Leuthen 260th Anniversay Game

As the title suggests today is the anniversary of the Battle of Leuthen, 5 December 1757, one of Frederick the Great’s truly great victories over the Austrians.

Tomorrow I shall be hosting a game to refight this iconic battle. Yes, I’ve played it many times before but I always live in hope that the Prussians will manage to pull off a victory as convincingly as they did on the day, but to date they’ve only once got even close and usually get beaten!

I decided to do away with using roads as they were probably all covered in snow anyway. I think the table looks better for their absence. Not al the troops shown are actually on table at the start of the game, but it was easier to deploy them where they will come on rather than to have trays of troops littering every flat surface until it was time for them join the fray. How will it go? Who knows but I expect a hard fought and close game.

A slight extravagance? The banner.

When my offer of a game at this year's Battleground was accepted I started to plan how I could make the game stand out in some way. I enlisted the help of my resident graphic/website designer Katherine and asked her to design a banner for me.

I selected a range of photos from my library in an attempt to display the wide range of periods I have collections for and play. Katherine selected the best and 'did stuff' to them before they were uploaded onto the Vistaprint template she'd already designed. I have to say that when the finished banner arrived a couple of days later we were all completely amazed at the quality of the product, and more so at the standard of the photographic reproduction. For example, the eight inch tall Saxons at the top are 28mm figures but they have been reproduced so clearly that you might never know.

The banner wasn't cheap but I am well pleased with it and look forward to displaying it again when the new man cave is officially opened and at any future demonstration game I might be asked to put on. I know I am on the list for Battleground 2018, by which time we shall have moved to merely 10 minutes away from where it will be held.

On another note entirely, today is the 260th anniversary of the Battle of Leuthen, which the guys and I will be playing tomorrow.

A blast from the past.

I was having a bit of a clearout under my games table today. Actually I was supervising and Katherine was doing the heavy work. Our objective of tidying the man cave was achieved and lots of junk was thrown out or consigned to the eBay box. A surprise find was the above item which I am sure all wargames of a certain age will instantly recognise. Yes it is a matchbox chest used in the dim  and distant past to facilitate hidden movement in a campaign, each box representing a square on the campaign map. Players would secretly move tokens from box to box as their armies advanced and whenever a box was opened which had an enemy token a battle would be fought on the table. I remember several additional rules played over the years (and we are talking 1970s and early 80s here) allowing for random events like ambushed by partisans, mutiny, plague and so forth, and scouting rules allowing one to peek into a random.number of neighbouring boxes.

I have kept this relic and hope to put it to good use in the new man cave. 

New Man Cave update

The door and windows are on and the plastering will be finished tomorrow.  Electrics 1st fix done. I am very pleased and looking forward to filling this space to capacity once we move in the New Year.

Battleground show and the battle of Seneffe 1674.

We got home this afternoon after an excellent day in Stockton at the Battleground wargames show. Readers will know that this year I put a game on under the 'Carryings on up the Dale" banner rather than like in the past couple of years when  I put games on with Robbie of the Independent Wargames Group. The net result for the organisers was that they were guaranteed two excellent games among what was on the day a very strong range of demonstration and participation games, many of which (of the ones I actually got to see) were pretty good, imho anyway. It goes without saying that I could not have put the game on without the support of friends who volunteered to play on the day; Paul and James from Grimsby, John from Stockton, Douglas from Falkirk, and Tim and Barry from Mansfield. Of course without my wife Katherine's help in packing the car, driving and helping to set up on Friday evening as well producing my handouts and my 'banner' and feeding me copious quantities of mind altering drugs for my back we wouldn't even have got as far as the game. So all in all I think I am very fortunate to have such a supportive better half and a great bunch of mates, to whom I am all really, really extremely grateful.

Before I go into any detail about the outcome of the battle of Seneffe, what follows are some photos taken by Katherine of the games on display. I've not used all of the ones she took (over 100) for obvious reasons and some games have been omitted due to my camera being crap, poor light, photobombing and the like (Note, not my wife photography skills) which are better than mine at any rate. So fasten your seatbelt and place your seats in an upright position.

This and the following three pics are of Conrad Cairns' (Durham Wargames Group) 1848 Hungarian Revolution game in 42mm. Fantastic, especially the train!

Stafford and Districtput on a rather nice 10mm War of the Spanish Succession representation of the battle of Oudenard.

Redcar Ironbeards WW2, part 2. Stalin keeps going west!

Lancaster's 18thC siege. 

My mates Robbie, John and Neil of the Independent Wargames Group staged this exceptionally colourful ACW game. All the figures were from Robbie's enormous and gorgeously presented collect. It looked great. No idea who won though judging by Robbie's mutterings around midday the Confederates were taking a whipping. I may be wrong.

The other Durham game was also ACW; Port Republic from the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign. I've seen this before but it looked great.

I think this was Scarborough and a D-Day Pegasus Bridge game.

Generals and Kings and the Battle of the Brandwine 1777 

Tyneside Wargames Club 10mm Siege of Troy

Westerhope's Wellington in India game, a period that has always tempted me. The figures were gorgeous.

How did the elephant get into the courtyard and how will it out?

Border Reivers' battle of Quatre Bras.

Old Guard Wargames - 10mm ACW. 

Stafford & District's Battle of Oudenard in 10mm again.

And now on to our game, a representation of the Battle of Seneffe in 1674. French under the Great Conde. Dutch, Spanish and Imperial troops under William of Orange. The battle started badly for the Allies when with his very first throw of the dice Douglas managed a blunder, sending six of his battalions swerving off towards the French while still in march column. I seem to have 'lost' that picture but although the French took advantage of the mishap to batter several of the unfortunate units quite badly, the Allies soon recovered.

The French advancing on the Allied masses. The cavalry had originally been deployed in the centre but were trying to  get over to the left to support the Maison du Roi. The blundering Germans have just managed to recover from their uncontrolled advance towards the enemy and deployed into line.

The Spanish contingent holding the left of the Allied line around Seneffe.

More Spanish

The great man himself.

Spanish dragoons holding Seneffe.

The Allied centre. In front a brigade of troops from Hannover, Celle and Brunswick, supported by the Dutch Guards.

A massive cavalry fight developed on the Allied right. Initially successful in driving back the Imperial cuirassiers the  cavalry of the Maison du Roi were pushed back by the Dutch horseguard and lifeguards and more Dutch horse and eventually the cream of the French army melted away.

These sheep get everywhere.

French horse  trying to get over to their left to plug the gap left by the collapse of the Maison du Roi. The French artillery hardly moved during the game. I don't know why, but they would have made a difference had they been brought into action.

My windmill and a new built up area/coaching inn, occupied by Dutch dragoons. Their flanking fire contributed to the demise of the French left wing.

The Dutch were by now taking the battle to the French, who's line had been angled back at the church to cover their now exposed left.

The Gardes Francais, Gardes Suisse and Fusiliers du Roi advancing on the Allies.

Conde looks on as his plan starts to fall apart.

The team: James (Grimsby), Tim (Mansfield or thereabouts), John (Stockton), Barry (Mansfield), Me (up the Dale), Douglas (Falkirk) and Paul (Grimsby). Many thanks to you all, and safe journeys home.

The prime mover in all this, Mrs CarryingsonuptheDale, Katherine.

The game was a great success. Not for the French though who conceded defeat in the final minutes of the show. We received loads of positive feedback about the game along the lines of 'spectacular', 'enormous' colourful' and 'oh like in season 2 of Versailles?' I certainly enjoyed myself as did the guys who were largely strangers to each other (not Tim/Barry or father and son Paul/James). I didn't get much time to circulate around the traders and the other games. I did however catch up with lots of old friends and acquaintances and actually talked face to face with several Facebook buddies as well. Remarkably I could still stand up at the end of the day, even if I was at a bit of an angle, and as I write this my body is still reminding me how knackeringit is putting on a game at a show. More remarkably I didn't spend a penny (of the monetary definition anyway) as I only collected a pre-ordered bag of Savoyard mountain guns off Graham at Cran Tara and was given free a pack of dancing Gypsey girls of Stuart of Colonel Bills. Charles of Hellion also let me have a couple of books free of charge on the understanding that I would write a review of them both on Amazon and on this blog, of which more in another post after I've read them. 

Thanks again to 'the Team' who can all now say that they've been Carrying on up the Dale and got away with it.