Foragers’ Lament – A SP2 Game

I played my second game of Sharp Practice with the new 1809 forces against K. She took command of the Austrians, who were intent on disturbing some French Légères improving their supply situation.

The French had a forager wagon in the center of the village. Each time the Tiffin Card was drawn, one D6 would be rolled. On a total sum of 30, the wagon could start moving towards the French Primary Deployment Point. The wagon also served as the French Secondary Deployment Point. If the Austrians captured the wagon, they would win the game. If the French brought it off the table, victory would be theirs.

The table.

The Austrians deployed in force, with the skirmishers and Jäger advancing through the woods while the massed line infantry slowly marched forward in the road.

Commanding the French, I deployed skirmishers in the gardens and a small column marched out to meet the enemy. The village did not offer much space to deploy a line and I knew I had to play for time, so I decided on an aggressive defense.

At the same time, I deployed my largest formation from my Primary Deployment point. My plan was to bring them around the village on my left flank and outflank the attacking Austrians.

My gallant small advance guard formed line in front of the village and tried to slow down the mass of whitecoats.

Confronted by this mass, my first line of skirmishers fell back. This was perhaps not the best decision, as you can see a column of Austrians advancing in the distance on my far right flank. They were very slow and I had another group of skirmishers behind a fence in front of them, so I was not too worried.

Although the main Austrian line took severe punishment, my advance guard came under a withering fire from not only the regulars, but also some very nimble Jäger hiding in the bush. Gradually, they lost nerve and fell back.

Just at the right time, my flanking force arrived and smartly formed line. I quickly withdrew the groups of the shattered advance guard into the courtyard of the first farm building.

However, the Austrian column on my right flank suddenly rushed forward. I decided to hold my ground with my skirmishers – they were loaded, behind a fence and Light Infantry. Alas, this arrogance was to be punished! The Austrian bayonets made short work of my skirmishers, knocking out their leader and routing the rest. In just an instant, my right flank had broken down completely!

Fortunately, my foragers finally had finished their work and loaded the wagon with all kind of goods, Off they drove, when the driver casually turned his head to his left… Zut alors!

The Austrians rushed forward and caught the wagon in the nick of time!

The game was over! A win for the Austrians and their gallant commander K.

This was an excellent game, dramatic, fun and very close. We both really like that napoleonic SP provides a different experience than the ACW version, although rules-wise, the differences are subtle. But the generally shorter weapon ranges, the different terrain and the colourful uniforms all contribute to making this feel quite different. Also, after playing a series of games remotely, it was great to play once again face-to-face.

Hopefully, there is more to come. In any case, I’m very motivated to paint more figures. I’ve almost finished French Ligne, after which I will paint Austrian Grenzers, who should provide a very different experience from the sluggish Austrian regulars.

State of the 1809 Project

Two days ago, I finished painting two Sharp Practice forces for my 1809 project. This means I’ve painted 120 figures in six weeks, which is very fast for me. Ok, the figures are no works of art, but I wanted to get them on the table to play a game on my birthday. Well, I managed to finish them three weeks earlier!

Fortunately, Sigur had time for a remote game and joined me on Discord for a straight-forward encounter scenario. I had set up a table to try out my new fields and decided to use it for the game, dicing for the positions of the Deployment Points as indicated in the SP rulebook.

This is where we ended up:

The French DP was pretty much in the middle of the table, while the Austrian one was near the road and the bulding on the other side. The French force was light infantry, while the Austrians fielded a Hungarian regiment with one group of Wiener Freiwillige Jäger.

The game went well, at least for Sigur, who played the French. He at first out-skirmished me, very early driving off my Jäger with a couple of volleys by his skirmishers and keeping my right flank occupied with his second group of skirmishers. I merrily chased them through the woods, which tied down a large part of my force. He meanwhile had formed a large line which moved forward quicker than I thought, taking my main force on my left flank under fire.

The long French line.

I knew I could not stand this for long, and when my main leader was killed by a musket ball, I conceded. My force morale was at 3, while Sigur’s was still at 9.

It was a fun game, even if I’ve been thorougly out-generaled. Sigur managed to achieve a local superiority by tying down my right flank with his pesky skirmishers and made the most of it.

The situation at the end.

Unfortunately, my mobile camera, which provided the overview of the table, produced a pretty crappy video feed – maybe it was the light, or some other problem? So I’ve no images of the game itself. I have to work on that problem – when I saw how crappy the video feed was I had a really bad conscience about making Sigur play under such circumstances. So a big thanks to him for indulging me and giving me an opportunity to play with my new figures!

1809 Terrain 1 – Fields

My 15mm terrain collection is by now heavily geared towards the ACW. It will surprise no one that the landscape of Austria in the 1800s looked very different from the North American landscape around 1860. I did a quick research to find out how it differed from today’s Austrian landscape. Interestingly, it seems there were less hedgerows and less woods. Most of the land was of course used for agricultural purposes, the by far largest parts making up farmland. As three-field crop rotation was practiced, some fields would always lay fallow. Pastures were fewer, as livestock grazed on common land, where all the cattle of a village was driven by a herdsman in the morning and returned to their owners in the evening.

In contrast to Northern America, fields were not enclosed by fences. Fences were, however, used to enclose pastures and sometimes orchards.

The great birdseye map by Franz Xaver Schweickhardt, albeit drawn a bit later, offers a good glimpse at how the landscape looked at the time of the napoleonic wars (it’s accessible here)

This section shows the area around Parbasdorf, a village that was contested during the Battle of Wagram. The details are very neat and will be a great guide for setting up a gaming table.

So, from everything it is obvious that I need a lot of fields. I might even make a new mat with fields built in, but for the moment, I wanted to have something modular. I have some rather small ploughed fields from my medieval project, which I built out of corrugated cardboard. This time, I wanted to use cloth with acrylic paste so as to have somewhat flexible elements which can be used to recreate a more rolling landscape.

Now the 1809 campaign was fought during spring and summer, so most field would have standing crops. However, crops are rather difficult for wargaming purposes – you either have to make them removable, or you put the figures right on top of them, having them hover over the crops. I will use parts of a door mat for wheatfields, but for ease of play, most of my fields will only feature a hint of crops.

The basis for my fields was an old linen sheet. I drew the shapes with a marker, trying to make the fields modular and fit together in different ways.

I then mixed white sealing acrylic (because that’s what I had at hand) with acrylic paint and sand. Incidentally, on the acrylic cartridge it said it had expired in 2016, but I used it nonethless and had no problems. I applied the paste to the sheet with a spatula, then used a comb to create the furrows. I also sprinkled offcuts from the door mat on two fields so as to make it look like it had recently been harvested.

After cutting the fields out, I touched them up and dry brushed them. I also sparingly applied some static grass on the borders. Here’s my first attempt to create a landscape using the new fields (and some old ones):

They look ok, I guess. Because the linen sheet was thin and I also applied the acrylic thinner than I did before, the actually lie pretty flat on the table. They also accommodate better to a hilly landscape than I’d thought. All in all, I’m quite happy with them.

1809 – A New Project

For the last four years, my historical gaming, painting and research almost exclusivley focused on the America Civil War. However, already last year I noticed a certain fatigue, which was amplified by unpleasant developments in the US, culminating in the attempted coup. How nice would it be, I thought, to do a historical project which has no immediate connections to current politics?

My mates Sigur and Virago, as well as some other local wargamers, had some time ago started a Sharp Practice project set in 1809 and concentrating on the uprisings in the Tyrol. Because it’s in 28mm and it seemed to stagnate anyway, I was very reluctant to join in. However, the period seems to have been stuck in the back of my mind, as a couple of weeks ago, I suddenly decided to do some more research. And what I found immediately fascinated me! Rather spontaneously, I decided that this would be my next project.

As always, I will use Sharp Practice and collect both sides in 15mm. I’ve ordered a bunch of figures from AB Figures via their distributor in the UK, eureka.uk. As I ordered them in January, I had to wait a long time for the parcel to arrive and then had to pay import taxes. Welcome to the world of Brexit! Another bunch of figures came from Campaign Game Miniatures, which is located in Spain, so no fees there. Additionally, small stuff for Deployment Points came from Stonewall Figures.

While I waited for the figures to arrive, I build a house and some small scatter terrain. I have a big terrain collection, but much of it is modeled for the ACW and the Central European landscape of the 1800s was very different from the North American one. I find it important to have scenery which makes clear that, as the saying goes, we are not in Kansas anymore, so I plan to make more stuff in the near future. The 3D printer came in very handy, I printed a lot of fences and other small stuff.

My initial forces will be based on the skirmishes around Vienna. For the time being, I will leave out the Tyrol and concentrate on my immediate neighborhood. After we had to cancel our trip to Gettysburg last year, I kind of like the idea of going to a battle field by subway! On the Austrian side, I’ve started painting up figures for Infanterieregiment 39 (Duka), which defended the Lobau island against French troops from Molitor’s division. Painting napoleonic figures is actually a lot of fun after years of painting ACW!

IR 39 (Duka)

French Voltigeurs.

I’ve also built two Deployment Points, as this is always fun.

The Austrian Deployment Point features a Hussar from the Stipsicz Hussars and a sceptical looking woman. Incidentally, the fences, the rustic toilet in the background and the table with benches came out of the 3D printer (the food was modeled on with green stuff).

The French Deployment Point features a straggler enthusiastically greeting a Vivandière. The wayside cross was also 3d printed.

Last but not least, I’ve also bought a couple of books and I’ve started on the first volume of John Gill’s 1809 trilogy, which promises to be an excellent read and a great ressource. As the ability to do research is one of the key prerequisites to get hooked on a project for me, I was very happy to discover that many sources are available online, either via google books, archive.org or Gallica, the French National Library’s excellent digital repository.

I’m really enjoying myself with this new project and I’m already looking forward to having a first game. Maybe when I’m finished painting, it will even be possible to play again with my mates…