Battle and a very Civil War

No prizes for guessing what my two choices of reading material currently consist of - the updated edition of Charles Grant's Battle and Three Weeks in November - the military history of the Swiss Civil War in 1847. Both have been very inspiring in different and occasionally similar ways.

Battle has given me much to think about for my 42mm plastic WW2 project - both from the rules perspective and how I will be organising my collection. I am very fond of the rules and could easily turn them into a hex-based set for use with my Hexon set up if needed - I should mention perhaps that my original intention was to use a version of MOMBAT by Bob Cordery or even just go with Memoir 44 as they stand. Either way it is no big deal and I am quite relaxed about the rules side of the project.

My initial forces for this collection will be fairly modest in terms of numbers and will equate to roughly a Grant sized platoon of around 30 figures. By careful choices in respect of figures this will also double up for any '4 figure unit' style games - such as the aforementioned MOMBAT or Memoir 44. I have settled on 30mm square bases for the figures and have a supply en route from Peter Pig. No mention yet of vehicles or artillery as I am still thinking about this.

The Swiss Civil War of 1847 has really given me a lot to think about. Whilst I have no plans to refight this in its entireity I shall, after some gentle persuasion, fight a couple of the actions using the block armies - what I have in mind would make for an interesting game in any event. The main inspiration for me from this book though is the sheer potential from an imagi-nation perspective and also the way it has made me think about tackling a Napoleonic era set up along those lines. The uniforms worn are largely late Napoleonic in style and so producing armies would not be a problem using a selective repaint. I am not about to do this but it has made me think about how the concept of cantonal armies in the later part of the century - after the war of 1847 or, assuming that in never took place. With a little artistic licence with the geography - perhaps reducing some of the mountains and enlarging the lakes (one has to think of the naval dimension!) as well as combining the cantons into larger 'national' groupings you have a ready made area for fighting over. Allow the Austrian border to be disputed by the Turks so they have a presence (I simply could not leave them out!) and you have all the ingredients for something rather special and late 19th century.

I need to develop this a little further and so my first port of call will be to look at a decent map of Switzerland to see how it could be, ahem, carved up....;-)