Little things

As grandma used to say “please little minds”.  I’m not going to argue with her, after all it would be pointless she has been dead since the 1970’s!  Oh and the fact that in my case she was right on the money.

The latest little thing to please my little mind is this it’s a nail varnish rack but it does an excellent job of holding my paints.  I like the riser system as it lets me see the actual colour rather than having to look at the label I wrote on the bottle lids.  Result ... a happy Elenderil  and all for under £15

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Do I do any actual wargaming?

From reading this blog you might be forgiven for thinking that I spend my time painting figures which never get used in a wargame.  To some extent it is true that I have been doing a lot of 6mm painting of late courtesy of having a painting table set up 24/7 which makes it easy to do a few minutes here and there most days.

My gaming has mostly been provided by the Monday Night Group, you know the ones who meet on a Tuesday evening.  Graham blogs the details of the games over on Wargaming for Grown Ups and as they are his games, by and large I don't like to steal his thunder.  This year we have had some excellent games ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia through the mid 20th Century Spanish Civil War.  What I have not done is provide the game rules or scenario for any of these run outs.

With that in mind and considering that I don't really want to inflict an untried game on the MNGWMOAT (Monday Night Gamers Who Meet On A Tuesday) I am thinking of suggesting a game I have played solo a couple of times before using BBDBA and DBM.  This is the first Battle of Whalley, not the one fought in 1643, but the one from 798 during one of the regular Northumbrian Civil Wars, AKA the Battle of Billington Moor.  Unlike the later ECW battle where there is a reasonable amount of information available, this one is shrouded in mystery.  The Anglo Saxon Chronicle has a very laconic entry.  It reads:

'AD798.  This year a severe battle was fought in the Northumbrian territory, during Lent, on the fourth day before the nones of April, at Whalley; wherein Alric, the son of Herbert was slain and many others with him.'

I had to look up Nones of April.  Its Roman calendar reckoning and in the shorter months fell on the 5th day of the month so by my arithmetic this means the Battle was fought on 1st April.  I'm pretty sure that the name in my copy of Stenton's translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles isn't Herbert but as I can't get to it at present I will have to accept it for now.  I'm guessing that it will turn out to have been Eardberht or similar and that he was famous enough to warrant mention by virtue of his rank although it is of passing interest that his son's name wasn't worth mentioning.

Not much to go on there then.  We know from other sources that the Northumbrian crown was in dispute at the time and one of the claimants,  the previously deposed King Osbald, seems to have held lands around York at Osbaldwick and more importantly based on place name evidence perhaps also close by the site of this battle at Osbaldeston.

Osbald's claim seems to have had support from Mercia who following the death of King Offa were struggling to keep their status as the leading English kingdom.  They were campaigning in the East and South East and an internal succession dispute would have been useful to keep their Northern frontier secure.  The Northumbrian dispute could also have roots in the earlier organisation of the kingdom which had two power bases Bernicia on the North East Coast and Deira based in Yorkshire and the Pennine valleys of what is now East Lancashire.  The pro Osbald party was lead by Alderman Wada possibly from Waddington a few miles up the Ribble valley.  He met and was defeated by King Eardwulf at Billington Moor.

There is little evidence as to exactly where the battle was fought but there is a well used Roman Road which runs down the Ribble Valley along the East bank of the Ribble angling of to the west after Whalley to the old Roman fortress of Ribchester.  It would make sense for the combatants to have used this route.

So in my scenario I have Wada rallying support from Osbald's holdings between Ribchester and Whalley and calling in others from his own supporters.  The easiest way to move into the Northumbrian heartlands would be march North East along the Roman Road with a view to attempting the Aire Gap at Skipton.  Some historians suggest that the battle was fought somewhere close to Billington or Langho South West of Whalley (Hence Billington Moor).   So that's the ground I'm recreating and as a bonus it helps me to visualise the location as I went to school at Billington!

The Ribble valley is open here with flat land to the east of the river rising to a steep ridge above Billington with a number of small streams running down from the ridge to join the Ribble.  Slightly further to the North East at Whalley itself the River Calder joins the Ribble and personally I wouldn't want to fight with that to my back so I'm placing the action a little  further down the valley towards Old Langho which matches with the description of the Battle as being at Billington Moor.

The two forces are both essentially similar consisting of the Nobles Hearth troops backed up by Fyrdmen drawn from the rest of the local population.  Neither side would have been particularly numerous so I'd guess at no more than 1,000 a side.  The Royal Army would probably have an edge in quality over Wada, but Wada knows the ground so gets to choose the battlefield.

I'm going to allow Wada his own Hearth Troop plus some supporters of Osbald who are equally well equipped as a second unit of Hearth Troop.  The balance of his forces will be Fyrdmen split roughly 1:2 between the better so called 'Select Fyrd' and the the less well equipped 'General Fyrd'.  The Royal Army will have the Kings Heath Troop, plus Herbert's and one other Hearth troop unit.  The balance of his force will be 'Select Fyrd' quality.  Both sides will have some light infantry as skirmishers.  I normally give slightly more of these to Wadda as he is on home ground and can drum up more support from the locals.

I need to think about how many units to use overall as I may work to a lower figure:men ration to get more toys on the table.

Proxy Dark Age troops - Strathclyde Welsh

The last few weeks have seen a few more bases added to my Viking Age Britain forces.  I have been mainly adding to the Strathclyde Welsh contingent.

Hmm can't seem to rotate this image!  Strathclyde Welsh defying gravity it is then

Two elements of Heavy Cavalry on the Right (top!) wing two elements of Medium Cavalry on the Left (bottom!).  The Centre consists of eleven elements of Pedyt Medium Infantry spear and two elements of Light Infantry archers.  There enough figures on the painting table for a further three MI elements and two Heavy Infantry Spear elements.  The HI will be Anglo Saxon figures so they will look better dressed.

As I had to use proxy figures I used Baccus 6mm figures from the Gothic part of the Roman range.  The spearmen make a really useful generic Dark Age warrior capable of  being anything from early Franks through to lower grade Anglo-Saxon Fyrdmen and of course they can always be Visigoths or Ostrogoths.  The Gothic Medium cavalry are equally useful; bare headed and unarmoured they can proxy for almost any early medieval unarmoured cavalry or mounted infantry.  The Heavy cavalry work well for late Roman or early Byzantine heavy cavalry or as is the case here Sub Roman heavy cavalry.  To be fair they might be a little too well equipped for Strathclyde in the 9th Century but they do resemble the mounted troops on the Pictish Aberlemno stone so that's good enough for me.

The Carvings on the Aberlemno 2 stone

Jolly Broom Man on his blog 1642andallthat has just had an interesting debate about Anglo-Saxon use of cavalry much of which derives from interpretations of the above stone.  Well worth the time to go and read it.  I’m in the ride to battle and dismount to fight camp, but it seems pretty obvious that the occasional mounted combat would have occurred either during pursuits or if caught without time to dismount.  I don’t think that they deliberately intended to fight as cavalry or had experience as cavalry.  I consider that at best they were mounted infantry.  Certainly at Hereford in the early 11th century they came off second best when fighting against Welsh raiders from horse back.

As no one except Irregular do much in 6mm for the fringe nations of the Britain in the Viking Age ( and they only add two castings to the choices - Pictish spearmen and Scots Irish swordsmen) so for now it will have to be other figures acting as proxies.  Fortunately conversion by paint brush is quick and easy.

Horse Archers

Just painted some Sassanid horse archers from Baccus.  The Galloping version rather than the standing ones.  These are a lovely casting with lots of detail that are a pleasure to paint.  Horses have a nice animation to them and a mix of long tails and bound up ones which matches the evidence for how they actually groomed them.  As these are light horse I went for a mix of Brown's Chestnuts and Bays for the horse colours and used a palette of colours based on Hyacinth Bloom colours for the riders silk clothing.  I chose the Hyacinth colour palette as it seems to match the colours in things like the Osprey on Sassanids and Parthians.

I still need to do the texture on the base to finish them but they look so nice I wanted to share.  I just have the odd 35 left to paint!

I try to base light cavalry in a less regimented layout then close order cavalry hence the two outside riders starting to turn away.

Once the Baccus shopping cart reopens after the workshop revamp  I will be ordering a second pack of the Sassanids plus two packs of Parthian Horse Archers which will do very nicely for allied horse archer types.  The Parthian's are bare headed with a headband while the Sassanid's have a mix of 'light bulb' style hats.  I'm wondering if a few Scythians might work for mercenary horsemen.  The main difference between them and the Sassanid and Parthian castings is that they have a three lappet cap.

 I have been making inroads into the lead mountain but everytime I think I have cleared my desk some one adds more to the 'to paint' pile.  The fact that that person is me doesn't help!

This parade of unpainted lead is taking a long time to clear.

Still If I'm reducing the lead pile it is probably time to buy more!

Its been a slow (match) day

One of the things I have started to do as part of my re-enactment hobby is make the slow match for the musket block I'm a member of (see it wasn't a post about cricket at all).  It's a vital item for a matchlock musketeer who will go through at least a meter of the stuff at every reenactment weekend.  Of course you can buy it, but its easy and quick to make your own, it saves money and you can't always get the stuff when you need it.

Back in the seventeenth century soldiers on campaign would steal, er I mean requisition, the cords that criss crossed bed frames to hold up the mattress to make match cord with, so after they passed through town you would be sleeping on the floor until you could get more rope.  Saltpetre was a little more difficult to source with original recipes using dissolved black powder, or ash and lye or even boiling down urine to obtain it.  In fact human urine was such a good source it was collected on an industrial scale from alehouses, private homes and even by stealing the contents of cesspits! Poorer people would sell their urine as a source of income, provided they weren't so poor that they didn't have a pot to piss in!

For me it's a easier and a lot less smelly!  The commonest source for the cord is 100% jute sash window cord in either 6mm or 8mm diameter.  Easily obtained online (pun not intended).  I tend to buy from a firm called P T Winchester Ltd as I can be sure it doesn't have a nylon core.  Saltpetre is Potassium Nitrate (KnO3) and is sold as lawn food, stump remover or (in food grade quality) for curing bacon or hams.  Again the internet is your friend here.  I look for something that is as pure as possible assay at 99% pure if I can get it, which I usually can.

Making the slow match is simple.  Add 4 or 5 litres of cold water to a bucket and stir in 4 - 6 Tablespoons of saltpetre per litre.  Throw in the sash cord (if it was in a hank unroll it first) and weigh it down to ensure it is submerged.  Leave it for 12 - 24 hours.  Lastly take it out and lay it out flat to dry.  This last part is important, as it ensure that the saltpetre is evenly distributed.  Once it is dry you have your slow match.  Don't throw away the unused solution.  It doesn't go off and can be topped up to replace the bit soaked up by the cord and used again.  With sash cord at about £50 per 100 metres and saltpetre at about £12 a kilo I reckon that even without recycling the saltpetre solution it is costing less than 60p a metre (not counting the cost of the bucket!) for the finished matchcord.

The exact amount of saltpetre to use can be found by trial and error, sometimes you get slower match than other batches, sometimes faster.  I prefer to err on the side of faster as at least I know it will burn.  What you are aiming for is a burn rate of about 1-2 cm a minute without it spitting.  Spitting is a sign of too much saltpetre so if that occurs with the lit cord all you do when you top up the solution for the next batch is add more water and less saltpetre to the replacement solution.

   

The dead lay all around

I have been considering how to create some markers to show units who have taken 'hits' in ADLG.  Under those rules units degrade in combat rather than being pushed back or destroyed as is the case in DBA and it's offshoots like DBMM.  The downside of the extra granularity is the need to record the effect of combat.  Despite having used micro dice in my own rules for 2mm ECW I prefer a table with markers that appear to be battlefield debris or casualties where possible.

With that thought in mind I thought I would have a look at making some markers using Baccus casualty figures.  They do these as specific dark age castings and although they come with a mix of kite and round shields at 6mm scale it doesn't really show up.  There is a mix of cavalry and foot all prone and hors d'combat. I should be able to fit them onto UK 1p coins as a base with a bit of trimming.  The castings come as strips but the base between the figures is thin and easily cut back with side cutters.  I struggled a bit with the cavalry casualties as it was hard to see how the rider was laid across the horse but reading specs and the magnifier lamp helped.

Casualties clustered around a 1p coin for scale (1cm grid)

I have done without the buckets of blood and gore effect for these I don't think it adds anything.  Plus I find it hard to make it look anything other than a bit cartoonish. 

I'm considering going for one standing casualty as one hit, one prone casualty as two hits and two prone as three hits as that lets me keep to 1p basing.  I just need to source some standing 6mm casualties or kit bash some from the bits box.  But that may change if I can find a way to squeeze three figures onto each coin as I could then go for a simple count the bodies system!

Some like it hot

They tell me that some people like really hot weather.  They must be the ones who don't spend bank holidays running up and down fields in woolen clothes and armour and carrying an assortment of out of date military equipment.  For those of us who indulge in military reenactment as a hobby bank holidays are usually wet.  Either from the outside in or the inside out, there doesn't seem to be any happy medium.  This last one was no exception it was a getting wet from the inside out variant which is getting more common of late.  The display on our car claimed it was 29 centigrade, in the shade maybe.  Where I was it was difficult to find shade, not even in the lee of the average re-enactor ( who is probably best described as large economy sized)*.

Still it did help build up a thirst which our Bavarian guests were keen to help us deal with.  Forty plus Bavarian Pikemen from the Memmingen Pikeniere.  Who says the EU doesn't do anything useful for British culture.  I didn't go on the field the second day.  I'd like to claim it was due to drinking prodigious quantities of Bavarian beer.  I'd like too but I can't because I was asleep by 8.00pm the heat had done for me.

Some may like it hot, but not apparently I don't.

* which reminds me that the BBC apparently turned down an offer from the Sealed Knot to provide extras for a Civil War drama with the killer put down of "Too old, Too fat".  Harsh, but sadly really rather fair.