Wurttemberg Leib Chevauxleger Regiment #2

 

The Wurttemberg Chevauxlegers had their origin with a first regiment in 1802, which was formed from a nucleus of the prior Wurttemberg mounted troops. A 2nd regiment was added in 1805.

Rawkins has this to say about the apparent mismatch between the title and the appearance of these troops: The Chevauxleger Regiments had their origin as part of the Kreis-Dragoner-Regiment. The first chevauxleger regiment formed in 1802 was raised from the three squadrons of ‘chevauxleger’ from the disbanded Kreis regiment. Despite the ‘chevauxleger’ title both regiments retained distinct features of their dragoon origins reflected in their uniforms and equipment. The Duke of Wurttemberg, later King Frederick, was strongly drawn to the light cavalry regiments being formed in he Bavarian army but also wanted to build both heavy and medium cavalry units for the Württemberg army. It has long been speculated that he may have wished to leave open the option of converting the chevauxleger regiments back to dragoons at a later date.

The uniforms of the two regiments were quite similar. As is the case with other units of the Wurttemberg army, there were fairly frequent changes of designation for both. This regiment, the first raised, was designated Chevauxleger regiment "Kurfurst" from 1805 - 1807, but thereafter if was referred to as the  Leib Chevauxleger regiment (#2)

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The biggest differences between the two regiments were the addition of white "litzen" to the button hoes on the lapels, collars, and cuffs of the Leib regiment, and  and the fact that the buttons and metal on the helmet were white metal for this unit, as opposed to brass for the other. 

The flag is downloaded from Lucas' website, and is somewhat speculative. It looks as though it was designed to hang down "vexillum" fashion, but that didn't suit me, hence the somewhat odd orientation. I think it still looks great!

If you look closely, you can see that the turnbacks on the jacket are yellow piped scarlet. These are of course more great figures form Lucas and Piano Wargames in Germany.

Another unusual feature of the uniforms of both regiments was wearing a cummerbund; scarlet for this regiment, and yellow for the other. 

Household Troops, Earl of Warwick

This is the last of three units of new Household troops for the Wars of the Roses. All my Household troops have a single color for their clothing, and in this case, that's green!

The banner is that of Sir Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, aka the Kingmaker!

Figures, as usual, are by Old Glory (originally the "Revenge" Medieval line, once sold by the Emperor's Headquarters, if I re all correctly). 

Properly, Neville's men should have a white and red livery.

Flag once again is by Pete's Flags. At least the green matches the Eagle on his arms!

Some "Darth Vader" style helms once again!

Coat of Arms of Sir Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick

By Ipankonin - Self-made. SVG elements fromDescription source, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3235569

 

Tools of the Trade

 

In preparation for my Wars of the Roses game a few weeks ago, I remembered that Tim had used some small color coded tokens to track the Morale of each Battle independently. This is important, because Morale is essentially by Battle; even if the overall action is going in your favor, one of your Battles can still break if it takes additional losses after it runs out of Resolve points. Searching around on Amazon, I found these.

Each set has 15 tokens in each of 9 different colors. They were quite inexpensive, so I got two sets, or 30 of each color total. They arrived the day after I ran the game, though. Oh well, on hand for next time. 

All sorted in boxes...

Really Useful Boxes. 

I also needed small dice to fit the die frames I used to track losses for each company; a "
6" is no losses, a 1 is one, etc. The dice were also color coded to troop quality, with blue being Superior, Red/White being average (for Lancaster and York respectively), Green for Inferior, and Black for very inferior. Once again, IO ordered two packs from Amazon to be sure that I would have more than enough. 

Finally, I needed to spend a bit more to get free shipping. These plastic "Risk Piece" style sailing ships are what started it all off on another blog, so I figured why not? I already have the infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery from Morrison Games. 

Each pack has 12 ships, and the detail on them is surprisingly good. I'm sure that I'll find a use for them at some point! 

Wurttemberg Jager zu Pferd Regiment #3 Herzog Louis

This unit was first raised in December of 1805 as the Jägerregiment zu Pferd ‘Prinz Paul’. In keeping with the unit's "Jager"  designation, all leatherwork was black,

It was renamed the  Jäger regiment zu Pferd ‘Herzog Louis’ in 1807, and in 1811 it became the Jägerregiment zu Pferd Nr 3. A final name change came following the retreat from Moscow,, which devastated the Wurttemberg cavalry, becoming  the the Kavallerie-Regiment Nr 2 ‘Jägerregiment Herzog Louis’ in 1813.

A Raupenhelm similar to that of the infantry was issued in 1806, but with a green crest. In 1808, the crest of the helmet became taller. In the case of this regiment, the fittings were white metal, and the crest  became bicolored, yellow over green. The helmet was replaced by shakos similar to the infantry between 1812 and 1813.

Descriptions of the Trumpeter's uniform vary, but they wore yellow coats with green collar, cuffs, lapels, and turnbacks piped yellow; later all were yellow piped  green, except the collar remained green piped yellow. The earlier trumpeter's uniform is said to have had green swallows nests with white piping but lacking the distinctive "W" lace decoration generally seen for Wurttemberg musicians, which seems odd. 

The officer's raupenhelm was taller, and  had a white plume with a short black base. The regiments had 4 squadrons of roughly 120 men each, although a 5th squadron was raised for the 1809 campaign and disbanded at its end, the men forming the core of  a new Dragoon regiment. 

This particular regiment wore distinctive ‘scharawaden’ breeches from 1805 to 1810; parti-coloured breeches with the upper part to mid thigh yellow and the lower legs grass-green, a fashion popular with light cavalry in the mid-18th Century.  The breeches were worn with the Hungarian style boots

until replaced with plain grass-green breeches in 1811.

Household troops of Edward IV

Fresh off their less than stellar performance at Towton this weekend, we have a unit of Foot Knights (Household troops in plate armor) supporting the cause of Edward IV

As usual, the figures are from Old Glory, and were originally part of the "Revenge" range ? 30 years ago.  

I chose to do all my Household troops in a single color, in part because with all that plate, there isn't much fabric showing anyway, and in part to further differentiate them for the mass of every day troops in livery coats, that are most often bicolored. 

That's the model for Darth Vader, rear rank, 3rd from the right!

The white Rose of York is prominent on the banner (once again from Pete's Flags). Curiously, although Shakespeare's plays cover Edward IV, none of them are named for him. 

History is (un)made at the Battle of Towton, 1461

Battle of Towton, March 29, as set up[ Set up on a 5 x 6 foot table at the Gardiner Library, Gardiner, NY.

The first game had Vladimir as Somerset commanding the Right  battle, Hudson as D'Acre in the Center, and Nathan as Percy commanding the Left Battle for the Lancastrians. For the Yorkists. it was James as Warwick commanding the Left battle, Ela as King Edward IV commanding the Centre and also Fauconberg on the right. There was a brief exchange of archery, without any significant advantage to either side (despite the wind and snow blowing into the face of the Lancastrians ). The Lancastrians advanced upon the Yorkist positions as quickly ass possible, but not before the Yorkist reinforcements under Norfolk arrived and made their presence felt. The main bodies of each battles clashed, and in the fighting, King Edward IV was hit (rolled a "1"). As a VIP, that ended the battle in the Lancastrian favor. despite Norfolk early arrival already threatening to flank and  defeat Percy. From the game standpoint, I should have continued play despite the Victory conditions, a significant error in judgment on my part. Art a convention or at home I would have just set it up again and played it a second time, switching sides. 

John Spiess ran his dark ages Viking game twice; casualties were heavy on both sides as the 1st  game is near its end!

Jared ran the Battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918. Note the great looking scratch built terrain boards!

"Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"- USMC commander's response to request by our French Allies that they pull back in response to the heavy German assault. 

After lunch, I ran Towton again. Clockwise from the Left we had Sean as Somerset and D/Acre, and Bryce as Percy for the House of Lancaster, Milo as Fauconberg, Ryder as King Edward IV, and Miles as Warwick, the "Kingmaker". Despite the advantage of the wind and snow, the exchange of arrows caused only limited losses, with many of the Yorkist bowmen running low on arrows early on. 

All three Battles got stuck in melee, with much hacking, slashing, and bashing going on along the entire battlefield!

The Lancastrian ambush was sprung form the woods, and the captain of this small independent command of men and arms lead his men well into the rear of Warwick's positions, to devastating effect! 

Shortly thereafter, Warwick's Battle reached zero Resolve Points; on the next loss, the Battle failed its Resolve test, and fled the field, the Kingmaker following them ignominiously!

King Edward and D'Acre battled it out in the Centre... 

In the process, both D'Acre and Edward fell in the melee. Having learned from the first game, play continued, with the fate of the leaders to be determined after the conclusion of game. Norfolk's reinforcing command made a tardy appearance this time. Percy's men commanded  by Bryce, crushed first Fauconberg's Battle, and then Norfolk's (played by Miles, who lost his command first). At the end of the battle, for the Lancastrians, Percy had 7 Resolve points left, D'Acre had 3, and Somerset 2. D'Acre was wounded but recovered subsequently, King Edward was captured and imprisoner in the Tower of London, and Somerset was killed. All in all, a truly decisive victory for Red Rose of Lancaster... and quite a reversal of fortune from the historical outcome!

Test of Resolve rules

Having run the game twice with teens now, it works best not to even have them use the QRS, but rather just handle all the rules myself and simply explain their options and then have them roll the D12's! 

International Star Wars Day...

be with you...

With my friends Joe, Greg, and Roger staging a series of games with the Galactic Knights rules and ships (ex Superior Starfleet Wars range), recalled I had some as yet still unfinished items from that range. Three Terran HAVOC Transport ships, the enormous Nest space station for the Entomalians

My order from back in 2014(!) indicates I got 1 bulk Pack of Light station sections (5), 1 Bulk Pack of Heavy Station sections (5), 2 bulk Packs of end sections (10), 1 Bulk Pack of Triple splice station sections (5), 1 General Section with heavy weapons pod. Checking the Monday Knights Productions website, the prices for these parts remain essentially unchanged 9 years later! The peices can be combined in many different ways. The problem is that they never came out for rules for these items in the Galactic Knights framework. Digging them out at least caused me to prime the lot of them after the photo was taken!

I have a number of other rules sets to try out for my Sci-Fi naval miniatures , if I ever have the time and energy to do so! 

ADD: Primed the pieces and did some test configurations...

Hard  to get contrast with white on back. but this is a single section space station with light weapons (and 3 heavy weapon pods!).

The same with a heavy weapons section

A three ring station - one each light heavy and Very heavy weapons sections with "Y" weap[on interlocks

6 section station with 3 each heavy and light weapons sections. 3 "Y" links and 3 heavy weapons pods.