Hi
Took a few minutes away from our game to take pics of splendid Battle of Nachod game by General John DZ & Andrew Brentnall (also forum members) who were highlighting their joint book on the Opening Battles of the War of 1866 in the Wargaming in History series.
http://s1213.photobucket.com/user/BernardGanley/library/Salute%20Continental%20Wars%20Society%201866%20Game
Figures from Pendraken and terrain from Realistic Modelling. Even able to take a pic of Leon with John!
Nice pics of a great looking game! I'll be popping a link to these on the Salute thread as well.
8)
I don't know how you managed to get that picture of me though, you must have used some ninja skills there... >:(
beautiful looking game and lovely figures, shame i couldn,t have seen it in the flesh but great to see the pic,s,
kev
Great game with masses of well-painted figures. Enjoyed chatting with the guys and learned a great deal about Prussian and Austrian tactics.
Sorry I could only stop for a minute or two, busy day trading. Looked amazing! V cool! 8)
Very nicely done, Bernie 8)
John/Andrew
What a fantastic looking game you had there at Salute. I came past a couple of times and had a good look. Sorry for not introducing myself. You both were fully engaged with other punters each time I came and my very British reserve prevented me from interrupting! I'm not at all surprised it attracted so many interested onlookers. But I regret not having more time to stay longer - the unforgiving demands of Salute I'm afraid and the peculiar way time always seems to disappear in a flash at Excel!!
I must say your book, which I have already started in earnest, after a quick look at all the pretty pictures I admit, is superb. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who either already has an interest in the Seven Weeks War or who just loves the look of big battalions in 10mm. A public health warning to other forum members is in order though. If you look at the pictures on this forum your bank balance will be soon reduced and a lovely new book and lots of shiny new Pendraken figures will be winging their way to you!! But you'll be a happy man/woman when they arrive.
I have already started reorganising my troops to fit with the size of your units which are perfect for understanding/reenacting the lower-level tactics of the period armed with the book's 1866 revisions to RF&F. I am trying to be clever and do so in a manner that means I can also use the same troops for Bernie's "Trapped Like a Fox" which are the perfect counterbalance for grand tactical corps level and above fights and campaigns. I seem to have enough figures for 2 RF&F brigades per side with cavalry/artillery support. A few more might be in order then!!
Thank you once again for putting so much effort into both the book and the display game. I wish you every success and look forward to volume 2 on Koniggratz. Perhaps given the size of that battle it could run to volumes 2 and 3?!!
Cheers
Andy Robinson
PS I will keep my ears open for any news of a 2014 tour of the battlefields. I've already started saving!
Dear Andy,
Thanks for all the kind words, sorry we did not get to have a chat. You need to be more pushy, mate! :D On the basing, you are doing exactly what I did. My initial armies were for TLAF, with the width of the foot bases reduced to 25mm because I preferred the look, and as TLAF is fought using squares of terrain, the exact size of figure bases does not matter. As long as you can get the right number of units in a 10" square. The cavalry remain on 30mm squares, as do the artillery. Why? First, I didn't feel like rebasing them! Second, they fitted the figures, particularly the new ones, very well. Third, I rationalised it as reducing the number of bases they can get into combat with the infantry, whcih is no bad thing in this period.
Best Regards,
Andrew
PS, If you have any questions post away!
The Continental Wars Society is contemplating a tour of Bohemia in 2014, as is the Cultural Experience. If you are not a member of CWS you should join forthwith as it's the best £6 worth around today.
Sorry to miss you, I have no idea where the time went. It was the first Salute for years where I was not bored by 3pm. I didn't even have time to run the Nachod Prussian limerick competition: There was an old man called von Wnuck.....
Holdfast
Great pics !! :-bd
Cheers - Phil.
Leon seems to be 17 years old. ;) ;) :d
I didnt imagine him looking like that
more
(http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt334/SteveW_04/index.jpg) (http://s625.photobucket.com/user/SteveW_04/media/index.jpg.html)
Quote from: barbarian on 26 April 2013, 10:50:49 AM
Leon seems to be 17 years old. ;) ;) :d
Indeed, one of the reasons I don't like pictures of myself... :(
The camera does add a lot of years doesn't it?
Better to look younger than your age than older. ;)
Quote from: Hertsblue on 27 April 2013, 09:11:43 AM
Better to look younger than your age than older. ;)
Not if they wont serve you in a pub.......
IanS :d
Quote from: ianrs54 on 27 April 2013, 11:06:41 AM
Not if they wont serve you in a pub.......
IanS :d
Carry some ID. I would always serve a kid who could prove he was over age.
Quote from: Hertsblue on 27 April 2013, 03:45:08 PM
Carry some ID. I would always serve a kid who could prove he was over age.
It led to some interesting confrontations when I used to ID people and they didn't have any. Even worse when they asked to see the manager and I was already standing there... :D
So der we wuz, many years ago in a pub called "The ring 'o Bells" in West Kirby, in school uniform, when two police officers walked. First asked a friend who was 18 for Id, he produced his passport, then asked me for some, I was 17, but had a full bike licence, and they didn't check the classes........
At that point they gave up and left.
IanS
Quote from: mollinary on 25 April 2013, 09:35:56 AM
Dear Andy,
Thanks for all the kind words, sorry we did not get to have a chat. You need to be more pushy, mate! :D On the basing, you are doing exactly what I did. My initial armies were for TLAF, with the width of the foot bases reduced to 25mm because I preferred the look, and as TLAF is fought using squares of terrain, the exact size of figure bases does not matter. As long as you can get the right number of units in a 10" square. The cavalry remain on 30mm squares, as do the artillery. Why? First, I didn't feel like rebasing them! Second, they fitted the figures, particularly the new ones, very well. Third, I rationalised it as reducing the number of bases they can get into combat with the infantry, whcih is no bad thing in this period.
Best Regards,
Andrew
PS, If you have any questions post away!
Thanks Andrew. I am currently enjoying the book in the evenings over a bottle (or two) of Pilsner and no doubt will have some rules questions as I go. Like you I have already reduced the width of the infantry bases to 25mm. I prefer the look and it also fits with my home made square terrain using two different but complementary shades of railway mat to give a chequerboard effect which are around 9.6" square to fit my 7'x4' board. Could you let me know what depth your infantry bases are? The pictures in the book look like they are 15mm deep which I think gives a better impression with RF&F than my currently chunky 20mm deep ones. Unlike you I'm a sucker for rebasing lol!!
Cheers Andy
Hi Andy!
Cannot feed your addiction I am afraid - the bases are 20mm deep. I find this gives you the opportunity to provide a slight staggering of the figures which gives the look of movement and aggression. Once you get much below 20mm , it is very linear.
Mollinary
PS. Sorry for the delay in responding, just spent the last five days walking the fields of the early 1870 engagements: Wissembourg, Worth, Spicheren, and Nouilly-Colombey Farm, as well as a good walk in the centre of Gravelotte-St Privat to try and understand the inter relationship of IX Corps and Guard Corps. Great sites, still to get my thoughts in order!
M
You lucky lucky man!
The last part is easy, walked it twice,
IX brigade think they have found the French end of the line. They deploy artillery too early, which gets taken apart by French small arms fire, and even have some guns captured. They do take the farm at Champenois (a fortified farm, left undefended,), but the division's infantry stall along teh line of the farm to around the Lion memorial whilst advancing up the scrub around the railway (Zola was here). Guards send one brigade to support on the right of the (unfinished) railway line, as they are being sniped from Amanvilers before they advance on Saint Private (two units plus the Guard Schutzen or was it the Jagers, I can't remember) Guard artillery make it as far as the ridge by Champenois but get mown down by a mitrailleuse brought up from Amanvilers. Guard make it as far as the very outskirts of the modern suberb, where they cannot advance any further as they are faced with dug in French infantry fire from along the ridge... They are then stuck until nightfall and the break of the French army.
It was the Guards Schutzen! I was right! Even on Goolge maps! ;D
Guards Grenadier no 1 (Kiazer Alexander)
Guards Grenadiers No 3 (Queen Elizabeth) made it the furthest!
As far as I can work out, IX Corps arrive c10am, and fight until about 1, but if you take the idea that a lot of the memorials are at the furthest advance of the units, most of the Schleswig-Holstein units infantry units of 18th Division didn't make it far outside of Verneville. The Hessians used Haut Bois and teh railway embankment to shield themselves, but stall around 1-1.30. The Guard attack goes in about 2, and they stop about 3. The rest of the French is spent firing enfilade on the rest of the Prussian Guards attacking Saint Privat.
Very impressive ML, but not quite the cigar!
No guard artillery being mitraileused on this front, but the IX Corps reserve artillery on the spur above the Champenois farm, suffering the fate you describe. The Hessian division artillery gets mostly deployed on the other side of the unfinished railroad track towards St Privat. Managed to drive down a back farm track, see the old signalman's hut which saw the culmination of the Hessian attack, and then walk to the Hessian lion and mass grave, which is really difficult to access. Then went down to the Champenois farm, and think we found the remains of another Hessian monument in the buttresses and gate posts of the current farm. It looks like a roundel, containing a Hessian lion, in the centre of a Maltese cross. The gate is surrounded by four large, sculpted, stone blocks, which look like the base for an obelisk. The monument to the IX corps artillery has been vandalised, so no inscription now, but is clearly in the centre of their line. The weather was beautiful yesterday, and it was a memorable day! All your Guard regiments are, of course, completely correct, as their monuments and the maps in the General Staff History attest! Finished this morning driving really obscure parts of Nouily Colombey, and seeing monuments of VII Corps which are very moving, if only for their isolation. Including individual grave monuments, moved into a central location at some time in the past to allow the fields to be farmed. Was particularly struck by a poor Hanoverian, an NCO in the Hanoverian Landwehr, called up into the Line Regiment (73rd?), killed on 14th August, and described as an "Overforster Kandidat". All the ambition in this description, cut off in this obscure little corner of France, really got to me.
But you are right,I am really lucky, and had a fabulous time!
Mollinar
Mollinary
I sit corrected.
The Hessian artillery was complete last time I was there, beautiful with an eagle atop (you can see it on Google maps, if you allow photos). In Ascoli it is described as being exposed on a finger of a ridge, without support. Must have been a hell of a fire storm...
Re vandalism, It appears to happen a lot at the moment. I was devastated last time I was there, the Guards memorial in Saint Privat had been stripped of it's bronze lists of all the fallen, there were three huge plaques the first time I was there, full of names, when I went back three years ago is was bare! I know the local preservation society is trying to cataloge everything before it all goes. Bastard scrap thieves!
The IX Corps Artillery Monument still has its eagle, but the plaques were white marble, and seem to have been smashed with a sledge hammer. Not a lot of salvage in that! This is one of the reasons I love this forum - where else could we have an exchange like this? For those interested work seems to go on apace for the new Gravelotte museum, on the War of 1870-71 and the period of the Annexatiion (1871-1919). The outer shell of the new museum is complete, and the new car park is finished on the other side of the road. Still, a lot of work to do to get an opening in time for the anniversary on 16-18 August?
Mollinary
That will be the meuseum promised to be open in 2009! ;D