Canadian History - So Not Boring

 

After my last post here on a wargame which turned out NOT to be the battle of Ridgeway but a post Ridgeway what if (I shouldn't fall asleep in O Groups), I received a charming email from a reader of this blog who told me that he too used to think Canadian history was rather dull.  However, the reader told me that he discovered some information on the Battle of the Plains of Abraham which made him rethink his position.  Apparently the French army was thinking more of the local ladies than the security of the position, which is always a fatal mistake.

To provide more evidence that the Plains of Abraham, like the rest of Canadian history, is not boring, I offer this cartoon from Kate Beaton.   I referred to Ms. Beaton in my last post, and she is to my mind the Official Muse of Canadian History, or at least one of its foremost practitioners.   In fact, I urge you all to go out and buy her book of cartoons, Hark A Vagrant!, from Amazon. 

Did you like the cartoon?  Good.  Then be a good chap and go buy her book.

Canadian History Is Not Boring! Comic Operaish Yes, At Times, But Not Boring

There is a school of thought that Canadian history is dull, a debate which is conveniently summarized here by Kate Beaton.  Consider the Battle of Ridgeway as an example of how Canadian history is actually quite exciting.  On the one hand, a bunch of Irish-Americans nationalist  yobbos, many of whom had not received their fill of the horrors of the American Civil War, and who wanted to stick it to John Bull by having a go at Canada (which is rather like getting revenge on your big, frightening neighbour by kicking his little dog tied up in his front yard).  On the other hand, you have the Canadian militia, made up of local farmers and University of Toronto students who got to dress up in Gilbert and Sullivan style uniforms, go fight in a battle, and get a cheesy monument erected in honour of those unfortunate enough to get shot.

You have to admit, that is a much more impressive way to go that choking on your vomit at a weekend frat kegger, but I digress.

Yesterday much of the brain trust and secret society behind SW Ontario's Hot Lead Gaming Convention assembled to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of one of our own, Postman Pete, or WO Garnham as some are unfortunate enough to have to call him.   Among the day's events was a 28mm battle of Ridgeway by Keith, who had brought an impressive assortment of Fenians, looking suspiciously like Perry Bros ACW infantry in greenish uniforms.  Opposing them were the Canadians, stout chaps in gorgeous red uniforms like this fine fellow.

I believe that the Canadian minis are a mix of Empress Victorians and Foundry from their Indian Mutiny range, and that some were painted by James Manto, but I will let others confirm that.  Suffice it to say, they looked good.

Here is the table provided by Postman Pete, with the Canadian side prepared to defend the stream, with their one gun guarding the bridge in the centre.  Our two better units are posted forward, while our less effective militia units are in reserve, but surely those Irish rebel scum won't get as far as the second line of fences!

The Fenian side of the table, showing the Fenian dispositions.  Spirited demonstrations by Rico (Fenian right, Cdn left) and by Patrick (Fenian left, our right) will try to pin the flanks while the main force under James and Brian will aim to pierce the centre.

 

 

Having introduced the armies, I should say that the rules we used were Black Powder (my first time playing them) with Keith as game master.

 

On the Canadian left, defenders shake out into skirmish and move forward to check Rico's push on our left flank.  The redcoats will soon rethink this policy and fall back on their supports.

 

Rico's gobshites crash into Postman Pete's militia and a fierce punch up along the fenceline begins.  This melee will rage for most of the battle.

On our right, Fenian Patrick watches in satisfaction as his yobbos sully Ontario's fair stream with their dirty brogues and tear into Mikey's militiamen, who had taken the worst of the musketry so far and were beginning to falter.  As the Cdn CinC, I soon had a lot to worry me.

My chief worry was in the centre, where Brian massed an entire battalion, but paused longer than he wished while he tried to get a good orders roll to sort them into a column of companies for the assault over the bridge.  This gave my gunners time to do some damage and disorder, but I had trouble getting my infantry supports to shift over behind them.  I was hoping I could withdraw the gun and plug the bridge with infantry.

Alas, it was not to be.  The Fenians charged, the gunners panicked and fired their double shotted grape high, and were cut down.  I did manage to get several companies of redcoats to plug the gap, but their die rolls weren't much better.  There was much Fenian mocking of the cool bearskins my lads were wearing, but as a gentleman soldier scholar knows, chicks love bearskins.

 

 

After a few pokes with  bayonets, the bearskins remember that they have a big varsity game tomorrow, and skedaddle.  The mass of the Fenians break through the centre, shrugging off Canadian counter attacks, while James pushes some of his boys over the stream against poor Mikey's last survivors from his fight downstream with Patrick.

 

On our right, Patrick's Fenians have overrun Mikey's lads and pitched into our second and last line of defence.  Barry's militiamen try to hold at the apple orchard but quickly decide that Ontario has more than enough fruit to share, and they fade away.  The pressure on Barry's unit prevents him from shifting enough forces to check James and Brian in the centre.

The final view of Fenian victory.  

The Canadians are rolled back everywhere and have done a fraction of the damage that was inflicted on them.   There will be much mourning among the belles of Toronto, and a lot of lads with excellent excuses for late term papers.  The cry among the Fenians was "On to Hamilton!", but in real life, after winning at Ridgeway but discovering that the Canadians did not welcome their visit, the Fenians decided enough was enough and went home before the British Army showed up. 

All told, a very pleasant game with some terrific looking figures and with a very unusual "Redcoats in the American Civil War" feel to it.  The rest of the day was spent in sillier but equally amusing pursuits.  So happy birthday Postman Pete and thanks for your hospitality.  

The World Is Flat! (And What I Did About It)

After my friend James came by last week and we fought the battle of St. Mikhail's, I had a look at the table afterwards at the table we used and was dismayed at how flat it was.  I even got a carpenter's level and the bubble was dead in the middle.  So flat!  St. Mikhail's must have been located somewhere in Saskatchewan!

Recently there was a thread on the Too Fat Lardies' Yahoo group about a chap who used a bunch of heavy blankets to add texture and contours to his wargaming table. This was a somewhat more substantial procedure than just draping a thin sheet of green cloth across some books.   So I started with some books.

 

I then took several old quilts and blankets and spread them over the table, trying not to smooth and straighten them too much - this image isn't super helpful but it conveys the general idea.

 

Once I had the quilt and blanket scrunched into some contours, I overlaid them with the sheet of fabric I usually start with and then started adding terrain features.   These led to some actual contours, such as folds in the ground and dips in this road leading to a village church.

Or, on the other side of the church, a field of wheat that actually follows the side of a hill, rather than looking as flat as the Canadian prairie (which is actually not as flat as one would think).

A small side road with sufficiently high banks and hedges to conceal a section of infantry moving tactically.

The table in its final form.  I am pleased that the final look isn't so deadly flat.  While the church in the centre still dominates, there is enough dead ground around it to make approaches possible for both attackers and reinforcements sent to its relief.  

So apologies to those of you for whom this is not especially novel or profound.  I am rather like the Irish novelist George Moore, of whom Oscar Wilde once quipped that he conducted his education in public.  To me at least this is a bit of a breakthrough in table design.  I have just started using this layout for a solitaire run through of the new Too Fat Lardies rules, Chain of Command, and I hope to have some results and thoughts to share with you by this weekend.

Two Faces From The (Near) Past

In my last post I bragged on my godson Brendan, and mentioned that his dad Kevin and I became friends during our American Civil War reenacting days.  I found this image today in my papers.  Kevin and I had this tintype taken at a reenactment sometime around 2000.  I'm the bear die standing on the right.  I recall getting a lot of stick from my relatives when I showed up for a reunion in this facial hair and they thought I had gone all Grizzly Adams.

The interesting thing about a tintype is that it takes forever (well, at least a minute or two) for the exposure to take, which explains why you don't see many period pictures of Cviil War chaps laughing and grinning.  I suspect for most of them, who might have had one or two images taken in their lives, it was a serious business getting one's image taken.

If you're good, I may post a picture of a Civil War chaplain gorging himself on pie.

 

With My Painting Padawan

 

One of the advantages of being back in eastern Canada is that I have the opportunity to pick up with old friends, including my buddy Kevin from my ACW reenacting days with the Columbia Rifles.   The CR was an authentically-minded group of living history buffs that Kevin and some friends founded in the late 1990s, and they were kind enough to take me in when I stupidly thought that lying on the cold ground wrapped only in a period correct natural fibre blanket would be fun.   Actually, it was kinda fun at the time.

Kevin and his lovely wife Maureen soon became fast friends and seven years ago they adopted a lovely chap from Guatemala whom they named Brendan.  I had the honour of becoming his godfather but hadn't seen him or his parents for the last five years.   When Kevin and Maureen invited us down to Buffalo, NY for the Labour Day weekend, I was told that Brendan really wanted to paint Zouaves with me.  How could I resist?

Here we are last Sunday.  Brendan quickly picked up some basic principles such as the importance of figure prep, a quick undercoat, block painting and using a palette for his paints.

 

 

Here are some of Brendan's Zouaves, painted an illustration from Dad's book of Don Troiani prints of the 5th New York at Gaines' Mill.

 

A desperate battle at Lego Farm!   As I was leaving, Brendan was mixing up some flesh tones for his fellows, and was going to try mixing a dark gray for his rebs.   I expect great things of young Brendan and hope to show off more of his work here in the future.

Unpacking and Repairing

Since the move at the beginning of the month, I've had a chance to inspect my wargaming kit and I'm pleased that my figures came through, if not unscathed, then lightly scathed. The worst of it, and this always seems to be the case, was flags and banners. A quick trip to the hardware store for a fresh bottle of superglue, and work begins. With this command stand from an ACW Texas regiment, Foundry figures, originally painted about ten years ago, I noticed some painting errors. I never painted the tension straps on the drum, and there was some basing slop on the drummer's gray uniform. So that got all fixed, and the flagpole touched up. Now they're ready to take on the bluebellies.

< Next up in the repairs queue is a Dixon casting of General Hood (the intact version, before he had various bits shot off) and his faithful colour sergeant, a Foundry figure. The banner bearer had a lot of old glue in his hand that needed to be removed with a pin vise and a knife, and then his gloves needed to be repainted and treated with a wash. Now he's ready for his banner so he can follow Sam Hood into the storm of bullets.

Lots more command stands to be redone, but this is a start.

The Sack and Cleansing of St. Mikhail's: A Maurice After Action Report

My mate James dropped by last Wednesday to christen the Mad Padre's Wargames Chapel. We both have an interest in Sam Mustafa's Seven Years War rules, Maurice, and since I just happened to acquire a copy of the rules and spiffy cards, we broke out my 28mm Russian and Turks and gave them a go. A simple set up, but I have a thing about putting churches on my tabletop, so this battle would centre on my fine Faller church model, St. Mikhail's, which happened to be in the path of a Turkish raiding force.

Here James surveys his Russian army, drawn up to defend the borders against the Ottoman hordes.

My Turks in array of battle. Crap light cavalry on the flanks, my jannissaries and spahi heavy cavalry in the centre, with the infamous love slaves in the rear, as a sort of disco version of the Imperial Guard. I only had two guns against the might of the Russian artillery, but felt that elan and sharp pointy things could prevail.

<

The tabletop:

Stanley the Cat auditions for the role of Russian sub-commander, though sadly, his attention span wasn't quite up to the challenge. A helpful chap while he lasted, though.

James advances his pandours and five regiments of regulars as one force. James quickly showed that he grasped the idea of combining and maneuvering multiple units in one force, a force in Maurice being defined as homogeneous (all foot or cavalry, all regular or irregular - we opted to count the pandours as regulars for this game.

I took the opposite tack (which proved to be disastrously wrong) and deployed most of my units individually rather than as forces. Here a unit of my crap light cavalry on my right moves forward to lurk in a copse of trees, hoping to pounce on some unwary Russians.

I try to grasp this Force thing. Two of my crap irregular infantry units make a rush for St. Mikhail's, with visions of gold chalices and loose nuns in their sordd heads.

James combines two of his guns on his right and very unkindly begins pounding my irregulars as they try to go to church.

Too late, the Turks break into St. Mikhail's and begin looting. The church is soon in flames.

Emboldened by my church ransacking, and hoping to stop James' advancing infantry from breaking up the party in the nave, my crap cavalry rush out of their woods and fall on one of the Russian regiments. However, as we discovered, this is Maurice, and in Maurice, infantry are pretty robust when hit from the front by cavalry. In fact, Sam M even has a little paragraph in his rules, saying that "This is not Napoleonic cavalry; it does not have much chance of breaking a line of regular infantry from the front". I didn't read that paragraph in advance, and so my horsemen were treated rather roughly by the Czar's lads.

With my scurvy horse cleared out of the way, the battle for the church now began in earnest. The Russian force, a whole brigade, surged forward, while my lads threw candlesticks and burning nuns down on them. At this point, James and I began to appreciate one of the nuances of Maurice, the Volley phase. Once units are in either small arms or cannister range, the phasing player has the option to declare a volley phase, which given that I was outnumbered by three regular units in line against two irregulars, gave James the advantage. I soon realized that in my turn I had best not declare a volley phase, hopefully forcing James to go in with the bayonet. This tactic worked for a time, as using the Rally Order and, once, a lucky card, was able to rally my church ransackers several times when they were almost on the point of disintegrating at 4+ disruptions (Maurice uses disruption levels rather than figures removed as casualties to measure a unit's cohesiveness and closeness to breaking).

My force of three jannisary regiments moves forward to the relief of their unruly comrades in the church, taking stick from the Russian guns as they do. Sadly, it will be too little, too late.

Borrowing a tactic from Dino de Laurentis' film Waterloo, we hired a helicopter to record the final cinematic units, as James' elite grenadiers and two of his regular units charge into the burning church, evicting the sacreligious heathen, and extinguishing nuns and icons. Losing two more of my units took me to the breaking point for my army, so the battle went to James and Mother Russia.

So that was our forst head to head game of Maurice and I have to say that we were both quite impressed. The use of cards to interrupt your opponent's plans and to generally annoy him is entertaining but doesn't feel too gamey. At the heart of the game is good linear tactics, and victory goes to the player who can maximise the effectiveness of his units by grouping them into several powerful forces, rather than scattering them about the table as I did. I also learned again what a fragile army the Turks can be. I need to paint more jannisaries and artillery to give them a stronger regular core to allow them the chance of an army morale similar to the Russians (starting morale is based mostly on numbers of guns and regular horse and foot units). To be fair, we just dumped a lot of figures on the table. It would have been more interesting for the Turks we purchased units from a set number of points. We will definitely Maurice it up again soon, and try some of the advanced rules. Highly recommended.