Count down to Historicon, and some previews on Saxe-Pape

If all goes well, tomorrow by this time in the morning I will be at Historicon, in Fredericksburg, VA. Having missed the show one year ago, I am really looking forward to reconnect with friends, do some shopping, and hopefully join a few games.
As my usual, I am showing up at the convention without much of a plan. I have no pressing need to purchase miniatures or rules, and one of my favorite hobby bookstore, On Military Matters, is not going to attend this year. Thus, I think I may be aiming to some terrain pieces, or other target of opportunities -- a dangerous spot to be, as there is nothing like a wargamer abandoning himself to impulse shopping!

In the meanwhile, I spent the last couple of days doing some work on my revamped Imagination. I set up a specific blog... shhh, it's still a secret, but you can look at the layout and an introductory post right here at the Chronicles of Saxe-Pape. (By the way: when the time will come for the "official" launch, could anyone suggest how to have Saxe-Pape included in the Emperor vs. Elector blog?)
At the moment, I am doing some background work of the personalities of my Imaginations, comprehensive of family trees and individual attributes. I became a little apprehensive about finding proper names, but as usual, Wikipedia proved to be an invaluable resource. Would you have imagined that somebody make the efforts to provide a comprehensive "List of Hessian consorts"? With a little of research on the history of minor German principalities, and their ruling families, it is really not that difficult to come up with many splendid ideas for an Imagination.
Going forward, my plan is:

1. to review and post the introduction and historical background on Saxe-Pape;
2. to complete the work on personalities and ruling families in Saxe-Pape, and post brief introductions about the leading characters;
3. to finish and post the "official" map of Alte-Saxe;
4. to take pictures, pictures, pictures for the blogs (don't we all love eye-candies?)
5. and, last but not least, to complete the painting of enough miniatures to fight a first battle sometimes before the end of the summer.

With those thoughts, off to Historicon - if computer connection will allow, I wouldn't mind to post from the convention, but do not hold your breath if I fail to return to these columns until Sunday.

Marlburian infantry units in review

Today I finally managed to spend a few hours to fix some final details on my Marlburian armies, and I also had the opportunity to take some long-due photos of the final results of, literally, months of work. I am very pleased by how things are shaping up in this project. of course, I would have liked to proceed faster, but overall I cannot complain. Life has been busy, really busy: and yet, I have succeeded in bringing several units to the table -- literally.

Right now, the bulk of my Marlburian forces are in two armies: the one of the Elector of Palatinate, and one French. ideally, I will probably develop an imagine-nation narrative when the time to deploy them will come, but for the time being I am glad to keep them both relatively historical.

For the Palatinate forces, I also manage to paint a commander, maybe the Elector himself. You cans ee him here, all smiles after a full staisfactory review of his troops. These are 15mm Edition Brokaw miniatures.

Thus far, I have completed five Palatinate regiments, based on 12 miniatures per regiment: IR Bettendorf and IR Rehbinder (blue coat with red cuffs); IR Haxthousen and IR Westerwald-Dillendurg (blue coat, green cuffs); IR Saxe-Meiningen (red coat, green cuffs.) Here the five units:

For the time being, only one Palatinate cavalry regiment has been completed, RR Hochkirk, while two other cavalry units are in the pipeline, one dragoons and one cuirassiers (the Gendarmes de Venningen.) Here's Hochkirk's cavalrymen:


The French units have been completed in a more free-wheeling, unsystematic manner. Thus far, I count four "regular" infantry regiments: Normandie, Piedmont, Perche, Enghien. In addition, there are two Irish units, Abermarle and Donnington, and one Swiss, Stuppa, plus some Spanish grenadiers (you can see them in the background in the second picture below, or here for a close-up during painting.)



What will be next? There are some items with very high priority. I need cavalry for the French; two units of dragoons are about to hit the workbench, and eventually one more of mounted musketeers. As I mentioned, there are two cavalry units for Electoral Palatinate that are almost completed, and I am considering an additional couple of Imperial cuirassiers. Then, I need artillery -- something is in the pipeline, but I need to hurry up... So, yes, still a lot of work is waiting for me. But, nonetheless, some very sweet progress as well!

Is paper the new black?

Of course it is not, nor I would ever dare to state the contrary. Yet, I think that for people in the right mindset, with the proper expectations, and for the right price, paper can go a long way on our wargaming tables.
Enter exhibit A.



This building was downloaded a few evenings ago from this website. If I well understand, the models are inspired by buildings in the French island of Reunion (which, by the way, I thought it was a penal colony.)
Yes, this is not perfect. It is not the solid, stocky building I would have bought at JR Miniatures. Not the excellent, hard cardboard models from the always intriguing Paperterrain. But hey, the price is certainly right: they are free to download! All I needed was a color printer, some glue, some patience, and a couple of hours during a rainy afternoon. And rest assured this palace will come handy again and again: I already envision it as the Prince's Palace in my XVIII century imagi-nation, the Principality of Saxe-Pape-Cyssor, and it will also serve as the presidential palace in Lopongo.
I hope, eventually, to refine my skills in paper building - starting with a not exactly simple project has probably affected today's final result, too. But again, with the right expectations and the right mindset, I believe this palace will be in proud display on the tabletop soon.

Saxe-Pape-Cyssor: preview

Just a quick preview of the work done on Friday night on the map of Saxe-Pape-Cyssor. As you can see, I just used the basic system offered by The Perfect Captain in their campaign system BattleFinder. I only had to be careful, to make roads and rivers consistent with an overall pattern. Because of that, I decided to explicitly paint the actual course of roads and rivers to connect each of the individual maps that, for those of you who do not know BattleFinder, can be directly translated into a battlefield on a 6'x4' table.
I still need to do some work to clean up this map; the idea is then to take it to Kinko to make a clean copy, and eventually a few letter-size copies that may come handy at a letter time to manage campaign moves.
Here a zoom into the area between the Rhine, at the bottom, and Harassee-sur-Butte, the fortified town at the centre of the map, along River Butte.

My imagination

I know the sheer title of this post will create thrill in some of you... not so fast, but yes, I want to confirm I am working on this. I set a time-frame: 1715-1740, that is between the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession and the opening of the war of Austrian Succession. I establish a broad geographic area when my imagination will be: the west bank of the river Rhine, somewhere east of France, southeast of the former Spanish Netherlands, southwest of the Holy Roman Empire ecclesiastical states of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, and north-west of Wurttemberg. Or, to me more precise... south of Frankszonia, and north of the Bishopric of Uber-Gruntshuffen, if you know what I mean...
(By the way: I should probably drop a note to Brother Anslem, Librarian at monastery of Alt-Wittendorf, and make sure he will "officially" register my spot!)
I have a map of my principality, and a very detailed one for that! Thanks to the campaign system provided by The Perfect Captain, I worked over the past couple of evenings to a very detailed chart of the area.
I already have a plot, which should get my first campaign started as soon as some of my WSS battalions will be painted and ready to undertake their mission! My imagination belongs to the Empire, but because it's strategic position, and its complicated dynastic issues, it is the object of the ambitions of many competing states in the area. I have a few personalities, around whom the events will revolve: the Marquis de Belmont, Viscount Diversey... [can't you guess I live in Chicago?]
I also have a plan about how to maintain the chronicles of my principality: following what many of you already did, I will spin-off another blog completely dedicated to the principality, but I intend to keep that as a mere mirror of what I will continue to write here. In other words: Desto Fante is and remains my wargaming blog; the other one will only collect writings related to the specific project, at least until I will move all the contents to a website.
Finally... I hear you clamoring... what's the name of the principality?
Well, in honor of a staunch supporter of Desto Fante, who was also the first one to leave a comment on my blog on its very first day, the first name of the principality will be Saxe. Now, tongue in cheek, since "Saxe" sounds very much like the Italian noun "sasso", i.e. rock, I could not help but choosing "Pape-Cyssor" to complete the name I was looking for. Cyssor, pronounced in the French way, will be the capital of the principality.
So, here we go: Saxe-Pape-Cyssor will be.
Going back to the geography of Saxe-Pape-Cyssor. I took very seriously the task of designing a credible map for this imaginary region. Since the area borders with France, many names will show a French influence: the major city on the border is in fact Chateu Mauvoisin, who sits right along river Rhine. Saxe-Pape-Cyssor is crossed by another river, the Butte; its second city is therefore Harassee-sur-Butte - again, tongue in cheek: but this is as far as I will go, since I am very jealous of my PG-13 rating on Blogspot. A few other spots that found their way on my map were the towns of Sankt Sergius, Schloss Roget, Hirshwald Hof, Fahreberg, Saadbrucken, Thornbach.
The map is pretty much done, but it still requires a few cosmetic adjustmens before I will share.
Well, these are all the news that fit to print, for the time being. It will take sometimes before the WSS units I began to paint last week will come into line, so there is no rush into getting the details out about Saxe-Pape-Cyssor: but I feel I am off to a good start, and by the time the battalions will deploy on the ground I think I will be enjoying a very good time in tracking the maneuvering around this small, but far from negligible, principality at the westernmost border of the Holy Roman Empire.