SYW Assn Convention Report

 

The dice were flying on the table, fast and furious, during my games on Friday and Saturday.

I arrived at the convention venue at the Ramada Inn in South Bend, Indiana Thursday afternoon and found that a number of games were already set up for the next day. I made the rounds and said my hellos to everyone before getting on with the task of unloading game terrain from my car. I was rather surprised by how much space the terrain boxes took up in my vehicle, but then, I always like to bring trees - lots of them. I counted five boxes of trees in my car.

Thursday Night Game

I rarely ever get to play in a game at this convention because I'm either manning my Fife and Drum Miniatures dealer booth or I am hosting several games. This year I left the FD retail merchandise at home and just participated as a game judge. This gave me more time to play in others' games.

Paul Petri was hosting a refight of the Battle of Kolin, with the scenario focusing on the attack of the Prussian advance guard on the Austrian right flank at Krechor. Tom W. commanded Hulsen's forces and captured the village of Krechor from the Croats. This served as a jumping off point for further attacks on the Austrian flank.

Paul Petri (center) hosted a good looking Kolin game on Thursday evening.
I played one of the Prussian commands in the game, ahem. More on that later.

We were playing a variant of the Shako rules set and several of the players had some experience with them so this served to move the game along at a fast pace.

I was commanding the center and right flank of the Prussian army, i.e everything else that wasn't in the advance guard. I made some initial headway up the hill as my grenadiers told off some of the Austrian grenadiers that were in front of Hulsen's attack. The rest of that brigade also gained the slope of the Krechor Hill. My initial thought was to refuse, or hold back, the Prussian right wing, but here my uncertainty of the artillery rules made me fearful of marching to the left and potentially presenting my flank to the Austrian artillery that was cited on the hill to my front. I knew that attacking the hill with my right wing was a losing bet, but I did it anyway. I should have stuck with my initial inclination and my knowledge of how Kolin was historically fought. The Austrian artillery proved ineffective at long range so I would have been okay had I continued to march to my left. In these rules, units are not allowed to change formation once they deploy into line formation. So my fate was already decided.

Hulsen's advance guard made short work of the Croat defenders in Krechor and in the "Swedish Fort" earthworks

The high-water mark of my attack (Treskow) on the Krechor Hill.

Hoards of Austrians descended down the hill and overwhelmed my right wing with their sheer numerical advantage. My brigade of two battalions had to hold off four Austrian battalions, a battery of artillery, and several regiments of Austrian cavalry. I had neither cavalry nor artillery under my command.

Still, things were going sort of kind of okay as my troops began their ascent of the heights, but then the Dice Gods intervened and my attack went pear shaped and into the dumper. One needs to roll a high number on a D10 die, or even a moderate 3 or 4 on the D10; however, I could roll nothings but 1s and 2s the rest of the evening. My troops began to lose the majority of the firefights and as my casualties increased, so too did the odds of my brigades breaking increase. The picture below gives you an idea of how the Prussian disaster unfolded:

The Austrians descended the Pohbor Hill and caved in the Prussian right flank (mine unfortunately).

The Prussians got thrashed, but I had fun playing the game and I thought that the rules did a nice job of presenting 18th Century tactics on the battlefield. Those dice though, I could not control.

Friday Morning

I joined a small game depicting the British invasion or raid of St. Cast in France during the SYW. The Right Honorable John The OFM was one of my opponents on the other side of the table. Eric T. and I commanded the British infantry and our task was to evacuate as many troops as we could before the French overwhelmed the beach property. It was a small four player game and I think that we were finished in little more than an hour.

The British won by the skin of their teeth, due in no part to my horrible dice rolling. My first couple of die rolls were good, but after that it was a steady heaping helping of snakes eyes for the rest of the game.

John The OFM surveys the Field of Mars for the St. Cast game.

A border view of the convention hall where all of the games were played.
And there is John The OFM photo bombing my picture.

Here are some pictures of several of the other games that were going on during the convention.

A nice looking 28mm French and Indian War game. Great looking terrain.

I think that this game was the opening Swedish attack at the Battle of Poltova.

I thought that this was a good way to camouflage a dice tower on the game table.
This is from Bob Moon's FIW game. I might need to pinch this idea for my own table.

My Croat Terror War Games on Friday and Saturday

I ran two Croat Terror SYW skirmish level games over the two day convention. The scenario featured the Croats staging a raid on a Prussian field bakery somewhere in Silesia during the SYW. The Austrian raiding party included two units of Croat infantry, one Austrian musketeer and one Austrian grenadier units for a total of four combat units. Each unit consisted of 24 figures spread out over two twelve-figure movement trays from Litko Bases. The figures are individually based on 25mm round discs that fit snuggly in the movement tray. The Prussians had a similar force of one Jager, one dismounted hussar unit, some freikorps troops, and one 12-figure stand each of Prussian musketeers and grenadiers. The Prussians also had two 12-pound cannon sited in some field works.

The Prussian camp and field bakery.

A close up view of the field bakery, constructed by Ed Phillips.

The next two pictures show the entire game table, first from one end to the other end:

I have been using the Cigar Box Battle Mats for my convention games for a couple of years now and I think that this product is the best in the business. The mats are printed on a chennile cloth material that drapes elegantly over the table top with printed on wheat and corn fields, roads, plowed fields and grass lands. One can place pieces of foam board under the mat to create contours, which look very natural once the mat is laid over the top. Then I spruce up the appearance by placing my own buildings, trees and other bits of terrain on top of the cloth mat. You don't like where a cornfield is printed on your mat? No problem. Just cover the area with a clump of trees or a building. You don't like being fixed with the same road network in game after game? Again, these are easily covered over with other terrain bits and pieces and I can lay down my own roads anywhere on the table to suit my particular game needs.

Prussian Freikorps ("Double Blues") from Minden Miniatures guard one of the camp tent areas.

Minden Miniatures Prussian Jagers.

Close up view of the Minden Miniatures Jagers based on Litko Bases movement trays.
Note the 3D effect of the plantings on the ground.

Bucket Woman holds court at the water well.
The players all had the good sense to leave her alone during the two  games.

Prussian artillery crew manning a 12-pounder in some field works.
I painted these six figures the night before the convention.
Note the hay stacks placed atop the printed field of hay.

Two companies of Austrian musketeers in firing and advancing poses. The figures are actually the Minden Miniatures French Legion d'Hainault light infantry figures. All I did was to "convert with paint" by simply painting the figures as Austrians.

Two companies of Blue Croats. 
Minden Miniatures.
The figure on the large round stand is the personality figure that commands the Croat unit.

Minden Prussian Jagers in situ.
This picture demonstrates how one can dress up the Cigar Box mats with some  small bits of terrain (6mm wheat clumps), lichen and trees and achieve a realistic terrain effect.

Game Action Photos

The Friday game was played on the vertical axis of the table (the long length of the table) which required the Austrians to negotiate nearly the entire length of the table in order to get into the Prussian camp. One unit of Croats managed to sneak in behind the camp and set it on fire.

The Saturday game was played on the horizontal axis of the table. I placed the bread ovens in the center of the table rather than at one of the ends of the table. This placement gave the Austrians a better chance of actually making it into the camp before their units were shot to pieces. Playing on the horizontal axis also created more playing space on the flanks and averted the troop traffic jam that occurred during the Friday game, which was played vertically.  This time the Austrians had an easier time, although still difficult, of reaching the Prussian camp and setting fire to two of the three bread ovens, resulting in an Austrian victory.

This change made a world of difference in the spacing and playability of the game and I will play it this way when I run the game again at the HMGS Midwest Little Wars Convention April 21 - 24, 2022 in Lisle, Illinois at the Sheridan-Naperville/Lisle Hotel. 3000 Warrenville Road, Lisle, IL

A very deadly affair as the red coated Croats and white coated Austrian regulars close in on the Prussian camp.

In the Saturday game, the Austrians managed to set two of the three bread ovens on fire, thus achieving their game objective.

There was fierce fighting around the bread ovens as they were the objective of the game.

Game action on the Saturday game.

A Note About All of These Field Bakeries These Days

You might have noticed that there are more and more sightings of field bakeries on SYW era game tables these days, and you might be wondering how this all came about. You may hear several different versions of how this trend got started, but trust me, I know the true answer and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

In 1994 the Seven Years War Association members conducted the very first Christopher Duffy Tour of Frederician Battlefields. Whilst we were traveling across the bucolic Silesian landscape, there were a number of instances where the topic of field bakeries came up. In fact, it was Ken Bunger who first asked "why doesn't anyone do a wargame involving a small raid on a field bakery?"

Not long after, Ed Phillips made several models of Prussian or Austrian field bakeries, of which you can see in some of these pictures. Ed did some extensive research on the topic and found some period drawings of field bakeries in one of the German state archives. There were already some models made by several of the German "flats" producers that Ed could draw on to make his models.

Ken and I both started creating small actions on the table top that focused on a raid on the field bakery. I have continued to do so to this very day.

Somewhere along the line, a German company, Black Hussar Miniatures, produced a resin plastic model of a Prussian field bakery as well as a range of field bakery workers and these are truly marvelous terrain pieces and vignettes. One no longer needs to have modeling skills to scratch build a field bakery because you can easily buy and paint the Black Hussar version. Since then, I have seen a number of Black Hussar and scratch built field bakeries popping up in the various war game magazines and in pictures taken at various UK based wargame shows.

A good idea is a good idea regardless of its origin and so I am glad to see that Ken's kernel of an idea has made it to the table top in a number of venues and publications. I just thought that you should know the story of how it all began.

I will see you at Little Wars on April 21-24, 2022. I will be running my Bread and Croats game on Friday at 1PM and on Saturday at 1PM. If you plan on being in the area on those days, then why not go to the Little Wars game sign up site and reserve your spot in my game.

Cheers,

Fritz

My SYW Skirmish Game Table Is Set

 

The Prussian camp and field bakery.

Last evening I finally got around to clearing off my game table so that I could lay out the terrain for my skirmish level game at this year's Seven Years War Association Convention in South Bend, Indiana. The convention will be held this weekend from Thursday March 31 through Saturday April 2, 2022. The venue is  the Ramada Inn South Bend (formerly known as the Waterford Estates Lodge).

This year I decided to do something a little different and run a small skirmish level game rather than my usual serving of large linear SYW battles.

Here is the view of the entire game table from opposite ends of the 6ft by 12ft game area:

I am using two game mats from Cigar Box Battles and the two mats have roads and fields that match up so that the table can be longer. The standard mat size if 6ft by 4ft as advertised, but the actual area is 6ft by 5ft. Thus two mats give you a 6ft wide by 10ft long table area.

The buildings and trees are largely made by Herb Gundt. There are also some stands of K&M trees that Tony Adams assembled and based for me. I added a few Woodlands Scenics trees to the mix. I think that a table looks better if there is a wide variety of trees on it.

Here are some pictures of the game table, which highlight some of the vignettes that are sprinkled around the table.

The Prussian Field Bakery (Ed Phillips made these)

The Prussian camp, including some wayward camp followers.

The Prussian Commander's tent.

The village watering hole.

Every game table needs a wind mill on it.

A Prussian guard post on the main road into the village.

A view of home of Bucket Woman.
Some Prussian freikorps troops know to keep their distance from her.

I am looking forward to running this game at the convention. I will run it on both Friday and Saturday afternoons. The rules are called "Kleine Krieg" appropriately enough, and they are loosely based on a set of rules called Woodland Wars by Tom Kelley. Each player will command a squad of two stands of 12 figures, or 24 figures in total. Unit activation each turn is done using a deck of cards. Each player has two cards for their unit and all of the cards are mixed together in a small card deck. The player will be able to do something with his units twice per turn. This is also known as "The Dreaded Double Phase". Movement, firing and melee are handled using D20 dice.

One side benefit of organizing this game is that it juices my motivation to get back to 18th Century wargames using my 28mm Minden and Fife and Drum Miniatures figures. You will be seeing more 18th Century content in the coming months and a little bit less of the Punic Wars Project (this is nearing its conclusion in terms of what I need to paint).

I will try to post some pictures of the SYWA convention on friday and saturday, God willing on the local wifi.

Caesar Award Winner for Best Blog

 

Well, I was completely chuffed (and surprised) to learn that the Der Alte Fritz Journal has won the 2022 Caesar Award for the Best Wargaming Blog. The award is presented annually by Little Wars TV (LWTV) and it recognizes achievements across a broad range of wargame hobby content creators. The crew at LWTV put together their award show each year around the time that Hollywood's Oscar show occurs and the mimic the latter to near perfection.

You can watch the entire show on You Tube 2022 Caesar Awards

The lads start the show with a red carpet pre-event show, hosted by um, ah, Richard Clarke complete with a very bad imitation of a British accent. There is even a minutes and seconds countdown shown in the upper right hand corner. The show kicks off with an introduction by a sort of Matthew McConaughey  that is even sponsored by Lincoln Navigator (well, sort of).

Greg is the MC and host of the event and introduces the other Little Wars TV members decked out in black tie. The nominees are introduced and then the envelope is opened and the winner is announced. Numerous clips/cut aways of the crowd at the real Oscar ceremony are interspersed throughout the show. Needless to say, the production quality and humor evident in all LWTV movies are in the Caesar Awards show.

The 2022 Category Award Winners Are:

pod cast - Yarkshire Gamer

wargaming blog - Der Alte Fritz Journal

Greg cuts in with a parody of "You'll Be Back" from the Hamilton musical

video painting tutorial - Pete The Wargamer ( Painting Dark Age Warriors)

video product review - Warlord Games (How to paint ACW figures)

terrain tutorial video - Deep Gaming Seeds (Making a Band of Brothers Trench Table)

Brutus Award for funniest meme - John Pickens for his Fire At Sea rules review

Filmed Battle Reports in a short format  "quick strike"- Wargames Tonight (the Battle of Shiloh)

Best Award Video After Action Report in a long format - Nonshot Wargaming (Crossing the Rhine)

In Memorium for 25mm Scale due to scale creep. Together we can end scale creep.

Favorite YouTube Channel (chosen by voters) - 7th Son

I am amazed by the creativity of all of the pod casts and video channels that are put together by the wargaming hobby and I will certainly be visiting many of the nominees' sites to see and hear more.

Once again, I am honored to receive the Caesar Award for the Best Wargaming Blog. I thank the LWTV crew, the judges and whoever nominated my blog for the award. Click on the link provided above and spend a quick 20 minutes to watch the show, get a good laugh, and maybe even learn about some new content providers that you were not aware of.

See you next year at the Caesars.

Hannibal Command Stand

 

I finished the basing on my command stand for the Carthaginian army commander, Hannibal. The figures are from HaT and are 1/32 scale (54mm). I used figures from the Carthaginian cavalry box set. I bought the figures already painted from another collector, but I basically did a total repaint of all three figures. I left the armor untouched, but everything else was repainted by me. The original shields were a brass color with no shield design on them. I decided that a black shield with a design and a red border would look better.

My lower level commanders that command the "wings" of the army will have a stand of two mounted figures, preferably one carrying a standard of some kind and a figure that looks the part of a commander.

My army commanders have a stand with two mounted figures and one figure on foot. The extra foot figure distinguishes the army command stand from the wing command stand. Both Romans and Carthaginians will use the same basing system.

Carthaginian Mounted Generals

 

Click on the pictures to enlarge the view

This week I have been working on adding a couple of command stands for my 54mm Carthaginian army. I found a few Carthaginian cavalry figures on eBay and I will use the officer and standard bearer for my command stand. The army commander, Hannibal, will get a third figure (on foot) on the stand. So three figures denotes army commander and two figures denote battalion/wing commander.

I have posted the Before and After pictures of the figures, above and below. The figures with the gold colored shields are the Before figures and obviously the black shields with designs on them are the After pictures. One of the members on the Virtual Wargamers Club (Zoom forum) suggested painting over the gold with the black and I really like the way these turned out. I also have twelve rank and file cavalrymen and I intend to give them black shields too. The line fellows don't need a whole lot of paint touching up so other than fixing some paint chipping on spears, I can paint the shields and use the rest of the figures "as is".

The above picture places the individual figures side by side with their Before and After counterparts. The After figures were pretty much a total repaint job of both rider and horse.

My next post will show my Hannibal command stand after all of the base terraining is finished.

Painting Tutorial: Numidian Light Cavalry In Hannibal's Army

 

Click on all pictures to enlarge the view

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day basing cavalry figures for my 54mm Punic Wars Project. I have shown pictures of the Numidian light cavalry in previous blog posts, however, I hadn't gotten around to basing the figures.

Unlike my Italian cavalry, I opted to not use green static grass on the bases. I wanted to achieve a more arid look to the bases so I relied on lots of dry brushing of light colored paint. Then I selected an assortment of dark tufts to provide some contrast to the base. The finished bases remind me a little bit of Western tumbleweed. I am happy with the look of the bases.

HaT Industrie Numidian light cavalry figures.

So now I have 32 Numidians that I painted and 16 more that I acquired from a collector who decided to dispose of his collection (much to my benefit). Thus there is a total of 48 Numidian light cavalry. I might paint another 16 figure unit in the future as I move into Stage Two of my Punic Wars Project.

Here are some close up pictures of some of the Numidians prior to getting based. I posted these pictures to give you an idea of the various horse colors that I painted.

1) Reaper  Ruddy Leather (09109) shade or base color.  Reaper  Oiled Leather (09110) highlight.

I used the Reaper Olive Skin triad paints for the skin color on the riders.

2) Iron Wind Metals Grey (77-707) shade or base. P3 Sickly Skin (93132) highlight.

I used the Reaper Dark Skin triad for the skin color on the riders.

3) P3 Umber base/shade (93028) and P3 Bloodstone (93029) highlight. The figure below on the far right, front row is done only in the P3 Umber color and a high gloss finish. Most of my darker horses have black manes and tails.

4) This is a color scheme that I made up. I don't know if horses exist with the colors below, but they look nice for light cavalry horses.

Reaper Oiled Leather shade or base color (09110). The I mix my own highlight color using the Oiled Leather plus some Reaper Creamy Ivory (09144) for the highlight color. I can't really give you a formula for this because I mix the paint until I get a highlight color that looks right to my eye. It doesn't take much more than a drop of the Creamy Ivory color mixed in with a lot of Oiled Leather. My recollection is that I do make a "base color" that is a little bit lighter than the Oiled Leather. Then I follow that up with a "highlight color" that has even more Creamy Ivory mixed into the Oiled Leather.

The figures are finished off with black manes and tails and hooves painted with a dark grey craft paint color. The bases are finished with a brown color, but this doesn't matter because the horse bases will get covered over with my terraining goop.

African Skin Color

This is a hard one for me because I can't seem to get a natural looking skin color for the Numidians, Beja and Dervish warriors. I assume that Numidians have a variety of skin tones so they should not all look the same. I have no idea what an ancient era Numidian looks like so I have come up with some different ideas for the skin tones.

My advice is to use a triad color system with the shade, base and highlight colors already selected for you. I use the Reaper Dark Skin triad: Dark Shadow (09040), Dark Skin (09041), and Dark Skin Highlight (09042). I use just the shadow and the highlight colors and skip the base color so that I get more of a contrast on the figure's skin.

Another formula is to use the Reaper Dark Skin Shadow (09040) and then use some P3 Bloodstone (93029) as a highlight.

The Reaper Olive Skin triad provides more variety to my Numidians for a lighter color variant. I also use this color for some of my Carthaginian Liby-Phoenician peoples.

Sometimes I slip in several figures with tan skin from the Reaper Tan Skin triad. Tan Shadow (09043), Tan Skin (09044) and Tan Highlight (09044). This is the color that I use for all of my Caucasian skin peoples such as Romans, Celts, Hibernians and some Carthaginians.

Hair Color

I use black for the Numidian figures and for any figure that uses the Olive Skin triad. My Romans and other caucasian peoples general get brown paint. 

Gloss Finish Effects

One of the nice things about a gloss finish is that it does a good job of hiding most painting mistakes and it makes certain colors "pop". The darker skin colors look better with gloss, which naturally provides a highlight to the skin tone.  

A gloss finish also makes it easy to mass produce horses. I paint the horse either black or umber and then give it a spray of gloss. Think William Britain's 54mm metal toy soldiers for how the glossy horses look. The end result looks good and you didn't have to spend extra time working with triads.

Gloss coating also seems to provide a heavier protective coating than Dull Coat or other matte finishes. I use gloss spray coating for all of my plastic figures, but matte finish for my metal figures.

The Italian Job - Allied Cavalry

 

HaT Industrie figures: Italian Allied cavalry in Roman service

Please click on all pictures to enlarge the view

With my Carthaginian cavalry forces nearing completion, I have turned my brushes towards the Roman Republican army in my Punic Wars Project. At the top of the list were two 16-figure units of Italian Allies horsemen in service with Rome.

I purchased a dozen Italian cavalry from the gentleman in the UK who is disposing his Punic Wars armies in 54mm. Another six figures were sourced from eBay. I am always on the look out for 54mm figures on eBay or listed in various wargaming forums. Purchased and painted figures are a quick way to fill out one's army. I do not care about the quality of the painting because good figures need little "touching up" while poorly painted or heavily used figures will look good after some major touch up painting.

HaT Italian Allied cavalry. The figure on the left is a touch up figure that I painted, leaving the horse "as is".
The other five figures are shown as the "Before Picture".

The "After Picture" of some of the Italian cavalry, essentially these were totally repainted.

So I now have one 16-figure Italian cavalry unit that includes the 12 figures (untouched) from the UK and 4 figures from the eBay group. I have a second Italian cavalry unit of 16 figures that I painted in entirety.

The two 16-figure Italian cavalry units.

This is the unit that I painted.

This is the unit of purchased figures. The basing/terraining makes all the difference.

Command Stand -  A Mini Tutorial

I also painted a two-figure command stand for the Italian cavalry. The officer holding his sword aloft in heroic fashion ("forward lads, follow me") has a sword that I made from wire off cuts and a hilt made from epoxy putty. The standard bearer is straight out of the box. I use a piece of 1/8 inch bass wood for the base. I cut the base in an irregular manner using a small coping saw to curve the corners, then beveled the edges with a flat file. 

The figures were glued to the wood base using "tacky glue" and allowed to dry over night. I also placed a small blob of epoxy putty under the saddle before adding the glue. The putty helps to seat the figure solidly on the horse and fills in some of the gap between rider and horse.

The next step is to slather the base with my standard goop: wallboard paste with brown craft paint ($1.00 per bottle) mixed in to give it a brown tone. Once the goop is slathered around the horses' feet the base is sprinkled with a heavy coating of Woodlands Scenics railroad ballast. The ballast provides texture to the stand. Next, I dry brushed an orangish-brown color from my box of craft paints and then gave it a second dry brushing of linen white or creamy yellow.

Final step is to glue tufts and flowers onto the base and let them dry for about an hour. After that, I do the final touch and add a minimal amount of static grass to the base to finish it off.

See picture of the finished command stand below.

I will likely use this command stand as my overall Roman cavalry commander. The HaT Roman cavalry figures are noticeably smaller than the Italian cavalry figures so they do not look as imposing in comparison.

Next on the docket, some Roman cavalry. I have 12 figures primed and ready to paint and another 4 figures purchased on eBay. This will give me my standard 16 figure cavalry unit for this project.

My next blog post will feature the Numidian cavalry in Carthaginian service. These were painted several weeks ago, but I only got around to basing them yesterday.