The world is too much with us.

Paper models courtesy of Fiddlers Green

The last few days have left little time for blogging as between work and attempting to get our Mortgage cheque clearance, I have been exploring interesting new avenues of sleep deprivation.

Mrs Kinch has been off doing the state some service during our elections.

I must say I'm ambivalent about the result. That old anarchist slogan "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in" is one that has always been close to my heart. Though one aspect of the election did fill me with a deep sense of unease.

In the mean time back to wargaming, I managed to get a game in on Thursday night - sadly just with blocks, but it was fun nonetheless and entirely contrary to expectations and experience, I won. I had intended to do a report, but Donogh beat me to it, so you can find his view of the battle here.

Leprecon is hoving into view and I find myself in the embarrassing position of having packed material that I'll need for the convention, which is extremely irritating. I shall have to dig out Donogh's zeppelin, figures and other things in order to fulfill my commitments. Very irksome.

This week I shall have to...

- Finish writing a live action roleplaying game based on "Yes Minister".

- Get together my bits and pieces for a run of Jim Wallman's Tank Duel.

- Assemble my forces for Command & Colours: Napoleonics in 1/72.

- Finish Donogh's zeppelin, once I've found it.

All while, hopefully buying a house, we shall see how I do.

Addendum: The buildings above are available from Fiddlers Green. I printed them on heavy paper and started using them some seven or eight years ago. Since then they have done service in Ireland, Spain, England and Russia, with few casualties. Cheap, easy to transport and pre-painted, I commend them to the attention of the cash strapped wargamer.

Cavalry: Its History and Tactics by Louis Nolan - Part II

Having spent a day locked in mortal battle with mortgage providers and their eternal engines of lies - I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is every possibility that Mrs. Kinch and I will be getting keys to our new home next week. I'm not putting much store by that prediction, but we shall see.

In the meantime, I have been spending time waiting in offices waiting to see people, which has meant I've been able to spend some quality time with Louis Nolan.

He continues in much the way I expected, the British cavalry are too laden down with equipment to be really effective and everything much be done to reduce the amount of weight carried by cavalrymen. I was particularly amused by his plan to transfer older and -ahem- heftier troopers into the infantry once they reached the age of 35.

Nolan also maintains that the troop rather than the squadron was the proper unit of maneuvre, but that certainly no unit larger than a squadron should be deployed in line. Because cavalry is more reliant on speed than weight or numbers, the smaller, handier unit can exploit opportunities that would pass larger units by.

Another point that Nolan is enthusiastic about is the need for appropriate intervals between troops. His point was that without proper intervals it is almost impossible for disordered cavalry to reform without crashing into their fellows and disrupting the order of the whole line. It also compromises the speed of manuevre. He claims that the search for the "press of cloth" has led to large units closing up too enthusiastically in the charge with the result that the inner files become compacted and lose their order.

The preferred method of attack should be echelon allowing the sub-units to maneuvre to best effect and allowing sufficient space, should the attack fail, for the sub-units to retreat in good order. One point that I had never considered was that he condemned the issuing of homogeneous uniforms to cavalry, arguing that cavalry regiments should be dressed distinctively so as to make it easier to rally them on the field.

Lieut. Gen. Sir Charles James Napier also sticks his oar in, in excerpts from his Defects, Civil and Military, of the Indian Government, in which he deplores the effects of westernising Indian irregular cavalry, who he states are far superior horsemen when left to their own devices. He also picks up Nolan's (though perhaps Nolan took it up from him) point about weighing down horses with equipage.

What does all of this have to do with wargaming?

Well, that depends on - the skirmish wargamer will find a great deal of material here, seeing as there is a wealth of minutia offered. The wargamer on a broader canvas will still find much food for thought, though in more general terms. A great deal of ink is expended discussing how cavalry ought to be used on the battlefield and assuming ones rules are good ones, a good player may find himself evaluating his decisions rather than his rules after reading this book.

Still recommended. I may have to look over the Command & Colours rules and see what can be made of them in the light of Nolan.

The image above is taken from Iron Maiden's "The Trooper", a good pounding metal tune. It was inspired by the charge in which Nolan lost his life. I've often felt to be a little too wordy to be a really brilliant, but this is not the first time that charge has been leveled against Maiden, you can have a listen here.

Old Kinchs figures lie a moulderin' in a box...

A forlorn and somewhat mouldy box

I store my 1/72 scale figures in file boxes, which has been a success so far as organising them is concerned. It's not the most attractive way to store figures, but it does work - though Savage has come up with a cunning plan for adding fake book covers to them. The idea being that when placed on a shelf, the box will look like a large book.

Savage came up will all manner of smart ideas for bookcover designs that would incorporate information into the cover. The colour of the cover would indicate which nationality the troops inside belonged to, a logo which arm they belonged to and a "title" to indicate the regiment.

Therefore the box contains the 4th and 88th regiments would have a red cover (British troops), a stand of arms on the spine (infantry) and a title, "Adventures with the Fourth Foot and Connaught Rangers".

This is no doubt, a long way off as I will obviously have to organise somewhere to put them - but the grand plan develop a minor setback today, when I went to inspect boxes in advance of a game next week and discovered that some of them had mould growing on them.

The field forge of the 13th cuirassiers

I moved the boxes to a new location, have been cleaning off the mould as best I can with a cloth and hopefully while the boxes are a little damp at present - this won't effect their strength and durability in the long term.

Cork Hills

(Corunna, inexplicably sideways and resisting all attempts to turn it)

The hills of Cork....

...which are as nothing compared to the bewildering and irrational behaviour of their rivers, which seem to conceived solely with the purpose of upsetting innocent Dubliners.

The last few days have been very eventful and I can't say that I'm unhappy to see the back of them, they have however left precious little time for wargaming or indeed sleep.

Bob Cordery over at Wargames Miscellany has been experimenting with foamcore for use as hills in his portable wargames project. I have had some success with using cork for the various Command & Colours games. You can see above the Corunna scenario laid out using my 2mm figures, woods and buildings and using some of the river tiles from the game.

As you can see the look isn't too bad and I've found the cork a very durable and hard wearing material to work with. I've traced a card hex from the boxed game onto a cork tile and then cut the resulting shape out with a sharp craft knife. Sticking a couple of hexes together allows you to make larger hills, though after experiments with bespoke hills, I found that it was generally easier to produce a variety of shapes of between one and four hexes in size and put them together as needed.

Donogh has commented that the 2mm figures are swallowed up by the board. I can't say I mind myself, but I can see his point and have been looking over the options offered by Irregular Miniatures. They offer blocks of troops up to 96 men strong, which might be a little too big for the hexes, but would certainly make it easier for the uninitiated to manipulate them.

There is of course, the option of placing the figures on larger bases and using a marker system, but this would miss the point of using figures in the first place.

Oh and by the way, one of those clever Johnnies over at ccnapoleonics.net have come up with another Corunna scenario, this one using the Breakthrough format. You can find it here.

Large Scale Figures

A Crimean Officer of the 19th Foot

I finally finished my Roll Call Crimean Officer - which is meant as a belated birthday gift for Mrs Kinch's great uncle. I'm relatively happy with the figure, my first of this size (120mm) and it has certainly been a learning experience. The figure itself is cast in resin and comes in multiple parts. The resin needs to be washed and trimmed, as there are large pieces of sprue still attached. This is not quite as easy as it looks and requires a firm hand, patience and plenty of sandpaper.

Once assembled with superglue, I undercoated the figure white and painted him with my normal vallejo acrylics with virtually no shading or highlighting. There is little need to in this scale, the light does the work for you. I'm not convinced my choice of glossy black base and I may repaint it in a warmer brown to give an effect of the mahogany type before he takes up his new billet. I'm hoping Mrs Kinch's great uncle will name him, he has a rather excellant collection of old teddy bears all of whom have names. My favourite by a country mile is Paget Soames.

Some years ago, Mrs Kinch and I were married. It was a wonderful day, but one that was not without its troubles the week before. The main problem being the fact that the venue that we had booked for our reception effectively withdrew eight days before the wedding - anyone who has attempted to book a venue for 170+ persons in Dublin city centre at a weeks notice, can attest I'm sure to the fact that it is an impossibility for anything less than a Kings ransom.

Enter stage left, the man of the hour, Mrs Kinchs uncle - who put his Georgian town house entirely at our disposal. He and his family took time off from work and college to clear the bottom two floors of their home and plumbed in extra bathrooms in order to accommodate our guests. There are some debts that can never be repaid, but when I discovered that the relative in question liked 120mm models - I think I may where to begin.

With that in mind I purchased two new figures, a British officer of Waterloo (who may have to be transfered into the 88th) and a trooper of the French Dromedary Corps. Time will tell how well I get on with them.

Who knows, I may even get better at this modelling lark.

Danger to Quatre Bras!

The Black Watch at Quatre Bras by Woolen

Disquieting news has just reached me that a request has been presented to the authorities in Genappe to have the historic farmhouse at Quatre Bras demolished to make way for a development.

Domminique Timmermans is rallying the troops to save this historic site. More information and advice on how you can help (all that is required of you is an email gentlemen) can be found here.

I will be writing to express my objection to any such move and I would encourage all others to do the same.

Cavalry: Its History and Tactics by Louis Nolan

Louis Nolan - he died as he lived, on horseback

Louis Nolan was an odd old soul - born in Canada, he served first in the Austrian cavalry and would end his life in the British service. Known most famously for his role in the "Charge of the Light Brigade" during the Crimean campaign. I have been unable to find any reference to his having seen action in India, it would seem that he first saw active service in the campaign that ended his life. Yet he was a thoughtful officer and gave a great deal of his time to attempting to improve the state of the British cavalry.

Along the way, he wrote two books - but of particular interest is "Cavalry: Its History and Tactics" first published in 1853, but republished by Westholme in a handsome hardback in 2007. It's a nice book and I much prefer the experience of carrying a book with me, but for those of us without the €30 to spare, it can be found here.

I have only read the first fifty pages or so, but the central points so far are -

- firearms are anathema to cavalry because they dissaude men from closing with cold steel.

- armour is a waste of time, because...

- speed, good horsemanship and sharp swords are the most important attributes of cavalry, with them all things are possible, without them mounted men are merely more expensive infantrymen.

General Flashman famously described Nolan as "...a cavalry maniac who held everyone in contempt" in his memoir of the Crimean campaign and I can see his point. There is a great deal of scorn in this work, though I have only read a quarter of it so far. I suspect the message at the beginning, that light cavalry are the apotheosis of the mounted arm will be much the same in the end.

In many ways Nolan reminds me of specialist trainers in the college, each man a prophet for his discipline and holding all others in contempt, if he regarded them at all. The chap who taught the correct use of the notebook held all other things cheap, while the handcuffs instructor maintained that once you'd mastered handcuffs all other aspects of the job would simply fall into place, while the legal instructors thought that anyone who didn't master the finer points of their discipline was an idiot.

It is unlikely that I will get the opportunity to read much more this week, but we shall see how the thing develops.