The Coming (Re-) Fight. . .

 

Young Master Paul writes his initial orders at the start of a game two or three years back.

The Young Master and I have been planning our coming game, which will be a larger affair than we usually attempt here in Stollen Centrale.  This time around, we will base our tabletop adventures on the Combat at Zinna, fought in 1759, but we have renamed it The Battle of Spargelzeit (Asparagus Season) to fit into our Grand Duchy of Stollen campaign area, which lies more or less to the northeast of Frederick's Prussia, somewhere in the vicinity of modern day Lithuania and Latvia.

The Young Master, to his credit, has been hankering after, "a really big battle" (his words) for some time, so how can I refuse?  

This one should do the trick.  Our own forces are not quite as extensive as history dictates, but we'll use what we have on hand and "bathtub" things a bit, in the fine Grantian tradition, to make it all work on the table.  The game will also will give us a chance to use and refine our developing rule set, A Tangled Mass.  Needless to say, we're looking forward to getting everything ready to go during the next month or so.

On a related note, the Jemima Fawr's Minature Wargames Blog provides additional details on the combat, blog owner Mark's own refight of it, plus a very useful map, on which we will base our tabletop set-up.  His recent efforts to paint and flag the units belonging to The Reichsarmee are after my own heart, and certainly set a new standard to which those of us with leanings toward the Holy Roman side of things can aspire.  Do make sure to visit the blog and have a look around if you are not already familiar with Mark's work.  It's a feast for the both the eyes and mind.  [Thank you again to Neil for correcting me!]

More immediately specific to the coming battle here in the Grand Duchy, I've got to get busy finishing that new company of generic jaegers AND create some small river/large creek sections to meander across the southern and southwestern parts of the 6'x9.' table.  A recent trip to my local big box craft store yielded the basic materials although I already had the paints, acrylic gloss medium, and scenic materials here at home, so the cash outlay was minimal.  

For the large creek sections, I'll use dimensions and a style similar to the various roads, fields, and mats that I have from the defunct Hotz Mats to give everything a fairly consistent look.  Since the creek lengths will hopefully turn out to be relatively flexible, I plan to give them a coat or two of artists' acrylic gloss medium once the basic brownish-green colors have been blended in and before I add some small clumps foliage along the edges tacked down with fabric glue.

So, considerable preparation and some terrain experimentation in store beforehand.  Time to stop blathering on about it, and get busy.  Still lot's to do to lay the, ahem, groundwork for the coming game planned for early to mid-August.

-- Stokes and Young Master Paul