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De Latte's Positions. . .

General Phillipe de Latte's lines take shape early during the 2012 refight of Sittangbad that took place in the former Zum Stollenkeller. 

Here are a few cropped and brightened photographs that shows General de Latte's front lines and my own fairly early during the partial refight of Sittangbad, aka Neu Sittangbad, in early 2012.  I took the part of Stollen's General von Tschatschke, of course, and the part of Zichenau's evil, conniving, and tactically more astute General de Latte was played by the mysterious Mr. Horne in Australia (the man behind the Duchy of Alzheim, one of my painting, collecting, and blogging inspirations).  


De Latte's army outside Neu Sittangbad bears down on isolated Stollenian jaegers in village.


The figures pictured above include a slew of RSM95s plus some Revell Plastics, metal Spencer Smiths, a few by Garrison, plus a MiniFig or three, and a regiment of blue-coated infantry figures that were a shot-lived brand known as Huzzah! Miniatures.  These were marketed as 30mm "old school" at pretty reasonable prices, but, sadly, they never quite took off after initial promising releases.  I seem to recall that there was a serious family illness or something similar that interrupted the proprietor's efforts to establish his brand firmly within the marketplace (understandably so), and he simply disappeared after that.



The retreating Stollenians, scattered within and around Neu Sittangbad, await the coming onslaught.


At any rate, we conducted our game via email until new, rambunctious, and extremely naughty kittens on my end caused a bad case of Felinus Interruptus one night, and things had to be cleared up.  Sadly, that meant we were never able to fight the game to a natural conclusion, but I believe General de Latte gave me a pretty hard pounding up to that point.  Tabletop generalship does not seem to be one of my particular fortes.

 -- Stokes

General de Latte attacks!


 And here is a photo bonus, this time a picture from the conclusion of the Action at Picklehaubewicz, fought via e-mail between yours truly and Jonathan Broadus between the end of November 2008 and early January 2009.  Here, my defeated Colonel von Grundig quits the field and exists stage left (or is that stage right?) under the watchful eyes of  Major von Hirschbiegel's troops.


Initial Stollenian positions during the Sawmill Village refight, fought via email between Jeff Huddleson and myself, during late April and May 2009.

Comments

Scheck said…
That´s an impressing deployment with the endless ranks of infantry - marvelous!
The game will continue soon? Would be a joy!!
Peter
12:09 PM
MSFoy said…
Wow - now that is terrific - not only is it fun, and visually enjoyable, but you have also captured something very traditional and quite emotive. Your troops are obviously not "toy soldiers" in any derogatory sense, but there is an elegant whiff of ancient games and protocols about the whole scene.

From a nuts and bolts point of view, the basing was obviously not complete at this time, and seems to have several different styles. I am always impressed by the look of soldiers standing individually, without any bases at all - I could never play like this myself, since my OCD would waste most of the day in getting the lines straight, and my underlying clumsiness would waste most of the time which remained standing the beggars up again when they went down like dominoes. It looks amazing - the big flat green field is just as it should be - I can hear the toy trumpets!

I was wondering whether I could spot a "skinny" general, to be Latte, but haven't managed this yet.

My one slight regret about your blog in the past has been the relative lack of battle pictures. These are great - I can stand any amount of these, please!

Thanks for sharing - regards - Tony
2:58 AM
WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…
Thanks for the comments, men! I too prefer singly based figures, but as my tabletop armies have grown this has become less practical since time is always the enemy when it comes to moving hundreds of figures around the table. Almost everything has since been tacked down onto multiple bases which must still be painted in the same green as my tabletop. I use the dimensions laid out by the late Peter Gilder in his In the Grand Manner, but with officers, NCOs, musicians, and standard bearers still based separately. General de Latte is represented by an RSM95 mounted officer figure and is painted, more or less, as a French general of the period in a dark blue coat with red breeches, waistcoat, and facings. Eventually, he and his ADC Major di Biscotti are slated to be replaced by Minden figures which at the moment occupy one or another plastic tub sealed in a moving box at the rear of my bedroom closet.

Best Regards,

Stokes
10:40 AM
MSFoy said…
If the original "Charge!" book had somehow used your modern colour photographs, the history of wargaming might have worked out quite a bit differently! Why would we have ever done anything else...?

Cheers - Tony
2:35 PM
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