Horse & Musket - Wimpfen

Battle of Wimpfen. This is a good one for learning about pike & shot tactics in Horse and Matchlock.

Pike & Shot Campaigns: Nordlingen

Some scenes from a PBEM game of Pike & Shot Campaigns. The beginning of the Protestant advance on the Imperial left. I'm playing the Protestants.

You know your hobby is serious when...

I was doing some reviewing and editing of scenarios and rules for a game I'm helping with on the Thirty Years War and realized I didn't have a good reference on specific battles. Now I do.

Presents from Germany

Blucher looks down on all who enter the War Room. He's actually a fridge magnet and bottle opener, but I like him here.

My grogbrother Jim, his wife Michelle and son Edward recently returned from two weeks in Germany where they did their level best to visit as many Napoleonic battlefields as they could, but most especially Jena. They made my Friday this week by sending along appropriately themed goodies from their trip!

Turenne's 1645 Campaign - March 1645

I didn't get to it last week, but this week I am playing Won by the Sword, a game simulating operations during the Thirty Years War.

Scenes from Lens, 1648

A couple of scenes from the Battle of Lens, fought between the French under Condé and the Spanish under Archduke Leopold on August 20 1648.

The Campaign of 1645

Turenne's army preparing to leave Phillipsburg and begin the campaign of 1645. Won by the Sword. I'm planning to start this in the coming week, assuming I finish my game of Nine Years.

1632

I've just finished Eric Flint's novel 1632, something I'd put off for years. I have a love-hate relationship with alt-history fiction. When it's really good I enjoy it a great deal. When it's bad, it makes me crazy. To avoid being driven crazy by what might be bad alt-history set in one of my favorite historical periods, I've studiously avoided this series for quite a long time.

This is not bad alt-history.

First, from a historical perspective, Flint knows his history. The period is depicted very well. There's decided bias toward certain factions in the Thirty Years War but it's a bias that I happen to agree (rather strongly) with, so it didn't bother me. It is also rather strongly pro-American common man (and woman), an attitude that might not be terribly popular in a lot of circles these days given the recent election.

Fleurus Two Times

I find the Pike and Shot period of warfare fascinating. Like the Napoleonic era and the American Civil War, it was a period of rapid evolution of warfare coupled with a time of dramatic political and social change. There's a lot to learn and understand about the wars of this period, and I keep getting drawn back to it.

Protestant and Imperial positions at the start of Fleurus, Pike & Shot Campaigns

Pike & Shot

The 16th Century saw the dawn of modern warfare, particularly in the brutal combat of the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War. This has always been a favorite era of mine to study - but it has always also been an era poorly represented in wargames, particularly computer wargames.

The Swedish center at Lutzen