Battle of Malplaquet; Another 9/11 on a vast scale, 300 years ago....is evidently alive and kicking in France.
Almost forty years before the War of the Austrian Succession, but these pictures give a great idea of wargaming on a large scale. Would that my games ever end up looking like this!
Malplaquet, 1709. An amazing array of flags on splendid terrain. Check the pictures in the gallery.
Almost forty years before the War of the Austrian Succession, but these pictures give a great idea of wargaming on a large scale. Would that my games ever end up looking like this!
Malplaquet, 1709. An amazing array of flags on splendid terrain. Check the pictures in the gallery.
4 comments:
But how do you move those guys in the middle?
Truly an amazing display.
-- Jeff
Very carefully, I'd imagine!
Interesting thing is, they appear to be flats(?)
If so, I never imagined flats as being wargaming material, but why not, I guess? I'd have thought they'd have been a little fragile for standing up to too much handling, though- especially in numbers like these.
France has a very old (late 19th C.?) tradition of using flats for kriegspiel, initially with rules derivated from chess but using 'hexes'. At first a military, quasi-professional exercice.
A 'school' totally independant from the 'wargame' initiated by H.G. Wells - and a school which in the "70 hindered not a little the development of 'wargaming as we know it' in France.
(Tony Bath also used 'flats', but with 'wargaming' rules).
For me the problem with flats is that they look totally silly as soon as you don't look at them exactly from the 'right' pov.
Apprreciate you blogging this
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