2015 so if he is going to go to Salute the day before, then he is invited to return home via Suffolk in order to participate in one of the games. If he manages to read this far, that is.

[holdfast]

Ref my last, to the printer by early 2016, not 2015; and into print for Salute 2016.

[Leman]

You know when you're typing a reply and directly above the blue line there is a row of faces; well, just click on the one you want and it automatically inserts itself into your reply at that point. Looking forward to the Shenandoah Valley Campaign as it was the first ever historical campaign I tried, back in the early 70s.