Inability to focus

Before any concerned blog readers think I have some sort of problem with my eyes, I should clarify it's about an inability to mentally focus on producing something of note. I have not touched a paintbrush in a long time now....

Mostly it's due to two factors; depressing grey days; I really need bright daylight to even get motivated to paint; secondly, time....

The weekends go very fast. My last leave over Christmas was stymied by illness and prevented me from doing much of anything. I seem to find the weekends taken up with things I didn't have time to do during the week, so have not even forced myself into doing much except tidy up and think.

I'm conscious I should be focussing on Pavia. To that end I have been translating (with the use of a translation pen) an Italian book I picked up from eBay. I was looking for more information on the Mirabello palace and the park walls, primarily their appearance. Sadly, much is lost. The best we can hope for are the various woodcuts, paintings and tapestries of the battle.

What it has done is completely change my thinking on the battle. What I have realised is that all the modern accounts are selective, ignoring some sources at the expense of others. There is a well reasoned argument, supported by a contemporary source (from Pavia) that the entry point must have been the Duo Porte in the east, not the Porte Pescharina - the latter would have needed the Imperialists to break through TWO walls - the walls enclosing the new park and then the walls of the old park - which none of the sources mention. Often modern accounts just repeat the Pescarina gate theory without addressing the problem of the two walls - in some cases the map cuts off the new park wall altogether!

There is the possibility that the Old park wall was already breached or that the new park wall was in disrepair, but the sources are clear that the Imperialists broke into and pulled down the park walls to gain entry, which delayed them. There are also doubts about the French King's location - the Repentina may just have been a rural cottage and the Duke of Milan's Kennels pure invention....

Along with these doubts has come even more discouraging news. I had been toying with putting Pavia on as a game at a show. I had thought about Britcon, only to discover that this year due to Nottingham University not accepting external bookings, it has had to move to Leicester. Logistically this is too far for me. That leaves the Newark shows, but I'm now getting cold feet about the whole idea. I have even found myself wondering whether I shouldn't just go back to my idea of DBA sized armies or even using the 15mm I have.

The lack of producing anything has also led to considering renovating or restarting old projects rather than new; that is projects I never finished but have painted stuff for. In this mood I have found myself looking at my SYW but more particularly, French & Indian War. I have the figures, a lot of the French and Indians are done, so I have found myself buying large pine tree models from eBay....

I have struggled a bit to find a set of rules I like; before anyone suggests any I have explored many! I need a set that can cover both battle and skirmish - most F&IW rules cover the latter or require large figure to man scales. I quite liked Habitants and Highlanders, but don't like the predictable shooting. I have dug out the old WRG 1685 to 1845, but have also toyed with VnB variable scales. I suspect it may end up as a Frankenstein of several......

Hello 2025, goodbye 2024! New Year ruminations

A happy New Year to any followers of this blog!

As is traditional amongst bloggers, I've looked back at 2024 and thought about where I'm going in 2025. One of the good things about blogging is that it allows you to establish exactly what you were doing on a specific date without recourse to fallible memory.

Looking back to this time last year, I see I had a raging chest infection! It has obviously become traditional for this time of year....

I was trying to plod along with the Soldier King project but didn't finish Banst until the simmer of that year. Each year I think to myself that I really should get this 30year old project finished. Having being within a whisker of completion, I eventually worked out a logical recruitment and maintenance system from the game translated into VnB units. Having then applied this to the armies, I found that Estavia, the Imperial states and non-electoral states all had room for increasing the armies.....

This resulted in the equivalent of a whole new army.....

Psychologically, this derailed me a bit; the thought of cleaning up Spencer Smith figures and then getting very mixed up and focussed on storage, meant it all went on the back-burner. I have since realised I actually have more HMSO box files so some of the reasoning was utterly irrelevant!

This year, one of my goals is to get the armies finished so that I can actually start a campaign.

Last year this time was also focussed on the Six Days War project. Not much has been done on that   over the course of the year.  Partly due to real world events and more likely due to new distractions.....

In February I commenced on the Italian Wars project using Zinnfiguren flats. This has resulted in a new painting technique and project creep from a modest aim of DBA sized armies to refighting Pavia at 1:100 scale! The realisation of it being the 500th anniversary was what did it. Looking back, I have made some progress with the French  and Swiss but there are a lot more to do.

I also got distracted by embarking on a long desired WW2 desert project. Despite having a lot of 15mm stuff, this was in 20mm - the 15mm being organised for platoon scale games means there are multiple 10 tank model battalions in the lead/plastic/resin pile. 20mm offered the attraction of 1 model tank = a battalion....there has been some project creep here following the publication of NQM.

I'd like to get the Pavia project done; I suspect it won't be in time for the anniversary (February) but hopefully before the end of the year. I'd also like to make progress on SK and the C20th projects.

One bright spot has been the VWC which continues to inspire, motivate and bring companionship and goes from strength to strength.

I had also forgotten that I'd re-kindled interest in my very old SYW and FIW projects, leading to some purchases (mostly terrain or painted figures).

So as is traditional, a parade. The Prussians:

New Year, Christmas lurgy and Pavia puzzling

The lack of posts recently has been due to contracting some kind of respiratory illness, coughing, wheezing and generally feeling tired and washed out.....typically just at the start of Chrismas leave.....

It has also resulted in a complete absence of painting!

I have been reading about the battle of Pavia......

What is clear is that there is no single coherent account of the battle; both the contemporary and modern accounts of the battle differ considerably - a point raised by Martyn in his blog as he considered how to wargame the battle.

https://www.collegeofkings.com/battle-of-pavia-in-2025/

I have found many of the modern accounts make references to "attacking the right flank" or "left flank" without a clear explanation of how this was possible given the limited maps and diagrams.

As usual, the numbers of the opposing forces differ widely and we run into the usual problems of "lances" and how many actual heavy cavalry this represents...

More problematic are issues such as where in the park walls the Imperialists broke into the Parco Viscontio; accounts differ whether it was the east or north walls which has a significant impact on the battle, or where the garrison made a sortee - I have seen both south and north east suggested.

Contemporary woodcuts, paintings and tapestries further confuse matters all choosing to show a perspective from north looking south to Pavia and distorting geography and distances.

Modern wargame reconstructions suffer from all these issues and more, not least perpetuating some common myths.

These include:

The Swiss - normally portrayed as fearsome fanatics - one rule set had a rule they never rout! In this battle their performance was lukewarm and it certainly looks like they routed in a panic at the end; perhaps Bicocca a mere three years earlier had been the high tide of ferocious behaviour.

The French and Italians seem to have played no part aside from the cavalry, artillery and some references to Gascons with the king. The cavalry in wargames are often decisive. In the real battle they seem to have been tardy in arriving and suffered from the terrain and boggy ground.

The Black Band - of which there were two present. Giovanni de Medici had been wounded (and would later die of these wounds); his unit had suffered casualties and was probably posted to the south of Pavia so played no part in the battle. The landsknechts are more problematic. They were named prior to entering French service and are often shown in black uniforms and armour. It seems the original band were supplemented by more mercenaries for an invasion of England under Richard de Pole. Thus there may have been two units - it is perhaps telling that both de Pole and Lorraine are given as leaders. Contemporary depictions do not show black uniforms, although in the Tapestries now in Naples, a few figures are so depicted....

Maps - these vary but are crucial to getting any understanding of the battle. That said, these vary considerably. This is one of the better:

(From https://www.thedevilstonechronicles.com/The-Siege-of-Pavia.php)

Given that the park was fairly waterlogged and the attack was made at night, the tracks and roads would have been used (there is an indication they were raised). From this it s likely the Porta Pescarina and wall adjacent were the point of entry for the Imperial army (the gate on the north wall above).

Assuming the French advances also used the roads for the most part the action seems to have taken place to the east and south of the Mirabello lodge with a subsidiary action to the south around the Five Abbeys (to the east of Pavia itself).

More on numbers and OoB in a subsequent post.

Pavia Project Progress

Not the most interesting of posts but one to prove to myself I am making progress after some non-productive weekends.

This weekend I managed to clean up another 42 Landsknechts to add to the 50 done previously and 30 Gensdarmes. Not very photogenic in just the metal but until the weather allows spray priming, they will remain bare and shiny....

In actual fact, they are quicker to clean up than fully round figures. A quick going over with a scalpel, snipping of extra weapons, legs and tails, then a good quality file is all that's needed. The trickiest part are pikes and lances which usually have flash. I tend to rest them on the cutting board itself, scrape with scalpel and carefully file away from me, stopping if you get a sudden bend.

Landesknechts

Gensdarmes

Still cannot get over the movement in these figures.

Distractions, distractions......

It's dangerous looking at other people's blogs as it results in distracting you from current projects and often produces unforeseen results......

Progress has been slow,,,or rather s-l-o-w....

Weekend before last saw some Landesknecht cleaned up. Due to the weather they have not received a spray primer yet,  here they are in the RUB awaiting drier and calmer days.....

I'm hoping to do another lot today....

As a balance for the last blog entry, purchasing for the neglected SYW project continues, this time the Prussians....

The Alte Fritz is a Willie figure that came in a lot of painted figures. Needs a bit of work, but I was quite taken with the figure. I may have an unpainted version somewhere. The horse is quite nicely done (the Mollwitz Grey?). He was stored away until I saw the aide figure on eBay. Expensive, paint job is workmanlike if not exquisite. I only bought it as (1) I couldn't identify the manufacturer and (2) thought he would make a good counterpoint to Fritz. Need some Italian greyhounds or an additional figure for a nice command stand.

Anyway, back to the blogs and distractions.....

There I was looking at Martin Rapier's blog (https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/) and he had a post about Decision Games Khe Sahn:

https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2024-12-02T00:23:00-08:00&max-results=7

I thought I'd kicked my Vietnam fixation long ago, but I was intrigued. A quick visit to Second Chance Games (https://secondchancegames.com/) and before I knew had added these to the basket...

And this....

The two solitaire mini-games were purchased with the idea of actually playing something, KS as mentioned and the other as I cannot resist anything North Africa.....

Pavia was an attempt to re-start the Pavia Project to see how someone else looked at it, especially the terrain....

Unfortunately, in the solitaire section I spotted this.....

A solitaire campaign game for the Mexican Revolution.....this led to digging out the unstarted 15mm project figures. It looks as if the game will make a good battle generator for these....

 Previous to this, the distractions had already started. Richard Crawley's blog featured his long running mythical Caucasian Imagi-Nation, engaged in various C20th (and C21st?) conflicts:

https://thelandofcounterpane.blogspot.com/2024/11/attack-on-northern-hills.html

This set me off on revisiting my own Post-Soviet Imagi-Nation, the Central Eurasian Republic (geographically vague but somewhere between Kazakstan and Georgia - modern Stavropol and Kalmykia).

This emerged as a game to make use of my then collection of Soviet 1/87 armour and vehicles and 20mm figures in a post-Soviet break-up. Vague details of such conflicts had filtered out and it seemed plausible to use everything from T-34s and JS-III to T-72 . As my then collection was sparse (now much increased) I simply  divided up what I had painted and the Nationalist "Government" and Rebel forces diced to see what they got. There was a third force representing the Russians controlling some KGB, Birder Guards and with the opportunity to call in Airborne forces and airpower.

The game involved a battle for a city centre (Krasny Gorod) complete with government buildings, KGB HQ, People's Park of Liberty with Fimo statue of Lenin. Off table, was a small table representing the Airport and a card table for forces transiting between the two.....

President Danniken (Danny O'Hara) ended up with a small force of Motor Rifles and some reasonably modern tanks and apcs. These he deployed in front of the Government building where he himself was sheltering, The Rebels under Markov (Mark Daly) had a mix of veteran MRs with modern equipment and a mob of militia and some older T-34 and JS-3. He dispatched his most effective troops towards seizing the airport accompanied by a JS-III (he was much taken with this model) which unbeknown to him slowed down his progress significantly. His militia and some more effective MR supported by T-34/85 would assault the Presidential palace.

Menawhile, Petrov (Pete Foggin) as representative of the former Soviet, now Russian forces could negotiate with either side. Following self-imposed mandate of "never negotiating with rebels" he opened discussions with Danniken. In a canny move, he deployed what few troops he had at the airport and called in the Desentniki...

I was using Combined Arms, the modern version of Command Decision, so the game remained unfinished when the players left, but I concluded it solo the next day.

Markov's assault on the palace consisted of successive "pasadaran" human wave assaults backed by T-34s which eventually petered out after losses caused morale failures. An appearance of an Hind gunship crewed by rebels promised much, but Mark as an inexperienced player attacked the front of a T-72, failed to do any damage and contented himself with shooting up the palace with remaining cannon, while Danniken cowered in the basement but survived any risk of becoming a casualty. His column trundled towards the airport (slowly) and was straffed by Russian aircraft, losing artillery and softskins and causing further delay. The Desantniki would arrive in a randome number of turns (diced for) so any delay was crucial if they were to arrive on time.

As it turned out, their transport planes touched down just as the rebel assault on the airport developed. They could have opted for a parachute landing at either the airport or city, but instead taxied down with the warning the landing zone could be "hot!.

The Rebel MR managed to breech the defences of the Border Guards, broke in the main gate and suppressed the KGB in the main control tower by dint of shooting it up with BTR-60 cannon/MG!   

With the BG suffering a morale collapse, the MR had only to break down the perimeter  fence and overrun the trenches. Tearing across the runway, the Desantniki shot in by BMD2 apc managed by the skin of their teeth to reach the trenches landing in and among their shocked BG comrades. There followed a furious fusilade of small arms, MGs, Cannon, tank guns and AT missile fire between the two sides, with the rebel MG getting the worst of the exchange, despite dealing out damage and knocking out at least a platoon of BMD. In the morale phase, the cumulative losses were enough to cause the rebels to melt away leaving bodies and burning vehicles....

I had ideas to develop things further and since then have acquired many more suitable vehicles and figures. Like many projects it simply stalled. The last work I did was some S&S Models Russian MR to represent the inevitable "Peacekeepers" that would arrive.....

 

As the stash of x-Soviet equipment has increased, I feel like a revisit to the CER is in order. 

That is after I finish the Pavia, Soldier King and AIW projects!

So much for maintenance of the aim!

Back in the saddle

The lack of activity on the blog recently is due to a lack of activity at weekends generally.....

Aside from the VWC, I have been unable to summon the energy to tackle any of the many projects, partly due to endless grey skies and work, work, work.....

Hopefully, I can get myself into gear and do some cleaning up of figures.

In the meantime, various projects have suggested themselves, such as my long neglected SYW and FIW armies. While there is still unpainted lead, I have supplemented them with some eBay purchases....

Greenwood & Ball / Garrison French

Very nice in an "old school" way and about £1 per figure.

I also could not resist this Austrian Willie general and his Hinchliffe aide. 

Not cheap but an inspiration to paint my own Willie generals; fortunately the style is not too dissimilar to my few painted Austrians, supplemented by some painted units. I puts me in mind of Phil Robinson's (?) fantastic Hinchliffe SYW Austrian army, complete with Willie personalities that appeared in a very old MW.

A friend of mine, Pete Foggin, sent some pictures of masters he has done for his expanding Italian Wars 10mm ranges. In this case Stradiots.

To buy, see here:

https://www.foggofwarminiatures.com/

At present only Gensdarmes and Swiss/Lansknechts seem too be available with various ancients.

Finally, David of the Ragged Soldier blog (https://russetcoatcpt.blogspot.com/) mentioned he had been to the NAM in Chelsea and seen the Siborne Waterloo diorama. There were in fact two a small and large, the small resides in the Armouries Leeds. I didn't post previously as the pictures are not of the best as it was very difficult to photograph. Online articles suggest the figures are 25mm but appear much smaller - scale creep even in the C19th?

Despite restoration and conservation (including making replacement figures) it looks a bit sad and worn. Anthony Clipsom indicated there's a viewer to see the figures in close up, but I missed that.

Pavia inspiration and a trip to Fiasco

Last weekend saw a trip to the Fiasco wargames show and the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Fiasco was disappointing; the games were mostly small with a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, the venue itself (across from the Armouries) a bit gloomy. Trade stands were OK and I came away with some paints and brushes. I noted a couple of tables where games had failed tom turn up (never a good look) but on the whole it had more of the feel of a club night.

While I have complained about large demonstration games, this was the opposite, small niche games or 5mm /15mm often on plain cloth. The biggest was a Battletech game with very nice scenery.

I think somewhere in between club type games and elaborate demonstration games is the answer with some of the others mixed in. At least a lot appeared to be participation.

The only temptation was Anschluss' 1:144 armour, but I resisted.

Naval landing skirmish

Cthulu Mountains of Madness

VBCW

Castles in the Sky Agean sky battle

What a Cowboy

Cold War turns Hot

Battletech Big Red Button

The Armouries was busy, and a bit dark for photos. A lot of reflected light.

Pavia