Tactica Review (1) - The Battle of Aboukir

Once again this blog fell silent for a couple of weeks. Again my apologies for but my reason was just since I had to concentrate all my hobby time on finishing my share of our game for Tactica wargaming show namely one unit of redcoats, a rowing boat with 38 figures and a British gunboat. From time to time I didn't believe that I'd make it but delayed holiday, sleep deficiency and negligence of household duties do miracles sometimes. In this context I cannot praise Mrs Monty's patience enough!

Anyway somehow everything was done and finished by Thursday evening and so I set sail to Hamburg on Friday morning with a bag full of miniatures. As I mentioned a couple of times we prepared a game to recreate the Battle of Aboukir which took place on 8th March 1801. From the morning fog there were British landing crafts emerging that told of the advancing landing force under command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie. He brought 17,000 troops to breeze out the French but those are ready to fight their last stand as hard as possible. Once again after Nelson's famous naval victory and after a failed Ottoman landing operation in 1799 the fate of the Orient is decided at Aboukir.

The initial setup with the French on the beach and the British advancing by sea.

Command base finished: Sir Denis Pack and ADC

Finally it's done!
Yesterday evening I finished the command stand for my future 9th Brigade for Waterloo:

It represents Major-General Sir Denis Pack (later KCB) and his ADC  Major Edmund L'Estrange:

MAJOR-GENERAL Sir Denis Pack, K.C.B., wounded at Waterloo

Only son of the Very Rev. Thos. Pack, Dean of Ossory, by Catherine dau. and heiress of Denis Sullivan, of Berehaven, co. Cork. Five times received the thanks of Parliament for his military services. Was one of the moat dashing leaders of a brigade in the Par. War. " He was scarred with wounds and covered with glory." Commanded the 71st Regt. at Buenos Ayres when that city was retaken by the Spaniards, and was sev. wounded. and taken prisoner. When he escaped from prison, Pack was appointed to the command of a provisional battalion stationed at Colonia. His fidgety and irascible temper somewhat tried those who had to serve under him. One morning there appeared written in chalk on the door of a barn the following distich :

"The devil break the gaoler's back, that let thee loose, sweet Denis Pack."

For his services at Waterloo he was made Col.-in-Chf. of the York Chasseurs. M. 10th July, 1816, Lady Eliz. Beresford, youngest dau. of George, 1st Marquis of Waterford, and had issue. His 2nd son was Lord Beresford's heir, and assumed the surname of Beresford. Sir Denis died 24th July, 1823.
(from: "The Waterloo roll call" by Charles Dalton, Link to the original text)

Firstly I decided to represent Pack's brigade because I liked the mixture of different Scottish units. But meanwhile I got fascinated by the character of this gifted commander. If anyone knows a good biography about him I'd be happy for any hint.

Pack's staff officers were rather unlucky during the campaign. His General of Brigade Brevet-Major Smyth was mortally wounded at Quatre Bras and his other ADC Major Edmund L'Estrange was mortally wounded at Waterloo. Anyway I decided to represent the latter:

MAJOR E. L'Estrange, 71st Foot, K.

Edmund L'Estrange was a hero in every sense of the word. He waseldest son of Capt. Anthony L'Estrange of the 88th Regt. one of the Irish representatives of the ancient family of Le Strange, of Hunstanton, co. Norfolk. Was A.D.C. to Sir Denis Pack in the Par. War, and hisespecial gallantry, on several occasions, attracted the notice of Wellington. Made a brevet maj. at the early age of 26. His right leg was shattered by a round shot at Waterloo, and he died soon after suffering amputation. Had he lived, a great future was in store for him. A pension was granted to his mother whom he had supported.

(from: "The Waterloo roll call" by Charles Dalton, Link to the original text)

Although an officer of the 71st Regiment of Foot would have worn another dress I decided to show Major L'Estrange in the usual staff officers' uniform. In 1815 he had been Pack's ADC for several years so I thought it might be plausible that he adopted the appropriate uniform until then.

The figures are both by Perry Miniatures. While the Pack miniature is really meant to be the Major-General I had to improvise with the ADC because unfortunately there are no British staff officers by the twins yet. A pity!

Anyway luckily I got the inspiration of "Guns of April" who did some similar conversion a few years ago for a Peninsular War project they had. Although those chaps did a great job I wanted to be as precise as possible within the boundaries of my limited sculpting skills. So I took an ADC from the Perrys' Nassau command pack and started grinding and milling and removed everything that didn't look British. Afterwards I took some greenstuff to perform damage control and wel... reached the result you see now.

An excellent source for the work was Osprey's "Wellington's Generals" from their Men at Arms series. On one of the colour plates there's an ADC pictured and described. Anyway the experts amongst you will probably spot the small mistakes on the uniform and especially the horse furniture but I think they are venial.

If you're interested in it I'll post some WIP pictures of L'Estrange later this week.

As usual I painted the figures with Vallejo Model Colors. The base is a 60mm circular steel base from Precision Wargames Supplies. Perfect in shape, extremely thin and magnetic which makes transport of such vignettes much easier. In addition to my usual mixtures of static grass, flowers and flock I added a piece of Warbases' rather new animals range:

Meanwhile Diane and Martin are producing a wide range of domestic and wild animals and I can highly recommend them. They are all very well sculpted and the larger animals are perfect to add some life to farms or villages. And the smaller ones like those rabbits are to my mind a nice addition to larger vignettes.

Last but not least a close-up shot from Denis Pack's face. When you compare it to a historcial picture you see how close Alan and Michael came with there sculpt. Excellent work and great fun to paint. Unfortunately I'm still looking for a feeling for the contours of faces...

In any that makes me keen on painting more command bases. So probably I'll tackle a light cavalry commander rather soon for my 6th Cavalry Brigade... or Picton the old rogue... or the Iron Duke... A lot of possibilities...   ;-)

Thoughts about artillery

Actually it has been quite busy this week but unfortunately there's nothing new to present by now. I cleaned some World War 1 figure by Great War Miniatures - excellent sculpts but a bit flashy and with very soft material - and I proceeded with Westfalia's rude highlanders which I'm currently painting for Fran as betting debt from the painting challenge.

But last friday when we met up at our club HQ we came into a discussion about the size and mobility of Napoleonic artillery batteries in our Black Powder games. Actually we agreed that a single gun without a base seems quite too narrow and too mobile, but which size is appropriate?

During the last days I picked up C. E. Franklin's "British Napoleonic Field Artillery" and Mark Adkins' "The Waterloo Companion", reflected about the frontage of several formations and did some simple calculations.

1.) Infatry in line formation:
Kind of basic formation during Black Powder time line is infanty in line formation. Although it's slightly different from nation to nation in Black Powder this formation is simplified to a certain number of minitures placed in two ranks behind each other. In our group we tend to use 24 miniatures for units of standard size which means an actual strength roughly between 450 and 700 men. That's a rather large span but for reasons of gaming simplicity we try to cover most units as standard size and hold large, small and tiny for very special units like detached companies, severely battered units or really large battle formations.

Anyway since the British are my pet issue I concentrated on them and pored over the Waterloo companion to get an idea of the frontage of a British infantry bataillon in line. Fortunately Mark Adkins explains this formation very graphically by taking the example of the 2 Btl / 30th (Cambridgeshire) Regiment of Foot. The regiment had a parade strength of 650 men before being battered at Quatre Bras. So it's perfect for our standard size Black Powder unit.

He calculates the frontage as follows:
- strength of slightly more than the average 630 of the British at Quatre Bras / Waterloo
- the usual two ranks formation with 300 men per rank
- each company has a frontage of about 20 metres, the HQ slighty less
- in total about 210 metres frontage (= 21.000cm)

Compared to this, the frontage of a standard Black Powder unit is:
- 24 figures in two ranks = 12 figures per rank
- each figure based with 20mm frontage
- in total it's 12 x 20mm = 240mm = 24cm

Therefore the ratio is:
21.000cm = 24cm
=> 875 : 1

2.) Deployed Artillery:
In 1812 a British battery of Royal Foot Artillery (actually called an artillery brigade) consisted of 6 guns. 5 of them were either 6pdr or 9pdr guns combined with a 5.5inch howitzer. Although these units could be split into troops, halftroops or sections, I'm only looking at a completely deployed battery with all guns besides each other. The limbers, ammunition cards and other baggade which doesn't influence the frontage will be left out for now.

Usually the guns were placed with 15 yards between each other. Althoug this depended on the actual terrain and in some battles they were placed closer to each other I'll use this regulation from the drill manual to calculate the frontage:
- 6 guns in the battery with a gun carriage of about 2m
- 15 yards (= 13,71m) between the guns

Overall that's:
6 x 2m + 5 x 13,71m = 81m
=> 8.100cm : 875 = 9,25cm


Well below the line a British artillery battery should occupy a frontage of slightly more than 9cm. To keep things easy I would estimate 8cm as working well with the usual 20mm / 40mm basing of infantry models. But unfortunately our artillery models have an uncomfortable size. Too large for two besides each other on a 8cm base but too small to place just one on such a large base without scenic stuff around it.

After all I'm not sure whether this calculation will or should affect our way of playing Black Powder. But at least it's interesting for me to know the kinks in the rulesets I'm playing. At the end of the day it's a just game so each group has to decide how accurate or playful they want to have the rules. Actually you could deepen such calculations for other values: Frontage of cavalry units, frontage of foreign formations with a different drill manual, movement distances, size of buildings etc. We'll see whether I'll tackle these arithmetic problems later...

AWI Command Base

Last week I was a bit restricted. A conjunctivitis ("pink eye") afflicted me and so time with full vision was precious. Besides painting miniatures I was busy with preparing my new laptop so there wasn't too much time to do other eye stressing things like reading or commenting blogs. Please excuse me for missing you last weeks efforts. At least I'll try to read the things I missed.

Anyway I finished the first command base I ever produced. It shall represent the brigade command for my highlanders:

My first command base... ever.

Actually it's a combination of an officer, a drummer and an ensign in the uniform of the Black Watch with the regiment's King's Colour which shall serve as kind of pars pro toto for the brigade command. The figures are from the excellent Perry twins and the flag is from GMB Designs. Unfortunately the contact between the officer's sabre and his hand was very week and it broke of while I varnished the figure. So I had to repair it and used flattened piano wire which I hammered and grinded into shape. I had to remodel a part of the hand as well but I think it doesn't stand out too much.

Close-up of the ensign...

... and the drummer...

... and the commanding officer himself.

My next task is to finish a group of British officers interrogation an American POW. Besides that I've got some Gripping Beast plastic Vikings on my workbench and my efforts for "Bloggers for Charity" seem to become concrete. Loki announced to send me a unit of FIW redcoats soon and I'm planning to paint them around christmas.

By the way I recognized that 50.000 hits are coming nearer and I'm thinking about continuing the tradition to organize a raffle now and then. In case I'll find some useful prizes I will...

AWI-AAR: Battle of Freeman's Farm

On friday our bi-weekly meeting took place at the club's HQ and we decided to play another game of AWI Black Powder. Holger prepared the Freeman's Farm scenario from the rulebook (pp. 110 - 117) which is inspired by the real battle in 1777 during the Saratoga campaign (for more background look here or here).
The figures came from several collections. Most of them from Holger, Heinz and Bernhard with my Scots as small addition.

However the battlefield was slightly smaller than the design in the Black Powder rulebook but it contained the key elements. On the one side the British with Hamilton's brigade with some pickets ahead on the left flank and Fraser's brigade advancing from outside the battelfield at the far right flank. Only some marksmen, Canadiens and Indians which belonged to his forces were present. The loyal troops were lead by Bernhard as incarnation of Brigadier Hamilton and me as Brigadier Fraser.
On the opposite site Heinz and Kalle took seat and embodied Brigadiers Learned, Poor and Morgan with their troops.
Holger acted as umpire and announced that maybe Von Breymann's German brigade might enter the battlefield under his command later in the game.

Anyway the aims of both sides was rather simple:
Meet and defeat the particular antagonist.

The battlefield with our British already set up.

Indians and Loyalists of my brigade (left) and Hamilton's pickets (right) which were deployed from the very beginning.

The game started with the British troops unfolding. Bernhard spread his troops over the center and left wing and began his advance in steady line.

The British left flank and center under command of Brigadier Hamilton

Menawhile I sent my Indians into the forest near the farmhouse to buy me some time until the rest of my brigade had entered the battlefield. An absolutely necessary task because I wouldn't have been able to withstand an American countercharge with those small units of my advance guard. Fortunately Kalle decided to take an entirely defensive position.

The American line of defense along the road between the two cottages.

After the first turns I was in urgent need of my troops. The Indians were slain by some continental regulars and my other troops were difficult to steer since they were far away from Fraser's command and didn't have the "Marauder" special rule. However the first of my regular units to enter the battle were the Scots who formed a line by the road and stormed towards the American seditionists.

My brigade arriving and slowly expanding.

Fortunately things went better in the center and on the left wing. Bernhard had his pickets capture the farmhouse on the left and his men defended it bravely against some skirmishing Americans. Meanwhile his lines advanced steadily by the sound of fifes and drums.

Hamilton's brigade advancing.

They appealed so much to the Americans that the largest of their three brigades entered the large forest in the middle of the battlefield and tried to hide from the redcoats. One of Heinz's surprising manoevre. We didn't actually know what to think about it but we suspected a shocking plan...

Simultaneously some heavy fighting arose on my flank. The Americans sent one brigade towards my forces and tried to overwhelm its front units. But the Scotsmen proved their stubbornness. They attacked and broke a unit of American militia suffering heavy closing fire. Afterwards they took a lot of musket fire from the surrounding Americans but their shaken morale lingered long enough to be rallied by Brigadier Fraser the turn after.
Meanwhile the rest of my brigade started their advance and especially the British grenadiers showed the benefit of hard drill when saving lots of hits without casulties and striding forward yard by yard.

Fraser's brigade preparing the decisive blow.

Although Kalle held his troops on my opposite in excellent order, his spirit started to falter. After my Scots had slaughtered his militia and the light infantery shot a unit of regulars to pieces, his worry lines deepenend. In this very moment we heared further fifes and drums closing by: The Hessians!

The Hessians bring the decision for the right wing.

Now the other British brigade closed a pocket around the forest in which the Americans hid and shattered unit by unit. When the continentals entered the forest they lost their tactical coherence and were doomed to be defeated bit by bit.

Hamilton's brigade clearing the forest yard by yard.

So ended a very entertaining evening and an exiting game with the Americans retiring. Very different from the historical battle but well deserved I think.

Friday Night AWI: AAR Americans vs. British and Hessians - 26th April 2013

On friday we met up in the HQ again and after some weeks with fantasy stuff we decided to return to some historical conflict. So AWI was sheduled and we prepared a little game with three brigades on either side and no historical background. Anyway three brigades of the young United States met two brigades of British troops accompanied by a brigade of Hessian auxilliaries. This time I had the unusual experience to command a brigade of American separatists. Very uncomfortable for me to shoot on Redcoats since that's my ancestral side...
Please excuse the poor photos. Unfortunately I forgot the digital camera and had only my cellphone at my fingertips.

The Continentals entering the battlefield from the left while British fifes and drums sound from the right hand side.

From the very beginning things were tough for us colonials. Although we had a heavy 24pdr cannon and a unit of cavarly a nearly one on one meeting with the best trained infantry of their time is always hard. Anyway we wanted to our very best and when nothing is ventured, nothing is gained.

The Hessian and the middle British brigade in their initial deployment. I love this impressing look.

The first turns went promisingly. The British left wing underwent a heavy command crisis and remained motionless for the first turns.
Meanwhile their center advanced only slowly because Bernhard befell some truble with his ADCs too. One of his bataillons blundered and after a second bataillon went disordered he reorganised his forces and sent the grenadiers ahead.

A bloody good idea as he realised later...

Some of my boys awaiting the enemy.

Meanwhile we separatists didn't want to hide and tried to set up brave defense. On our right front where I commanded a brigade of regular troops I advanced carefully to take position at the edge of the field. Taking cover seemed a good idea although the Redcoats on my flank remained motionless...

On the right Kalle rushed forward with his militia. He brought a small but fast galloper gun to the other side of the river and took position near the brewery. Simoultaneously he wanted to push his bataillons into the center but those smutty amateurs proved too unreliable to achieve any serious support.
However the Hessians were busy with their flank threatened...

While the British were busy with solving their command crisis we Americans saw a chance to come into a good position. Maybe we could overcome their mighty middle brigade with concentrated fire while the Hessians are bount at their flank. Hopefully their third brigade will not enter combat until we achieved first success...

But reality overhault us when the forces clashed in the center of the battlefield. Even Holger's trained regulars weren't able to hold fire until the Redcoats were in close range so the unloaded their bullets too early and caused only light damage. Even concentrated artillery fire didn't break the British grenadiers' spirit and their fifes and drums sounded inexorably.

Our boys did their very best to withstand them but after the first volleys came in from short range the spirit of liberty faded. While the British reduced their speed and fired volley after volley the poor bataillons in our center broke and the Holger's brigade sounded the retreat.

Simultaneously Axel's Hessians found their formation again and shattered the poorly equipped militia troops. Although my brigade wasn't that badly hurt by now I felt defeat being near. When Heinz's brigade started to move finally my boys lost their nerves. Although I fired several volleys on the leading unit all shots failed to hit them. Even my artillery which was reliable during the first half of the game failed to hinder the British.

Thereby the game was over rather quickly after the British were able to send in their whole power. Two of my units broke and the rest betook themselves to flight.

Heinz's brigade presenting the coupe de grâce.

Anyway it was a great evening and an entertaining game. Victory went to our opponents but it was well deserved for the best trained army during the late 18th century. However it showed that a one on one ratio is impossible to master for the Americans. We will bear that in mind for the next games, I'm sure.

Finally there's a short sequence from the movie "Revolution" which outlines the development of this game precisely:

Thanks to Holger for finding this nice clip.