Mid-18th Century Update - Bavaria

BAVARIA's troops are unlikely to be much of a threat in themselves but could form a useful auxiliary force for their long-time ally France.


Small but colourful

In front are 9pdr and 6pdr guns, two battalions of Kurprinz foot and a half-battalion of Kurprinz grenadiers. The horse are two squadrons of Hohenzollern dragoons and one of von Gschray hussars.

Mid-18th Century Update - Britain-Hanover

THE combined forces of Britain and Hanover - yes, I know it is Hannover in German, or even Hannober - do not match in number those of the main European powers, but their commander King George II will be expecting help from Austria.

Two-thirds of the Pragmatic Army?

Behind three 9pdr guns are (left to right) battalions of Royal Foot, von Klinkowström and von Zastrow. The battalions behind them are Royal-Buffs grenadiers, The Buffs and 5th Marines.
George II is between the foot and the horse, which consist of The Green horse, King's Own horse, Royal Horse Guards, von Aldeleben dragoons and Queen's Own dragoons.
In all, the British-Hanoverians have six battalions of foot, three squadrons of heavy horse, two squadrons of dragoons, two guns and a general.

Mid-18th Century Update - France

I HAVE blogged before that my French forces were complete, only to find myself a few weeks later increasing their strength.
But I do think my current set-up will last for some little time … I hope.

French arms at the ready

At the front are three 8pdr guns and Chasseurs de Fischer.
Behind them (left to right) are battalions of Navarre, Picardie, Champagne, Touraine and Poitou foot.
The remaining five battalions are Alsace, Wittmer, Grenadiers de France, Piemont and Normandie.
The first row of horse are Mestre de Camp Général dragoons, Gendarmes de la Garde, La Reine Cavalerie, Languedoc dragoons, Bretagne Cavalerie, Cuirassiers du Roi, Colonel Général Cavalerie and Bercheny hussars.
The back row has Orléans dragoons, Beaufremont dragoons, five generals (Noailles, Soubise, Broglie, Saxe and Gramont), Dragons du Roi and Royal-Cravate Cavalerie.
In all, the French have 10 battalions of foot, one unit of light infantry, six squadrons of heavy horse, five squadrons of dragoons, one squadron of hussars, three guns and five generals.

Mid-18th Century Update - Austria

Here are my Austrian forces

Front row (left to right) are battalions of Baden-Baden and Prinz von Sachsen-Hildburghausen foot, a 12pdr gun, a howitzer, Grenzer, a battalion of Prié-Turinetti foot and a half-battalion of Deutschmeister grenadiers.
In the second row are two battalions of von Lothringen foot, a combined battalion of Lothringen-Los Rios grenadiers, and battalions of Los Rios and Deutschmeister foot.
The third row has Hohen-Ems kürassiere, Liechtenstein dragoons, two squadrons of Modena kürassiere supported by a further half-squadron, Csáky de Keresztszegh hussars (temporarily missing their commander) and Eugen von Savoy dragoons.
At the rear are Nagy-Károly hussars, von Cordova kürassiere, Sachsen-Gotha dragoons, Fürst Batthyányi dragoons and four generals: von Kornberg, von Neipperg, Prinz Karl von Lothringen (aka Prince Charles of Lorraine) and Fürst von Lobkowitz.
In all, the Austrians have 8.5 battalions of foot, one unit of light infantry, four squadrons of kürassiere, four squadrons of dragoons, two squadrons of hussars, a gun, a howitzer and four generals.

Mid-18th Century Update - Prussia

I HAVE been gradually expanding my collection of mid-18th century armies.

Frederick the Great and his Prussians in five rows

At the front (left-to-right) are a combined battalion of Glasenapp-Lehwaldt grenadiers, three 9pdr guns, von Leps grenadiers and Jäger von Noble.
The second row has single battalions of von Grävenitz and von Röder foot and, to the right, two battalions of von Glasenapp foot.
The third row has von Lehwaldt, von Leps and Markgraf von Brandenburg-Schwedt foot.
In the fourth row are King's hussars, Garde du Corps (kürassiere), Markgraf von Bayreuth dragoons, von Platen dragoons, Markgraf von Brandenburg-Schwedt kürassiere, Red hussars, von Buddenbrock kürassiere and Porzellan dragoons.
At the rear, either side of Frederick the Great, are the yellow-coated Prinz von Preussen kürassiere and the blue-coated Württemberg dragoons.
In all, the Prussians have one general, 8.5 battalions of foot, one unit of jäger, four squadrons of kürassiere, four squadrons of dragoons, two squadrons of hussars and three guns.

Review: Table Top Battles - Grid Wargaming With Miniatures

THIS is officially the second edition of a set of rules that first came out in 2004 as Table Top Armies, but was republished with amendments as Table Top Battles in 2007.
Although it has only 58 pages of A4 paper within flexi covers, the booklet, which I got for £15-plus-postage from Caliver Books, has much in it despite using fairly large print.
Photos accompanying the text are excellent, showing just how attractive miniatures can look on a surface of gridded squares.
Quite a bit of thought seems to have gone into designing the cover and, naturally, the rules, which generically cover ancients through horse-and-musket with many supplements, including ones for naval warfare, air combat, fantasy and solo gaming.

Well-designed cover

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the wording of the rules, which contains some really appalling and baffling English.
It starts with the Forward (sic): "Table Top Battles has sold around the world albeit in small numbers and has had a good reaction from the Public when staging Participation games. Admission granted by the Newbury And Reading Wargames Association at their annual warfare event named Warfare."
Again: "After Table Top Battles appeared, other rule sets based on the square grid have been published. Written by some big names in the war game hobby industry."
This carelessness with basic English is perhaps not of great importance in a foreword, but it creates doubt in the rules themselves.
For example, page 18 covers "Hand to Hand Combat (Using a 12 sided die)".
Before getting to the combat mechanics, we are told: "(b) Some types of stands have a chance to avoid combat."
The stands are listed, and then comes: "(c) Throw a die for the stand trying to avoid combat. The score must be a '4' or more. If this is attained the stand can be moved back 1 square minimum, 4 square maximum, facing the enemy."
Apart from the poor grammar, the question arises: do the authors, Michael and Joyce Smith, mean a 4 on a 12-sided or six-sided die? The former gives a 75% chance of success, the latter a 50% chance. Perhaps the answer is obvious to you; it isn't to me.
Issues like this might have been cleared up by including what every set of rules should have, in my opinion: a detailed play-through of a battle.
Enough criticism; what do I like about Table Top Battles?
As I have already stated, the booklet is generally well-presented and a lot of eventualities are covered in the rules.
These are not, and do not pretend to be, suitable for tournaments at wargame conventions - there are too many possible bones of contention and the rules are not period-specific enough for most tastes.
What they are very much suitable for, as I hoped when buying, is simple battles that emphasise the toy-soldier aspect of the hobby rather than model-soldier realism.
The rules could certainly be used for refighting famous battles from history. Indeed it is quite possible I will be using some of the Smiths' ideas in an upcoming project I have for refighting the Franco-Prussian War in 54mm-scale.
The great advantage of using a gridded table-top is it almost completely eliminates one of the biggest time consumers in wargaming - measuring movement and firing distances.
The Smiths recommend using a grid of 16x12 2in squares. That is a total of 192 squares, which may sound a lot but only requires a table 3ft by 2ft 6in.
You would not need to rebase figures, provided they are on bases which fit inside the squares, eg the popular base-width of 40mm would be more-or-less ideal.
To sum up: despite its easily avoidable faults, I regard Table Top Battles as a pleasing addition to my wargaming library.

Review: The Portable Napoleonic Wargame

THE Portable Napoleonic Wargame is the third in a series of Portable Wargame books by veteran wargamer Bob Cordery.
I have the previous two books, The Portable Wargame and Developing The Portable Wargame, and have gone through the latest offering twice.
I bought it direct from the publisher, Lulu, in paperback format for £10.98, which includes £2.99 shipping.

Attractive cover

The book has some 170 pages and contains FOUR sets of rules, although one set is more of historic interest, being a modification of Joseph Morschauser III's rules from his pioneering 1962 book How To Play War Games In Miniature.
Morschauser fought his battles on a gridded table-top using figures and scenery that emphasised the toy aspect of the hobby.
Cordery follows very much in this tradition, although he has greatly developed the concept, adding layers of realism without overly complicating what are genuinely quickplay rules.
The great advantage of using a grid is it massively speeds movement and firing calculations. The price for this is a reduction in flexibility, and the obtrusiveness of the grid markings.
Cordery gets around the latter problem to a large extent by using hexagonal terrain produced by Nottinghamshire-based Kallistra. The terrain looks fabulous and, while the hexagonal lines are clear, they are not so "in your face" as you might expect.
Hex terrain works really well for 20th-century and later wargames, but I am a lot less keen on it for games set in earlier times when straight lines were usually such an important feature of how armies formed. A square grid, as used by Morschauser, works better, in my view.
Cordery goes into some depth on the pros and cons of hexes and squares in his original The Portable Wargame book. He does not repeat that discussion but you can get a clear picture of the issues by studying the three battles reported in great detail in The Portable Napoleonic Wargame.
Why three battles? Well, in addition to the modified Morschauser rules, Cordery includes three sets of his rules to cover Brigade, Division and Big Battle engagements. The differences between the three sets are not mere tinkering but reflect the very real differences in the scales depicted.
Each set comes with its own battle report - Division on a squares battlefield, the other two on hexes. The battles include numerous black-and-white photos and a complete turn-by-turn account of what happened.
These reports get repetitive at times, especially as the language used is somewhat long-winded, eg there are far too many sentences like: "The 2nd US Light Dragoons rolled a D6 to resolve what happened and a D6 die roll score of 4 meant that the unit lost a further 1SP [strength point]."
This could easily be reduced to: "The 2nd US Light Dragoons rolled a 4 to resolve what happened, losing a further SP."
Cordery is also addicted to footnotes. The book has 178 of these, all of which could have been incorporated into the text without any interruption to the flow of the narrative.
But to an extent these criticisms could be seen as nit-picking as there is so much to commend.
Even if you are not particularly interested in the Napoleonic period you might find the book worthwhile just for its appendix on two command-and-control systems using playing cards. These are in a way stripped-down versions of Bob Jones' famous - infamous to some people - Piquet family of rules.
Cordery's original playing-card system was detailed in The Portable Wargame. I used it in my refights of the Battle of Chotusitz http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-battle-of-chotusitz.html and the Battle of Sahay http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-battle-of-sahay.html with mixed results.

Looking from behind the French lines at the Battle of Sahay

He now calls this The Random Method and has added a similar, but much less random, Turn-By-Turn Method, which he uses in the book for his Division battle. It seems to work well for engagements using a small number of units, but then so does the system of orders he adds to his Big Battle rules.
None of the three sets of rules is meant to be sacrosanct, and I can well imagine a user wanting to add flavouring, one way being by adding so-called national characteristics (for example, the rules make no difference between the musketry of a two-deep British line and a three-deep French one).
Will there be more Portable Wargame books? I certainly hope so, and the obvious next step would be The Portable Ancient Wargame.
If so, I hope Cordery takes a leaf out of Neil Thomas's marvellous Ancient & Medieval Wargaming book by showing how Portable Wargame rules can be used to refight historical battles.
But that is for the future - for now I heartily recommend The Portable Napoleonic Wargame and feel sure it will make for pleasant browsing for many years to come.