French Personality Figures: Broglie & Chevert

Lt. General Chevert (left) and Marshal de Broglie (right)

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I commissioned the painting of some of the new Minden Miniatures personality figures to use for advertising and trade stand purposes. Normally I paint my own figures, but I wanted to go the extrea mile for display figures so I went with a very good professional figure painter.

Another view of Broglie (left) and Chevert (right)

Grenadiers de France mounted officer (using the French officer in bearskin cavalry figure)

French Kettle Drummer

I am very pleased with how these figures turned out, both in terms of sculpting by Richard Ansell and by the professional painter. The painting really brings out the best in Richard's sculpts.

I guess that I will have to start building a French army for these gentlemen to command.

Minden Austrian Horse Grenadiers

Minden Austrian Horse Grenadiers painted as D31 de Ligne Dragoon regiment's horse grenadiers.

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De Ligne Horse Grenadiers

Yesterday I completed the basing of a 12-figure squadron of the new Minden Miniatures Austrian Horse Grenadiers, painted as the de Ligne Dragoon Regiment. Each dragoon regiment had a squadron of elite horse grenadiers and it was not uncommon for the horse grenadier squadrons from several regiments to be formed into one ad hoc regiment of "elite" cavalry. The Austrian Cuirassiers' equivalent of the horse grenadiers were called "Carabiniers."

It is my plan to eventually add the Austrian Carabiniers to the Minden range too so that I can have a converged regiment of elites from the Dragoons and Cuirassiers.

De Ligne Horse Grenadiers with hand painted standard using an image from the Royalfig website.

I chose to paint my first unit of Minden Austrian Horse Grenadiers in the uniform of the D31 de Ligne Dragoon regiment. I have always liked that regiment's uniform of green coat and red facings, thinking that it is perhaps one of the handsomest uniforms of the Seven Years War era.

Below are some pictures of the new Product Codes for the Horse Grenadiers to refer to when you order any of the figures from the Fife & Drum Miniatures web store

Web Store Link

MAC-007 Austrian Horse Grenadier Command Pack with horses

MAC-008 Austrian Horse Grenadier Troopers pack with horses.

 I have also painted and based a sample of the new Minden Prussian Mounted Jager courier and added him to the web store Here

The new Product Code is MPC-019:

MPC-019 Mounted Jager
The new Minden Prussian mounted jager courier shown with a dismounted hussar (from the Zieten personality set PER-004) posed as if he is about to be handed an important dispatch. The hussar does not come with the mounted jager.

Thank you for taking a look at these painted samples of the new Minden Austrian cavalry. Please feel free to leave any comments in the Comments section below.

Frederick the Great & Staff at Kunersdorf

Frederick the Great of Prussia

Click on the picture to enlarge.

I really like this vignette grouping of Frederick the Great and his staff convening on a hill top prior to the start of my Battle of Kunersdorf wargame. The Frederick command stand was painted by Leuthen Studios several years ago and I use it on my trade stand when I go to wargame conventions as a dealer.

The staff members on foot are part of the PER-001 Duke of Brunswick & Staff on Foot pack of figures.

The general in the background wearing the orange Pour Le Merite sash is Prinz Moritz von Anhalt-Dessau.

In the right background we have an RSM Prussian officer and horse paired with one of the Minden Prussian officers with spontoon. Instead of a spontoon, I simply placed a flag for the Prussian Artillery Regiment in his hand. The vignette represents Colonel Moeller, the artillery genius at Rossbach and Leuthen.

Other Announcements - AWI Highlanders Will Arrive Soon

Griffin Moulds shipped a large order of castings, most of which are the new AWI figures consisting of 12 British Highlander figures and 4 personality figures: Washington, Greene, Howe and Cornwallis. I anticipate that I will have the figures delivered to Schloss Seewald next weeek and I expect to add them to the web store over the weekend and have them ready to purchase sometime next week.

These figures are an important expansion of the Fife and Drum Miniatures AWI figure range and I am really keen to see the castings first hand and quickly paint some samples.

Campaign Books by Charles S. Grant

Continuing on with our discussion of war gaming with Imaginations, as inspired by Peter Young in "Charge" and by Charles Grant in "The War Game", I thought that it would  be helpful to provide an overview of of six mini campaign books written by Charles S. Grant (fils) since 2008. These can be played with Charles' rules book "The War Game Rules" which were written in 2012 or with your own favorite set of rules.

A quick note about The War Game Rules; these are a recent update of the war game rules from the classic, The War Game" and have been amended and updated for today's wargamer and reflect more than 40 years of play testing, innovation and development. Now some of you might be thinking that these rules are of the "Old School" genre, but that would be far from the truth. These are very modern and current rules that represent a considerable amount of research and development by Grant fils in more recent years, making them as "modern" as any other set of SYW rules that you could purchase in the market today.

Mini Campaign Books by Charles S. Grant

 Let us now look at the titles that Mr. Grant has penned since 2008:

* Raid on St. Michel (2008)

* The Annexation of Chiraz (2009)

* The Wolfenbuttel War (2012)  and The War Game Rules (2012)

* The Siege of La Crenoil (2013)

* Attack on the Junger (2014)

* Border Raid - Pillage in Procraster (2015)

Each of these books feature the long standing struggle for power between the Grand Duchy of Lorraine (GDL) and the Vereinigte Frei Stadte (VFS). The Lorrain forces are modelled after those of France while the VFS armies represent a fairly tight agglomeration of small principalities, republics, city-states, duchies and similar entities. Some of these nations bear a similarity to the Prussian army.

In recent years, Charles has been adding actual historical units of French and Prussian/Hanoverian regiments to his armies.

The Margrafin of Wolfenbuttel

The driving force in the long running rivalry between the GDL and VFS seems to be the the Margrafin of Wolfenbuttel (known as "Tutzi" to her friends), who wears the pants in the family if you will. She has a bone to pick with the Grand Duchy of Lorraine because her young husband, the Margraf, died in one of the wars and so she has sworn undying enmity against Lorriane. It is the Margrafin (I don't know her well enough to call her Tutzi) who is constantly plotting with the generals of the VFS to launch an aggression against the GDL. She is responsible for launching the pre-emptive attack in the Wolfenbuttel War (only to have her pre-emptive attack, itself, pre-empted by the armies of the GDL. She seeks reveenge in the Siege of La Crenoil, but finds that her plans are scuppered once again and again (Attack on the Junger). 

The Raid on St. Michel

The first book in the series takes five Table Top Teasers and rolls them into a mini campaign for the 18th Century. Color cover with black and white pictures inside (ensuing books were published in full color).

The book starts with a brief background of the forces in the campaign as well as mini biographies of the commanders of the respective sides. The general theme is that the forces of the VFS are crossing the border and making a raid on the Lorraine provice of St Michel. Throughout the book, Charles Grant has written up some newspaper articles for the local papers of Lorraine and the VFS. These are fun to read and they add quite a bit of color to the mini campaign, giving it some extra context for your games.

The first teaser is "The Bridgehead" that is reminiscent of the Battle of Blastof Bridge."

The second teaser takes place several days after the Bridgehead and is titled "Rear Guard". A small force of Lorraine defenders are attempting to buy time for the garrison of St Michel to get ready for the forthcoming attack.

The third teaser is the actual battle of St. Michel. Having successfully crossed the border and swept aside the Lorrain rear guard, the VFS army has arrived in front of St Michel and are preparing to attack.

Teaser four is called "Counter Attack on the Bridgehead" in which a separte a separate Lorrain force not involved in the battle of St Michel attacks the VFS guard at the bridge in an attempt to cut off the main VFS army from its line of communication.

Teaser five, the final action, is called "Heading Home". The VFS army, having captured and looted the town of St Michel, is heading home with a wagon train full of the treasury of the town. This is a fun river crossing scenario that you will find challenging and fun to play.

The Annexation of Chiraz

The principality of Chiraz is in the uncomfortable position of being georgraphically located between the Grand Duchy of Lorraine and the VFS. This land has been fought over for several centuries and we find, once again, that the aggressive VFS is up to no good in this mini campaign. It seems that the heiress to the throne of Chiraz is expected to marry a nobleman from the Lorraine court and this would undoubtedly lead to a de facto annexation of Chiraz to the Grand Duchy of Lorraine. Obviously it would be in the best interest of the VFS to prevent this from happening.

Teaser number one is called "Seizing the Arsenal at Petresville" which calls for the VFS to attack this walled town and capture the gunpowder arsenal to deny its goods to the opposition.

Teaser number two "Invasion" is a pontoon crossing battle that will encourage you to purchase a lot of our Fife & Drum Miniatures pontoon wagons and pontoons (LOL!).

Teaser number three is "The Encounter at Drew" which is another battle to capture some bridges at a key river crossing.

Teaser number four is "Return to the Arsenal at Petresville" which features a relief force of Lorraine troops that are trying to recapture the gunpowder arsenal.

Teaser number five is "The Defense of Cressay" in which another Lorraine army is defending the town of Cressay from the attack of another VFS army.

The book includes battle accounts in each teaser and ultimately the Grand Duchy of Lorraine ejected the VFS army from Chiraz.

The Wolfenbuttel War

In my previous post I made reference to this book, having read it during my recent vacation, and what a good read it was.  The campaign is a thinly disguised play of the Hundred Days leading up to the Battle of Waterloo. Actually, it is not even disguised as Charles states upfront that the scenarios and battles are the actions at Ligny, Quatre Bras, Wavre and Waterloo. 

The battles can easily be played as stand-alone games or linked together in a campaign. For example, losses in a battle are deducted from each regiment and the reduced numbers of men are carried forward into the next battle. Grant provides instructions on how to set up the campaign and manage it without too much paper work.

I have to say that The Wolfenbuttel War is my favorite book of all the campaigns.

The Siege of La Crenoil

This mini campaign has six stand alone scenarios based upon the progress of a fictiitious siege, with rules to run the seige itself, so this is a very useful book. 

Once again we have the VFS as the aggressor, conducting another crossing of the rivers that separate the Grand Duchy of Lorraine and the VFS. The VFS is still smarting from their loss of the Wolfenbuttel War and seek revenge by invading the Lorraine province of Chantilly.

The scenarios are as follows:

1) The Run for the Fort

2) Storming the Grammon Ravelin

3) Attack on the Siege Park

4) The Sally

5) Storming the Breach (the Forlorn Hope)

6) Fight Through the Town (two versions)

As you can see from the scenario titles, there are plenty of ideas for actions associated with a siege from building trenches, sally attacks on the siege lines, storming the breach in the walls and the bloody fight in the town.

Attack on the Junger

This mini campaign features two small actions, two medium size actions and finishes with a large battle. So there is something of interest for everyone.

Once again the VFS army is on the march into the Lorraine province of Chantilly, but this time it is led by the legendary General Fritz von Tarlenheim. Will the VFS finally have some success in its never ending war with the Grand Duchy of Lorraine?

1) Surprise Attack at Haux

2) The Attack on FALOUX

3) The Action at Tasque

4) The Battle of Haux

5) The Battle for Blaise - Day One and the Day Two scenarios.

Border Raid "Pillage in Procrastor"

The Margrafin of Wolfenbuttel and her entourage were captured in the previous campaign and imprisoned in La Crenoil, ironically, for breaking the terms of surrender of the VFS army in the previous campaign. Well, that should seem to put an end to all of the VFS aggression, right? Oh come on, you know the answer to that question. The high council of the VFS has decided to make a quick dash into the neutral state of Procraster and seize its herds of fine horses so as to deny them to the army of Lorraine.

Day One - The Raid Begins

Day Two - A Gathering Storm

Day Three - Actions and Ambush

Day Four - The Chase

Day Five - End Game

I shall not reveal the outcome of this mini campaign other than to say that it consists largely of small actions that are both interesting and won't take long to play.

Conclusion

Well, there you have a review of the six campaign books penned by Charles S. Grant (fils). I hope that you have found my review of interest and that you will want to purchsae one or more of these mini campaigns to play out on your own table top.

In the United States, you can purchase the books from On Military Matters while in the UK, Caliver Books is your go to source.

Finally, I would reiterate the point that you do not have to play all of these battles and actions as part of a campaign. Each scenario can be played independent of the campaign and provide a nice variety of small actions, medium sized engagements, and large battles - something for everyone.

Even if you are not interested in campaigns or scenarios, the "eye candy" quotient is extremely high with lots and lots of color pictures of 18th Century armies (I'm pleased to say that there are many Minden Miniatures gracing those pages.)

Imaginations: Seems We've Struck a Chord

I have been pleased to see the overwhelming positive response to my blog post about Imaginations.

Who needs Imaginations? It seems that we all do based on the response. As of today their have been approximately 1,500 views in aggregate among TMP, the DAF Journal Blog, the Fife and Drum Miniatures forum and the Kingdome of Hesse Seewald blog. There have been nearly 100 comments and responses to the topic across these sources which is a record response in all of my years of blogging.

The Prussian von Reusch Hussars (H5) in my Prussian army, doing double duty as Lady de Winter's Black Hussars Regulators.

On my recent vacation to Florida, I took a copy of Charles S. Grant's "The Wolfenbuttel War" which is an Imaginations campaign that closely mimics The Hundred Days Waterloo campaign. There is some great stuff in this book and all of the characters that Mr. Grant has created add a richness and much color to his campaign.

Now, who is that mysterious general who betrayed the VFS?

So What's Wrong With Imaginations?

A contemplative moment amidst the Battle of Aspern-Essling, done in the SYW manner.

I recently read a blog that has taken a few "swipes" at the concept of "Imaginations" and the blogger saying that his way of wargaming is the best way. Several other blogs have played a similar tune from time to time, so I thought that a rebuttal of sorts was long overdue.

Well, it is OK to have an opinion (even if it's wrong), but we wargamers live in a big church and there are hundreds or more ways of approaching the hobby of playing tabletop games with the Little Men, as many of our wives and sweathearts call them. The term "Imaginations" refers to the invidual's creating of imaginary nations, hence the mash of the words into "Imaginations".

Prussian/Germanian infantry defend a town against French/Gallian attack.

I think that it is rather sad that some people feel the need to put down the efforts of others. For one thing, most wargamers are doing the best that they can with resources and talents that they have. We should encourge them for their effort. For another thing, it can come across as arrogant or elitist for a person to say that his way is the best way of approaching the hobby. And finally, it's a hobby, not a contest.

Some Approaches to the Hobby

* the majority of wargamers like to build historical armies and recreate historical battles on the tabletop in order to see if they could have done any better than Lee at Gettysburg or Napoleon at Waterloo. They might also create fictional battles (and often do) and scenarios for their tabletop wars.

Think about it, if you are playing a fictional scenario that might have happened between the Austrians and Prussians in the Seven Years War, then you, my dear hypocrite, are already engaging in the employment of your imagination to play in a wargame. This is the lane that I choose to play in most of the time.

* an even larger community of wargamers dwell in the fantasy realm of Hobbits, Dwarves, Orcs and other monsters and enemies. This is not my cup of tea, but let us give Fantasy its due because the number of Fantasy gamers and the amount of money that the segment of the gaming industry generates quite simply dwarfs that of historical miniature wargaming.

* back in 2005 or there abouts, Patrick Lewis created a Yahoo Group titled "Old School Wargaming" (or "OSW") that celebrated the "good old days" of wargaming with the likes of Donald Featherstone, Peter Young, Charles Grant and Peter Gilder, among others. Patrick talked about the influence that Charge and The Wargame had on his nascent wargaming career and how it directed him towards the 18th Century. He would fondly recall building armies with simple figures such as Suren/Willie, Staddens, RSM/Pax Britannica, Minifigs and many others.

The book that started it all - Peter Young's CHARGE!

Charles Grant told the tales of battles between Imaginations such as the
Grand Duchy of Lorraine and  the Vereinigte Freie Stadte

"Never fail to celebrate your victories - and dispute your drawn battles - by erecting  monuments and triumphal arches to your own honor. Never fail to preserve and display replicas of every captured color. Such little attention will pierce the think hide of the most complacent opponent"  -- Peter Young

Quite a large number of wargamers were drawn to this new Old School Wargaming thing and the number of visitors on the group site grew and grew. At the same time, the same people caught the bug to create their own little countries and rivalries in the manner espoused by Peter Young and Charles Grant. And before you knew it, there were little principalities, dukedoms and electoral states popping up all over the internet. A kindly gentleman named Jeff Huddleston creating a central warehouse of all these imaginations on his blog titled "Emperor versus Elector". It was a place where the denizens of imaginary nations set in the 18th Century could congregate and carry out their diplomatic affairs with other nations. Jeff added a long list of links to various blogs that updated (not sure what you call this, "streaming" or something like that) in real time. You can visit the site and see when one of the blogs had posted a new entry on its blog. This remains a valuable tool to this very day, and I admit that Emperor versus Elector is one of the first sites that I visit on nearly every day.

Let me be very clear about in my opinion that Old School Wargaming and Imaginations brought a lot of new people into 18th Century wargaming and anything that expands this population is a very, very, very good thing. Period!



Why Wargame with Imaginations?
One acquaintance of my summed it quite nicely, so let me say it in his words:

"I always have a wry smile when those who denigrate imag-nations in their next breath say that it was "CHARGE" or "THE WARGAME" that got them into 18th Century wargaming, or what classics they are! Two of the most imagi-nation centric books on wargaming that I can put my hand on.

I am only starting down my imagi-nation road, but it is one that I have tinkered with on paper for years. Why? Two reasons: First - I love the process of bringing into existence two sides, that have no historical baggage, and Second - an imagi-nation campaign, even just linked battles, is fun to devise and run - even as a solo project."

An interesting observation that checks two of my own boxes - the fun of scribbling on a piece of paper your ideas for creating an army, and it goes without saying, drawing up imaginary lists of figures that I would want to purchase for a new Project. I hark back to Hal Thinglum and his MWAN publication - he had an infectious way of talking about Projects and Lists of Figures that will always stick with me.

The second check box for me is the fact that the two (or more) sides/countries have no historical baggage to contend with. Which countries had good armies and which ones had poor armies? It doesn't matter when the combatants are of your own creation.

The imagination has a wonderful side benefit, that is, over the course of the years it allows you to create characters and watch them develop over time. In my imagination of Germania (Prussia) there is an undercover agent or naer do well named Lady de Winter who works mysteriously around the edges of our games. Lady de Winter has an obsession with collaring a ditzy English heiress named Lady Diana Pettygree. These two ladies have crossed path during many of our games and the competition has a sort of "Road Runner versus Wile E. Coyote" feel to it. I haven't enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that Lady de Winter almost captured Lady Pettygree, but she never quite manages to nab her adversary. One of the fun parts of this rivalry is that Lady Pettygree has no idea that some evil woman has it in for her, which makes the whole thing even more delicious.

The infamous Black Hussars of Lady de Winter's personal army of evil doers.

Lady Diana Pettygree is said to have passed this way.

Where I Entered the Scene - My Approach

Circa 2007, I was attending the annual Seven Years War Association in South Bend, Indiana where I was hosting a wargame featuring Austrians and Prussians fighting over something, I forget what. On the table next to me was a game hosted by Bill Protz that featured large 48 and 54 figure infantry battalions fighting in three ranks, just like the actual soldiers would have done in 1757. Bill was hosting an French & Indian War game at the time. I found that as my game progressed, I kept looking at Bill's game and admiring his big battalions.

After both of our games concluded, I ambled over to Bill and told him how interested I was in his game (which won the Best of Show award that year). Bill told me that his game and rules were strongly influenced by Peter Young and his book "Charge". As the conversation continued, I got around to asking Bill whether or not he had ever considered doing this in a European setting. Well, like minds converged and soon we were both building large armies with 60-figure battalions and 12-figure cavalry squadrons. After a few months, we finally had painted enough figures to have a game on Bill's giant 6ft by 24ft game table.

Big Battalions of infantry, supported by equally large cavalry regiments, in one of our Old School battles.

Paying homage to messers Young & Grant, we created fictional countries for our armies. Bill had an affinity for the French and so named his country "Gallia", while my affinity for all things Prussian led to the creation of my country, Germania. The armies had fictional names and nations, but they were in fact French versus Prussians on the tabletop. You see, you really can have your cake and eat it too by having both historical and imaginations at the same time.

What do you do with big battalions? You play in big games!

I have always been rather enamored with Peter Gilder's Wargame Holiday Centre, having visited it twice when it was owned by Mike Ingham. As a consequence, I wanted to fight similar big battles at home and at game conventions in the USA.

Hundreds of Prussian and French cavalry cross swords in an imaginary battle scenario.

On at least four occasions, probably more, I organized large games at a local hotel for our SYW games. We played SYW versions of the battles of Rossbach, Gettysburg, Antietem, Aspern-Essling and Austerlitz with our armies. We often had 20 players in these games, ten per side. We would set up the table terrain and place the troops on the table the day before the game. This way, the gamers would arrive and could pitch into right away. Each battle had to have a Raison d'Etre so I would create a back story to the battle and give a name to each player's general. Several times I went the extra mile and scribbled out general orders and missions for each person on a paper scroll that I sealed with red wax and the letter F for the French and P for the Prussians. We had a lot of fun with that. Sometimes two players on one side had conflicting missions and this had the potential to create even more fun and mahaym in the game.

So I have nothing but warm feelings about Imaginations armies and wargames. I caught this particular SYW bug from Young and Grant. If Imaginations were good enough for them, they are good enouigh for me.

Conclusion

The concept of Imaginations in wargaming has attracted a lot of new people into the SYW era of historical miniature wargaming. Anything that brings in new blood to the hobby should be celebrated rather than disparaged.

As I said earlier, there are many different approaches to the hobby and the diversity of ideas on how to wargame is one of the things that make this such a great hobby.