Sunday, August 5, 2007

Welcome to Project Auldearn

I first became interested in the 1644-1645 Campaign of Montrose back in 2003, at around about the same time I was getting back into the miniatures hobby after a break of over 15 years.

It's a fascinating few years of Scottish history with which most wargamers are reasonably familiar, but which sadly the general public is not. This is even true in Scotland, where you will be lucky to find a person under the age of 40 who can tell you who Montrose was, or who can name any of the battles of this campaign. The battlefield sites themselves are often not marked, and if they are you'll find precious little or no on-site information as to what happened there.

However, the period has a special resonance for me as many of the battles (Justice Mills, Fyvie, Alford and Auldearn) were fought within an hour of my home town of Ellon in the Northeast of Scotland. Many of the men who fought on both sides were local northeast men such as the Marquis of Huntly's three sons, the Aberdonian mercenary commander Sir John Hurry, the loyal Forbes lairds of Udny and Tolquhon (Ta-hoon), who raised their tennants for the government fencibles, and the brave burghers of the Aberdeen Militia, regular citizens and part-time soldiers who volunteered to stand in defence of their city.

This blog will follow our progress as we assemble the armies and terrain to refight the battles of this campaign on the tabletop. Here we plan to post details, such as orders-of-battle, basing and painting guides, figure selections and table layouts etc, as well as just sharing the ups and downs of putting a project like this together. We hope to keep it interesting with plenty of pictures. So if the English Civil War in Scotland is your thing, bookmark this page and visit often.

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