Plodding through the heat: Keeping on re-basing

It won't be a surprise to anyone in the UK,  but it has been exceptionally hot here in the past few weeks. and that has slowed down pretty much all activities, including hobby activities. There's also been quite a bit of 'real life' stuff competing for attention, so the toy soldiers have taken a back seat. But I have made a little progress, and made a couple of interesting acquisitions.  I believe there has also been some sort of football (soccer, if you prefer ) competition, which I think has taken many people's attention - though very little of mine! But it did spark a little pondering on the nature of games and gaming..

The great re-basing project continues with the vintage Minifigs 7YW/AWI collection.  I've been working on the slightly mysterious French infantry with unusual green facings ( see my earlier post about identifying them ), which I have decided to designate as the Volontaires Étrangers de la Marine.  Although there were lots of green-trimmed musketeers, I had no command figures for the unit - step forward the Garrison figures I recently acquired from Rob Young of The Eastern Garrison (many thanks, Rob!).  I'm no great shakes with the paintbrush, but I was fairly pleased with my efforts painting them - my first attempt at painting a drummer in the the blue-and-red French royal livery coat came out quite well, I thought, bearing in mind the 'three foot rule'.  I'll admit I have no idea whether this unit had drummers in the royal livery, but it was fun to paint it!

   

When simply block-painted in an old-school style, the officers looked rather bright and clean compared to their rank and file, who are a little 'aged' so to speak, so I gave the command group a thin wash of Army Painter Soft Tone to dull them a little - but it has been pointed out to me by the excellent Ross from Battle Game of the Month that the officers would probably have higher-quality (and maybe cleaner!) uniforms than the 'PBI', so maybe my newly-painted command group is quite authentic!  

I also enjoyed painting a version of this unit's  interesting flag, with the standard French 'quartered' banner further sub-divided into green and white, fortunately in a quite simple and easy to re-produce way. Having fixed  them to MDF bases and applied a couple of coats of old-school plain green to the bases, here is the finished unit basking in the sunshine in the garden this afternoon: 

 You may have noticed the horsemen behind the Volontaires in the photo - these are my first re-based unit of cavalry from the collection. They represent the Russian Slobodskiy Hussars  and I very much like their lavender-coloured uniforms! Here they are, taking their place in the sun : 

 

I have a bit of a dilemma with cavalry:  I settled for 50mm x 50mm bases with two figures per base, which fit the suggested base sizes for both Black Powder and Honours of War rules.  But BP has six such bases (12 figures)  for a standard cavalry unit, and HoW  has 4 bases (8 figures).  Given that I am using  4 bases (16 figures) at 40mm x 40mm  for infantry, the standard BP cavalry unit would look a bit too big.  It's also relevant that most of the cavalry I have acquired seem to be in 'units' of 12, so adopting the 4-base HoW format would mean leaving quite a lot of figures unused.  So on consideration, for now I am going to have a cavalry 'unit' of 6 figures on  3 bases, just as shown. I think I might consider them as a 'squadron',  part of a 'regiment' of  2 'squadrons'.  As you can perhaps see in the above pictures, my cavalry and  infantry units have roughly the same frontage, which I am happy with. Admittedly all slightly arbitrary, but to my mind they should  look 'right' on the tabletop. And I have another six figures of these nice hussars, to make another 'squadron'!   

Next up for basing, lots of Russian infantry.. 

There's almost 100 figures here, and I can probably get 5 battalions out of them, so not a bad little force.  The Musketeers (left) have already had their old bases removed, the rest still need to have a paddle in some water to soak off their current stands - which look to be made of balsa, curiously enough. So this will be my job for the next few days..  

I've also done a little light shopping - specifically, I got tempted by Pen and Sword's half-price offer on Henry Hyde's  book Wargaming Campaigns. It arrived at the weekend, and is a substantial tome ( 500 plus  pages! ).  I loved Henry's previous Wargames Compendium when it came out, and I think it was one of the factors influencing  me to move from just reading blogs on wargaming to getting back to actual gaming and starting this blog. So let's hope this one is as good - and provides some inspiration for campaigning.  It will certainly occupy a lot of reading time!  I was interested to see the Acknowledgements page near the front, where Henry lists a whole lot of people who 'helped me to name the vast numbers of places that sprang up as I created the imagi-nations of Dahlia and Chindrastan featured in these pages'.  Many familiar names were on that list, including several I have met (in person or on-line) and a couple who follow this blog. Henry also thanks 'veteran wargamer Arthur Harman', who 'has undertaken the heroic task of creating an index for this monster' .  Indeed, quite a major job,  well done Arthur! 

 

At the other end of the price range, a charity shop find I couldn't walk away from this week - Alan Clark's Barbarossa, a chunky paperback for all of £1 !  Possibly influenced by listening recently to Al Murray and James Holland's  We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast, which devoted a series of episodes to the decisions, planning and preparations behind Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. This one may go on the backlog pile at first, but I'm sure it will make an interesting read eventually..

Alan Clark was an 'interesting' character of course, I can't say I was an admirer of his politics or his personal conduct - but the relevant question is 'was he a good historian, and a good writer'? The latter will become obvious, the former - well, he may have been superseded by later authors with more access to Russian archives. for instance, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. 

 Finally just a bit of whimsy really: here's a picture of the scene at Pizza Express restaurant on the South Bank, Central London last Wednesday evening - at the time England's footballers were playing against Argentina for a place in the World Cup Final. It was all rather lovely, quiet and peaceful. We'd been to the nearby National Film Theatre, to see a rather charming film - Night Train (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz,  Poland, 1959) well worth a look if you enjoy a good railway-based movie.      

 

The fact that I was at Pizza Express should tell you how much I know or care about football - precisely nowt -  but it was interesting to see the reactions to the result and to England Manager Thomas Tuchel's  tactical decisions.  It made me think;  if Monty and Eisenhower on 6th  June 1944 had said 'OK everyone, we got the  landing done successfully, we've got the beach-head established, now we'll sit on the defensive and let the Panzers come at us', how would that have gone?  ( shades of what actually happened at Anzio? ).  But I also thought, if we were wargamers playing the Normandy Campaign  as a game of some sort, we might very well do exactly that, because the victory conditions would doubtless specify that simply establishing  a beach-head and not being thrown back into the sea would give the allies a marginal victory - and Herr (sorry!)  Tuchel only needed a marginal victory..  As players, though, we would have thought that was pretty 'game-y' and not really in the spirit of things.  So I concluded I had little sympathy for Thomas T, and that maybe England need a 'Monty' for manager? Discuss...  😀

With that, I'm sure I've entertained you all for long enough, so I'll sign off. The heatwave does seem to be easing off a bit, and I've got some more free time in the next few days, so hopefully I can get those Russians sorted out, and report my progress in a future post. Until then, keep well everyone, 

 

p.s. a quick 'plug' -  my old friend 'Liverpool Dave' has had a bit of a rush of blood to the writing fingers and revived his long-moribund personal blog Serener Skies  Recent posts include reminiscences of cartoon strips in the Daily Mirror,  Liverpool Corporation buses,  the dream of a remote lochside idyll versus the reality of modern tourism, and the late Kevin Keegan's triumphant FA Cup Final in 1974 (the latter may have been the last soccer match I watched with any real interest!). Not a wargaming blog, but Dave can certainly write, and wargaming does get a mention - he poses the question of whether  there a correlation between interest in military history and interest in public transport? I think a few readers of this blog may be able to answer that one, while looking at Dave's nice pic of a Leyland Atlantean..    

1776 and All That..

It can't have escaped your notice that there have been some events in commemoration of the United States' Declaration of Independence from Britain 250 years ago.  In the spirit of such self-evident truths as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (and now it seems, cheating at soccer), I thought it might be fun to mark the anniversary with some sort of gaming. I remembered what I think was the first board wargame I ever bought - Avalon Hill's 1776, and  I am glad to say I still have my copy, which I'm almost certain will have been acquired by the teenage me in, of course,  1976.  

Here is the suitably lightly  scuffed box,   

 and the contents - a little yellowing of paper here and there, but not bad condition for 50 years old, large stretches of which were spent in various lofts. 

 

The mapboard is rather splendid, measuring 16 by 44 inches, rather nicely depicting the wooded and mountainous terrain in a sort of 'relief map' style, at a scale of 1 hex = 18.6 miles.  

The rulebook contains rules for three levels of game; a very simple Basic Game with a single, simple scenario;  an Advanced Game (plus optional rules) which  allows the playing of four larger campaign scenarios (such as the invasion of Canada, or the Saratoga campaign);  and the Campaign Simulation Game which 'provides the framework for re-creating the entire Revolutionary War starting in January, 1776' - I suspect this latter would involve a fairly large commitment of time to play to completion.  

 Fortunately the Basic Game is very basic indeed, covering only the Northern half of the map and depicting the situation in mid 1776 during the British build-up. Units are restricted to British Regulars and Continental Army, they have only Combat Strength Points ( 1 CSP = approx 500 men ) and movement allowances.  CSPs are interchangeable ( so a 10 CSP unit can be split into 2 x 5CSP, etc )  and combat is decided between opposing units occupying the same hex, by calculating the attacker:defender CSP ratio and rolling a single D6 against a simple Combat Results Table - just like many contemporary SPI games I can remember.  The Brits win by occupying enough of the main cities (each has a 'Control Points' value) with no Continentals disputing them, and the Americans win by preventing the British from doing so, after seven (monthly) turns from June to December 1776.   There are only about 4 pages of rules and the turn sequence is Player 1 move then combat, Player 2 move then combat, simple as that! So let's give it a go..

Here's the initial setup : 

Fairly obviously, red counters are British units, and blue are American.  Something of a 'central position' for the Americans, with a fairly large force of 17 SP at Morristown, New Jersey, and an overall total of 32 SP.  The British have a total of 36 SP, with 20SP of those in New York and 10 SP at St. Johns.  It looks fairly even, but there are large British reinforcements coming.. 

Turn One represents June 1776 and the Brits go first - they advance with 18 SP from New York towards West Point ( which is occupied by 6 SP of Continentals), being careful not to allow  the Morristown force to get behind them and attack New York. Meanwhile in the North, 11 SP of British advance  from Canada along the shores of Lake Champlain, heading for Fort Ticonderoga ( held by just 3 SP of Americans  ). 

Turn 1 : British  New York army threatens West Point 

 

..while a large force from Canada descends on Ticonderoga 

The Yankee response is to split the large Morristown force, sending 7 SP to reinforce Philadelphia ( which is worth a substantial 15 victory points ) and 10 SP to strengthen their force at West Point to a total of 16 SP. (this split may have been a mistake.).  No fighting yet, but the Americans could not reinforce Ticonderoga, which looks vulnerable. .  

On Turn Two ( July 1776), the British get a substantial reinforcement of 19 SP landed  at New York - pretty much doubling their strength in that area!  The British forces coming down from Canada  attack Ticonderoga with with 12 to 3, so 4:1 odds, rolling only a '2' but that gets a '1/2DE' result - half (rounded up) of the defender's units are lost, so 2 out of 3 US SPs are lost.  One solitary SP of Americans face 12 times their numbers..   Meanwhile in New York,  the British reinforcements go straight into action, allowing a total of 30 SP of Redcoats to attack the 10 SP of Americans at West Point. 3:1 odds, and rolled a six!  That is a 'DE' result, and all  10 SPs of Yankees flee the field. That is a major blow for the Continental army - more than a third of their total forces lost in one move! 

Turn 2: Scary Redcoats at West Point threaten Morristown..

 

In their turn, the USA raises 6 SP at Albany, to add to the 1 SP already there and these are supplemented by the survivors (1 SP) from Ticonderoga beating a hasty retreat. After the disaster at West Point, the Americans at Morristown (8SP) retreat to Philadelphia, making a fairly formidable 15 SP available there. But they are still quite badly outnumbered by 40+ SP of Redcoats around New York. 

Turn Three -  August 1776 - piles the pressure on, as the British get another 21 SPs of Redcoats which can land at any port. They choose New Bedford, Massachussetts  and immediately march no less than 19 SP to attack the small American force (2 SP) at Boston, an important objective. With more odds of  5:1 or more, they roll a '3' which only gives '1/2 DE', so not a total wipeout but leaves 1 SP of plucky Continentals facing 19 times their number of redcoats!  The British are also able to send 2 SP to secure Newport, Rhode Island (worth some victory points ).

Having large forces at both West Point and Ticonderoga, the British now turn to deal with Albany.  From Ticonderoga, 10 SP advance but can't quite reach Albany owing to a couple of river crossings slowing them down; but 24 SP from West Point can easily get their, and attack the American 8 SP at 3:1 odds - the dice are with the British, a '5' gives 'DE' and the entire  American force is scattered! This is another disaster for the Yankees, they have only 17 SP remaining ( 15 at Philadelphia and a puny 1 each at Ft. Stanwix and Boston ) against the British with well over 60 SP.  In their turn, they recruit 4 SP around Albany, who promptly retire up the Mohawk valley to Stanwix. 

Turn 3 (August 1776) : Redcoats everywhere!  

 Turn Four (September) saw the British victors of Albany sending no less than 20 SP to attack Fort Stanwix, and detaching 10 SP to West Point, to be joined by  8 SP coming from New York. A further 15 SP marched from Boston across Massachussetts, reaching Hartford, Connecticut - that left 4 SP to deal with the last Yankees at Boston - which they duly did, wiping them out.  At Stanwix, the British has 4:1 odds and rolled a mediocre '3' , but that still gave '1/2DE', killing 3 SP of Americans (and leaving the survivors outnumbered by 10 to 1 !).  The Americans  gained reinforcements of  4 SP at Philadelphia, making a respectable 19 SP there, and the remaining 2SP from Ft. Stanwix began a cross-country retreat across the New York  back country, reaching Owego - the British probably won't bother to pursue. 

Turn 4 ( Sept 1776) : all over bar some shouting in Philadelphia..

And at that point, I'm calling it, a solid British  victory. The Americans hold only Philadelphia, with only a few  more reinforcements coming ( including 1 lone SP at Albany - that won't last long!), and the British can just keep them bottled up there, even if they don't actually attack. With all the other objective cities and forts held, the British will have an overwhelming victory point score (96 to 15!).  Looks like the American dream was squelched at the very start... 

Interesting - although the armies were fairly evenly matched at the start, the British had 40 SPs more coming in July and August, more than doubling their force! The Americans had only 18 SPs of reinforcements, in small packets from July to November, so they were at a real disadvantage after the first three turns.  I wonder if it was a mistake for the Americans to divide their large Morristown force early on to reinforce Philadelphia - perhaps they should have combined with their troops at West Point and attacked the British army which had marched out of New York. This would have given the USA  23 SP vs. the British 18  SP - which would only be a 1:1 attack ratio, so still quite risky and at best would kill half the British force, with quite a high chance of losing half (or even all) of  their own army.  Or perhaps just combining and standing on the defensive at West Point - with 20+ SP there, the Brits would have struggled to mount  a 2:1 attack,  even with their reinforcements, which could have made any assault quite costly.  As it was, once the big British reinforcements arrived, it was quite easy for them to build up 3:1 or 4:1 attack forces, and I'll admit the dice went their way - if they had rolled a '1' at West Point, 15 SP of  Redcoats would have evaporated as well as the 10 SP of Continentals! 

Anyway, quite a good fun game, thankfully simple for my heatwave-frazzled brains (we are forecast  34C / 93F  today!). and I am interested to read the Advanced Rules and give them a go soon - I do like the map, I have to say, and it cries out for using as a basis for a figures-gaming  campaign!

What with the heat and some fairly onerous 'real life' stuff, I'll admit there has been a shortage of both time and inclination for hobby activity, but I can report the next step in the great re-basing project: Russians! Here are some vintage Minifigs Russian 7YW musketeers  and Hussars going for a nice paddle in cool water ( lucky them!) to loosen up their old bases: 

    

I have also been enjoying catching up with other blogs, and will admit that my decision to dig out a very old game was partly inspired by the prolific Martin Rapier of  The Games We Play blog, who has clearly lost his senses in the heat and is grappling with the veteran SPI complexathon that is Air War  :  I had that one myself, and from reading Martin's valiant attempts I wonder if I ever even scratched the surface of it back in the day!  

Also great to see Postie's Rejects Richard's (My Wargaming Habit) excellent 1796  Battle of Caldiero report, supplemented by Ray and Big Lee's accounts of the same game from opposing sides, and Jon at Palouse Wargaming Journal with his Samurai 'Battle of the Tombs'  (featuring Postie's Rejects again!) games, even though I can;t keep up with the Japanese names and unit types, so it is to some extent 'all Japanese to me'!  Still, well worth a read.  And finally not to forget Alan 'Kingdom of Wittenburg' with his glorious-looking 18th Century armies fighting the 'Battle of Vierstrasse'  ( loosely based on Quatre Bras?)  - quite an inspiration for what I'd like to achieve with my old Minifigs collection!

More on the Minifigs next time, I hope (if we haven't all melted)  with basing and painting progress, and I have gleaned some more interesting snippets of  information about them.  Until then, keep cool, everyone. 

Fnurban #41: General Knowledge

Among the worryingly large backlog of unread volumes on my bookshelves (worrying because one starts to compare the probable time required to read them all, to average life expectancy), there is a small but distinct category - that of biographies of  prominent British army commanders. This is a direct result of my reading John Keegan's  1991  Churchill's Generals a couple of years ago.  Keegan acted as editor for a collection of 17 biographical essays  by various authors, covering no less than 20 British generals from the Second World War. 

 I'll freely admit that I really knew very little about any of the subjects, so this book was a very nice introduction to the subject - and of course it left me wanting to know more about quite a few of them! In second-hand bookshops and charity shops I tend to find myself looking at the history/military sections of the bookshelves, and guess what?  Yes, you got it, I have been picking up biographies  and memoirs of some of these commanders. Here is the harvest so far: 

I found Alex , Nigel Nicholson's authorised biography of Field Marshal Alexander, in the excellent  Harris and Harris Books at Clare - and actually managed to read it! Well worth it, and very relevant given my interest in the 'D-Day Dodgers' Italian Campaign 1943-45, in which Alexander was allied C-in-C, and highly successful in commanding truly multinational forces. 

Viscount William Slim's Defeat Into Victory (an abridged, but still substantial tome)  came from Cuirassier Books, I think at the Re:Play show at the Royal Engineers Museum a couple of years ago. I like the 'career arc' of Slim : certainly not the usual public school educated product of a family of soldiers,  he was the son of a Birmingham ironmonger, working as a junior clerk before 'joining up' in 1914.  Defeat Into Victory is his account of his command in the Burma campaign, and according to Duncan Anderson in Churchill's Generals,  reveals 'an ordinary man, one often assailed by self-doubt, who made mistakes.. and did not consider himself particularly brave'.  

A charity shop find next:  Horrocks: The General Who Led From the Front by Philip Warner (1984).  I'll let the cover blurb give a flavour.  'Sometimes described as 'Britain's answer to Rommel', Sir Brian Horrocks was not only a charismatic and courageous leader of men but one of the most successful commanders of the Second World War'. His career spanned  Ypres 1914 (and 4 years as a POW) , Russia 1919, Dunkirk 1940, North Africa 1942/43 and North-West Europe 1944-45 (despite being seriously wounded in 1943), with 'retirement' involving the post of Parliament's  Black Rod, journalism and even presenting military history on 1950s  TV!   

On a recent trip to the National Trust's property at Calke Abbey (well worth a visit!), another little find came up in their second-hand bookshop : John Connell's 1964  Wavell:Scholar and Soldier (to June 1941) .  Much more than a simple soldier, Archibald Wavell was 'also a man of scholarly interests and attainments;  a biographer; an outstanding administrator...; and a Viceroy of India'. He may be better known as compiler of a best-selling poetry anthology Other Men's Flowers than as a soldier.  His misfortune was to be unable to build a good relationship with Churchill, perhaps partly  due to his taciturnity - eventually Churchill relieved him of command in the Middle East, at which point this volume ends.    His Middle East command was much more than just the Western Desert, also covering East Africa, Iraq and Syria, Greece and Crete - a huge responsibility with action in all areas, much of which will probably be new to me.  

 

And finally, the joker in the pack, so to speak - Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart's Happy Odyssey (1950).  An addendum sticker inside the front cover records that 'in this book General Carton de Wiart makes no mention of the fact that he was awarded the Victoria Cross'.  I think this may give an idea of the character of the man. In contrast to Wavell, he clearly had a very good relationship with Churchill, who has provided a foreword, and also appointed de Wiart  as his personal representative to Chiang Kai-Shek,  'to which he was not entirely suited' , as professor Gary Sheffield puts it in Churchill's Generals.  Multiply wounded (note the eye-patch) and famously courageous in 1914-18, in WW2 he led a British  military observers mission to Poland in 1939,  had an independent command in Norway 1940, and was captured by the Italians after a 'plane crash en route to Yugoslavia in 1941,  subsequently (aged 63) escaping from a POW camp via a tunnel and evading capture, in the company of fellow General O'Connor,  for several weeks. I think this is going to be a roller-coaster ride.. I had never heard of this gentleman until I read Churchill's Generals, and I was pleasantly surprised when a copy if this book turned up in Sudbury RSPCA shop a few weeks ago - snapped up for £5.  Amazingly, last week I was browsing  in our local Oxfam, and found another copy  - but they want considerably more money!        

Now it's very easy to buy books, especially if kidding yourself you are 'rescuing' them from charity shops, but the proof is in the reading, and I have all too many unread books. But I have a good feeling about these, and I think I will start with what looks to be the most straightforward and positive story, that of Horrocks. This is also a rather long-term project, and I won't be trying to get through them all in quick succession, more likely pick up one every so often, in between other reads.  Let's see how it goes.. 

The recent heatwave has driven away any thoughts of hobby painting, or hobby anything much! (in Suffolk we managed to have the record-breaking highest June temperature)  Now we seem to be cooling down a bit, today I managed a tiny amount of painting - here 'on the bottletops' we have four Garrison command figures for my French 7YW infantry unit Volontaires Étrangers de la Marine.   

 They've had a coat of grey primer, and their uniform base colour of white - it's a start. at least. There's some 'real life' stuff coming up this week which means I might not get them finished  until the weekend, but I should get some of the basic details done. There are also various 6mm units for Risorgimento 1859 wanting finishing, and.. and.. and... just like the books, the painting backlog never ends!

I hope everyone reading this  in the UK has got through the hot spell without too much discomfort - I think we all need some decent sleep! Hopefully we can all get back to our hobby now, and I can report a little more progress next  time. Until then keep well, everyone.  

Broadside show 2026: From Strength to Strength

Like approximately 700 other gamers, I went along to the Broadside show at Gillingham, Kent last Saturday, and I had a thoroughly pleasant day there!  For a 'smaller' show, this one has been going from strength to strength, and there was a good number of games and a surprisingly large contingent of traders on the day.  It so happens that my old gaming friend Tony Toms has recently become chair of the host Milton Hundred Wargames Club, and therefore was heavily involved in running the event; so I was morally obliged to go along and show support (having enjoyed  the show in previous years, of course I would have gone anyway!).  I tried to photograph a good number of the games, and as ever I will show some of my  pictures, in roughly the order I saw the games.  I had arranged to meet Chris aka 'Nundanket' of Horse and Musket Gaming fame, and we toured the show together, also adjourning to a pleasant nearby cafe for a quick lunch. Really good to see you, Chris,  to have a good chinwag and discuss the various games. Chris found some really useful fortification terrain for his 18th Century games, courtesy of Brigade Models - so his visit was worthwhile for that alone, I suspect!     

You can't blame the host club for putting their game 'front and centre', and so the first game that I came to upon entering the hall was Milton Hundred's own Sword Beach 6th June 1944: The Longest Day,  depicting the D-Day invasion beach  in 15mm scale, with Rapid Fire Reloaded rules. . The club members  had taken great pains to accurately represent the defences, buildings etc with extensive use of 3D printing, fantastic models of landing vessels and aircraft, and even pointed out that 'the sand on the beach does come from Sword Beach itself!'.   

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The Werelords (Tredaway) - with the editor of Miniature Wargames present, of course, presented Attack on Space City,  a Hammers' Slammers  game.  I'll admit that Sci-Fi ain't my thing,but the terrain was impressive - that tall tower looked suspiciously like it might have been cleverly made from a defunct electric room heater! 

 

Hailsham Wargames Club  presented their rather wonderful Malplaquet 1709: The Bloodiest Day. I'd seen this one before, at Cavalier in February, but it doesn't half stand repeating!  Using no less than 3.500 Alex Higgins figures in 20mm scale,   'this game represents a life's worth of dedicated collecting, painting and research into the Marlburian Wars by club stalwart Bill Hendley'. 

view from the French left..

 

..and their right. 

look at the masses of Allies approaching..

later in the day, the fight is really on!

Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society presented -Hobgoblin:  can't tell you much more, but some nice figures, I liked the knights : 

 

 

Hythe Tyrants staged a Burrows and Badgers  game on a nice town layout: 

When I passed by, this was being discussed by a group of young women, a good reflection of a generally much more diverse crowd than some other shows, which can only be a good thing, 

Maidstone Wargames Society brought  The Labyrinths of Mars Journey to Barsoom. Rescue Prince's and Princesses.- which is something of a mouthful!  Clearly this one helped with diversity too, this time attracting some younger players. 

 

The Friday Night Fight Club can be relied on for something 'different' - they did not disappoint with their   Steampunk Victorian Fantasy game - featuring mobile cities on massive wheels!  A Japanese-inflected force met a more Germanic-influenced opponent. 

 

Medway Wargames Society  presented a  Gangs of Rome skirmish game.  Chris suggested it might be inspired by the TV comedy  Plebs - 'which one is Grumio?' which got a laugh of recognition (and not a denial) from the players. I liked the setup, with that paved-effect mat.  

 Nowadays one is likely to meet some fairly exotic-looking folk at gaming shows, and this was no exception - they were of course entirely friendly and happy to pose for photos.  

 

Here's a fairly dramatic-looking  Sci-Fi game which i took a quick snap of, but then forgot to get any information about it, apologies! Looked fun, though, and one of the players appears tobe praying for a good die roll..

Shepway Wargamers presented their  Dead Man's Hand goes Back to the Future :  extra points to them for the description of the game packing in so many western film titles

 

what's that under wraps in the alleyway..?

WIP Games put on a rather nice looking Ancients game in 28mm, to demonstrate their On Bloody Ground rules.  It looked Egyptian-ish, but I forgot to ask(!)  On looking at their website, I see they are Sea Peoples (on the left, and the 3rd and 4th pictures) and probably New Kingdom Egyptians (on the right, and 2nd picture), from their own figure ranges - and pretty  good they looked, too.  

 

As you may be aware, WIP have a number of rulebooks for the Ancient to Horse and Musket period, with the ancients having a volume each for several 'sub-periods' so to speak - such as 'New Kingdom' in this case - but sharing a common 'game engine' set of  mechanisms, which are kept fairly simple. Apart from the impressive cover illustrations, the books are pretty much text-only, with the basic rule set followed by special rules and army lists for the sub-period. By avoiding the use of loads of colour photos, the price can be kept down - currently £12.95 per volume. It feels like a sort of antidote to the recent trend for very glossy (and expensive!) colour rulebooks 'padded out' with eye-candy photos, with equally glossy  supplements for each sub-period.  I'd say 'good for them' - of course it will depend if the rules work well, but I applaud the overall philosophy.  In fact, I parted with £12.95 -  about which, more later..      

Dad's Armies group showed a  6mm  WW1 game First Contact - Austria Advances 1914, being the Austrian invasion of Serbia at the start of the war - quite an unusual game subject? Rules were Great War Spearhead II  by Shawn Taylor ( for Division and Corps-Level gaming), figures from Baccus 6mm (each base representing a company), and buildings by Brigade Models.  I thought it looked simple and  effective. Historically, i think the small  Serbian army gave their more powerful opponents a bloody nose.. 

 

  

South London Warlords Wanasa! Way of the Buffalo was clearly  enjoyed by players young and old :

 I've shown Deal Wargames Society's  POLISH BLITZKRIEG 1939! Polish raid on Fraustadt, 2 September 1939 before (possibly more than once!) but it's so good, it seems worth a few more pictures - tankettes, bicycle and motorcycle troops and all! 

 

I was looking forward to seeing Postie's Rejects group's game: The Battle of Berezina, 1812, depicting the famous episode in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. This has been masterminded by Ray ( 'Don't Throw a One' )  and Lee ( 'Big Lee's Miniature Adventures' ),  with painting and scenery done as part of the Analog Hobbies Painting Challenge, and documented copiously on their respective blogs, of course!  The result was a lovely table, fantastic snowy scenery (note the particularly effective ice floes on the river) and great figures. They were of course, playing the game too - 28mm figures,  Sharpe Practise rules.  The game won a well-deserved 'best in show' prize from the show hosts - congrats to the Rejects!  

 

Tonbridge Wargames Club presented Port Arthur or Bust! Naval combat in the Russo-Japanese War; using Togo Heihachiro - Gods of War  rules. Lots of lovely turning circle and arc of fire templates, which seem obligatory for such games - and of course, very nice ship models.

 

 

The Society of Ancients showed a classic 'big battle' game :  Gaugamela 331BC.  All those pike-wielding Phalangites are quite inspiring for me, must get painting to expand my own modest Macedonian, Persian and Indian  forces..  Impetus rules were being used. 

 

Kent & Sussex D&D & Roleplaying Club  gave us The Bards are Back in Town:  I'll admit D&D etc is another 'not my thing', but the model town looked pretty good, complete with shipping wharf:

 

 South East Essex Military Society (SEEMS) ran  Voidfighters on a Budget (2x games at once)  a Star Wars game, of course: 

 

 

 Canterbury & Littlebourne Wargames Club showed a great 'local interest' game:  Battle of Maidstone 1648, using  Warlord Games Epic Pike & Shotte figures and rules. The scenario had been created by my friend Tony's son, Oliver, and I thought  the guys had done a really good job of presenting a 'do-able' club-sized game, which also looked really nice in terms of figures, buildings, terrain etc. We had a good chat about the challenge of writing a scenario that made a good game, too.  Nice to talk, Oliver!

 

 

And not least, but last ( and I admit I was flagging by now),  Real Time Wargames presented  The White Cockade: Battles of the '45 in 10mm scale, demonstrating their own Battlefield Rules and Campaign System for the period.  I didn't get into chat about the features of the game, but the table looked classy, and even the seemingly obligatory 'drink can next to the table' seemed to be the appropriate brand!   

 

That's all the games I saw and photographed; perhaps unsurprisingly I did have time for a little shopping, too, though only a few items.  As mentioned above, I did give the  WIP On Bloody Ground guys a try - I would have bought their Rise of Macedon set, but that had sold out, so I opted for their English Civil Wars  edition. 

 Longer-term  readers of this blog will know I have tried a few rule sets for my Thirty Years War armies ( for example In Deo Veritas and Twilight of the Divine Right )  without really settling on a favourite. so why not give these a whirl? I'll have to set up a trial game, and report back. They are designed for 28mm, and my armies are in 15mm, but hopefully a 'halve all distances' house rule should suffice.    Hmm, wasn't I thinking of working out a Freiburg 1644 scenario?  

A bit of an impulse buy from  Grubby Tanks, who as usual had a useful  stack of boxes of  HaT 20mm figures : 

 I do like the mixed boxes that HaT do, they give you a 'starter army' which will probably furnish enough figures for at least a DBA force. There are even a couple of elephants!  I have in my mind that Carthage could possibly have rubbed up against Macedonian Successors of one sort or another, though of course the logical opponents would be Romans, and that is the thin end of a very big wedge.  These may go to the back of a long painting queue, frankly, but they are nice to have. I was slightly intrigued by the rather old-fashioned box art;  I wonder if these are rather 'old stock'?  ( Readers of a certain vintage may be reminded of buying Airfix 'series 1' 1/72  aircraft and AFV kits in new-fangled blister packs, but occasionally finding the old-fashioned versions in a plastic bag stapled to a piece of folded cardboard - or  is that just me? ). Anyway, there was a 10% discount on the day, so I got 67 figures for about £7, I can't complain at that - an army for £7.   Speaking of Ancients, I would have added some more Indians to the lead pile, as the nice people from New Line Designs were present, but sadly had very few 20mm Ancient Indians with them. I had been coveting their War Elephant with General, or 4-horse Chariot with General, for an army commander.   I really should have emailed them in advance with a pre-order - will do that next time!   

And finally, not a purchase but a 'freebie' ; I  met the guys from Whitehall Warlords club who I bought a load of vintage Minifigs  7YW.AWI  figures from last year. Bob Walker, who had sorted them out for me, said 'hang on a minute - I've got something for you' and nipped off to his car, returning with some more figures!  Just a few, but all very nice -  looks like a handful of possible Austrian Jagers and gunners, and  most importantly, some drummers and standard bearers for Hessians/Brunswickers.

Bob said these should really have been included in the collection I bought, so he was happy to pass them on at no charge.  Thank you very much, Bob! We had a good chat, and I was glad to be able to tell them how much I've enjoyed sorting through the collection and starting  on re-basing them.  I learned a bit more about their provenance, which was most interesting, and I will  share in a  future post.

And that's about it for the day. I hope this has been of some interest to those who couldn't be at the show, and maybe for anyone who did get there, too! It was a pretty good day, the Broadside show has been getting better and more popular over the past few years, and my thanks and congratulations to all those involved in organising it (well done Tony!), as well as all the other clubs etc hosting games, and all the traders. One factor which may be helping the show is that there do seem to be quite a large number of clubs in and around Kent, for whom this is a 'local' show. long may that continue.. 

After all that excitement, 'real life' has kicked in rather, and there's not been much hobby activity possible this week, apart from writing this and reading some of those other blogs which also reported on the show!  I think my next post may involve books about WW2 British generals;  until then, keep well ( and cool!), everyone