Amiens - the tanks advance

We played out the Amiens scenario and the tanks did indeed advance, but quite slowly. They found hills difficult - entirely consistent with the original battle - and as the defenders kept scoring high on the countdown roll the game finished one turn before they would undoubtedly have secured victory for the British.

Neither Peter nor James seem to find it intuitive that one could lose the battle but win the game. I must admit that I don't really understand what their problem is; apart from a lot of spurious precision in the totting up of victory points there isn't anything involved that we haven't done before many times with other sets of rules. Anyway, flooding permitting, we are now going back to the legendary wargames room and the Seven Years War for a campaign of James' devising - more details at James' blog; I am commanding the Austro-Russian force - so it may be time to sum up my feelings about Square Bashing so far.

Firstly, the mechanics are straightforward enough and we got a few good games out of it. There seems to be consensus about which bits we would change. In particular ranged fire seems to involve an awful lot of dice rolls for basically no effect. That would seem to imply two alternatives so, based on a natural reluctance not to have any shooting at all, I think we will beef it up a bit. Also up for some tinkering are the pre-game asset rolls, the higher command stuff and aircraft.

More pertinently there is the question as to what it is trying to represent. It is pretty explicit that the forces are a division a side, but - in my opinion at least - divisions didn't fight like that on the Western Front; certainly not in attack. Now believe me I am firmly in the 'game' camp (as opposed to the 'simulation 'camp), but even so one of the reasons for historical wargaming in the first place is to try to reflect the realities and constraints of the time. In addition to that, the more I read I feel more strongly than ever that the best level for gaming the last year or so of the Great War is brigade. You may recall that's what I attempted when messing about with my own 'Blue Guitar' rules at the end of 2017. So, there you go, pick the bones out of that.

Cleanth is next to Godth

"It's not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in" - Raymond Chandler

I am pleased to say that the most appropriate time for that quote has been and gone, as I have somewhat dillied and dallied when I should have been writing blog posts. I once again have a functioning shower, the world - at least that part near me - has regained its sweetness, and no longer can the recent presence of Epictetus be detected by his unwelcome sillage.

The living room ceiling is also back in place, the table in the annexe has been cleared of extraneous items and there is even the possibility of a game being set up sometime soon. I have just been to see a production of Journey's End so the Blue Guitar rules might be due for a revisit. Who can say?

...and all that

There was a heartfelt request in the comments a few days ago that I should post about anything other than wargaming, but as I find myself in the odd position of not having done much else, wargaming it is.

I have been reading 1066, the special edition of Medieval Warfare. The only previous one of these that I have read is 1453, which I enjoyed.  There are a couple of negatives with this one: the maps are particularly poor, showing not much more information than the fact that towns such as London, Durham, Rouen etc all seem to have been in pretty much the same place then as they are now; and the proof reading also leaves a bit to be desired. I know that the publishers don't have English as their first language, the same indeed being true for many of the contributors, but the issues are mostly typographic rather than idiomatic. However the chapters on context such as the backgrounds and experiences of  Harold, Haraldr and William are good, as is the one on what happened next; even if strangely excludes Sellars and Yeatman's insight that "William next invented a system according to which everybody had to belong to someone else, and everybody else to the King. This was called the Feutile System,... ".

I wasn't previously aware of the level of 'restoration' of the Bayeux Tapestry undertaken over the centuries. When one goes to see it they tend not to mention that it might not be be an accurate reflection of how it originally looked. I shall investigate some more. Also new to me was the Battle of Northam in June 1069, although I don't seem to be alone in not knowing much about it. Nick Arnold, the chap writing that article, is rather groping in the dark I think; nevertheless I shall keep an eye out for the book he is apparently writing on the battles of 1069.

In other news I convinced myself that drybrushing a second shade onto the wire wool smoke would be easier because the previous coats would have made it stiffer. They hadn't and it wasn't. However, despite being darker and greyer than I originally envisaged, it has reached the stage of  'it will do' (admittedly a reasonably low hurdle in the Casa Epictetus) and, Storm Eleanor permitting, I shall shortly be moving on to another solo run through of 'Blue Guitar'.

"With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour" - Theodore Gericault

Tobit 8:2

This blog has long had an interest in the movement of the earth around the sun and so it is fitting that as the days start to get longer once again that we find the time for another post. There are many reasons for our absence, and possibly the least among them is that I have hurt my arm dry brushing. There was a level of derision in certain quarters when I passed on that news, but unlikely as it sounds, it's true. Perhaps readers deserve a recap.

When I was last here I was playing through a solo try out of my 'Blue Guitar' company level (or possibly battalion or even brigade level - I'm not entirely sure what the naming convention is) Great War wargames rules, and also providing a much needed running score update of the cricket in Australia. What happened next was that there was a bit of a cold snap in the UK and my enthusiasm for going outside to the annexe to roll dice and push little plastic men around a table rather dwindled. It seemed a convenient point to pause, properly write up all the rule amendments arising from the playtest and start again. In particular as weapon ranges had been shortened during the game the defending Germans had suddenly found themselves isolated from each other and rather easy to pick off, one unit at a time.

As I said earlier, it was a bit parky so I retreated to the warm to do some painting and modelling of various player aids. I wanted to make some smoke markers and after due consideration decided to make these out of wire wool. (I should mention that the same doubters mentioned above were also sceptical about this choice, given the material's noted flammability and my own equally well documented propensity to set things alight whilst painting them.) One attraction to me was the opportunity to get out the hot glue gun, which I have owned for years, but which never sees the light of day. Inexplicably, but somehow inevitably, despite never using it I had managed to run out of glue sticks, thereby causing a delay while more were procured.

At that point the cold weather gave way to wet and several more days passed before I could take the stuff outside to spray it with primer. I decided to prime in grey, thinking to dry brush over the top in white. This was a mistake. The grey was much darker than I thought it would be - in fact it was almost exactly the shade on the cap of the can; who'd have thought it? - and wire wool is an absolute bugger to dry brush. This coupled with yet another duff decision, namely to model enough markers to make a smoke screen a metre in length all in one go, have given me a painful RSI type strain to my arm coupled with a great reluctance to overbrush with any more shades. So, my advice for anyone wishing to make some smoke is to prime in white and, even more importantly, don't use wire wool in the first place.

In case I should not post again before Christmas - and let's face it, I won't - Happy Yontiff to you all.

442-8 dec and 138 all out; 227 all out and 176-4

So, as Aaron has pointed out, what a difference a day makes. To the game in Adelaide that is; twenty four hours has made remarkably little difference to the ongoing playtest of Blue Guitar. Those who aren't in tune with the rhythm of cricket can sometimes be heard wondering aloud about the nature of a contest played out over a series of five games each lasting five days. Well, what I'm doing seems to have the potential to last longer than the Ashes. However, if I were to be controversial I would say that the case against day-night test matches gets stronger with every game, whereas I am cautiously optimistic about my Great War rules. Except perhaps for their speed. 

I've made it a bit harder to blunder although this still hasn't done much for the companies on both the British and German left flanks who both not only failed to respond to orders to advance, but instead moved randomly backwards. The battalion on the British left has also lost its 2-i-c (not to enemy action - one can only speculate as to where he has disappeared to), on top of which the British support weapons have still not deployed. There has however been some combat at last which has highlighted that while the disordered mechanism seems to work I had set the saving throw at too easy a level.

A really obscure view from behind the German left

I remain relatively happy with the shifting turn sequence.

442-8 dec and 53-4; 227 all out

Despite the improvement in the weather in South Australia I was only able to find time for one move in the extremely slowly developing playtest of Blue Guitar. I didn't plan the scenario in any great detail and simply plonked the British on the baseline; indeed at the time the thing that more concerned me was the realisation that there were more bases in each unit than either utility or appearance demanded. I also didn't do the attackers any favours by putting their support weapons in the middle. The one upside is that the time it is taking for the game to progress has given me more chances to tinker (refine?).

The colonel waves his pistol in despair as his men advance the wrong way

The battalion on the British left has been rolling some very odd command dice and as a result its tactics can perhaps be best described as doing the hokey-cokey. The one company that is getting anywhere has entered the woods, and so that's where the German mortar is now targeting.  In the centre the support weapons have been unable to set up despite the best efforts of the brigade 2-i-c who was despatched to sort things out, although the dead observer has successfully been replaced.

On the other flank the Germans have seized the initiative and moved into the woods where all logic suggests they should have been anyway. Their sniper has been moving steadily forwards - the rules as to how he does that have changed several times so far and may well change again - and has picked off one of the British company commanders. That unit will suffer a permanent -1 to their command roll.

442-8 dec; 29-1

The latest stage in the solo run through of the Blue Guitar Great War rules was somewhat curtailed by the evening rain in Adelaide, to the extent that once again nothing much happened. Things weren't helped by all the companies in the battalion on the British left being sent off in various directions by blunder rolls. The Germans have continued to target the road with their mortar, but the British haven't had the opportunity to move along it anyway.

In the centre the observer for the Stokes mortars was sent forward, but, after some rapid rule writing and a truly terrible throw of the dice on behalf of the British, was caught by machine gun fire and removed from play. Cue some more hurried creativity to work out how a new one can be put in place. On their right the issue was repeated failing of command rolls despite my patent method (essentially stolen from Crush the Kaiser) to reduce the chance of this happening.

The have been another couple of rule changes (enhancements?), but I'll just mention that, notwithstanding what I wrote yesterday, I have decided that what the game really needs is separate 'Command' and 'Rally' phases.

The early finish did however give me a chance to check out the Otley Victorian Christmas Fayre. In addition to buying the traditional festive samosa, seasonal food of choice of the nineteenth century working man, I was rather taken by Hardcastle's Amazing Human Vegetable Machine, which I don't recall seeing before.

209-4

I had an hour so in the annexe this morning while listening to the cricket from Australia and got a couple of turns done. Considering that I wrote the rules there was a surprising amount of checking as to what was supposed to happen next, as a result of which not much actually did. Still, early days.

The brown circle is a rather undercooked marker indicating that the Germans are mortaring the road to deny passage to the British. The 'M's indicate that those support weapons have moved and so cannot fire and the just visible 'O's show that those units are able to use opportunity fire. For those of you keeping track of these things the following is the phase sequence as at the end of turn 2. The 'Rally' phase should probably be called 'Command' phase or perhaps 'Officer Check' for the Piquet players among you.

To lay his brain upon the board

I have previously mentioned that I have been writing my own set of Great War rules; or, perhaps it would be fairer to say that I have been melding together bits the I like from other sets while discarding the bits that I don't. Clearly this may result in a majestic set of rules far superior to anything ever seen on the tabletop, perfectly simulating the battlefield of the period and providing a game both gripping and subtle. Equally, and one must suspect far more likely, it may well be an unworkable and unplayable abomination bearing no relation to the Western Front as anyone understands it. There is only one way to find out and so, after a few small scale and half-hearted efforts, I have set up a larger game for a solo run through of the rules, which are named, for now at least, 'Blue Guitar'.

The is no particular assumed narrative behind this, it's sometime in the middle of 1918 during the German retreat. Two battalions of British plus brigade machine gun and mortar assets have come up against a German battalion covering a bridge.

The only conclusion that I have come to so far from setting it out is that the companies (unit is company, command level is battalion-ish) each have one too many stands, so I shall remove the surplus before beginning the game. It has also become apparent that my recent painting spree did not include enough Lewis guns, that there are not quite enough command and communication markers until the recently arrived order from Warbases is painted, and that some of the other player aids such as smoke and explosion markers will have to wait until I decide what size they need to be. However all of those are really only a question of aesthetics and so tomorrow - or possibly the day after if something better comes up in the meantime - I shall play upon the Blue Guitar.

The starting turn sequence