Peter Gilder was well known for his terrain and love of Napoleonic refights. In Miniature Wargames Four he was to provide details of his most ambitious refight... The Battle of Leipzig.
When I first read this article I was simply blown away by the size of the game and all in 28mm!
Of course the images of units from the refight drove me to paint faster, better and basically follow the Gilder ideals. It was only later I finally realised that I had neither the money, time or resources to stage these types of games. But it did provide loads of ideas about how to wargame in the grand manner.
Yes. I too blame the marvelous photos of figures for my unfinished Waterloo-era corps projects. Sadly in 15mm though. As a schoolboy and then young, non-union employee in a supermarket the funds, time, and painting skills were never available in enough quantity to make real progress. Still, I labored on in my delusional state for quite a few years.
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Stokes
As a teenager and then a newly married man, money was always tight.Gilder was always the pinnacle of wargaming for me Stokes and remains so. No one could produce the colour and spectacle as a Peter Gilder wargame. Having been lucky enough to have been the the Wargames Holiday Centre I always find the experience wonderful, especially when commanding units that I wanted many years ago..
ReplyDeleteI have that number too, Robbie. I can actually remember laughing when I read this article. "Let's Fight Leipzig". Yes, let's do that, I thought! It planted a seed, however, which has finally started to sprout, even if it is 37 years later.
ReplyDeleteIt was a goal I never actually achieved although at one stage I had actually constructed the table. I also had the figures... all in 6mm. I then suddenly lost focus and gave up. I think I realised its sometimes best to keep a goal for later.
DeleteBTW, if you want to look up all the articles written by Peter Gilder, you could always refer to the wargames magazine index: http://snv-ttm.blogspot.com/p/wargames-magazine-database.html
ReplyDeleteI have included links to your blogposts in the comments section of the relevant articles.
Thanks very much Phil.
DeleteThank you -Its great to see this - I was just looking at it the other night - have aspired to something like this all my life and am still not even close - and that's in 15mm
ReplyDeleteAs a battle for wargamers it is a massive feat.Foolishly I wanted to stage this in 6mm and started the planning as I do have the figures, well I did until I started rebasing a lot for the Blucher rules. So now I have all the Russian and Prussian armies on my old Volley and Bayonet bases and the Austrian and a lot of the French on the Blucher bases. Sometimes wargamers can do foolish things.So unless I can stand rebasing the rest onto either ruleset I've scuppered my aspirations.
DeleteThis article was such a catalyst in my life it deserves an entire post on Marauder Moments I suspect.
ReplyDeleteGreat to see it wasn't just me who who got inspired to go BIG...
Best wishes,
Jeremy
I cant see how any wargamer worth his salt wasnt inspired by everything that Gilder did. I used to dream of being able to take part in such a wonderful wargame.
DeleteI played the Leipzig game at the WHC when it was managed by Mike Ingham and it was very playable over 2-3 days. I think that the scenario had been staged so many times at the WHC that they could play it with 8 players rather than 44.đŸ˜‚
ReplyDeleteHi Jim I played it with Pete Gilder a long time ago and more recently with Mark Freeth. A great game to play with lots of lovely figures and terrain. A difficult one for the French to win but it can be done.
ReplyDelete