Friday 30 April 2021

Fenwick - forces in motion ....

 To counter a threat of invasion of the Bylandt province by Monrovia, the Duke of Fenwick leads his army towards Rondenplatz


Meanwhile, the Bylandt provincial troops have mustered at Lagerheim and are on route to camp at Grondheim...

[note : map of campaign area in this post here .... 

http://tidders-kingdomofwittenberg.blogspot.com/2021/04/message-for-duke-3-meeting-of-general.html ]

Saturday 24 April 2021

Scheithers freikorps...

More troops to add to the Duchy of Fenwick Army, this time the Hanoverian Scheither's Freikorps. I've skipped the wavy cuff lace - keeping the basic uniforms of these 18C Hanoverian units; the bulk of figures are my own home-casts with a few from Redboubt/Old Glory.        

Jagers and artillery detachment...
The Grenadiers....
The carabiniers...
Also I could have some Uhlans (I have these are from my Wittenberg army)..

Wednesday 21 April 2021

River craft ...

Two recent additions to the river craft flotilla - a couple of old resin boats I picked up off Ebay along with a nice selection of scatter terrain (sacks, barrels, bales...). A new mast/sail was made for the sail boat. I already had a selection of crew I could use for both...

Before storing them away I had a quick check of all the other river craft; I have enough (?) for a potential river crossing game - transport barges, row boats and seated figures

Sunday 11 April 2021

Walls and Gatehouses ....

Tinkering with town/castle walls and gatehouses....

Checking through boxes I found had two sets of walls with appropriate gatehouses; basically too much stuff to keep for what I needed for games .....

After checking the wall sections, the brown set was found to need a fair bit of work to repair it; also not as robust as the plastic sections made from a couple of old toy castles. Decision made goodbye brown walls - in the bin they went. I saved part of the gatehouse base used with the brown walls and made a small gatehouse to go with the plastic walls...

Looking good, so I checked the plastic walls see how they would make up a castle ....
So able to do a suitable castle, plus town walls across the table narrow-ways or in the corner of the table. One problem the plastic set is that it is rather dark in colour; time for lift with a paint job - I decided on a lightish grey finish


ready for the next game which needs them :)

Saturday 10 April 2021

Message for the Duke (3) - A meeting of the General Staff...

continued from the previous post ...

After the message had been deciphered, the Duke called a meeting of the general staff to discuss the content.

Gentlemen, I have received a dispatch from Wittenberg, providing information gleaned from their spy network informing us that Monrovia plan to seize our Bylandt province and take control of the trade routes. Their army is to complete scheduled manouvers and instead of returning to barracks move to the north-east and cross the river Oudear near Pinzendorf.

They examined the map of the Bylandt province....

After much discussion it the following was decided ...
  • The River Rangers to double the boarder patrols
  • Provincial troops to have a camp and manouvers at Grondheim (to be able to react and perhaps prevent a river crossing).
  • Garrisons stationed on the Von Ket canal and the river Onay to be reinforced.
  • A plan to be drawn up to capture Pinzendorf, by assault from the river Oudear, to cut off the Monrovian forces should they successfully cross into the Bylandt.

the above is the start-up scheme for a small campaign involving Monrovia and Fenwick.. ( a few troops remain to be painted and some boats to be finished ....)

Monday 5 April 2021

Message for the Duke (2) - the delivery ?

 continued from the previous post ...

A bright summers evening, no much going on at the Ducal palace, a couple coming in from a walk and the guards for the evening taking their place. It was still reasonably light ....

Mlle Givenchy, Hofler and Hagen, carrying the dispatches for the Duke, moved cautiously through the grounds ....
A group of men sent to intercept them arrive by the edge of the formal gardens ....
as they move into various places to lay in wait; Givenchy, Hofler and Hagen approach the river..
rather than go across the large bridge they head off to one side and cross by a small footbridge ...
The make it into the formal gardens but their pursuers are catching them up ....
The captain of the guard sees the group down by the fountain and orders an officer and soldier to go and investigate, as a precaution he orders more guards to be called.
Hofler and Hagen are attacked from behind
Their pursuers close in ....
the two guards challenge the interlopers, shots are fired ....
Hofler and Givenchy have beaten their attackers and Hagen chases off the other one who is wounded.
The guards kill one and wound another, two more hold their ground ....
Givenchy tells the officer they have dispatches for the Duke from the King of Wittenberg ...
The remaining interlopers make a last ditch attempt to stop them reaching the Duke; they try to get past the guards....
The attempt fails, although one gets through wounding the officer but is then brought down by a deft sword thrust from Givenchy, the soldier chases the surviving attacker away...
The noise of the encounter outside had disturbed the Duke and his guests, the Duke had come outside onto the terrace to find out what was happening.  The officer escort the messengers up to the palace....
Mlle Givenchy introduces herself, Hofler and Hagen to the Duke ..."we have urgent dispatches for you from your brother-in-law King Leopold"
They are taken inside and hand the dispatches (which had been hidden the lining of Hofler's coat) to the Duke...

---oXo---

Schema for activation of each group, using pack of cards

Hearts - The messengers

Diamonds - Fenwick ducal palace guard (and civilians)

Clubs - the baddies following the messengers

Spades - the baddies waiting in the grounds for the messengers

Each group moved on a card from its suite being turned over, others could not move but could defend themselves; combat using my to&fro 'simple combat rules' with no saving throw for a hit - a hit equalled a wound.   Decisions on routes to take done by using a dice.

Cards ran well for each group, advantage to each group with runs of cards and some singles; oddly the last move for handing the message over was the Ace of Hearts..

Thursday 1 April 2021

Message for the Duke ....

Colonel Steffen Hofler home on leave from the Zinzendorf province was given an urgent task to perform by Count Munster, with Mlle Givenchy he was to deliver urgent dispatches to to the Duke of Fenwick; going with them would be Hofler's batman, sergeant Johan Hagen.

They rode hard and evaded a couple of men who had been following them and crossed the border into the Duchy of Fenwick without incident.

---oXo---

As they neared the Ducal palace two men (with a few more in the distance behind them) blocked their way; "Ride on to the cross, I'll cover you" shouted Hofler....

after an exchange of fire, a bit of swordplay and dodging through the trees the Hofler made it to the old cross where Mlle Givenchy and Hagen were waiting.
with no-one obviously following them they headed round the back of the ducal palace estate to an old access gate....
they tied up their horses and forced the gate open and went inside.... it would take some time to get through the grounds to the palace to get the message to the Duke...

was anyone lying in wait for them  ?

to be continued