More Napoleonic Wargaming - Part Two

NATURALLY a battlefield needs scenery, and in the case of the first scenario in Mike Lambo's Battles Of Napoleonic Europe, the scenery consists of a river, a village, six woods or copses, a stream or river, a six-hex ridge of high ground and a single-hexed hill at the bottom-right of the map.

Map of the battlefield

Part of my original order of Hexon II from Nottinghamshire-base Kallistra included hill hexes.

My basic battlefield grid, with hill hexes added

I already had plenty of suitably sized trees in my collection

With the village of Roliça added

The river is cut from blue felt bought at a Hobbycraft store in Hull

I am very pleased with the final result - well worth the money and time spent on it.

More Napoleonic Wargaming

I HAVE decided to refight the 20 scenarios from Mike Lambo's solo wargaming book Battles Of Napoleonic Europe ... but with a twist.

This time, instead of using the maps and counters supplied in the book, I plan to refight the scenarios with 10mm model soldiers on a hex grid laid on top of one of my wargaming tables.

Lambo's maps use a grid that is 10 hexes wide and eight or nine hexes deep, as shown in the following image.

Map for the book's first scenario, in which the player commands Anglo-Portuguese forces advancing from the bottom of the map

My first task was to recreate the basic grid, and I have done this with textured hexes, a system known as Hexon II, from Nottinghamshire-based Kallistra.

The hexes measure 100mm (3.9in) across, and I chose ones coloured to give a grass-and-earth effect.

Here is my first order, straight out of the box and upside down, but showing how they come in groups of six

I got my order hopelessly wrong in that I ordered far too many sixers, and anyway could not make the required grid with them alone.

So I had to order some individual hexes to complete the exact grid, which I felt was worth it, although I could have easily put together enough sixers to make the grid and simply ruled that certain hexes were out of bounds.

The finished grid (the hexes are held together by out-of-sight clips) with Lambo's book alongside

To be continued

Midianite Camelry

I have painted my first batch of 10mm Midianite camelry from Newline Designs

Tart

HAVE just finished a great read by Peter Fleming, older brother of James Bond creator Ian, which I spotted in a branch of Oxfam for £2.25.

News From Tartary is his account of a seven-month journey from Peking, as China's capital was commonly known in 1935, to Kashmir in what was then the British Raj.

The 3,500-mile trip was conducted while a Times correspondent, and involved much desert traveling in tough and often tedious conditions.

Some of the tediousness comes through in the book, but mostly it is an engaging and revelatory read.

Travel classic

There is not a lot of military history per se, but there is quite a bit about the state of warfare between various Chinese factions, particularly the Nationalists, those paying lip service to the Nationalist cause, and those groups controlled or heavily influenced by Moscow.

More Chariots

I have painted (best viewed from a distance) my second batch of 10mm chariots from Old Glory

Hebrew Chariots

I HAVE painted my first batch of 10mm chariots from Old Glory as part of my biblical project.

Two-horse chariots with two-man crews

They are painted to be suitable for Davidic, Solomonic and later Hebrew armies, and for their contemporaries.

The chariots certainly have a less-lightweight appearance than the Egyptian ones I obtained from Magister Militum, but are much easier to put together, and of course styles varied between nations and over the centuries.

I do not like the crews, which are moulded in one piece, but I suspect they will look fine from a distance as part of an army (the same could be said of my painting skills). 

Slingshot Issue 353

THE July/August edition of the journal of the Society of Ancients is even more than usually interesting.

Slingshot  - great issue

Highlights for me include the first part of a series on a battle in AD 685 between Northumbrians and Picts, the playthrough of a War of the Roses scenario for the society's new ruleset Blood Red Roses, a little-known way to temporarily base figures with museum wax, and a review of intriguing new ruleset Age Of Penda.

North To Northumbria

AM visiting the Durham town of Darlington.

In the parish churchyard is a Boer War memorial, dedicated in 1905 by Earl Roberts, a winner of the Victoria Cross who later led the British army in South Africa, where his son died while winning a posthumous VC.

The gun's bayonet is missing - broken off sometime in the 1950s by children swinging on it

THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY 5,576 SUBSCRIBERS AS A TRIBUTE

TO THE MEMORY OF THE BRAVE MEN OF DARLINGTON WHO VOLUNTEERED

AND SERVED THE EMPIRE IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 1899 - 1902
There are 100 names on the memorial, of whom 11 died on service.
The church is dedicated to St Cuthbert, who was born in 634 in Dunbar, which was then part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, but is now part of Scotland.
He may have been a soldier before taking monastic orders, rising to become bishop of Lindisfarne in 684, dying three years later.
He seems to have led a particularly frugal existence, enjoying the life of a hermit or traveling preacher.

The church dates back to the early 1100s, but has been much-modified over the centuries, including by adding a spire in the 1300s

The sundial looks a modern addition

The chimney was a vent for Victorian boilers installed in church cellars

Great

AM making my annual visit to Olomouc, which was an important settlement - possibly the capital - of the Greater Moravian Empire in the late 800s and early 900s.

Its walls defied Mongols and Hungarians, but proved less successful at stopping Swedes and Prussians.

Much of the defences still exist, partly because the town's predominantly German-speaking population kept the walls to ensure the city's population did not become dominated by Slavs.

The following photos are all from a short section of the walls near Olomouc's botanical garden.

Big Disappointment

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S Atlas Of The Bible, contrary to my expectations, proved a huge let-down.

The pithy summaries of key biblical stories are OK, but the maps are next-to-useless, and in many cases downright inaccurate.

Instead of showing the lay of the land when the events took place, the maps show modern coastlines and routes of rivers, etc.

In other words, any modern atlas could have done as well, and probably would be better, as the detail on the National Geographic maps is pretty sparse. 

The magazine is also liberally illustrated with photos of old paintings, which give a completely misleading impression of what life was like in biblical times, eg depicting men in Renaissance armour and clothing. 

Basically I feel as though I have been tricked into buying a cheaply produced cut-and-paste job.

I shall certainly be much more wary about purchasing future National Geographic publications.