The Latest Research, 47 Years on

I have been looking around for sources of information on the armies of Alexander the Great and his Persian opponents, so I was quite pleased to find a copy of this book on ebay, at a very reasonable price: 

 

Published by the Wargames Research Group in 1976 ( 47 years ago! ) this is a softback with  60 pages of 'organisation, tactics, dress and weapons. 72 illustrations'.  Phil Barker's introduction states that 'there has to now been a complete lack of specialist publications dealing with ancient armies. This booklet is the first of a series intended to end this situation' - I think it was quite a leap forward at the time. The chapters are Major Battles of the Period,  Tactical Methods,  Composition of Armies, Organisation and Formations, and  Dress and Equipment.  In fact the last of these takes up 3/4 of the book, and that is fine by me. I have very few sources to inspire the painting of my Macedonians and (especially) Persians, so this is may be a help. 

The content is, how shall I say -  brief and to the point. The illustrations are, well, 'basic' springs to mind, and Phil Barker states 'we have not gone in for glossy coloured illustrations for the sake of of prestige, when a black and white sketch with colour notes fulfills the purpose adequately',,, because  'This cuts down on the space required and reduces the expense to the reader'.    

keeping it simple..

What a contrast with the 'eye candy' dominated rulebooks and expansions of today,  they'd never dream of such a philosophy, and you can't charge £30 a pop for that!  ( and this must in effect be the first 'expansion module' , mustn't it?  Readers almost certainly had the WRG Ancients rules, this gave them the details  needed to recruit forces for ths particular period, which Phil terms 'Pike and Elephant' - now why didn't that stick, it's quite  a good label! ).  Thinking around this, it's worth noting that publication date of 1976 - the inflation rate that year was nearly 17%,  having hit 25% the year before!  I can well understand the emphasis on reducing 'the expense to the reader',  publishing anything in that climate must have been a nightmare. Of course it was a success, and it spawned a whole series of related publications, still well-regarded today. Is it possible that today's 'cost of living crisis' may generate a back-to-basics approach and an emphasis on simplicity and low cost? I suppose  Rapid Fire Reloaded springs to mind.. 

I need to think about how to paint my Persians, and this book ( along with the same author's Alexander the Great's Campaigns )  has helped with a few ideas, in particular regarding the lower status Persian troops, who he thinks would be likely to wear costumes made from natural/undyed fabrics. The idea of plainer colours for lower status troops, while the higher status units sport  more colourful finery, works well for me, and may tone down some of the more psychadelic tendencies that can be tempting for Persian armies.. 

Being only 60 pages, I read this in one sitting and am suitably inspired - and of course it features not just Alexandrian and Persian but Indians, Macedonian/Hellenistic Successors, Carthaginians, Republican Romans,  Gallic, Spanish and Numidians, all very tempting for the future. So all in all, I am pleased with my purchase, and also enjoyed opening a little window on wargaming times gone by.  That nostalgic aspect was boosted when I spotted a small label on the back of the book, clearly from a previous seller: 

 

Athena books was of course run by the late great Terry Wise - it's nice to think my copy was probably once in the master's hands.  And it looks like he only wanted £1.50 for it - that must have been quite a long time ago! If books could talk, what tales would this one tell, how many other hands has this been through, and how many armies has it helped to inspire? 

So now with this inspiration,  I need to get the brushes and paints out and raise that Persian army! With luck, some painting progress to report next time. Meanwhile keep well, everyone.

another week, another show : SELWG

 It's been a rather unusual seven ( or eight )  days,  I've been to two wargame shows! Last Sunday the extravaganza the was The Other Partizan -   this Sunday, the slightly more low-key SELWG, at LeaValley Leisure Centre in London. Here is a view of the hall as I arrived, about 11:00am:

traditional 'games in the middle, traders round the edge' formation

Notice a small patrol of Imperial Stormtroopers moving among the punters - maybe picking up some model TIE fighters?   I like the venue, it is the very definition of a light-filled  and spacious area, albeit slightly unusual to have to walk across a running track to reach the central area! Plenty of room for all the games and traders, with the busy  'bring and buy' in the separate upper area - and I think, some further  (possibly competition) games going on in another higher-level area.  Plenty of games to look at, of course, and I photographed some of them, so I will show them in more or less the order I saw them:

First up a nice big ancients game - Hydaspes 326BC, Alexander vs Porus of course, put on by Newbury and Reading Wargames Society and using Warlord Advance Guard rules ( from Caliver Books ).   Alexander and his Macedonians on the left with nice big pike phalanx, Porus and his Indians on the right with an impressive array of elephants! Having just taken far too long to paint about 50 figures for Alexander's army in DBA, I somehow doubt I will ever reach this level.. though once the Persians are done, I think an Indian force has to be next? 

Hydaspes - early doors

 

Nice Macedonian Phalanx

..and those lovely Elephants

On a slightly less grandiose scale, the Society of Ancients ran a Roman Civil War game, Thapsus 46BC, using Impetus rules. I was interested in this, having recently taken part in one of Jon Frietag's remote games using his adaptation of  Basic Impetus  ( see his report - I was utterly destroyed in short order, but it was still great fun! ). The SoA guys were very friendly and happy to chat about the game, and some of the differences in the full version of the rules, so it was pretty interesting. I confess I didn't go into too much detail of my recent experience with Jon's game, in case they had seen his blog ( oh, you were that guy..! ). 

Society of Ancients: Thapsus 46BC  'Impetus'

 Milton Hundred Wargames Club brought a 'Third World War' 1980s game Endlich! Die Letzte Brucke!  ( Finally! The Last Bridge!' ), I think using Team Yankee rules.  I'm always impressed with the huge numbers of track-to-track tanks in such games, but have slight questions about how 'realistic' that would have been? Looked impressive, anyway!

Milton Hundred's 1980s Cold War

Another fine table from Shepway Wargames Club, Dornier Down  : 'September 1940, somewhere in Kent between Lydd, Ashford and Hythe' - with the German invasion of Britain under way, German paratroopers try to free a German high-ranking intelligence officer captured by the Home Guard when his Do17 crashed.  

Dornier Down..

 

at the other end, Germans advance to the rescue

Too Fat Lardies were out in force with three games, one of which was the Dave Brown Memorial Game, a nice-looking large scale Napoleonics game using General d’Armee 2. Simple but effective terrain, I liked that big central hill.

TooFat Lardies Napoleonics

SEEMS ( South East Essex ) usually do something interesting, this time it was a Franco-Prussian War 'large skirmish' type game 'Nach Paris' which used The Men Who Would Be Kings rules - which of course are designed for Colonial settings. But they are the right period, they were simply pitting two European regular forces against each other rather than Europeans vs indigenous forces. That seems quite a neat idea.  Also nice to see the scenario was essentially taken from Charles S. Grant's vintage Table Top Teaser  'Reserve Demolition' - I think I still have the edition of Battle For Wargamers where that scenario made its public debut! 

SEEMS Franco-Prussian 'Colonial' game - clever stuff!

The Retired Wargamers Reloaded group having wowed us all with their Carentan 1944 game at shows last year,  are now back with a new game 'Hold Until Relieved',  depicting Pegasus Bridge on D-Day. 

Retired Wargamers Reloaded : Pegasus Bridge 1944

 

Well, they have done it again, a really great layout - they told me all the buildings are 3D-printed and represent the real buildings at the actual scene. 15mm scale, and gamed with Rapid Fire Reloaded. They won a very well-deserved 'best in show' prize - watch out for this at future shows ( they will be at Salute 2024, I assume!).  Sadly I managed to miss meeting my old gaming friend Tony who is part of the 'RWR' group, I just happened to always be passing their table when he'd gone to lunch or whatever! We'll catch up at a future event, no doubt - I will certainly be interested to see how this ( not quite finished yet, I gather) excellent setup develops. I need no excuse to include a few more pictures of this game:

Gliders landed bang on the objective..

..but bad news for this Dakota

I really liked the way the troops and vehicles subtly merge into the scenery ( just like their real-life equivalents would want to ) and then you come across interesting little scenes, like this column of German half-tracks moving up in response..   

All in all a really nice-looking game, do look out for it! 

Another nice-looking game was 'Escape from Distraction' by The League of Anti-Alchemist Cowboys (are these group names getting a bit out of hand, do you think?) - 'Distraction' being the Wild West town from which various ne'er-do-wells needed to escape, pursued by the forces of law and order and regulated by What a Cowboy rules.

A town called 'Distraction'

Now the next one doesn't look so much, but was a very interesting idea - Mr. John Kersey (1/72 Wargames) with his  Defence of Duffer's Drift 1900 , a game of the well-known book on Boer War tactics. Sadly his gaming buddy had gone sick, so John was not actually running the game, but happy to talk about it, and it seems to me an excellent idea - the book being after all, a sort of instructional manual, why not make it into a game and let readers or potential readers see how they might fair?  John mentioned that he had been invited to take the game to Salute in 2024, I look forward to seeing it there!

Duffers Drift - work in progress, but v. interesting!

Zulu Kraals are very 'in' this year

Central London Wargames Club were demonstrating their new edition Napoleonic rules Emperor of the Battlefield (by club member Ian Godwin)  and were most enthusiastic and engaging, even when I confessed ( to general mock-horror ) that I don't play Napoleonics!  

Central London Club's Rules

 

..and clever dual-purpose table setup

 

As you can see there was a central game table with a 28mm battle, but also two 'side-tables' with 15mm setups, which were used for ad-hoc demonstrations of rules mechanisms. I was immediately given a pair of dice to roll as a unit of cavalry proposed to charge an infantry unit in march column,  on the side table, and I have to say my dice-rolling caused the foot to fail to form square, and subsequently rout!  It was a nice way to involve viewers and show the ( gratifyingly simple ) mechanisms of the rules; full marks for engagement with the wargaming public!

Palestine 1938: Green Howards advance

 

.. and finally, another 'always interesting' group are Deal Wargames Associaton with their 'WW2 or thereabouts'  games - this time A Crown of Thorns, the Green Howards in Beit Faruk, Palestine 1938 depicting an incident in the Arab rebellion against the British mandate in Palestine in 1938, and inspired by the official history of the Green Howards regiment.  The excellent explanatory leaflet (another speciality of this group) says the game 'pits overwhelming firepower, mechanised forces and artillery against a lightly-armed but wily enemy fighting in his own back yard'.  All very sadly topical, I suppose.

Air power to the fore again - good!

  

view from the Arab side

As usual I was pleased to see some nice aircraft over the table - with 20th-Century scenarios you really can't not have air power involved, surely? The period setting just before WW2 made things interesting, with Gloster Gladiators and a Vickers Wellesley making up the RAF strike force, and the same pre-war and non-European environment made for a nicely unusual selection of troops and equipment - all good fun. The game was played with Rapid Fire ( 2nd Edition ) rules, which seemed to suit the relatively limited scale of the forces and should also allow brisk play. 

And that's all I photographed - of course there were quite a few more games! The program listed 37 games in all, so I have showed less than 1/3 of them.  I should probably apologise, I'm afraid I don't really 'get' Fantasy and Sci-Fi games, so I tend  not to feature those  unless espeically interesting or spectacular looking, admittedly I have thus ruled out another 1/3 of the games present.  There was perhaps a slightly  subdued feeling to the atmosphere at the show, but that maybe just my impression, formed by the tendency to compare with the Partizan extravaganza only seven days before.Actually I think the spacious hall made for a much lower 'population density' which was much more relaxing!  Always good to meet and chat with other gamers of course, and I was pleased to bump into David Crook of Wargaming Odyssey fame, we had a good talk and he introduced me to his friend Nick Huband, who showed us  pictures of his  fantastic collection of vintage Peter Laing 15mm WW1 figures - David and I urged him to show them to the wider world on a blog!  Nick's rules for 'Portable WW1'  gaming are included in Bob Cordery's recent  Second Portable Wargame Compendium .     

 As well as 37 games, the program listed 36 traders, and a little light shopping was duly undertaken: 

Persian painting inspiration

 

and what to do with those Persians

pure nostalgia

What a show looked like back then..

..and what the games looked like

As you can see, this ran to a vintage Osprey (very cheap indeed) from the assorted book box at Stonewall Figures, which will give some more inspiration for painting my Persian DBA army,  an expansion for Helion/Philip Garton's  Three Ages of Rome rules which covers Alexander and his successors with army lists and scenarios ( at a bargain price from Paul Meekins books ) and last but not least a lovely bit of pure nostalgia in the form of Shire Publications pocket-sized Discovering Wargames  by John Tunstill, in a 1970 edition. It's an interesting read - within the first couple of pages we are into a quite detailed discussion of ground and time scales for wargames! As you can see, some very 'period' pictures of games too, and a flashback to what wargames shows looked like 55 years ago.. 

Also bought, but not pictured ( just not photgenic )  was a 15cwt Truck, a Bedford QLT and a Bren Carrier (with Indian crew - very useful)  all resin models  from Grubby Tanks for my 20mm WW2 in Italy 'D-Day Dodgers' - I am going for a lorried Indian infantry battalion, so these are try-outs for that, and will hopefully appear on this blog when assembled and painted.  Finally my first 'Speed/Contrast' paint - in a suitable shade of brown as a trial for painting horses  with a bit of contrast, but quickly. To be tried out on the Persians - we'll see how it goes!

All in all a good day at the show, I'd always recommend SELWG if you can get there without too long a trip! I spent a good 4 hours there and could have spent longer, if I had gone for a participation game as well - something I must get round to at a future show. Can I book a place on Duffers Drift at Salute? Many thanks, of course, to everyone involved in running SELWG and its games and traders.  

*** UPDATE **** SELWG have posted their list of prize-winning games as follows: 

Best in Show - Retired Wargamers Reloaded - 'Hold Until Relieved'

Best Participation Game - Prince Rupert's Bluecoats - 'It's a Funny Old Game'

Best Demo Game - Deal Wargamers - 'Uprising in Palestine 1938'

Best Scenery - Milton Hundred Wargames Club - 'Endlich! Die Letzte Brücke!'

All except one of which I managed to include in my report - I seem to remember  Prince Rupert's Bluecoats were 'on a break' when I passed by, should have gone back.  I think it was a game depicting  one of those traditional  English 'football' matches where the whole village joins in and it turns into a drunken brawl - an ideal subject!  

Back to normal reading/painting/gaming now and in future posts, with inspiration somewhat boosted by two good shows in two weekends. Until then keep well, everyone. 

 

Another Other Partizan Report

Last Sunday I hit the road to sunny Newark, and attended 'The Other Partizan' show. A thoroughly enjoyable day was had, as expected.  Plenty  of interesting and impressive games to see, and I took some photos which I will show here. A great bonus was being  also able to meet my old friend Dave 'St Cyr on Wheels' and his wife; we had not met in person in many months since they moved to darkest Northampton, so really good to see them. Greetings Dave!

Now I have to admit that it's a fair old drive to the show, and I didn't really get going early enough - did not reach the venue until 12:30, and the show finished at 4pm - so it was a bit of a rush around towards the end. As a result, I probably missed quite a few good games, especially in the 'participation zone'. So this is by no means a comprehensive report - but what I did see was all good. I'll show them more or less in the order that we toured the room: 

1st Corps group put on a large game portraying The Defence of Calais, 1940 in 28mm, using Battlegroup rules, I think. Very impressive, the 'teddy bear fur' looked good - it reminded me of real colour pictures of Panzers on the Russian steppe - and the backdrop using printed railway was a lovely piece of work

1st Corps: Calais 1940

 

The Brens are coming..

Panzers on the march

and a rather effective backboard

More 28mm WW2 and 1940 from Chesterfield Old Boys, this time Beda Fomm in the desert :

I always like to see  a nice aircraft model flying over the table, it seems to be rather a trend in fact, and this game had a great example, this CR42 

Newark Irregulars showed their game of Gainsborough, 1643 also in 28mm :

good scenery, and a lovely big cavalry fight!

The 'Anti-Alchemists'  showed their 'Biscotti War, Garibaldi vs. Bourbon in 1860' , a fictional encounter set  during Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily,  using 28mm figures ( Gringo 40s ) and Sharp Practise rules.

Sicily 1860..

 

Garibaldi's Redshirts vs. Bourbons ( and an unfortunate cow )

I especially liked that their information sheet even gave brief historical details of the two types of biscuits! 

Derby Wargmes Society gave us 'Crossing the Berezina 1944' - WW2 in 20mm:

Berezina '44: I liked the forested terrain

 

The Iron Brigade provided more forestry, plus spectacular fortifications in 'Winter is Here' - a Game of Thrones ( sort of ) encounter in 28mm using Dragon Rampant rules. A neat trick was to use mirrors as the backboard, so it looked twice as long!

   

Boondock Sayntes provided probably the most spectacular single terrain piece - a Fortress in their Indian-set game 'Laisot 1785 and the rise of Benoit de Boigne' 

'a mighty fortress...'

and interior - modellers clearly just got a bit carried away!

Equally colourful troops made a beautiful setup

The name de Boigne  interested me, I checked later and realised I have owned  a book about him for at least 20 years ( Fountain of the Elephants by Desmond Young ) and never read it! I must rectify that promptly, from the explanation by the 'Sayntes' he will be well worth reading about.

 Old Pikey's Gaming Group had a very large layout for their 20mm Cold War game 'Operation Resolute' - the obligatory seething mass of Soviet armour, plus some more fun aircraft overhead.  Being at the end of the hall, it also afforded a good view of the whole room, so you can get an idea of the extent of it ( and also the demographic, I'd say. That's one of the Helion chaps on the left, I think.. )

hmmm.. Soviet armour in a bottleneck?

Gothenburg Gamers, who I think had come all the way from Scotland, showed a nice 28mm 'Crimean War' game - but not actually set in Crimea, as this depicted an engagement between Russians and Turks, a reminder that the Crimea was just part of a wider conflict. If I were the Turks here, I wold have been quite nervous facing this Russian column of attack ( and Dave, I think that's you.. )  

Quantity has a quality of its own.. 

 

Bramley Barn Wargames Club put on an interesting game - 28mm Elizabethan period, English vs. Irish.  They used a set of rules, Irregular Wars, which are aimed at re-creating 'smaller actions so common  at the fringes of the European world'.  

    

In this case, the 'irregular' but highly motivated Irish versus the 'regular' English Pike and Shot, whose ranks were likely to be stuffed with 'pressed' ex-convicts, poorly trained and motivated - though the English Demi-Lances shown here  would be the toughest unit on the field. All this very well explained by the Bramley Barn chaps, I thought it  made for an exemplary 'demonstration' game, in an interesting  and unusual period setting. 

Demi-Lances : Tudor England's  Panther Tanks?

Another really good-looking smaller game was from The Legion of Blokes -  'The Race to Caen' , described as 'Epic Scale WW2' , cleverly using 6mm figures with ( I think )  2mm scenery, and the whole thing in a case which folded up for transport! Really neat idea. The 'Epic' part was that it actually depicted a large area of the battlefield - if I remember right, the Blokes said this was all three British/Canadian beaches, and one or two figure stands represented a battalion. This was a great little big game, excellent stuff  ( and prize for top club/group name, which could equally work as the name of a show, perhaps? )

The (very) PortableWargame

 

Grimsby Wargames Society gave us a large WW1 game,  The Battle of Hargicourt featuring the 'Grimsby Chums' , set in August 1918, I think.  A splendid layout featuring another rather nice aircraft in the form of an Albatros DVa ( albeit going down in flames! ). I liked the idea of featuring a unit from their local area - high  time I  researched the history of the Suffolk Regiment?

Grimsby Pals - and Dave photo-bombing me again

 

 

The Rime of the Ancient Aviator?

Having recently visited Shropshire I was interested to see the Shrewsbury Wargames Club's Siege of Stokesay Castle (1645?), ECW in 28mm.  The castle made another 'trophy' piece of scenery to rival the Indian fortress, but I didn't really get  a decent photo. The figures were equally nice, though : 

 

Medway AD43 from Forest Outlaws and Kallistra looked impressive, and perhaps unsurprisingly was a good demonstration of how good Kallistra's Hexon terrain can look when used on a large scale. My own Hexon setup is usually 9 by 9 hexes, which would fit into this table about 6 times - but I can dream!

Medway AD 43 in 15mm

 

Medieval shipping made several appearances at the show :  (1) The Bodkins 28mm Breton War of Succession, Hennebont 1342

and -of course - (2) Andy Callan with 'Never Mind the Boathooks' 

Another minor trend was clearly Zulu Kraals : (1) Cramlington Wargames Group's Battle of Inyzane River 1879  

and (2) The Gentlemen Pensioners 'Death in the Donga - the Prince Imperial in Zululand 1879'

Zulu games, sir - at least two of 'em

Now I'm afraid I'm very old-school in one respect, I am not really bothered with  Sci-Fi or Fantasy games - but how about this for Sci-Fi terrain?  I think it's 'The Invasion of Skaro' by Chesterfield Open Gaming Society,  using Xenos Rampant: I suspect that this featured very ingenious use of 'found objects' and an awful lot of silver spray paint, and it looked great!
 

Invasion of Skaro - ooh, shiny!

And last but very much NOT least,  Nick Hindley's  'Giant Risk' - what a fantastic idea this was! Nick provided the rules  - a 'tweaked' version of the boardgame to add a bit of Napoleonic chrome plus naval elements, ports and forts, all on a single sheet of A4. I took a copy, and hope to be inspired - though perhaps not on such a vast scale.

The terrtitories ( boundaries drawn onto a conventional 'OS' style map of Britain) had been given quirky names - I will forgive him for renaming my bit of East Anglia, as he maintained it was an affectionate term used by his mother, who was born in Ipswich.. 

 

Overall, I think this may just have been  my favourite game of the day! 

All in all, of course a really good lot of games, some really quite spectacular. Maybe a bit  too spectacular? It was interesting to read Neil Patterson's view of the show in his  Aufklarungsabteilung blog - he is of the opinion that these huge showy games with massive trophy terrain pieces have maybe gone too far, in that they are 'demonstration' games demonstrating things that you would be very unlikely to be able to achieve at home or club. I have some sympathy with that view, I admit, and I am rather drawn to the smaller-scale but ingenious games, and those showing an interesting period or foregrounding a particular set of rules - which you might well emulate yourself.  Of course not all the big games are simply static models,  and it's quite inspiring to see large games that are really being played - my favourite example ( albeit not at this show, though they were at May's Partizan ) being the Retired Wargamers Reloaded  Carentan game which I saw at Broadside among other shows, which is clearly being run as a 'real'  game ( using Rapid Fire ) and I think features a different scenario at each outing, on the same basic board.  As long as you keep it simple, large games are entirely possible and quite exciting for a group! Having said that, of course if everyone just brings a bog-standard 'club game', that will be pretty dull -  it's great to see the big games and the amzing terrain, and I was probably guilty of missing a lot of more 'normal' games since I didn't really have time to focus on the 'Participation Zone'  which might have answered a lot of the above questions.Interesting to think about all this,  but I should say emphatically that it was a great show and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the games I saw.

And now the 'retail therapy' side: there were of course, many traders present and pretty much all your hobby needs could be catered for, but I really only had about half an hour to look around them once we'd looked at the games!  Luckily I didn't go along with a particular shopping list, anyway, and maybe the lack of time was good for concentrating the mind.. As a result I made two purchases : 

(i)  From Kallistra, a set of river/stream hexes should  will be pretty useful in my hex terrain setup:  

(ii) from Helion, I finally took the plunge and acquired my own copy of the late Christopher Duffy's By Force of Arms - so now Chris 'Nundanket' can have his splendid Emperor's Press copy ( very kindly loaned, several months ago ) back! 

 

Well worth getting this, I have been very enjoying reading the loan copy, and I am told the Helion version is a straight re-print, Mr Duffy having not been in sufficient health to produce a revised edition.  Hence  I should be able to simply pick up from where I got to.  Autumn/Winter reading sorted..

I think that sums it up fairly well, a great day had, albeit with a bit too much driving! Thinking about it  I broke a personal cardinal rule, as the journey at 2 hours each way exceeded the actual time ( 3.5 hours - and 45 mins of that was lunch!) that I was able to spend at the show. So next time, I most certainly need to get up much earlier and get there promptly!  (never mind,  next weekend is the good old   SELWG show, and that's a much easier journey).  My thanks to all involved be they  organisers, traders, clubs or players, for making The Other Partizan such a grand day out. 

Next time - well, it will probably be SELWG! Until then keep well, everyone.