First birthday of ALKAID and launching of issue no. 4

A cultural act to celebrate the first anniversary of ALKAID EDITIONS and the launching of the issue No. 4 of ALKAID MULTITHEMATIC MAGAZINE, took place the 23 of June in the facilities of "Caja Duero" in Valladolid (Spain),
The act, included in the activities of the JESUS PEREDA CULTURAL ATHENEUM, counted on the attendance of a numerous public, who followed with attention the introductory words of Pilar Iglesias (ALKAID's chairman) and three brief conferences about: "Geographic Information Systems" (Sergio Pardo, expert in G.I.S.) , “Introduction to the New Digital Art” (Agustín Espina, graphical designer of ALKAID) and " Web 2,0 and scientific divulgation" (Rafael Pardo, scientific director of ALKAID EDITIONS).

from left to right: Pilar Iglesias, María Vallejo (Jesús Pereda Atheneum), Rafael Pardo, Sergio Pardo and Agustín Espina

The magazine ALKAID has a multithematic structure: science, art, trips, gaming, environment, history, literature, poetry… and the issue 4 contains a "Napoleonic" article by Miguel Angel García García, La repercusión de la Guerra de la Independencia en la población civil (The repercussion of the Peninsular War on the civil population) presenting several testimonies about the personal and patrimonial damages suffered by the population during that conflict, giving back to us the horrors of the war.

Honour: the new Sam Mustafa's system

Sam Mustafa, the author of the wargaming rule-sets Grande Armée and Might and Reason, is now working in a new Napoleonic system named Honour. According to his own words:

"Honour is a new series of miniatures games for the horse-and-musket era. It will appear in Modules, starting at the end of 2009. Each module of the Honour system is a complete set of wargame rules that examines one of the wars of this period at a particular scale, and with a particular style. In the coming years modules will eventually address all of the wars of the era @1700-1900, at multiple scales and levels of play.
Every module in the Honour system uses the same flexible basing system that can scale to any player’s collection. All use the same basic set of terminology, measurements, and sequence of play. Each module “plugs-in” the distinctive features and flavor of the period it addresses, at the scale it addresses, to the core Honour system.
Every game in the Honour series is a beautiful, full-color hardback book with inspiring photographs and lavishly

Coming in Winter 2009: Lasalle
Lasalle is the first module for Honour. Players take the role of a brigade or division commander in the Napoleonic Wars.
The game is small-scale and tactical in nature, focusing on the movement of individual battalions and regiments of cavalry. The player will manage a small force of roughly a dozen units as he tries to complete some specific mission assigned to him, such as “Hold the village and our bridgehead at all costs!” or: “Drive the French from Plancenoit!”

Coming in Spring 2011: Blücher
Blücher puts the player in the role of an army commander in the Napoleonic Wars. It represents the most complete rethinking of grandtactical gaming in decades.
In Blücher players move entire divisions and corps at a time, but with bases representing the individual battalions, batteries, and regiments that comprise the “footprint” of those larger entities. Movement, shooting and combat resolve very quickly, often with dozens of bases engaged simultaneously, in a single, straightforward process. "

Take a look at the proposed basing system:

I am a fan of Napoleon's Battles ruleset, now in his 3rd edition (see Napoleon's Battles 3rd Edition post), but I am also a compulsive rule-set buyer, and Sam always offers new and imaginative game mechanisms, so I am waiting for the launching of his new products!

More information at the Sam Mustafa's Honour web site

Two essential bibliographical resources

While surfing through the Napoleon-Series Forum, I have found two posts for Steven H. Smith (of course!), giving two essential bibliographical resources for the Napoleonic era in general, and the Campaign of Leipzig in particular.

The first is related with one of the translations found in the Mark's Conrad page about Russian Military History: the Volume X of Viskovatov , covering the uniforms of 'Grenadiers, Musketeers, Jägers, Marines, and Carabiniers' from 1801 to 1825. The plates are located here, hosted in Memorandum, a Russian site that can be viewed through Babelfish.
The original Steven's post in Napoleon-Series Forum can be also found here.

The other resource are several links to 'Der Krieg in Deutschland und Frankreich in den Jahren 1813 und 1814' by Carl von Plotho. 3 vols. Published by C. F. Amelang, 1817. You can find all the links here, or copy and paste the followings addresses

Vol 1:
http://books.google.com/books?id=IRYLVfK-rgUC
http://books.google.com/books?id=0HkuAAAAMAA
http://books.google.com/books?id=KmsIAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=xksUAAAAYAAJ

Vol 2:
http://books.google.com/books?id=lnouAAAAMAA
http://books.google.com/books?id=vzRttj9l4AEC
http://books.google.com/books?id=O2sIAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=4lMUAAAAYAAJ

Vol 3:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UnsuAAAAMAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=tdJaWOJqkZkC
http://books.google.com/books?id=iWsIAAAAQAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=604UAAAAYAAJ

The books are printed in gothic characters and are not easy to read (at least for me!), but the OOB, located at the end of each book, are easier to follow.

Enjoy!

Maps of Westfalia

A new (german) resource, found in the Napoleon-Series Forum by courtesy of Steven H. Smith (a.k.a the 'urbique' boy).
To use the maps
1) Go towards the end of the page and find the General index Map
2) Click on one of the sheets on the index sheet
3) You'll see three little icons beside the thumbnail. Click on the middle one that looks like a big "Z"
4) Now double click on the map sheet where you want to zoom in

Enjoy!

1812 Wellington en Valladolid

My friend and historian M.A. García has published a new book:

'1812, Wellington en Valladolid'
Diputación de Valladolid, 2009
207 pages, 17x24 cm, paperback
ISBN: 978-84-7852-984-1
Price: 12 €

The book describes the presence in the province of Valladolid of Wellington and his army, in the weeks previous and after the battle of Salamanca. The pass of the Allied and French armies across villages like Mojados, Olmedo, Rueda, Nava, Portillo, Tudela, Valladolid.... is followed by using English, French, Portuguese and Spanish sources. These last include many unpublished parish documents, thoroughly researched by the author.

The book is available from pedidos@maxtor.es

More informatio at the Miguel Angel's web site

Congratulations Miguel Angel!

Croebern diorama again!

The team of the Croebern Project has updated its web site, with another set of wonderful pictures.



Being now in "painting-less" period, I am looking at these marvelous site to take breath for new enterprises!

Go to the Gallery section of the Croebern Diorama site.

Off topics: Ringworld

Ringworld is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, considered a classic of science fiction literature. I read this novel many years ago (around the 80's) and it is one of my favorite SF books along with its sequels: The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children.

The "Ringworld" is an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference), encircling a Sol-type star. It rotates, providing an artificial gravity that is 99.2% as strong as Earth's gravity through the action of centrifugal force. Ringworld has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets. The majority of the surface is land interspersed with shallow, freshwater seas. On opposite sides of the ring are two large deep saltwater oceans, placed in counterbalance to one another. Walls 1,000 miles tall along the edges retain the atmosphere.

Look at this wonderful animation:



More information at the Wikipedia

A tentative OOB for Pitschenberg

I have made some research... well, research is a too ambitious word: I have look at the books cited in the previous post about Pitschenberg, searching for the period comprised between the battle of Katzbach (August 26, 1813) and September, 5.
In those days, the demoralized French Army of the Bober commanded by the Marshall Macdonald, was retiring eastwards towards Bautzen closely pursued by the Bluecher's Army of Silesia. The retreat was only stopped by the arrival of Napoleon himself. He was accompanied by his Guard, the Marmont's VI Corps and the Latour-Maubourg's 1st Cavalry Corps. The French attacked the Allied advance guard but, Bluecher knew (from spy informations and from the reports of his advanced guards) of the presence of Napoleon and retired, in compliance with the Trachenberg Plan, leaving Napoleon without his general battle.
While in the real world the Pitschenberg combat was only a minor affaire, the battle of the Project Leipzig will be the general encounter wanted by Napoleon. In that battle will participate the following corps:

French
Napoleon (87,400 men)
- Army of the Bober commanded by Macdonald
- III Corps (Souham) 27,200 men
- V Corps (Lauriston) 7,700 men
- XI Corps (Gerard) 18,700 men
- II Cavalry Corps (Sebastiani) 6,100 men
- I Cavalry Corps (Latour-Mauburg) commanded by Murat 7,600 men
- Imperial Guard (Mortier) 20,100 men

Allied
Bluecher's Armyy of Silesia (85,000 men)
- Right Wing (Russian) commanded by Sacken
- 10th Infantry Corps (Vassil'shikov) 7,200 men
- Cavalry Corps (Tschaplitz) 2,900 men
- Cossacks (Karpov) 3,800 men
- 8th Corps (St. Priest) 12,000 men
- I Corps (Prussian) commanded by Yorck 32,600 men
- Left Wing (Russian) commanded by Langeron
- 6th Infantry Corps 7,200 men
- 9th Infantry Corps (Olsusiev) 6,200 men
- 10th Infantry Corps (Kapzevich) 7,200 men
- 1st Cavalry Corps (Korff) 5,900 men

The strengths of the different corps of the Army of the Bober have been calculated by using the losses given in Nafziger's 'Napoleon at Dresden. The Battles of August 1813' (The Emperor Press, Chicago, 1994). For the other armies or corps, we have used the numbers in the nearest available state of forces, corrected by an attrition of 1% daily.

French cuirassiers from Armand d'Arc

Another conversion and painting job from my Argentinian friend, Armand d'Arc. According to him:

"This is my Squadron of Courassiers strong in 157 riders. I had tried to make a formation similar to the one depicted in the book "Imperial Bayonets" by George Naziger - page 184 - for French Heavy Cavalry.
Mostly of those riders are from Airfix (69), Hat 8015 (19), Hat 8016 (12) and others. On all of them I have modelled the long horse trail with some movement and in some a bigger plume. Officers wear white plume and the troops red ones.
I have also changed some poses by cutting arms, heads, etc. So, all of those heavy riders are convertions. You can also can see some skirmishes on a little hill.
Hope you enjoy it!
Regards
Armand d'Arc from Argentina"





Watch the HäT Everything Toy Soldiers page for more pictures!

The next battle: Pitschenberg

The next battle of the Leipzig Project will be a semi-fictional affaire based upon the combat of Pitschenberg. In the real life, this small combat was fought in September, 4 after the battle of Katzbach, between the advancing and jubilant Bluecher's Army of Silesia and the mauled Marshall Macdonald's Army of the Bober.
Bluecher was pursuing the demoralized French Marshall, when Napoleon and Murat came to his help at the head of the Guard, the Marmont's VI Corps and the Latour-Maubourg's 1st Cavalry Corps. Macdonald stopped near Bautzen, and attacked the pursuing Allied Vassil'shikov's advance-guard occupying the Pitschenberg heights. After noticing the renewed French efforts, Bluecher retired in compliance with the Trachenberg Plan.

Bibliography
Nafziger G., 'Napoleon at Dresden. The Battles of August 1813', The Emperor Press, Chicago, 1994
Petre F.L., 'Napoleon's Last Campaign in Germany, 1813',J. Lane, 1912
Zucker K., '1813. The Year that doomed the Empire'. OSG, 2007
Rousset C., 'Étude sur les opérations du Maréchal Macdonald', Librairie Militaire R. Chapelot et Cie, Paris, 1910
Langeron L.A.A., 'Mémoires', Alphonse Picard et fils, Paris, 1902
Marston J.E., 'The Life and Campaigns of Field-Marshall Blücher', Sherwood, Neely and Jones, Londond, 1815