Too busy to post

The surviving Ordinarfahne of the von Niesemeuschel regiment

Most of October seems to have slipped by since the last time I posted anything new. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy and it certainly doesn’t mean that the rest of the world has been idle either.

Barry and Clarence, as you may have noticed from a recent comment here on BfK, are now on the very cusp of publishing the Republic to Empire rules. Apparently the proofs are back from the printers, the presses are rolling and pre-orders will be available within a week.

Also, I seem to be in a modicum of demand. Rosemary of Rosemary and Co. has been in contact with me and we’ve had a very civilized correspondence. I’ve heard from several other painters that Rosemary makes excellent brushes at VFM prices so it was a pleasure to hear from her directly. I now have several review samples of her Kolinsky sable brushes that I’m going to try out over the coming weeks and review here.

So just what have I been up to? Well, mostly, I’ve been digging into the arcane mysteries of 1813 Saxon line infantry flags. You may recall that, in my review of the GMB 1811 Saxon flags, I mentioned that the history of what happened to these flags in the 1812 campaign and how the lost ones were replaced in 1813 was very complex. Well, it certainly was! But I think that a joint effort by Grahame Black, Peter F, me and a couple of our correspondents (thanks to Andrew Brentnall and von Winterfeldt) means that we’ve almost got to the bottom of it. And I know (again from another comment here at BfK) that Grahame has almost got the 1813 sets ready for release. So expect to see those reviewed here in the near future too. At that point, I might also share the results of our research and add it to the Saxon Army Resources page. But in the meantime, as a taster, the photo at the top of this post is of one of the flags that survives to this day.

New Republic to Empire preview

Republic to Empire

I’m back from my holidays and delighted to find that Barry and Clarence have released a 12-page 10Mb PDF preview of the Republic to Empire rules. Current expectation is that the finished version will be available in the Autumn.

This is just a quick interim post to bring you the news – I haven’t even read the PDF yet. I’ll add more here once I’ve had a chance to digest it!

Let the countdown begin

Salute 2009 is on Saturday 28th March and my advance booked train tickets for the journey up to London arrived in the post yesterday. As I think I said around this time last year, you can get some genuine VFM by booking train tickets in advance as long as you’re prepared to commit to travelling on specific trains. The other tip is that two singles are often cheaper than one return for these sorts of advance bookings.

This year, I won’t be travelling up to town alone. Kiwi “Von Peter” and his family have come to stay in the UK for about six months as a sort of family adventure and so I’ll be sharing my day trip with him and his son Simon. This’ll be a fascinating observational experience for me. Von Peter tells me they only have small wargames shows in New Zealand and this will be his first time at one of the UK’s biggest days. I’ll be watching closely to see if it lives up to Von Peter’s expectations.

I’m much more optimistic about this year’s Salute than I have been for several years – especially since the change of venue to ExCel. I’ve previously found the atmosphere at ExCel to be lacking and the need for good company to compensate for that. This year, good company aside, other factors promise to restore Salute’s excitement of yore. In particular, a run down of the display games for once offers plenty for Napoleonics fans to sink their teeth into.

The Perry Twins will have a stand again this year where I hope to inspect their Napoleonic plastics in detail for the first time. Moreover, they’ll also be putting on a Quatre Bras demo game. I think I’ll also take some time to look at the Victrix plastics for the first time too. Obviously, their range is of little direct interest to me at present, being mainly focussed on the Peninsular War but I do want to scope out the quality of their work for potential future reference.

By some sort of strange coincidence there are two 6mm scale 1809 display games – Aspern-Essling and Wagram. I’m not a fan of this scale but I will look to see if the claims for it as a way to capture the spectacle of large battles is justified. There’s a 28mm retreat from Moscow game that has the potential to be spectacular if done the right way. But, best of all, Barry Hilton will be leading the League of Augsburg on a raid South of the border to put on two (!) games: one demonstration and one participation (oi! I was in the queue first!). I’m hoping that at least one of these games will feature Barry’s new Republic to Empire ruleset so that I can get a good assessment of them in action.

Throw in all the usual opportunities to catch up on gossip, bump into people I haven’t seen for ages and oggle the entries in the painting competition and I think there’s the makings of a grand day out.

More Republic to Empire clues

Just a quick post to say that Barry’s made a second teaser PDF available for free download. This one covers the thorny topic of scales: time, ground (horizontal) and vertical as well as figure ratios. Of course, the natural corollory of talking about scales is to talk about basing sizes and weapons ranges. And Barry doesn’t shirk from giving his fully thought out musings on these topics. There’s also some brief guidance on using the rules for figure scales other than 28mm.

I haven’t had time to do any more than skim through this document tonight but hopefully I’ll be able to read it in more detail and fully digest over the next few days. If I manage that, I’ll post a few more thoughtful observations here.