O'Brien/Clare's regiment

You can find a short history of this famous infantry regiment written by me on this blog.
http://leagueofaugsburg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/featured-regiment-clares-regiment.html

King William's War

I've posted another Donnybrook scenario set in North America in the 1680's during the period known as the King William's War on the League of Augsburg Blog.

http://leagueofaugsburg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/king-williams-war.html

Forage for Food

 

This was another Donnybrook scenario that I put on for Colin and Ray since they enjoyed the previous game so much. All the figures and animals supplied by me and terrain by Colin and myself.
I had previously fought this scenario before with Bob Talbot but that had been a two player game but this time I adapted it as a three player scenario.

The basic scene is that the Moorish and English forces are advancing on a nearby village to round up as many animals as they can to feed their troops and the third player are the villagers who are keen to hang onto their animals. Goats are worth 1pt each, sheep are worth 5pts each and cattle are worth 10pts each, the camels and market stall are for scenic purposes only although they could also have been added as further victory points.  I set up the three factions then allowed Colin and Ray to pick which ones they wanted and would have what was left. Colin decided to go for the Moors this time since he commanded the English in the last game and Ray decided to take the local villagers which left the English for me.
I haven't posted all the scenario details here as they will either appear in the Donnybrook rules book or I will add them into the League of Augsburg Blog http://leagueofaugsburg.blogspot.co.uk/

The game started very well for the villagers as all their troops came out in the first four moves whereas half the English troops were still waiting to arrive but this ended up actually being an advantage as it meant that the two Moorish factions were left to fight themselves whilst trying to round up the animals.

Eventually all the English troops got on, you can see them sneaking up in the left of the above photo.
The only unit of theirs that actually got into combat were the pikemen who ended up destroying the Moorish heavy cavalry and relieving them of the animals they were herding off whilst the rest of the infantry quietly rounded up what was in the immediate area and the four goats they got in the last move game them the victory by collecting 84pts of animals against the Moors 80 and the poor old villagers were left with nothing.

Again both Colin and Ray enjoyed the games so much that they are already planning their own Donnybrook factions.

Saving the Slaves

I've fought this scenario a few times with Barry Hilton and Bob Talbot but thought it would be a good one to introduce Colin and Ray to Donnybrook, a set of skirmish rules for actions fought between the period 1660 - 1760.


The basic scenario is that a group of English civilians and servants have been taken prisoner by the Moors during one of their many raids and are about to be sold at one of the slave markets in a nearby village as seen above. A detachment of troops has been sent out from Tangiers to go and rescue them. Colin commanded the English troops and Ray commanded the Moors although the only troops he has available at the beginning of the game are the slave traders bodyguard, reinforcements will come from the local villagers and from cavalry from off table.

The game started well for Colin as he managed to get all his troops on the table whilst the Moors only had the bodyguard unit and two small units of villagers that had rallied to their cause.

Eventually Ray's cavalry arrived and he tried outflanking the English troops but rashly ended up charging the English pikes which surprising turned out ok for him as he managed to push the pikes almost off the table. Instead of continuing to finish them off he decided to go and attack the musketeers where it all went horribly wrong.

The only success the Moors managed to achieve was to kill the English leader but by that point they had lost 50% casualties then failed their morale test. This would normally be the end of the game but they were both enjoying it so much they decided to carry on but it didn't get much better for the Moors and with the defeat of the bodyguard there was nobody left to stop the English from rescuing the prisoners.

Aughrim at Claymore

Above is a general view of the display game that myself, Barry Hilton, Bob Talbot and Gerry Donohoe put on at Claymore the annual show of the South East Scotland Wargames Club in Edinburgh on Saturday 3rd August. This was the central section of the battle of Aughrim fought in 1691 between the Williamite army led by General Ginkel and the Jacobit army led by General St. Ruth while both kings William III and James II/VII had left Ireland by this point in the war.

Williamite left flank

Williamite centre

Williamite right flank

Jacobite centre

Jacobite right flank

 

The day was a great success and the game generated a huge amount of interest and it was good to meet so many people especially the nice guys from the Wild Geese Wargames Club from Dublin.

The figures are from all four of us and are from Barry's wonderful Warfare Miniatures range http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/shop/ terrain from Barry and myself.

You can find more photos of the show on my mate Jim Duncan's blog

http://jim-duncan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/my-day-at-claymore-2013.html

 

The League of Augsburg

 

I have been asked to contribute a number of articles to this new blog set up by Clarence Harrison which covers the period 1660 to 1720 which actually takes in more wars than just the League of Augsburg also known as the Nine Years War.

http://leagueofaugsburg.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Apart from writing on the blog I have also been involved in playtesting a set of skirmish rules written by Clarence called Donnybrook.

This is the finished illustration for the rules, title and graphics still to be added.

Myself, Barry Hilton, Bob Talbot, Adrian Howe and Gerry Donohoe put on a display game at Carronnade, the wargames show by the Falkirk Wargames Club to promote Donnybrook and it seemed to generate a huge amount of interest.

The first article I've written for the blog is about the fighting around Tangiers in the 1680's and how I went about producing a force for gaming the numerous actions.

The next article is about the opposition, the Moors.

More Carronade

Here are another couple of shots which show off Adrian's Walls to perfection and the figures beside and on them give a good idea of scale.

 

Carronade display

It's been a few months since I've last posted mainly due to family, friends and work getting in the way of a lot of gaming and me forgetting to take a camera to the few games I did have. Fortunately my mate Barry Hilton took his camera long to take some shots of our demo game we put on at Carronade, the annual show of the Falkirk Wargames Club.

This was also the first outing for the new range of fortifications from our mate Adrian Howe and Adrian's Walls made a stunning background to our skirmish game which was also the first public outing of a new set of late 17th early 18th century skirmish rules called Donnybrook by Clarence Harrison. Other top mate Bob 'Toggy' Talbot also took part in the demo.

A couple of great views of the front and back of Adrian;s walls.

The show was also the first outing for my latest painting project

The Tangiers regiment for fighting against the Moors in the 1680's

The figures are individually based on pennies for skirmish actions but

also fit into these larger bases from Warbases for use in different styles of gaming.

This photo shows them being used in the skirmish mode,

group of pikemen have two characters, a drummer and ensign

attached to them while the small unit of musketeers in the background

are led by a sergeant.

I hope to take more pics of this unit and show the number of units

and characters I can get from it for using in Donnybrook.

 

Mac Cillycuddies Regiment

Mac Cillycuddies Regiment

 

Hooray!!! the blog is finally allowing me to post pics again.

This regiment was the last Warfare Miniatures unit that I've painted and was painted up as a mainly pike armed unit with just a few musketeers and improvised weapons added for visual effect.

Luttrell's Jacobite cavalry and dragoons

I finally got around to painting two squadrons of Colonel Henry Luttrell's cavalry regiment for my Jacobite force and they had their first outing at our display game that we put on at the Partizan show on Sunday 2nd September.  The three squadrons of dismounted dragoons also got their first outing as well.  Unfortunately the blog is still acting up and not allowing me to post any pics so I have had to put them on the LOA forum and you can see them here. http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/fightingtalk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4263&p=27582#p27582

or you can view them and more on my Photobucket album.
http://s777.photobucket.com/albums/yy54/obriendavid/Wargames%20figures/

Luttrell's Dragoons

It's been a quiet month because of my back pain and having my God daughter staying with us so no gaming and painting so far this month except for a few conversions of Warfare Miniatures dismounted dragoons to finish of my unit. I seem to be having problems with the blogger system which isn't allowing me to post pics at the moment, which is a real pain but you can see the pics on Barry's forum here. http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/fightingtalk/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4232

I've now got the dragoon unit finished as well as my first squardron of cavalry plus a game tomorrow night then the Newcastle and Partizan shows on Saturday and Sunday where I hope to take more pics, especially of our display game at Partizan.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Jacobite reinforcements

Just finished another battalion for my Irish Jacobite force.
This unit is the regiment Clanrickarde which at the start of the war was recorded as being poorly armed and uniformed which is why I have made the central unit a pike stand instead of pike support and I've also painted the troops up in a mixture of various uniforms and civilian clothes.  The figure in front on the extreme left is a conversion of one of the lovely Warfare Miniature figures range.

I also tried to model a cannon ball bouncing and taking out one of the unit.

The idea was ok but I'm not too happy with the final outcome, hopefully it will be better the next time I attempt it.

On the painting stocks at the moment is another stand of dismounted dragoons to add to

Colonel Samuel Luttrell's regiment and I've also started the first squadron of

Colonel Henry Luttrell's cavalry regiment.

Claymore 2012

As we were putting on our Borodino display game and ended up chatting to so many people I didn't get a long time to get round the show, especially with my injured back but I still managed to get a few shots of the games that impressed me.  Sorry to anyone who put on a game and I haven't taken any pics it's probably just that my back had become so sore I needed to sit down.

These two great pics are by our mate Kevin Calder who is part of the

 League of Gentlemen Wargamers but puts on games as the Iron Brigade.

I don't know which club put on this great 28mm WW2 game but it is fantastic use of teddy bear fur.

This is just one shot of a great looking 28mm Vietnam game.

This was the only shot I managed to get of this interesting Russian Civil War game

which was set in Latvia or Lithuania.  Everytime I went to get a shot there were too many

people hanging about, this was the trouble with a number of the displays.

This was a huge game of Platea between Greeks and Persians.

These two pics are of the game that won the best display.

It's a 15mm pirate game and was just packed full of interesting little scenes

like the ship in the dry dock above.

These two shots are of a 54mm AWI game set at Brandywine.

You can find a lot more pics on my mate Bill Gilchrists site.

http://blenheimtoberlin.blogspot.co.uk/

or on the Wappinshaw site.

http://wappinshaw.blogspot.co.uk/

I'm sure there are lots of other sites out there that will have other pics.

Danish Cavalry

Here are a few illustrations that I got off the web sometime ago, I can't remember where I got them so if the owner of these objects to me posting them then please get in touch and I will remove them.

Both these illustrations seem to show cavalry wearing breastplates

although they only seem to be on the front

I've been informed by Dan Schorr that these illustraions come from a series of articles on the Danish Army in the WSS by Torstein Snorrason that originally appeared in the Danish magazine Chakoten.

Dan had been given permission by Torstein to use the illustrations on his fantastic Northern Wars site which sadly is no longer available and I probably copied them from there so I hope Torstein doesn't object to me using them here, if he gets in touch and objects then I will remove them.

More Warfare Miniatures

King James II (VII of Scotland) in pensive mood.

Comte de Lauzun commander of French troops in Ireland.

Irish officer from the Kings Guard.

Individually these figures are superb but it's when you combine them into vignettes

with some nice basing that they really come to life.

I think this vignette sums up James' trouble,

he was surrounded by 'advisors' all offering differing advice

and he couldn't make up his mind what to do.

I'm sure a couple of near misses like these might sharpen up his ideas.

This base is the first of Colonel Simon Luttrell's Irish dragoons defending a forward position.

Simon Luttrell and Lauzun will probably stay well apart following a fight between the two of them

at a Congress meeting in Dublin, Luttrell was the Governer of Dublin at the time

and had his ears boxed for disagreeing with the Frenchman.

All these figures and the rules we use Beneath the Lilly Banners are available from this site.

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/shop/