On the Table Today Is...

Corsican Rangers lurking in the scrub

Maida.  The Battle of Maida, 04 July 1806, is on the table today.  Matt (wargameinthedungeon) and I plan to refight the battle later today as I return to 28mm Napoleonics after a long absence.  With Matt embarking upon a new 28mm Napoleonics project, what better motivation than to get in some action while his armies grow?  

My lads are long overdue in making a trip out onto the table.  Looking back into the archives, the last time the armies saw action was 3-1/2 years ago at the Action at Foz d'Arouce.  Too long to be confined to barracks.  In an attempt to make amends, Maida will be fought twice this week and perhaps even more over the holidays.

Initial Dispositions

What about the historical battle, itself?

Battle of Maida, 4 July 1806

Stuart expected that a British landing on the Calabrian coast would encourage and support a Calabrian insurrection against the French.  The British intervention would aid in lifting the siege against the Gaeta Fortress.  The French were encamped along the banks of the Lamato River on the hills overlooking Maida.  They awaited the British landing.  Stuart planned to attack the French camp before it could be reinforced but Reynier had arrived with reinforcements before Stuart could strike.  Stuart’s army disembarked on the beach at Santa Euphemia Bay on 1st July.  His landing was unopposed.  With British naval support, Reynier chose to draw the British inland and not fight them on the beaches where naval artillery could provide assistance.  Oswald’s Division came ashore first and advanced to Santa Euphemia.  Oswald’s Corsican Rangers became engaged with French skirmishers and fell back.

Stuart's Expeditionary Army drawn up for battle

On 4th July 1806, Stuart marched his army south along the beach and then turned inland following the Lamato River.  The mouth of the Lamato River was reached at about 0900.  The British army wheeled and formed an oblique battle line opposite the deploying French army as it advanced down the hill from its camp. The battle lines are drawn.

Reynier's French arrayed en chequer 

The battle began with a brief skirmishing exchange between French skirmishers from the 1st Legere facing the Corsican Rangers and flank coys from Kempt’s combined light battalion in the scrub along the Lamato River on the French left.  After the skirmishing action was stabilized, Compere launched an attack by the 1st Legere against Kempt.  Three devastating volleys and a charge was all that was required to put the 1st Legere to flight.  Compere was wounded.  Next the 42nd Ligne attacked Acland.  British volleys stalled this attack as well.  Taking heavy fire and seeing the 1st Legere break, the 42nd Ligne did likewise.  Peyri then attacked but the Poles were treated similarly and fled the field.  Only Peyri’s Swiss and Digonet’s command were left on the field.  Acland and Cole advanced upon Digonet.  With the 20th Foot in a flanking position and Reynier’s left gone, Digonet fought a withdrawal from the battlefield.

The battle was won in fifteen minutes.

Will Stuart be as lucky today?

Lull in Battle

After many weeks of multiple games per week, this week's gaming action slowed to a single game.  And, that game was cut short due to technical issues. With the lull in gaming, hobby time focuses on planning the next battles, rules' tinkering, and concentrating on projects at the painting desk.    

Mustering out from the painting desk today sees the addition of three Federal infantry regiments for the 10mm ACW project.  Having purchased a number of Old Glory bags before my Army Card expired, I have been trying to insert work on this project in between more pressing painting matters.  Today's ACW diversionary attack adds another 90 figures to the yearly painting tally.

Next up for the ACW project is likely a push to field several Confederate infantry regiments to keep the Rebel force build-up in step with the Federal troops.  While the project already fields about 3,500 figures and many of the major battles are gameable, there remains work to do.  Other work on the project could see a recruitment drive for dismounted cavalry. 

The primary focus of work at the workbench this week has been on projects in 28mm.  The WotR project should wrap up by year-end with the fielding of the sixth Battle.  Almost finished there.  Another 15 billmen to go and then basing can begin.  The other project seeing much attention is the Sumerian project in 28mm.  Units of spearmen are popping out from the production line at a steady pace and two Lugal battle carts are in work.  This is my first look at assembling and painting battle carts.  A big cart driven by four-asses is an impressive sight.     

On the gaming front, next week sees a return to gaming with at least two sessions already on the books.  The plan is to host the Napoleonic Battle of Maida in sessions on Sunday and Tuesday.  We will see how it goes.  If all goes well, I may offer up a third playing.  Anyway, more details on Maida in another post.

John de la Pole's Battle

When I began the War of the Roses project early in 2021, one goal was to complete six Battles by year-end with three Battles per side.  With other painting goals, a second new 2021 project, and a steady diet of remote gaming, could I reach the goal of 312 figures focused on one, 28mm project?  The answer is "I think so!"

With Battle #5 mustering out from the painting desk, Battle #6 in work, and a couple of weeks left in 2021, confidence is high in completing this goal.  Actually, I am nearing the finish line.  Battle #6 has both the bow and MAAs components complete and work will soon begin on the billmen.  Having only the billmen left to paint means only another 15 figures and I am done.  Should be an easy task once I finish up painting two dozen more Sumerian spear.  

Anyway, off the painting desk today is John de la Pole's Battle.  The 28mm figures are Perry plastics and the flags are Pete's Flags.  The 52 figures are distributed across three melee lines of archers (24), bill (15), and MAA (13).  Basing for this Battle was delayed slightly when I depleted my supply of gold tufts.  An order to Tajima 1 Miniatures got the resupply in-house within a week. 

Which Battle will be fielded as #6?  Thomas Stanley's retinue is on the painting desk and should be completed by year-end.

Nearly one year spent fighting through many WotR battles in playtesting Battle Commander, I learned much about a conflict on which I knew little. While I enjoyed these playtest games greatly, my tendency for experimentation is increasingly turning toward trying my hand at fighting battles using a different approach.  Once Battle #6 reaches the field and I can give these ideas a trial run on the table, we will see how far I go.

A Matter of Scale

A funny thing happened along my intended path to follow up the collection size analysis (see: Collection Size and Age).  The study began by aggregating the survey data on figure size (I may use the term "scale" interchangeably with "figure size").  Next step involved plotting the two-way interactions between figure size, collection size, age group, and primary interest.  At that point I changed tack.  To better understand the relationship between collection size and figure size, more study on figure size was needed.

Figure Size in the 2021 Survey

The 2021 survey saw a change in the way in which the question on figure size was asked.  In the 2020 survey, respondents were asked to rank their preferred figure sizes in rank order.  Well, this proved not so easy to do.  After feedback and reflection, the 2021 survey changed the response to one of choosing the top three with no specific order ranking.  While the 2021 survey can no longer distinguish a respondent's top figure size, the top three choices can be aggregated to form a view of each respondent's interests.  This change made the question much easier to answer.

After aggregating the top three figure size choices for each respondent, what emerges?  Note that the maximum number of selections was three but many participants selected only two or even one top choice.

Figure 1 shows the counts of the top three choices for all respondents.

Figure 1

From Figure 1, the three figure sizes of 25-28mm, 28-32mm Heroic, and 15-18mm claim 67% of survey respondents' top three choices.  06mm comes in a distant fourth.  After those four, the popularity of the remaining categories falls away quickly.  As an example, the 02-03mm or smaller category only had 1% of respondents having this scale in the top three.

As a check, I returned to a similar summary for the 2020 survey in which the top choice was identified.  The comparison between the 2020 and 2021 summaries produced the same results.  That is, the rankings of the top three choices were the same in both 2020 and 2021 regardless of method.  06mm came into the ranking in fourth place in both as well.  Reassuring result.

Figure Size vs Age Group

When the relationship between figure size and age group is examined, are any tendencies present or generalizations to be made?  See Figure 2.  

Figure 2

As a broad generalization, Figure 2 suggests that younger wargamers prefer larger figures and older wargamers prefer smaller figures. The 20mm and 1/72 category is dominated by the 51+ age groups.  The 51+ age groups also comprise about half of the total for 15-18mm, miniature airplanes, and ship-scale miniatures.  What does the 51+ age group not favor?  28-32mm Heroics and space-ship miniatures.  The 50 and under age-group dominates interest in the 28-32mm Heroics and space-ship miniatures.

Figure Size vs Primary Interest

Turning attention to figure size and primary interest, what does Figure 3 suggest?

Figure 3

For one, Figure 3 suggests that roughly half of all respondents are happy playing both sides of the net in "Mixed" company.  As in Figure 2, scale is split convincingly between historical and fantasy/sci-fi wargamers.  Historical wargamers tend to prefer the smaller scales while fantasy/sci-fi wargamers opt for the larger figures.  Notice that historical gamers are no fans of 28-32mm Heroics.  Fantasy/sci-fi gamers are not drawn to 2-3mm, 15-18mm, and 20mm figures but dabble in 6mm and 10-12mm figures.    

Figure Size vs Collection Size

Finally, when comparing the relationship between figure size and collection size, what are the tendencies, if any?  Figure 4 illustrates these relationships.   

Figure 4

Broadly speaking, we see that there is an inverse relationship between the size of the figure and collection size.  On average, this response group suggests smaller figure size leads to larger collections and larger figures (28-32mm Heroic and larger) lead to smaller sized collections.  For respondents with preference for larger figures, almost half of the respondents hold collections of 500 figures or less.  For those collecting smaller scale figures, roughly 20% have collections exceeding 5,000 figures.

Nature abhors a vacuum.  If budget, gaming table size, and storage constraints remain fixed then do collections expand to consume those scarce resources?  That is, does collecting smaller figures lead naturally to larger collections?  Certainly, other factors could be at play.  Does gaming style (skirmish, Big Battle, etc.) drive the final collection size?  Of course, there are other exceptions and situations that may drive collection size.

When examining these charts and reflecting upon your own wargaming tendencies with respect to scale, age, interest, and collection size, do the results of the masses capture your own habits and patterns?  How do these aggregated survey results differ from your own?   

Galling Gaesatae

There was a time when I held an aversion to painting and fielding a huge force of naked warriors.
There was a time when I requested orders to Black Tree Design to include "no naked Celts, please."  BTD happily obliged too! 

With thoughts of recreating the Battle of Telamon on the tabletop, those aversions had to be brushed aside so that the goal could move forward.

Given that, off the painting desk today are two dozen, naked Celts.  This is a good start for the battle participants, but more will be needed.  Figures are Newline Designs and the sculpts are some of its best, I think.

The gaming schedule saw a slight break this past week with three gaming sessions as opposed to the more recently frenetically paced four games.  This slight easing allowed a little more time at the painting desk.  A few more units were finished off to be paraded soon.  Back to gaming, along with the WWI aerial game accounted already, the week saw a return to playtesting Rein-Bow Warriors and the Battle of Trenton.  Details for both of those encounters await chronicling.  As a teaser, the Trenton outcome matched the historical battle uncannily.

von Freitag Gets Kill #6!

For Tuesday's weekly remote game, Richard hosted a return to the skies over the war-torn landscapes of WWI.  Once again, I reprise my role as Ace Rittmeister von Freitag as the outnumbered German patrol attempts to intercept a larger British sortie.  Rumors quickly drift down to German command that a flight of four allied aircraft are flying over German lines.  The mission seems to be focused on the rescue of downed Allied pilots, lost in previous missions.  Regardless of the allied mission, the German mission is to stop these intruders.  As von Freitag lifts off from the airfield in his DR1 Triplane with his two wingmen flying DV Albatrosses, let's see how the action unfolds.

With a flight of four Allied aircraft coming into view, von Freitag's squadron prepares for action.  The enemy are flying a pup, a camel, and two strutter two-seaters.  On the ground, can be seen two planes.  German infantry are advancing toward these aircraft.  

Von Freitag pounces upon the pup as the enemy plane banks hard left to evade the German squadron.  The triplane puts a burst into the pup as tracers fly into the wing.

The pup tries to evade but the triplane keeps the pup in its gunsights.  Another burst goes into the enemy plane.  The two strutters are beginning a slow descending circle over the downed aircraft.  A flare goes up signaling the location of the downed enemy pilot. The two Albatrosses close in on the strutters and deliver a few long range bursts.  Neither strutter is carrying an observer!  This must be a rescue mission.  

While the two strutters fly in tandem, both descend to a very low level.  Are they planning to land?  The pup cannot shake von Freitag and the German ace puts two more bursts into the pup.  The pup's wing disintegrates and the plane crashes to earth.  Kill #6 for von Freitag!  

Seeing the enemy go down, Freitag sets his sight on the camel in the distance.  Let the wingmen take care of the strutters, the ace goes after the camel.  On the horizon, another pup is seen approaching the dogfight as the strutters prepare to set down in the field.

As the triplane swings around to get into a tailing position on the camel, the pup dives onto the triplane and sends a long burst into the ace's craft.  Structurally weakened from enemy fire, the ace watches helplessly as a freak accident causes the upper wing on his triplane to bend and then tear away.  My God! The upper wing is gone!   

With the pup still on his tail, the hunter has become the hunted!  Is this effort focused on avenging the death of his comrade?

With both the camel and pup on his tail, von Freitag skirts the mountain and comes up behind the strutters as they lift off.  The observer seats are now occupied in both crafts and they begin manning their guns.  This is a congested and complicated situation.  Where are Freitag's wingmen?

Flying passed the two strutters, the ace puts himself into a dangerous position.  Both strutters are pouring bursts into the triplane.  Besides missing the upper wing, the ace's airplane is taking a lot of damage.   

Von Freitag banks hard left hoping to evade his pursuers.  The ploy works!  The strutters break off and head toward allied lines. 

Unfortunately, not before the allies manage to force both albatrosses down to the ground.  Von Freitag limps back toward base while his wingmen have successfully set their planes down without serious injuries to themselves.

The Germans picked up two kills but this was another hard day at the office, for sure.   

Friday sees another playtest of Rein-Bow Warriors with the Egyptians and Hittites locking horns once again.

2022 Caesar Awards

Yes, it is the time of year to submit your nominations for Little Wars TV's Caesar Awards.  Show support and encouragement for your favorite 2021 wargaming content by completing and submitting your choices via the official nomination form linked below:

Caesar Awards Nomination Form

As sometimes overheard in Boston and Chicago, Vote early and vote often!

Nominations are officially open through 31 DEC 2021.