 |
| The bucolic field of battle with roads in place, at the Young Master's insistence. |
The Young Master and I commanded two small forces which met around the village of Maddening just a few days ago (Sunday). . . For our purposes 24. July 1762.
Maddening is located in the Duchy of Schleiz, a fertile region nestled between, and long contested by our warring nations, The Grand Duchy of Stollen and The Electorate of Zichenau. As usual, my son commanded the Stollenian troops who look very like Prussians in their dark blue coats, while I took command of the Zichenauer advance guard, which, oddly, resemble Austrian and some Reichsarmee troops in white.
Young Paul's tabletop persona was, of course, the heroic Herr General Paul von Stollen, formerly in the Russian service and still clad in his dark green coat with decorations across the breast. And, as expected, my tabletop avatar was the dastardly and nefarious French mercenary-adventurer and veteran of the Seven Years War, General Phillipe de Latte, paramour to the conniving Princess Antonia III of Zichenau. De Latte was accompanied on the field that day by his faithful aide Major di Biscotti. The two go together like that strangest of American lunch concoctions, peanut butter and jelly.
Our mutual objective was to seize and control two of the three settlements at or near the contested crossroads near the center of the 9' x 6' table: Maddening Village, Hasenpfeffer Farm (in the distance) and Bretzel Farm (foreground) by the end of 10 turns. The captions beneath the photographs will provide more information as we go through the after action report.
My aging Sony Cybershot was behaving badly at the last minute just before we began the game Sunday afternoon, so I improvised with my iPhone. Usually, it takes pretty good pictures, but poor lighting put that idea to rest, so I've brightened everything before sharing it here. When enlarged, however, the results are, sadly, not great. Ah, well. C'est la guerre.
Do be sure to tune in again for more about our game during the next few days though. Oh, and by the way. Our A Tangled Mass rules seemed to work reasonably well. Which one might expected since they are really bits and pieces plagiarized, or "borrowed" from hobby greats like Featherstone, the Grants, Asquith, and others along with my own morale 'innovations'. . . If we can use that inflated term. But of that too, more anon.
-- Stokes and Young Master Paul
 |
| A close-up of Bretzel Farm, scratch-built about 2010 and based on a still extant Mennonite farm in the former East Prussia. |
 |
| Hasenpfeffer Farm, again based on old farm buildings that still stand somewhere in the former far east of Germany, now the Kaliningrad Region. |
 |
| The quiet Village of Maddening at table center. |
 |
| Herr General Paul von Stollen's force enters the table from the northwest. We rolled a simple D6 to determine where our respective advance guards would enter the table. His order of battle included a squadron of Bosniaken, the recently flagged Schaumburg-Lippe-Buekeburg Infantry, the 3rd Garrison Regiment, the Grand Duchess Sonja's Own Grenadiers, a company of jaegers (veterans of the famed Sittangbad refight at Partizan 2006 and painted by the talented John Preece), plus a two-gun battery of the Schluesselburg Artillery. |
 |
| The Dastardly General Phillipe de Latte's order of battle included The Flickenhoffer Fusiliers, a battalion of grenadiers, a company of Croats, a squadron of the Batthyanyi Dragoons, two Saxon guns and crew, and the Ernestine Sachsen Regiment bringing up the rear. Maddeningly (ahem), de Latte's forces entered from the southwest, which was to cause him considerable problems throughout the almost three-hour game. You know already how this will unfold, don't you? |
Comments