18th Century Field Bakery

Field bakery model for the SYW, crafted by Ed Phillips, and now in the collection of Randy Frye.

I played in a SYW game at Chez Protz last weekend, as part of Bill's annual birthday wargaming bash. During the course of the game, I noticed this model of a field bakery that Randy had brought to the game. The model was crafted by Ed Phillips, whom many of you know as the owner of the Wargames, Inc. mail order business, until he sold it and retired. Ed brings something new and different to the annual Seven Years War Association Convention, and his models usually get snapped up fairly quickly.

Randy was lucky enough to have purchased the model that you see above and below and it is very similar to the one that I bought from Ed last year (although I must say, that Randy obtained the better model - Ed gets better at his craft every year). Ed got creative and built one of the baking ovens completed (with the awning) and the other one as a "work in progress". He also scratch built the wheeled cart shown in the pictures and finished it off with some of Frank Hammond's Minden Miniatures Generic Pioneers. I would say that the Minden figures look like they were made for this type of model.

Rear view of the field bakery model.




Side view: note the Minden figure placing some bricks on the uncompleted oven. A second Minden figure (lower right) is shoveling some dirt. The third figure in the background (blue waistcoat) has had its shovel tool converted into a baker's spatula for removing the bread from the oven.


Front view providing a better look at the fellow constructing the oven on the left. Ed also scratch built the 2-wheeled wagon.

I hope that you enjoy looking at these models as much as I do.

Raid on the Field Bakery

Austrian field bakery and bakery wagon (yellow) constructed by Ed Phillips. Town and roads were made by Herb Gundt. Front Rank civilians work at the bakery.

Yesterday we set up my Winter terrain in my basement and staged a scenario involving a Prussian raid on an Austrian field bakery, somewhere in Silesia, possibly at the village of Born, which lies in front of the Austrian battle line at Leuthen. We had gotten about twelve inches of snow over the Christmas weekend so it seemed like an appropriate thing to set up a winter game. Bill Protz, Randy Frye and Keith Leidy joined me in this little skirmish game.

I wanted to do a BAR rules game in a skirmish or small action with just a few troops. The actual table was 6ft by 17ft, so hopefully this would give us plenty of room for maneuvering troops. The opposing forces are shown below:

Prussian Strike Force:
Von Zieten's Command:
5 sqds of hussars (60 figures)
1 horse artillery battery (2 x 6pdrs with 10 crew)
1 battalion of grenadiers
1 battalion of musketeers

Von Kleist's Command
3 sqds of horse dragoons (36 figures)
1 sqds of hussars (12 figures)
1 battery of frei korps artillery (2 x 6pdrs with 10 crew)
1 btn of elite Jagers (48 figures)
1 coy of frei korps jagers (12 figures)
1 btn of von Kleist Kroats

All of the Prussian units were rated as Veteran except for the Elite rated Jagers

Austrian Garrison at Borne
Croat & Light Troops Command (left flank):
1 btn of Croats (72 figures)
1 coy of Austrian jagers (20 figures)
1 battery of Austrian 3-pdrs (with 8 crew)
2 sqds of Hussars

Town Garrison Command (center and right flank)
2 btns of Austrian musketeers
1 coy of light piquets
1 Austrian battery ( 2 x 6pdrs and 1 x 12 pdr and 16 crew)
1 sqd of horse grenadiers serving as an escort for the garrison commander
5 sqds of Saxon dragoons (arriving on turn 3 or 4 , depending on a die roll)

Field bakeries were often set up ahead of the arrival of the army. The engineers would lay out the boundaries of the army encampment, a day or two before the army actually arrived on site. At the same time, the traveling field bakeries were set up so that they could commence the production of bread to feed the army. So one can imagine that the field bakeries might have been vulnerable to a quick raid by the enemy. If the bakery were destroyed ahead of the army's arrival into camp, that could put a serious crimp on the supply of the army.


Here is an overview of the table, showing the Austrian right flank in the foreground, the village of Borne in the center background, and the Austrian left flank near the windmill hill.

The Prussian players were given a handful of yellow cards and instructed to write the name of each unit under their command on a card. They were given several spare cards to be used as "dummy cards" with no unit on it to provide some disinformation or fog of war for the Austrians. The Prussians began the game by setting their cards on the table in lieu of their actual figures. The Austrian players could only guess as to what units might be listed on the cards. So they had no idea of the forces that were descending upon the town of Born.

The Prussians were given two free moves to start the game so that they could maneuver and sneak up on the town's garrison. On Turn 3, the Austrian players had a 50% chance of activating their units with a D6 die roll (odd number - they don't activate; even number - they do activate). In the event that a Prussian unit moved within 16" of an Austrian unit, then the Austrian unit could automatically activate.


Prussian jager surge over the hill and begin to engage the Croats and Austrian jagers that were guarding the left flank of the table. You can see that some of the Austrians are dug into wolf pits for added protection.


Prussian Zieten Hussars attack part of the Austrian camp and zero in on the Austrian artillery battery, hoping to take it out before it can fire and do any damage to the attackers.


Prussian musketeers (IR19 Margraf Karl) attack the other portion of the Austrian camp. The Austrian infantry have just been activated and are considered disordered until they have time to form up.


Von Kleist horse grenadiers/dragoons overwhelm the Austrian 3-pdr battery defending the field bakery.


It was a bad day for the Austrian artillery as the Zieten Hussars (Stadden figures) cut down the Austrian crew manning the guns in front of the tent encampment in the center of the table.


Von Kleist captures the town of Borne and sets up a battery of 6pdrs to control the approaches to the town, in case the Austrians counter-attack. They did not.


Saxon von Bruhl cavalry arrive on the Austrian right flank and attempt to push back the von Ruesch or Black Hussars.

I think that we played about seven or eight turns, including the first two turns where only the Prussians were allowed to move. At the end of Turn 8, the von Kleist Kroats had captured the village and were preparing to blow up the field bakery. The two tent camps had been over run by Prussian infantry and the tents were set on fire. Clearly, the Prussians had achieved all of their objectives and were declared the winners.

This scenario shows that Batailles de l'Ancien Regime (or "BAR" for short) work well for smaller scale raids and skirmish level games. The scenario would probably have worked well had I deducted one more battalion of infantry from each side's forces. Each player could be assigned a command of one battalion of infantry, 2-3 squadrons of light cavalry, and a battery of light artillery if you wish to reduce the roster of troops even more.

I might want to tinker with the rules for activating the Austrian infantry forces. They nearly waited too long to activate, as the Prussian infantry was nearly in their camp before they could get started. That is sort of the effect that I wanted to achieve. The Austrians did benefit from a nice run of cards that gave them the initiative on most of the turns after Turn 3.

Field Bakery

Prussian field bakery scratch built by Ed Phillips. Minden Pioneers are shown in the foreground. Buildings were made by Herb Gundt of H.G.Walls. The Alter Friz Gasthaus is the name of an actual gasthaus in the town of Hochkirk, Germany,

Someone had asked me about information on 18th Century field bakeries and I promised to post a picture of the generic field oven that Ed Phillips made. I was lucky to be the first one to see Ed as he unwrapped his collection of scratch built buildings and vignettes at this year's SYW Association convention. Little did I realize that these were all for sale (sort of like a bring and buy in the UK). So I snapped up the bakery and several supply wagons that Ed had also scratch built using balsa wood, bass wood, card stock and some Old Glory artillery wheels for the carts.

In the 18th century, the armies would transport wagon load of the black metal bands that you see in the picture above. Then they would build the oven either from local materials or bricks that they had carried along with them for that purpose. My thinking is that they used local materials rather than hauling heavy wagons full of bricks around the countryside. So the open top wagons carried the metal braces, probably covered with canvas to protect the metal from the weather.


A company of Prussian pioneers marching into the camp. RSM general, Stadden dismounted Seydlitz in the camp background, scratch built wagon by Ed Phillips, and Minden pioneers. Tent vignette by HG Walls.

The Minden pioneer figures look like they will be useful for a variety of functions, aside from their intended use as pioneers. You have seen how I have converted them into artillery crew in previous blog postings. I could also see them as part of the bakery crew. The fellow with the shovel could be holding a large spatula full of bread, with a simple conversion of the shovel with some green stuff.


An aeriel view snapped by Baron von Munchausen in his hot air balloon (no, I don't have one. Yet. I hear that Eureka is going to make the Baron's balloon in resin one of these days).

Today was Memorial Day in the United States. That means that I get to stay up late the night before and paint, then sleep in late on Monday. Nice! Lady Emma Cuddlestone-Smythe was having some of her ladies over for tea, so Mrs. Fritz suggested that it was high time for Myself to tear down the wargame table that I had set up in her half (the larger half) of the basement and move all of my gear back into the smaller half, where we had the flood earlier in the year.

This project took several hours and I have to say that it brought a tear to my eye to have to take down the 6ft by 18ft table that was set up in Lady Emma's play room. The picture above shows my table back in its old room, with a smaller 6ft by 12ft table. I set up the 2ft square terrain tiles that I had made a few years ago and placed my Minden Prussian camp on the table. This will be the eventual size of the table that I will use for my Minden Project games at conventions, so it is good to see how many battalions and cavalry regiments I can fit on this table.

Herself did allow me to keep my painting table upstairs in the generally unused Dining Room, albeit with the table area tidied up quite a bit. So I cleaned off the painting table after finishing the basement cleaning project. Since I was on a roll by now, I decided to clean out the garage for good measure. I think that earned me some bonus points with Herself. I was generally pleased with the day's efforts.

Finally, we all gathered around the television this evening to watch the Stanley Cup Finals between the home town Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers. I am really learning a lot about ice hockey as I watch more and more games, and I especially love the song "Chelsea Daggers" (or is that the name of the group) which is played everytime the Hawks score a goal. This is the same music used in the Amstel Light Beer commercials on television. The Hawks won 2-1 in a hard fought game and now lead the series 2-0. We are pleased in Hesse Seewald.


Carlstadter Liccaner Croats - Minden Miniatures - guard an Ian Weekley building.

And finally, I was able to finish the terraining of my two Croat bases this evening and have posted a picture above. They look much better once the stand is inked and the static grass is added. As I said in yesterday's posting, I 'm looking forward to completing the unit. I checked my inventory of Minden Austrians and found that I have enough figures for 2 Croat battalions, 1 grenadier battalion, and 2 musketeer battalions (with 2 more in transit right now).

I also plowed my way through a dozen Black Hussars, doing the Van Dyking of the shabraques this afternoon. This is the tedious part of painting hussars, but it should be clear sailing after this and I should be able to have the first dozen hussars done towards the end of this week. I think that I may have figured out a short cut for the shabraques: paint the "tooth" completely white and then come back and paint in a red diamond rather than painting the red diamond first, like I did, and then trying to edge the red tooth with thin white lines. It is the lining that drives one crazy. This other method would eliminate the lining step. We shall see how it works.