Dress Rehearsal

With the miniature battlefield complete (see previous post on Fun With Fur) we had the opportunity to get the toy soldiers out and check if and how the troops etc. fitted with the terrain.  A wargame ‘dress rehearsal’ was therefore arranged.

We gathered at one of our regular club Saturday meets and started the set up. The foundations of the battlefield are a set of 600mm x 600mm foam modules, 5 modules by 3. Over the top of the modules the teddy bear fur surface was unrolled. All good so far!

First of all we added the 3 windmills. One still to be painted!  Now, this is where figure / terrain scale and ground scale clash badly. The model windmills will take up far more room that the actual windmills did. I think we can live with this, and we may need to shuffle them around during the game as they shouldn’t interrupt troop movement unduly.  With the windmills down we could now add the windmill artillery battery, and also the miller’s house.

We then got down to discussing the town of Lutzen. Only the gardens surrounding the town walls were part of the battlefield as the Imperial forces set fire to the town itself so they didn’t need to defend all of it. We therefore planned to only represent a small part of the town and the surrounding garden. Bruce, who was building the town and garden bits, was keen try out his measurements on the final battle-rug.   After detailed pictures and measurements we’re taken we used some of my fields to stand in for gardens during the dress rehearsal.

Next we needed the smaller Imperial battery, on the Imperial left flank.   We used some resin fortifications to represent this. (I have subsequently built something custom for this!). Finally there is a pond and small wood on the Imperial extreme left flank. I have built a Charlie Foxtrot pond and already have some suitable winter trees (ie no foliage).

With the basic terrain down we could start deploying the troops. All three of us who are providing the figures still have units to complete (paint faster, Bruce!) and so we had brought stand-ins for some units to ensure we could see a full picture. (Not sure my Covenant cavalry would have been entirely happy about playing the part of the Imperial Croat light horse!).  We had a detailed order of battle to use (see future post) but there was plenty of shuffling around required.  We have used the Osprey Lutzen campaign book, cross referenced with the Schürger thesis to develop our initial deployment.

With the troops on the table we could then focus on the ‘fluff’; the camp, camp followers, vignettes, and scatter terrain.  There is not much room behind the Swedish deployment, but not a huge issue as the Swedish army has marched some way from its camp to confront the Imperial army so most camp stuff will be on the Imperial side.

We then spent some minutes just taking it all in.  Our new table full of toy soldiers, many of them taking the field for the first time.   “Do you think you’ll get it all finished in time?” was a common remark from our fellow club members. Oh yea of little faith!

I’d have been happy at this point to just sit and look at it all, but a concerned discussion had started. “The Swedes will never make it forward; look at all of the Imperial Guns!”  I thought that, despite looking scary, the Pike Shotte rules have a good balance on big guns, and it’s not like trying to charge in to the teeth of Napoleonic Guard 12 pounder batteries. We decided to play through a few moves of the Swedish and Allied Infantry marching to contact to test my theory.

We split into to two teams, and got out the dice and rulers. Exciting!  Just the Infantry to fight.  We quickly learnt our first important lesson. You can’t roll dice on teddy bear fur!  Dice rolling trays were going to be required. Various notes were scribbled and play continued rolling dice on box lids.  We played 4 or 5 turns. Although a niggling annoyance at long range, the Imperial guns didn’t stop the Protestant tide. The small Imperial battery was smartly taken by the Yellow brigade (point to note, Imperial left wing cavalry commander!). The old Blue and Green brigades came on and fierce fire fights developed around the miller’s house and Windmill battery.

We called time (had to put the toys away again) but were heartened that the first few turns had felt just right for us.  Back to the paint brushes everyone!

Until next time.