Battle of Altenrode

With any luck we'll be having another game of Muskets & Marshals in the Hinton Hut this week. This time the Duke will be sitting things out on the bench while his continental allies have a crack at the Ogre.

I asked ChatGPT to come up with a ficticious scenario and table layout for the game and this is what it produced:

The Battle of Altenrode, October 1813

In the weeks before the great struggle around Leipzig, Napoleon's armies were falling back through Saxony while the Austrian, Russian and Prussian armies advanced from several directions.

In this sector, the French had been ordered to hold the road running through Altenrode, Falkendorf and Grünwalde, delaying the Allied advance towards Leipzig. An Austrian force under Archduke Charles approached from the north-west, while Russian and Prussian troops under Barclay de Tolly advanced from the north-east.

Napoleon recognised the danger of allowing these two Allied forces to unite. He therefore ordered the French to attack aggressively before the Coalition armies could combine their strength. Napoleon himself took command of the French left wing, facing the Austrians, while Murat commanded the French right against the Russians and Prussians.

The coming battle would decide whether the Allies could unite their armies and continue their advance, or whether Napoleon could defeat them separately.

So with the hard work done by the AI I then decided on an order of battle and adapted the map for my 6' x 4' table as below:

Looking east along the French lines. Altenrode is left foreground with Falkendorf in the centre middle ground.

Looking in the same direction along the allied line. The Austrians in the foreground and the Russo-Prussians to their left in the distance.

I have deliberately kept the size of the armies quite small as we will have either 3 or 4 players so I don't want to overload any one player with too many units. A battle report will follow in due course.

Order of Battle

(the letters after each unit name show the troop classifications for Muskets & Marshals)

French Army – Left wing: Napoleon
1^st Old Guard Grenadiers A+

4^th Swiss B

8^th Poles B

85^th Ligne B

105^th Ligne B

10^th Legere A

Horse Grenadiers A+

1^st Cuirassiers A

6^th Chasseurs B

1 x Battery Guard FA

2 x Batteries Line FA

French Army – Right wing: Murat

Young Guard Voltigeurs A

25^th Ligne B

33^rd Ligne B

45^th Ligne B

57^th Ligne B

1^st Legere A

Empress Dragoons A+

8^th Cuirassiers A

5^th Lancers B

1 x Battery Guard HA

2 x Batteries Line FA

Allied Army – Left wing: Barclay de Tolly
Odesa Regiment B

Moscow Regiment B

Smolensk Regiment B

6^th Jagers B

Prussian Guard Grenadiers A

Pomeranian Musketeers B

West Prussian Fusiliers B

1^st Silesian Landwehr C

Astrakhan Cuirassiers A

Pavlograd Hussars B

Silesian Hussars B

2 x Batteries Russian FA

1 x British RHA Rocket Battery

Allied Army – Right wing: Archduke Charles
4th Hoch-Und Deutschmeister B

15th Szeckler Grenzers A

23rd Archduke Ferdinand B

32nd Esterhazy B

36th Kinsky B

51st Gabriel Spleny B

Vienna Volunteers C

Austrian Grenadiers A

Ferdinana Cuirassiers A

Toskana Dragoons A

1^st Uhlans B

1 x Battery HA

3 x Batteries FA

***Hut Update***

The Hinton Hut roof repair is finished...

Odesa Regiment and Hinton Hut Maintenance

Another unit turned out in record time. These are more Der Kriegspieler Napoleoniques recently sent to me by Don W. They only needed a tiny bit of TLC and rebasing to my house style hence their speedy appearance here.

The flag looks huge but that's just the camera angle. The figures are quite small when stood next to Hinton Hunt types but have a certain charm.

The figures are:

21 x DK56 LINE BN 1812-SHAKO, Receiving

1 x DK57 COMMAND GROUP - equivalent to:

1 x RN/11 Officer, charging

1 x RN/12 Colourbearer

1 x RN/13 Drummer

This gives you a better idea of the figure pose.

I should mention that the flag is Don's original work as all I did was touch up any worn paint and then give it two coats of gloss varnish.

What I find interesting is that DK produced a number of different charging type poses whereas Hinton Hunt generally only produced one.

Believe it or not the Hinton Hut is now seven years old. It seems to be standing up remarkably well to the Scottish weather with the exception that I've lost a few roofing felt tiles on three occasions. These gaps have been patched up but I thought it was time to properly replace the more exposed front roof covering.

After seven years and three major storms I've had to carry out a number of patch repairs but as you can see the roof was starting to look a bit sad.

Our house is on a slight hill at the end of a valley and when the wind comes from the northeast it whips up the valley and right against the front left corner of the cabin where it then huffs and puffs.

The leading edge takes the brunt of things but this was the only area with any trace of water damage. Fortunately this is mostly on the overhang and the timber is sound.

When I built the hut I didn't realise quite how exposed the location is so this time I am applying copious amounts of bitumen mastic to help keep the roofing felt tiles stuck down.

I just need to sort out the ridge now - hmm, didn't Napoleon say that once?

Ok El Nino - do your worst!

This week marks the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Flers Courcellete in 1916. If you haven't read my piece about my great uncle George take a look here.

Terrain for C&CN

You may remember that I acquired a hex cloth back in June that I could use for Commands & Colors Napoleonics games with the Hinton Hunts. C&CN and variations (noteably Tony's Ramekin rules) have been a staple of our little group over the last few years. Although, obviously, I like to play games with Muskets & Marshals, this is not always practical where a visiting General may only have a couple of hours or so available to play. C&CN is a good go-to with its short playing time and easy to remember rules.

The mat has 120mm hexes which work fine with my figure movement trays. What I lacked though was a suitable hex terrain system. Cutting hexes from MDF for hills by hand would be a chore too far for me but fortunately those nice people at Warbases (just down the road from us) do this neatly by laser and luckily 120mm hexes are the maximum size the have in their stock range.

I've glued three 3mm MDF hexes together to make some experimental hills. I tried this first time without any clamps which was silly as they turned out more than a little bit skew-whiff. Having purchased some mini-clamps my second attempt has been far better. For built-up areas I've painted 2mm MDF hexes in brown on which I can place a single 15mm building that can be easily removed when the hex is occupied by troops. I did briefly think about making some scratch built buildings that would allow placement of troops inside but this seems like a lot of effort and I'm happy with my solution.

I probably need to make another 10 or so hills and then possibly some river sections.

Smolensk Regiment

A bit of a departure for me, this unit is made up entirely of figures from the Der Kriegspieler Napoleoniques range (except for the officer). DK were contemporaries of Hinton Hunt being in production in the US through the 70s and 80s. I've mentioned before that many DK figures bear a striking resemblance to Hinton Hunt ones (my opinion, please don't sue me) but the Russian infantry figures appear to be original work.

DK figures tend to be a bit smaller than Hinton Hunt ones. In this case I have added some thin plasti-card under the bases to give them extra height.

The figures are:

22 x DK58 GRN BN 1812-Shako-Coat Charging (one converted to drummer)

1 x DK59 GRN BN 1812-Shako-Coat On Guard (converted to standard bearer)

1 x FN/11 French Officer in great-coat charging (with head swap)

The flag is another original from Revo.

These figures were originally in the collection of US gamer Don W. I have refurbished them rather than re-paint them although the conversions are my own work.

Muskets & Marshals

My Napoleonic Rules Muskets & Marshals have been revised and reformatted in what I hope is an easy to use style. Now available as a PDF download for a price "more than a cup of coffee but less than a coffee and a cake" (quote from Mrs S).

Link here: https://payhip.com/b/w6IHL

What you get is:

• A twenty-one page PDF document
• Including two-page Playsheet to enable play without constantly referring to the main rules
• Game order sheet to use to issue commands to your troops

What I get is:

• A sense of satisfaction having finished these rules after 15 years
• Praise from Mrs S for generating an extra income stream

I hope you enjoy them and if you have any queries regarding the rules please contact me via the email link on my Blog profile.

Life Guards Horse Regiment

You might just remember that back in the beginning of April I painted a test figure for a Russian Life Guards Horse Regiment. This unit then got set aside while I focused on the newly arrived Cuirassiers and then the Jagers. I've now put that right.

The figure is PN73 Prussian Garde du Corps (mounted) charging with a paint job conversion to represent the Russian Life Guards Horse Regiment. The only modification to the figure is the removal of the canteen slung above the scabbard. 

The trumpeter is converted from the same figure.

These are not original figures which you can see here clearly by their rather slim physique. Short rations I guess.

I have to say that I haven't particularly enjoyed painting these. I think the fact that they're not vintage castings coupled with the fact that they're not actually the proper Russian Guard figure is to blame. However, they will fill a gap in the OOB so that's good.

On a different subject - I've been experimenting with using ChatGPT to help me run a solo campaign with my Boer War figure collection. This has been quite fascinating so you may want to take a look (click here) even if colonial wargames isn't your thing as the same ideas could be applied to other periods.

6th Jagers and fighting Churchill

The Russian 6th Jagers are finished. The figures are about one third vintage castings and the rest are modern reproductions, all nice castings though. The standard bearer and drummer are conversions.

The firing figures are RN.15 Infantryman, firing.

The standard bearer is a conversion of RN.11 Officer, charging and the drummer is a conversion of RN.14 Infantryman, charging.

Here they are doing Jagery type manouevres.

Yesterday I braved the Edinburgh bypass for a War of the Spanish Succession game at Tony's with his excellent 20mm Les Higgins collection. I was in command of the Franco-Bavarians while Tony took on the persona of Lt. Gen Charles Churchill.

The sneaky Brits had built a lot of earthworks to hide in. I twice managed to get troops into this redoubt but each time was ejected at the point of a bayonet.

More earthworks on the British left flank this time occupied by Hessians.

A double 6 is not a throw you want to see if you're a general but it seems very unfair on the dog too. This is Tony's General Pickering in charge of the right-flank British Horse.

My troops are on the left of the table. I had lots of them but that led to some traffic jams that made manoeuvre (and retreats) difficult.

Tony didn't just have earthworks but also this huge Fortress. The mortars within fired to little effect thankfully.

The British and French lines clash in the centre. The battle here swayed to and fro but eventually went a bit too much fro for my liking as my VP lead slipped from 7:3 to 8:9. 

The final act was the Hessians unsportingly charging out of their earthworks to deliver the coup de grace to my right flank .

 

It was a really enjoyable game even if I did have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

It was a close run thing but a lot of fun.