Angus  Konstam's Edinburgh Wargames

Edinburgh Wargames Journal             

      Issue 41  -  December 2009  

Periods featured in this issue:  English Civil War, French Revolutionary War, Seven Years War (all 28mm)

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English Civil War Training, 1644  (Very Civile Actions) 28mm

Well, this was something of a non event, mainly as the useless Royalist player (Dougie Trail) never managed to get his arse out of the pub to play the game. We put the toys on the table, and he never showed up. Fortunately Jim Louttit appeared, with his new and beautifully painted unit - Sir John Hampden's regiment, a veteran green-coated Parliamentarian formation that was the mainstay of Sir William Waller's Southern Association.

As we had the figures out we moved things around, and tried out a few ideas. As my regiments were from the Eastern Association - like Hampden's they're all solidly Parliamentarian - this was more of a training exercise than anything else. You need this sort of thing to figure out such important things as unit frontages, the way units can manoeuvre into position, how the shot support the pikes in an attack, and generally how to get things right on the day. Okay, we were putting a brave face on the fact that the Royalist commander was too drunk to play, but it was all handy stuff!

We've actually got a ridiculously big game coming up  - a refight of the Battle of Marston Moor (1644), which will be played over a weekend in late January, with at least a couple of thousand figures on the table. the rules weren't designed to cope, but that'll be half the fun...

The russet-coated formations down below are Col. Edward Montagu's, and Col. John Pickering's regiments of foot, both part of the Eastern Association. The plan is that Chris Henry and I will field the whole of the Eastern Association for the Marston Moor game - about 500 figures.

English Civil War page 

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Bonaparte in Italy, 1796  (Napoleon) 28mm

This small game was set in Italy during the French Revolution, and involved a French assault on an Austrian position. We were using Napoleon rules for the second time, but this time we not only had time to figure the basics out, but Bill Gilchrist was on hand to umpire, which made things move along fairly quickly. I say as small game - Chris Henry only had four units, supported by guns and skirmishers - large clouds of skirmishers. Being French, all his generals were rated good, and being Austrian, all of ours were uniformly atrocious!

Command is important in these rules - when things got down to close range we needed to roll less than 6 on 2D6 to actually do anything with our units. Invariably they failed their command rolls at the crucial moment, and impotently stood around, getting charged or shot at by their French counterparts! Fortunately we had big, stolid units, supported by battalion guns. On the French left one unit was drawn into a firefight with my Grenzers, and bizarrely was outshot by them, and forced off the field. On the French right the remaining three battalions stormed up the hill, but after some stiff hand to hand fighting they were repulsed by Mikowai Staszek, my Austrian co-commander. With casualties mounting and with his left flank turned, Chris eventually called off the attack, and conceded the hard-fought game. Actually, the Austrians were suffering too, and with a bit more time he would probably have won the day.

The rules have their quirks - particularly the standing around when you fail your command tests, but on the whole we all thought the system was fast, fun and highly playable. The basics were easy to pick up, the morale and firing systems are very slick, and we all thought the result was fair. Granted the rules have some fairly obvious holes in them, but there's nothing that a bit of common sense and house amendments won't sort out.

The French Revolutionary War is a colourful period, and we'll certainly paint up more units for it. Chris' French looked superb, and their ragged banditti appearance was in marked contrast to my ordered but rather dull lines of white-coated Austrians! I'll raise some slightly more colourful Hungarian infantry next, and once the Perry plastic hussars come out (with their straight-up shakos) then I can add some real colour - gaudy Austrian hussars!

The Age of Bonaparte page         Review of Napoleon rules     

 Off-site Link to the Napoleon Yahoo group      Off-site link to another playtest of Napoleon

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The Battle of Hastenbeck, 1757  (Die Kriegskunst) 28mm

We'd actually planned to play a much bigger game - a scenario for a forthcoming book. It was based on the French attack on Obensberg hill, the turning movement that led to a French victory in the Battle of Hastenbeck (26th July 1757). One of the players had to cancel though, which left us short of troops. We scaled everything down, keeping the same basic situation, but playing it out with less figures, and on a smaller 6x4 foot table. The French were on the attack - in two columns - one directly in front of the Obensberg, and the other in front of the main Allied line. 

A brigade of Allied troops were well out in front of the Allied position, and in theory they were fairly exposed -caught between the two French columns. What the Brunswicker commander - Ken Pierce - did was to go over to the attack, pinning Dave Imrie's French columns in place before they could launch their own assault. The fight raged for several turns, but by the end it was clear that the French advance had stalled... even Dave Imrie resorting to chemical warfare (see picture) failed to turn things around. The Allies didn't even need to use the troops in their main battle line.

On the other side of the table the Grenadiers de France surged up the Obensberg, while French skirmishers kept their Hanovarian counterparts busy. So far so good. The follow-up brigade left the grenadiers to it and wheeled to the left, heading for the back of the Brunswickers. Then, as they were poised to launch their attack a new unit appeared - Col. von Dachenhausen's small brigade of Hanovarian cavalry. Another small brigade of infantry appeared on the eastern side of the Obensberg, making the Grenadiers de France form a defensive line just short of the summit.

Well, my French managed to turn a battalion round to face the cavalry, but a bad die roll meant their defensive volley was fired at long range, and the cavalry crashed home. The infantry - a battalion of the Conde Regiment - were overrun, which meant the Hanovarian cavalry were poised to run amok behind the French line. To recap, the Obensberg was still in Allied hands, the main assault had stalled, and the French reserves were being chopped up! At that point the French conceded - foiled by the spirited Brunswickers, and those darned Hanoverian horsemen!

We'll certainly play the game again, but the next time it'll be a full-sized clash - and with luck we'll be able to avoid some of the ghastly mistakes we made in this small battle!

Dougie Trail's new unit of Hanovarian foot - figures by Rank & File (Crusader Miniatures)

Seven Years War page

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