Trouble in Golpen Und Burpen 3: Clash at Karlseck

After much maneuvering on the Gneisnau campaign maps as described earlier, and with the help of the Anglo-Irish brain trust (Messrs Kinch and Cribbs), the French army of Marshal LeGros caught the Austrians strung out at Karlseck.  Battle began at first light, and the situation is now, at 11am, as follows.

The French III Corps, on high ground, faces the Austrian I Korps which holds Karlseck.  At bottom left and right respectively, the French II and I Corps advance on the far side of the Schlurpen, a minor river.  Opposing them, three brigades of Austrian light cavalry.  On the far right, the Austrian II Korps has just begun to arrive on the battlefield.

 A series of vicious melees as the Austrians throw themselves at the French to buy time for the reinforcements.  Austrian hussars and French chevaux legeres clash.

While a second brigade of hussars catches French line not in square.  Both sides take some casualties but the French hold.

As the morning drags on, a French light horse brigade is wrecked and withdrawing, but an Austrian hussar brigade is mostly blown.   The French infantry seems determined to press forward.  Von Klenau, commanding I Korps, is moving his grenadier brigade to help his cavalary by time.

Von Smettana, the Austrian CinC, greets his reinforcements with relief.  The Austrians got a very fortunate reinforcement roll.  II Korps was outside the battle area when it was drawn on the Gneisnau campaign map, but had a chance to arrive, and it did!

Meanwhile, on the high ground facing Karlseck, III Corps is effectively pinned by two brigades of Austrian cuirassiers.   The left most French infantry have gone into square and the supporting light cavalry have scrambled up the hill and are hoping to turn and face in time to get the height advantage.   III Corps' grenadier brigade have crossed the bridge on the right and are hoping to attack with support from II Corps.

Von Klenau, holding Karlseck, is mightily tempted to cross the Schlurpen and attack while the French are pinned by the heavy horse, and may yet do so.  For now, his orders are to hold.

It appears that the French have their work cut out for them!

Cheers and blessings to your die rolls.

MP+

Wednesday Workbench: Foundry Freikorps 2

The World Series was riveting this year, well played ball and an amazing run by the Milwaukee Brewers, but it was also very distracting for my painting efforts.  However I did get a little more work done on this crew of Prussian Seven Years War freikorps, and was grateful for all the suggestions you gave me regarding the green tone of the uniforms.  I'm reasonably happy with the result. 

So many straps!  Next, the red on the turnbacks.

What's on your workbench?

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

 

Trouble in Golpen Und Burpen 2: Clash at Karlseck

Readers will recall from a recent post that I enlisted some friends from the Anglo-Irish brain trust to help me prepare a battle using the Scharnhorst campaign system from Sam Mustafa's Blucher.

Responding to the invasion of the Electorate of Golpen Und Burpen by Austria's General Von Smettana's Army of the Moldau, Napoleon has sent Marshal Ferdinand Le Gros (dubbed "the grossest of my marshals" by Napoleon) with a scratch force of three corps to check his advance.  Le Gros' forces responded to the invasion from the north and concentrated his troops in the SE, as so.

General von Smettana, seemingly unworried by the French doctrine of concentration of force, decides to push his advance Korps south to seize the town of Karlseck and its bridges over the Schlurpen, a minor river.   He entrusts the mission to his subordinate commander, Klenau, known as an able defensive general.   The rest of his force will follow, except for a cavalry column pushed out to the west.

LeGros rubs his hands in glee as his scouts report in that there are perhaps four infantry brigades holding Karlseck.   He orders his other corps to converge and attack.   In the Scharnhost system, a friendly column adjacent to an enemy column (not on a diagonal) can declare a battle, and the battlefield covers six squares of the campaign map with the attacking unit in the centre.

Once a battle is declared, the columns on the battlefield are frozen in place.   The defender has a turn to bring his unengaged columns onto the battlefield if there is room, provided that they do not pass through another friendly or hostile column.   Von Smettana brings his cavalry columns onto the battlefield, but the rest of his army is stuck north of the battlefield and will have to hope to enter as reinforcements once battle begins.

Using the campaign map as a guide, I now recreate it on the tabletop and prepare this guide for the French player.  Once I get the commanders' intentions from the players, I'll fight the battle myself, though if any major decision points arise, I may ask them for further guidance.  Clever viewers might notice my new church as part of the town of Karlseck.

Next post I'll share the orders of battle, and show the deployment and opening moves of the two armies.

Which one are you cheering for?

Cheers and blessings to your die rolls,

MP+

 

Wednesday Workbench: Some Freikorps and the Elusive Green

 Hi friends:

This week I've started a new batch of figures for my SYW project, a regiment of Von Kleist's Friekorps, an attractive uniform that has some interesting hussar elements.   I've been test painting some figures to get a shade of dark green that I'm happy with, as per this plate in Summerfield's Prussian Friekorps and Jager of the SYW from Ken Trotman Publishing.

As you can see, it's a very dark, almost blackish green.  The closest I have in my arsenal is an old bottle of Vallejo 896 Extra Dark Green, but the result isn't really dark enough to my mind.

I've tried hitting the figures with a Citadel green wash, but that hasn't really darkened it enough.

My idea before heading to bed was to try a dark/black wash over the Vallejo paint and see what happens, so I've done that and left a figure to dry, and we'll see what the morrow holds.  If you have any suggestions that don't involve me buying more paint, I'd be grateful.

In the meantime, blessings to your brushes and I hope good things are happening on your workbench!

MP+

Terrain Tuesday: A 6mm Church

I've been making a determined effort to go through the half-finished projects started before my move last winter, and am making good progress.  Here's a 6mm church for my wee Napoleonics figures.

The buildings are from STL files for an Austrian or Bavarian village, designed by a friend of this blog, Thomas Brandsetter.  You can find the link to get these files (for a very reasonable price) at Thomas' blog here.  The church is modelled on the famous church fought over at Aspern Essling.  I painted it grey to suggest solid stone, but a more accurate colour scheme would probably be off white or cream to suggest plaster over brick.  I've included a little house from Thomas' village set as the parsonage, and I added some scratch built walls made from balsa.  The trees came from a Woodlands Scenics model railroad set that I probably paid too much for.  The base is a 4" square piece of MDF from Warbases.  I like how Thomas has provided two possible superstructures for the steeple.  I chose the onion dome style because it's very evocative of eastern Europe.

The stand can serve as table dressing or could be a terrain objective that can be garrisoned and fought over.  Here two French battalions attempt to evict some resolute Austrian grenadiers.

I would happily recommend Thomas' STL file set, they are far cheaper than some and as you can see they look fine for small scale games.  These models were printed on my now defunct Elegoo resin printer, but I've since printed some on my FDM Bambu printer and they came out just fine.

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+
 

Foundry 28mm 18th Century Russian Pandurs

 Back in March I had the opportunity, thanks to my mate James, to pick up a pile of 18th century figures from Foundry at a reasonable price.   They are slowly making their way off the painting desk and being mustered into service.

I was pleased that the sale included these 12 Pandours to give my Russian army some scouting and skirmishing potential.   Here they are complete with their cute little boots.  With two musicians, they probably won't be able to sneak up on their foes, but at least they'll be entertained.

They're painted according to a Knotel plate depicting the 3rd Pandur Regiment from the Kronoskaf website.  The two pistol packing officers give them a slightly comic, piratical look, and as with most Foundry figures, they have a some individuality in head poses.  They're single based for kleine krieg games using Sharp Practice, where skirmish infantry are usually in six man groups.  Painted mostly using Foundry paints.

Scouting the woods for pesky Croats and Friekorps, or perhaps a delicious wild boar.

Cheers and thanks for looking.

Blessings to your brushes,  

MP+

Trouble In Golpen Und Burpen: A Napoleonic Game Using Sam Mustafa's Blucher and Scharnhorst

Hello friends:

I've been dusting off my 6mm Napoleonics collection, which is predominantly French and Austrians, and decided to revist Sam Mustafa's Blucher rules.

Sam's rules include an elegant little mini-game called Scharnhorst, a campaign system to give tabletop battles some flavour and context.   It works best with two players, as there is some fog of war built into it, so I recruited two of my friends from the Anglo-Irish Napoleonic Brain Trust.

This is Sam's Scharnhorst map of a generic slice of Southern Germany, which has cunningly been renamed as the Electorate of Golpen und Burpen.   The Elector, Hans Joachim von Smolhausen, has somehow managed to stay neutral until 180X, when the Austrians cast covetous eyes on it and it's thriving burlap sacking industry.  General Konrad von Smettana and his Army of the Moldau are tasked with capturing the Electorate.  Warned of these intentions, Marshal Ferdinand le Gros, dubbed by Napoleon "the grossest of the gross", is alerted to assemble his Army of the Southwest Elbe.   

In Blucher terms, both armies are in the 200 point range.  One is slightly larger than the other.  Before the game begins, both sides secretly choose how many of their cavalry brigades they will commit to reconaissance.   The side with the most brigades doing recon gets to go first and gets to choose which edge of the map they will enter from.   The side with the lower number of committed brigades goes second, and must enter from the opposite map edge.

The Austrians choose to commit more of their cavalry brigades than the French and so choose to enter from the north side of the map, in four columns.  Each column can have one to eight brigades, and the opposing player may not learn how many or which type until one of his columns is adjacent, in which case a player can scout or can declare a battle.

At the end of turn 1, the Austrians have entered the map from the north.  On turn 1 both columns have a movement allowance of three MPs, so there won't be any contact.  The Austrians seize the town of Niederheim and the village of Wunsberg.   Seeing their advance, Marshal le Gros takes the unusual step to bring his force, in three columns, all onto the SE corner of the map.   Looks like he might be hoping to concentrate all of his force against part of the Austrian force!

Nice counters, aren't they?  They're plastic chits from Litko, very sharp.

In another day or so I should hear back from both players as to the second turn moves and we may have a battle!  Stay tuned.

Cheers and blessings to your die rolls,

MP+