The Prague Summer - about rules

This is a long one and to some extent it's about getting my thoughts organised on the matter. Feel free to skip the text and just look at the pictures if that's what does it for you.

How does one come to prefer a particular set of rules? Whilst out walking the dog this morning my thoughts turned to TacWWII. Why am I going back to it after having abandoned it in favour of Blitzkrieg Commander years ago? I think part of the story lies in my reasons for flirting with BKC back then. BKC had three things going for it. 

I like the idea of building headquarters units as little dioramas, which BKC supports but which doesn't entirely suit TacWWII as written.

The second appeal of BKC was that it was substantially similar to Cold War Commander, the game that got my Cold War collection onto the wargaming table for the first time in years. It made sense to use common basing standards and common mechanisms for both my WW2 and Cold War collections.

Thirdly, I do think the BKC/CWC command and control mechanisms are fun. Having recently played a comparative game of A Fistful of TOWs, I was struck by the relative lack of interesting command and control challenges. Without the uncertainty of CWC's command dice rolls the game seemed very flat.

Ah, the joys of the ill-timed command blunder!

So why would I go back to TacWWII? In many ways it's an old-fashioned set of rules. It uses simultaneous movement and written orders and it's completely lacking in the full-colour, glossy-photos-on-every-page approach that seems de rigueur today.

The answer, it seems to me, is related to why I prefer Basic Impetus over DBA. Both of these rules sets use element bases representing indeterminate numbers of ancient warriors. Both would have you field armies of maybe a dozen elements (exactly a dozen in DBA's case), and both emphasise speed of play and simple rules.

DBA focusses totally on the outcome of a combat between two groups of men. The fighting may continue for some time without a decisive result, one side may somewhat gain the other hand and push its opponents back, or the fight may be decisive with one or other of the units wiped out (or more likely routed). DBA does this on the basis of a single pair of opposed die rolls. That's great in terms of moving the game along quickly and allowing the players to concentrate on their roles as army commanders but it's just a bit... vanilla.

When I discovered Basic Impetus I was immediately struck by the fact that melées were now exciting. You could envisage the swaying back and forth of momentum as both sides got inexorably closer to the point where one of them would collapse and flee the field. Yes it was slower that DBA but DBA's speed now seemed to come at the cost of an unengaging narrative experience.

This speaks to why I'm proposing to use TacWWII instead of, say A Fistful of TOWs or Spearhead. Having tried both of those, I find them unengaging. I struggle to get excited about playing either game and I think it's because the units feel like anonymous playing pieces with no connection to what the troops are actually doing below the level of the battalion.

TacWWII's mode system (every company is in a distinct tactical mode at any given time) allows me to better envisage what the troops are doing. The Volkssturm Kompanie in Prepared Defence mode in the ruins of Oderbruch are well-hidden, having scouted out the lines of sight and stockpiled additional Panzerfausts. Across the Hitlerstrasse, while the Soviet tank company in Bold Attack is perhaps being too aggressive, the dismounted tank riders in Deliberate Attack mode are more cautious. Each platoon, we can infer, has one section moving at any one time with the other two laying down covering fire.

So does BKC suffer from this blandness? To a degree, yes but there but I think it's another issue with BKC that's pushing me back to TacWWII. I'm not convinced by the tactical decisions BKC is asking me to take.

Let's say I have a battalion of six Panzer-IV lining the edge of a forest somewhere in Lower Silesia and a wave of T-34s is advancing towards me. It's my turn to shoot and immediately the sense of immersion in events takes a hit whilst I ponder the maths of the situation. To knock out a T-34 will take five unsaved hits and my Panzers are rolling four dice per gun. Should I fire two Panzers at any given T-34? Three? Am I better off just trying to suppress as many enemy tanks as I can? These are valid tactical questions in the context of the game but what do they represent in terms of real world decisions?

Another set of decisions in BKC that I struggle with from this point of view is around giving orders. There are lots of decisions to make within the game turn. I may want to use a particular HQ to order the tanks to advance and to call down some fire from more distant supporting guns. Do I try to combine both in a single order that'll have a lower chance or success or do I make sure I get the tanks moving first? Having got the tanks moving, do I risk giving them another move order or do I pass on to the supporting guns and give up on moving the tanks again? Again, these are valid tactical decisions in the game but they don't seem to me to map well onto the tactical decisions required of a real-world commander.

A final element of BKC that I'm slightly uncomfortable with is the core combat mechanic. Hits are added to a unit during a turn and they may suppress the unit. Only if these hits reach a certain level is the unit destroyed. If it's not, the hits disappear at the end of the turn. Now you can just accept this ("It's how the rules work; don't sweat about what it means") or you can justify it to yourself in terms of units ability to fight being destroyed if the stress of action meets some hard-to-define crisis level. I certainly have argued that but not with real conviction.

One thing I want from a wargame is an emerging narrative of events occurring on the field of battle. BKC and TacWWII both do this but in my view TacWWII does a better job of allowing me to command a brigade whilst showing me what's actually happening to the units below battalion level. That it does this in a way that neither bogs down in detail nor involves complex on-the-fly statistical analysis hits a sweet spot for me.

Andreivia: an imagi-nation (part two)

Andreivia's first appearance on a wargame table was at the Gauntlet show in North Wales in July of 2007.  This was to be the second game I'd run at Gauntlet under the banner of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers.

I'd been doing some thinking about scenario design and wanted to run a linear game that would keep multiple players engaged with events happening at opposite ends of a long table. I'd also been inspired to build a modern patrol boat from a kid's toy picked up at the local flea market. So I decided on a lake-side town at the mouth of a valley. The town would be contested by rival militias whilst interventionist forces would have to fight their way along the valley to reach the town.

To give the scenario in some historical context I created a 'history of Andreivia' timeline:

Medieval times – Christian nation surrounded by Moslem neighbours. Slavic Andreivians share the territory with Moslem Turks and, in the eastern mountains, a smaller Armenian community.

19th century – successfully avoids integration into the growing Russian Empire but is a battleground during the Russo-Turkish War.

early 20th century – the Armenian population is swelled by refugees fleeing Turkish persecution. There is some inter-ethnic violence.

WW1 – sends a small expeditionary force to fight against the Germans on the Eastern Front.

Russian Civil War – King Alexei V is deposed in a coup and Andreivia briefly joins the Trans-Caucasian Republic but withdraws before the Republic is swallowed up by the Soviet Union. In 1924 the King is invited to return.

1941 – Hitler invades the USSR. Andreivian Prime Minister Mishkin declares the Kingdom neutral and states that she will defend her borders against any attack. Mishkin flirts with the Axis side and a volunteer Andreivian Legion fights with the Germans in Russia. Many Andreivians also join the Red Army and eventually a Regiment of Andreivian Riflemen sees hard fighting in Hungary.

1945 – Soviet Forces occupy Andreivia and install a Communist regime under Istvan Sakhvashev, the highest ranking Andreivian in the Red Army.

Post War – Sakhvashev proves to be a skilled diplomat and successfully rebuffs attempts to integrate Andreivia into the Soviet Union. Subsequently, he even wins for the nation a special status in relation to the Warsaw Pact. Andreivia does not receive the benefits of a large Soviet military presence.

early 1990s – The death of President Sakhvashev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union trigger a scrabble for power within Andreivia and the resurgence of ancient ethnic rivalries. Ivan Dzhugashev is elected President but many Armenian and Turkish delegates boycott the Party Congress.

This year – Dzhugashev proclaims Andreivian to be the sole national language and calls for a renewal of Andreivia's national identity as an Orthodox Christian Republic. Andreivian-Armenian Deputy Serj Benkian declares the republic dissolved and calls for an uprising to establish an Armenian Republic in Eastern Andreivia. Achmed Karamanoglu, professor of art history at Tcherbevan University makes a similar call on behalf of Andreivia's Turkic people. Fighting breaks out throughout the country.

This month – On the strength of a hastily agreed UN resolution, NATO forces cross from Turkey into southern Andreivia. On Russian insistence, the UN resolution severely limits the strength of the NATO contingent.

This week – The charming, lake-side town of Tuzkhur sees heavy fighting. Benkian's Armenians hold most of the town but they are being shelled from the surrounding hills by Andreivian-Turkish artillery. Elsewhere, the main NATO effort is aimed at clearing a corridor to bring humanitarian relief to the capital Tcherbevan.

Today – A small NATO force is tasked with breaking through to Tuzkhur and rescuing trapped foreigners.

Suddenly the internal geography and politics of Andreivia were starting to emerge. Many of the details in this, often deliberately vague, timeline would go on to provide inspiration for later Andreivian events.

But in the meantime I had my starting set up. My small collection of modern US troops (in that mix of temperate and desert camo you may recall from part one) backed up by Richard Baber's Spanish mechanised platoon, would force their way along the Tuzkhur Valley. The valley was held by Andreivian-Turk militia; colleagues of the forces besieging lakeside Tuzkhur. 

The town itself was mostly held by Andreivian-Armenian militia, the exception being "The Important Building" in which forces loyal to the Andreivian government in Tcherbevan were holding out and where the foreign nationals were being held (or kept safe depending on your view of events). Andreivian Government gunboats patrolled the lake.

The events of the action in the Tuzkhur Valley have been described elsewhere. They culminated in a spectacular helicopter-borne landing on the roof of The Important Building by the SAS and the subsequent rescue of the hostages. The game was a success and the players declared themselves keen to play more games in the setting.

Our next outing came about because Phil Gray got us the opportunity (in February 2009) to put on a participation game at the Hammerhead show, then held at Kelham Hall near Newark. I'd built some desert terrain for a previous game and I was keen to reuse it. Thus we established that somewhere on the border between Andreivia and Turkey were the dusty, red, Dagras Hills. A radar station on the peak of disputed Hill 154 would form the centre of the action. Once more, multiple factions were involved as this made it easier to create stand-alone forces that passers-by could pick up and play for a while.

Andreivian government armour attacks 
the Turkish radar station on Hill 154

So now we'd played two games in Andreivia. Over a dozen gamers had taken part. We'd happily used Scott Fisher and Chris Pringle's Arc of Fire rules for both and it was beginning to feel like a campaign of sorts. Obviously there was no detailed tracking of casualties and logistics from game to game, but we were building up a pleasing progressive narrative.

Our next game drove forward regional events rather more significantly. My Soviet/Russian VDV airborne platoon had so far sat on the sidelines. I was keen to see it used in its proper role, however, so I decided that the Russians would launch a coup de main operation to capture the international airport near the Andreivian capital of Tcherbevan! 

Several of the players from the previous two games returned to fight out this action at a church hall in Wirral. This was a fund-raising event so I introduced a couple of "interesting" mechanisms to the game. Players could donate money to purchase artillery support in the form of darts. A dartboard was set up in the room and there were twenty numbered locations identified on a map of the table. Hitting the dartboard would cause an artillery round to land at the appropriately numbered location. Doubles or trebles would reduce the incoming round's deviation. Sadly I hadn't allowed for Rob Connolly's inability to hit the dartboard at all!

Air support could also be purchased for a
charitable donation - here a Russian MiG-27
targets an Andreivian tank on the runway

The game ended with a narrow victory for the Russians. By this point in the development of Andreivia I had firmly settled on the idea that events in "official Andreivian games" established "facts on the ground". These facts would form the previous history to be taken into account in future game development.  In this case, we now knew that the Russians had captured the airport but that the operation had been far from flawless. The Russians would clearly struggle to gain control of the capital. 

I say "official Andreivia games" here because by now Andreivia was being used as a setting by other gamers. I understand some of the guys at the Deeside Defenders club were using the setting, particularly fighting actions in the breakaway eastern region. My attitude to this is, "Go ahead, the more the merrier". However, to keep my own timeline consistent, I'm adopting the approach of "Your Andreivia May Vary". That is to say, take Andreivia where you like but my campaign will only take account of events in games I've organised.

I'll leave it there for now. In the next part of the story we'll cover how Andreivia became the focus for the Crisis Point wargaming weekend and how the development of the plot became even more of a collaborative process.

Back to part one            Forward to part three

Andreivia: an imagi-nation (part one)

Having recently enjoyed Henry Hyde’s Partizan-in-the-Cloud video on the origins of his imagi-nations of Faltenland and Prunkland, I thought I’d share some details of my, quite different, approach to creating the fictional nation of Andreivia.

Now, I’ve always been a sucker for a bargain. I own far too many wargames forces and too many of those were built up because I saw some toys going cheap somewhere. I built Maximilian Adventure forces for Sharp Practice because I had half-a-dozen peons I'd previously picked up when considering a Mexico-focussed pulp campaign. In addition, during the mid- to late-1990s I ran the Northern Gathering of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers in Sheffield.  We’d always have a bring-and-buy and I’d always try to buy a souvenir of each event. In a way, these habits were key to the later discovery of Andreivia.

Thanks to my magpie buying habit, I accumulated a truly incoherent stash of late twentieth century military hardware in 20mm scale. Highlights included an A4 Skyhawk, an Argentinian bazooka team, some rather nicely painted plastic Arab infantry, a British Army Wombat AT gun, M2 Bradley IFVs in both temperate and desert camouflage, and even a Japanese Type 60 medium tank from the 1960s. All of this and more on top of a halfway-coherent Soviet force built around a VDV airborne platoon in BMD-1 armoured personnel carriers.

At some point in 2006 I decided I needed to do something with all of this. Even I had come to recognise that I’d most likely never get around to gaming the Falklands conflict, the Arab-Israeli Wars, a 1980s World War Three, and a 1960s invasion of Japan!  

I asked on various internet forums was there any historical setting where I could use a reasonable proportion of this collection? "No" was the resounding answer! 

However, several people did suggest that I create my own tin-pot little African country and play something like Peter Pig’s AK-47 Republic.  This had its appeal, but black African troops were among the few things I didn't have and the idea was most definitely not to buy more stuff to make a project work. [Although of course I'd later go on to purchase plenty of new toys as Andreivia began to build its own momentum.]

So, I started looking around for suitable settings. Where might I use both temperate- and arid-camouflaged materiel with European and Middle eastern-looking infantry?  

The answer came from Raids magazine. This French monthly, then readily available in an English edition, often carried news stories on military exercises in the Mediterranean region, and it wasn’t unusual to see a largely green tank alongside a distinctly desert-coloured armoured personnel carrier.  

Could I use the Med as a setting for a fictional country? Well... maybe... but somehow the region seemed a bit too familiar to allow the levering in of a new country. Then I remembered that the producers of the Sharpe TV series had been happy to send Sean Bean to the Crimea as a reasonably convincing stand-in for the Iberian Peninsula.  Somehow, a new nation on the shores of the Black Sea seemed less of an imposition on at least this Western European's sense of geography.

I knew nothing of the border region between Georgia and eastern Turkey but a new nation there, between the former Soviet Union and NATO, was interesting. If it also touched the borders of Armenia, then the centuries-old antipathy between Turks and Armenians would play into my situation quite nicely.

Influenced by what I had read and seen on television of the Yugoslavian Civil War, I decided to create a socialist republic that had remained outside the Soviet Union and that had managed to maintain a semi-detached relationship to the Warsaw Pact (thus allowing for an eccentric approach to military procurement - I was determined to work in that Japanese Type 60). As the Tito / Enver Hoxha generation of Second World War leaders began to die off there was scope for plenty of internal conflict, which, given the strategic location of the country, could draw in foreign intervention.

If the new country’s next-door neighbour was named for St George, it seemed only reasonable to have mine named for St Andrew. Thus, "Andreivia". 

By similar logic a cross of St Andrew seemed the logical design for the new nation’s flag.  I thought of reversing the colours of the Scottish flag but a blue diagonal cross on a white background already existed in the region as the Russian naval ensign. The easiest fix was to make the background colour yellow.  At that time I declared the cross to be cobalt blue. This was for no other reason than that I happened to have a tube of artist’s acrylic in that colour at the time!

I'd toyed with setting up wargames campaigns in the past. In my youth I was enchanted by Tony Bath's accounts (in Military Modelling and Battle for Wargamers) of his Hyboria campaign. I loved the idea of a long-running campaign with players generating complex and dramatic story lines. However, I knew that even if I had the enthusiasm to create a setting in detail from the ground up, determining population levels and designing fictional national economies, I was unlikely to sustain it over the months or years of campaign administration needed to create the kind of rich setting I aspired to.

So it was that I decided to adopt an approach I'd come across in the context of designing RPG settings; don't nail anything down until you have to!

I created an outline timeline for Andreivia and an outline map.

The eastern Black Sea region in the early 1990s

And there, for the time being, I stopped. 

In the next part of this tale I'll go into detail as to how the history of Andreivia developed as a narrative, co-operative venture starting with some dramatic military operations in the disputed Tuzkhur Valley.

Go to part two

When are Light Infantry not Light Infantry?

One of the aspects of the Sharp Practice rules that seems to cause the most confusion of new players is the terminology around light troops.

This is caused partly by some questionable decisions by the designers in choosing terminology and partly by the fact that contemporary military terminology was far from consistent with the needs of wargamers.

Which troops are light infantry?  Well the 1er Regiment d'Infanterie Legere are clearly light infantry in some sense (leger or legere being French for "light") and they'll have worn blue light-infantry breeches during the Napoleonic Wars but were they light infantry in Sharp Practice terms?  Probably not.  French "light" battalions, although in theory trained to operate as skirmishers, would usually find themselves fighting like any line battalion.

I think a Venn diagram is called for:

So some of the time, elements of the 1er Leger will be forming part of a skirmish line or running around in the hills in a loose swarm, making best use the available terrain and using aimed musket fire to dominate the enemy.  In this case they'll be treated as Skirmish Troops if we're playing a game of Sharp Practice.

There are three types of Skirmish Troops.  Light Infantry are the most professional and Irregular Skirmishers the least.  If fact our French skirmishers are "Skirmishers" - the third and intermediate class of Skirmish Troops.  In Sharp Practice terms they will be in Groups of six.

Most of the time, though, the guys of the 1er Leger are fighting in line.  They are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their comrades and if they fire, they do so without aiming, just pointing their muskets in the general direction of the enemy and firing to order.  In these circumstances they are treated as line troops and deploy in Groups of eight figures.

Light Infantry and Skirmishers (but not Irregular Skirmishers) get to take a third action when activated (as long as that action is a move action).  This will apply to our 1er Leger men when they are fighting as Skirmishers (i.e. the second class of Skirmish Troops) in Groups of six figures.  It will not apply to Groups of eight Legers fighting in line.

Hopefully this post will be useful in future when this issue comes up again on the TFL Forum or the Facebook group.

Not the Contrast Paints Post

So it seems that Games Workshop's new range of "Contrast paints" are the most exciting thing since something really quite exciting.  OK but I'll not be rushing out to buy them.

I first encountered the idea that thin "stains" of watered down paint over a white undercoat could give an impressive result with little investment of time in rules box for the RPG Traveller: The New Era.

The recommended approach was to apply "stains" of thinned-down paint over a white undercoat before finishing with a brown wash to outline the details. A stain is diluted paint but not as diluted as a wash.

As it happens, when I bought the rules in 1993, I tried out the approach using some actual Traveller miniatures - 15mm Aslan from the original GW/Martian Metals range.

They are a bit worn as they've been in storage for 26 years but I think you can see that the stain gives highlight and shadow to cloth and fur particularly well.

This civilian is a Traveller figure too...

As are these guys in vacc suits...

I've not really stuck with the technique for whole figures, though it is quite quick to use, but I do use it for parts of figures from time to time.  An exception is this recent spirit, which uses an all-over stain technique.

So my advice is buy GW Contrast Paints if you like but bear in mind you may get just as good an effect with conventional acrylics and water.

May the sixth be with you?

OK so I'm a couple of days late posting about Star Wars....

A colleague at work who's a Star Wars fan alerted my to Fantasy Flight's announcement of a second edition of the X_Wing Miniatures Game.

Now I'm not a great Star Wars geek but enjoy getting in the odd game of X-Wing and I'd like to own the main ships from the movies.  By 'main ships' I pretty much mean those I can remember and to be honest that's not that many.  I have several X-Wings and Y-Wings, loads of TIE fighters and Vader's TIE advanced, the Millennium Falcon (of course) and the fancy Lambda class shuttle.  Oh and of course a couple of TIE bombers because they look so cool.  Apart from Slave 1, there's not a lot more I'd definitely want to get.  After that it's just a case of picking stuff up if I see it going cheap.

I've no desire to play in organised tournaments.  X-Wing for me is mostly going to be a game we pull out when we have players gathered and no game planned.  Occasionally I'll plan a large, multi-player game like we did last Christmas.

So what should be my response to the new edition?  Do I want to buy the conversion kits you need to use your old models with the new rules?  Unlikely; I have ships from all three factions and at $50 per faction-specific kit that's a silly amount of money to spend.

So is the answer to carry on playing the old rules?

I can see why, apart from the commercial advantages, FF would want to update the rules.  They have rather grown piecemeal by virtue of what amount to new rules appearing with every new expansion pack.  A chance to review everything and make sure all the interactions are policed and properly integrated is probably A Good Thing.

On the other hand, with none of my regular gaming gang being fanatical X-Wing tournament players desperate to extract every ounce of advantage from minute study of "the Meta", I think we can probably manage quite happily with what we have now.  It might be a good idea to capture a copy of the latest of the First Edition FAQ though!

The new rules are promised to be (by virtue of new manoeuvre dials in the conversion kits) backwards compatible with the old ships.  FF would have had a riot on their hands if they'd done anything else! However, that doesn't mean any new ships that come out will be usable with the old rules.

So what are the chances that any new ships will come along that I'm desperate to include in my X-Wing games?  I quite like those big, tall bombers in the latest film (see, not a real geek; I can remember the names of neither bomber nor film) but you can buy those already.  Lets face it there's only a limited number of really iconic Star Wars ships.

Hmm, I think on balance I'm happy to remain blissfully old-school as far as X-Wing is concerned.



  

Decluttering

I'm making an effort to reduce the amount of crap cluttering up my games room.  I'm adopting the policy of disposing of one item each day.  Mostly at the moment that means throwing away boxes I kept because they looked like they'd be good for storing future terrain projects.  A couple of unwanted toys have gone to the charity shop.

It occurred to me, though, that a few unwanted rules sets could go to some of the local kids who are showing an interest.Hammers Slammers and 1st Ed Rapid Fire are going that way.

My printout of DBMM, however, has gone straight into the recycling bin. Discuss.

How Many Systems?

I popped into the Wargame Store at Brimstage on Saturday as I was over in Wirral visiting my Mum and needed a figure to represent a key character in the Pulp Alley game I'm running at Christmas.

While there I got into a brief conversation with the owner and another customer about how many systems we play.  The local view was that the gamers in the upstairs room at the store probably play no more than four systems and don't really want the hassle or expense of moving beyond those games.

Gates of Antares was cited as a particular example.  This was seen as sitting somewhere between Warhammer 40K and Bolt Action (which, given that its designers had both of these in their back catalogue, is not unreasonable).  Local gamers didn't see the new system as adding anything particularly unique to their current repertoire of games.  Some of them had already bolted BA mechanisms onto W40K.

"But I must play about a dozen systems", I said.  I started counting them off on my fingers and got to ten with no problem.  Afterwards, though, I thought more about this. What are My Systems? What rules do I actually play often enough count myself a regular player?

Happily, this is the kind of question I can answer because I keep a brief record of all the games I play or, more often, umpire.

So in 2012 I played 12 different sets of rules at least once.

• Arc of Fire
• Basic Impetus
• Basic Impetus Fantasy
• Blitzkrieg Commander
• Cold War Commander
• HOTT
• Lord of the Rings
• Munera Sine Missione
• Polemos GNW
• Second Fleet
• Sharp Practice
• Song of Blades and Heroes

By 2013 this had come down to 11:

• .45 Adventure
• Arc of Fire
• Basic Impetus
• Bolt Action
• c18th POW
• c19th POW
• Cold War Commander
• HOTT
• Pulp Alley
• Rapid Fire
• Song of Blades and Heroes

In 2014 nine:

• Arc of Fire
• Basic Impetus
• Black Powder
• Cold War Commander
• HOTT
• Maurice
• Perfidious Albion
• Pulp Alley
• Song of Blades and Heroes

And by the time we reach the end of 2015 it will be a mere eight:

• Arc of Fire
• Cold War Commander
• HOTT
• Pulp Alley
• RenPOW
• Saga
• Sharp Practice
• To the Strongest!

A few thoughts occur to me about these lists.  First up, the mix of big battle rules vs skirmish rules hasn't changed significantly.  

Secondly there are a few rules that I have tried and rejected.  .45 Adventure lost out to Pulp Alley, Bolt Action wasn't for me, and Basic Impetus is currently second choice to To The Strongest!

The 18th century big battle scene is interesting.  The Principles of War set for the period is definitely rejected - I sold on my copy of the rules.  Likewise the ambiguous and too-complex Polemos GNW.   Maurice I love but as someone who most often puts on multi-player games for my mates, a game that's specifically for one player a side isn't going to get played too often.  As a result Black Powder seems to be the default choice, though it's not a game I'm in love with.

So which rules have survived throughout?  Arc of Fire, Cold War Commander, and Hordes of the Things are the only three. Is this perhaps because in Crisis Point, CP6, and Berkeley there are events that allow me to meet up with a bunch of gamers outside the normal Saturday Afternoon Wargames crew?  Wargaming is, for me, essentially a sociable activity.

  

Don't do as I do...

Released from the discipline of a forthcoming major project I've wandered off into the jungle thickets of my lead-pile with no clear idea of where I'm going.

Currently on the workbench are: a couple of 20mm British trucks and two Comet tanks, bits of 20mm Kubelwagen, a motorcycle combo and a trailer needing resurrection, some 6mm Cossacks and Polish pancerni and Generals from Baccus, also from Baccus some Late Roman light cavalry, and a 28mm scale Sarmatian Cataphract from Warlord.  Oh and a WW1 German engineer wagon for Rommel's Route to Verdun.

Dammit, I need to focus!

A Periodical Cogitation...

...in which Our Hero examines some of the glossy wargames magazines in his shelves and ponders why he buys them so rarely.

Henry Hyde’s recent announcement that Battlegames and Miniature Wargames are to merge has set me thinking about the range of glossy magazines we wargamers are currently blessed with.  

Personally I don’t buy magazines very often these days.  More often than not, it’s when I have a long train journey ahead of me.  

I subscribed to Wargames Illustrated for many years, finally giving up my subscription when issue numbers were in the low 200s (in 2003 or so, I believe).  I gave up because the magazine seemed to be increasing dominated by articles produced to accompany the latest set of expensive, commercially produced rules.  Often there seemed to be little content beyond, “Here are the stats for Austrian troops in Kampfgruppe Blitzkrieg” or whatever.  

I was also getting a bit fed up with the design of the magazine, which seemed to be getting very fussy.  Sometimes the use of background images under the text made it difficult to read and it was increasing hard to see where editorial ended and advertising began.  In the end whole articles were remaining unread from one month to the next.

Miniatures Wargames (MW) was of course the predecessor to Wargames Illustrated (WI) and continued in competition with the latter.  MW suffered by comparison with WI not least because of its uninspiring visual design.  The continuing MW’s photographs in particular failed to tick the right boxes.  Too often they were neither the beautifully constructed set-pieces of WI nor the shots of actual games that had previously graced the pages of the late, lamented Practical Wargamer.  I can’t remember the last time I bought a copy of MW (certainly before I stopped subscribing to WI) so it may have improved in later years but it certainly hasn’t reached out and grabbed me from the newsagent’s shelves.

Through my post-WI period I’ve been aware of the new crop of entrants to the market.  The first I tried was the original, Spanish-produced, Wargames Soldiers & Strategy.  This scored reasonably on picture quality and could be selected (or not) on the basis of how relevant an issue’s themed core of articles were to my interests at the time.  WSS was also quite good for “how to” articles but it never grabbed my enthusiasm enough to make me a regular purchaser.  Production quality seemed to be variable with occasional lapses into Spanish where diagrams hadn’t been translated.

I was also a far-from-regular purchaser of the French magazine Vae Victis.  I think I bought about three copies at least two of which were found in French supermarchés whilst on holiday. Although it spreads its attention across boardgames and computer games as well as miniatures, I think it’s worth buying if one’s French is up to the task.

Next to get the use of my money were Karwansaray, the publishers who resurrected WSS after its Spanish masters pulled the plug.  The modern WSS is a beautifully produced magazine, clearly laid out and with a nice balance of substantial articles, opinion pieces, and reviews.  It seems blessedly free of articles-designed-to-push-the-latest-set-of-rules. 

Four times in the past few years I’ve shelled out for a copy of Battleground’s new, post-Duncan Macfarlane, Wargames Illustrated.  This is an enormously thick magazine but as I’m not interested in the 50% or so of each issue that’s devoted to Flames of War, it nets out at about an ordinary magazine’s worth of content. I still find the design a bit fussy and cluttered and still find editorial merging into advert (not surprising I suppose for a magazine that’s following White Dwarf along the path where magazine meets product catalogue.

Finally, we have Battlegames. For a long time I’d heard about this magazine and it sounded like one I’d really like but it wasn’t available from the likes of W H Smith until the recent issue 33.  The W H Smith connection is not insignificant.  Glossies cost nearly a fiver an issue and since I stopped subscribing I’ve become keen to see my magazines before I commit to buying.  The issues I have seen (issue 33 from Smith’s and an old pdf I bought as a sample) have both been keenly read from cover to cover.  it’s nicely designed and the articles seem to be aimed at wargamers like me.

And now Miniature Wargames and Battlegames are to merge, with Henry Hyde at the tiller and under the Miniature Wargames name.  If the new venture retains the style and spirit of its younger parent I may well be tempted to purchase more regularly, at least whenever I have a long train journey ahead of me

Bye Hitch!

We lost Christopher Hitchens today and the world is a lesser place.  

In memoriam here's another chance to see my model of the prophet Mohammed.  Some would say I must not depict him for fear of offending Moslems.  Well guess what; you don't have a right not to be offended and your religious strictures don't come close to trumping my freedom of speech.

  

I'm off to enjoy a whisky (not, alas, Johnny Walker Black Label) in Hitch's memory.

Grrr!

Remind me never to buy Tamiya acrylics again!

I bought a couple of jars when I couldn't make time at lunchtime to get to Wargames Emporium and knew I needed some dark blue to replace my old, dried out tube of artist's Ultramarine.  

All I need it to do is act as the shade coat for the cobalt blue I tend to use for French uniform jackets and suchlike.  Unfortunately, as I've just found again when painting some 6mm Arab light horse for Polemos GNW, it's got a horrible slimy texture that tends to slide off even the most grease-free of surfaces.  Trying to get it on in thin coats is soul-destroying.

Back to Vallejo and Games Workshop paints for me!