Ravenna

 There has been the first wargame of the year, the snow having cleared and Storm Éowyn not having yet arrived. We are going to have a run of Italian Wars games as the one we played a couple of months ago convinced James that the rules needed to be tweaked to reflect current thinking. What does that mean? Well, a bit more classic Piquet, a lot more streamlined. Now you know.

The chosen battle was Ravenna, which I know we have played many times, but about which I can remember very little. I was the defenders, which I'm pretty sure made me the Spanish; should you know differently feel free to leave a comment. There was a certain amount of making it up as we went along. but the game flowed well and finished easily in one evening. Whilst there were a series of cavalry melees on the left flank, the key action was as shown above. A whole line of pike blocks charged a single tercio behind a barricade. The white dice you can see relate to a somewhat complicated mechanism for reflecting stubbornness. I never like to see a rule without using it, so I spent morale freely to maintain my position at the defences and repel all three pike blocks. Unfortunately I spent the whole lot, which meant I had lost. A more sensible strategy might have been to withdraw the battered tercio at some point and let the pike blocks face the fresh one in reserve. Next time.

Silk

 “Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.” -  Shakespeare

Jonathan over at Palouse Wargaming Journal has been celebrating twelve years of blogging, which made me realise that I had also recently passed that mark. As opposed to that blog, which has gone from strength to strength and features more game reports than any other blog on my reading list, this blog has dwindled and diminished over time, both in quantity and quality. The only positive is that it still costs the same to produce, i.e. nothing. 

Evidence of all this is that I do have a couple of games to report on and can think of nothing more to say than that I enjoyed them both. First up was the Combat at Reichenberg, and the photos on James's blog if you follow that link are much better than the one above. As I say it was a fun way to spend a couple of evenings and resulted in a marginal victory for the Prussians. For those who like to keep track of our rule changes, we started playing Field of Battle 2 - sort of - and ended playing Field of Battle 3 -sort of - with our morale rules not having much to do with either. I know our approach bemuses people, but it is in part because James's table is so much bigger than that assumed in most rules; if we didn't change things up then games would last for months rather than weeks.

One set of rules which I never tinker with is Command & Colours. The above are the starting positions for Dennewitz, which I played recently with Chris, my plumber. It's such a good system for newcomers to pick up, and yet has plenty of decision points to keep more seasoned gamers interested, plus it doesn't last too long. It's not a simulation, but it is fun. To slightly misquote the designer of a different game (and one which I hope to report back on in my next post): "Throughout development, historical accuracy has been just one value among several". A fine approach.

PotCXXVpouri

 After a short gap, wargaming returned to the legendary blah blah with a Seven Years War game. Unusually we didn't use James and Peter's period specific rules (whose name I forget but it has something to do with lemons) in favour of playing Field of Battle virtually as published - at least to start with. We hadn't played them for a rather long time, but gradually remembered what it was we didn't like and so changed it as we went along. James has written up the first evening here, at the end of which we gave the Russians a shed load more morale so we'd get another evening out of it. That ploy worked a treat and the second evening ebbed and flowed quite a bit more than the first, but the better quality of the Prussian commanders proved too much for the Russians in the end.

And speaking of wargaming, it may return to the annexe next week for the first time in months. Having just cracked the problem of how to delineate dead ground in front of bastions, the logical thing would have been to play a siege game. However, instead I have cleared all that and set-up some Napoleonic Command and Colours. The motive for this was a request from my plumber who, having seen games in progress on previous visits, asked on this occasion (new U-bend on the bathroom washbasin) if he could have a game himself sometime. It is, of course, always worth keeping in with a good plumber (*).

In other news, the pigeon (see here for to which pigeon I refer) has gone. We finally did what should have been done a long time ago; i.e. captured her and took her off to International Pigeon Rescue. I didn't participate in that last element myself, but my henchwoman who did reported back that the organisation was impressively resourced, with staff who were well meaning, knowledgeable and every bit as bonkers as you would expect.

* Or indeed any other tradesman.

In another part of Spain

            There was a little girl,
            Who had a little curl,
            Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,
            She was very good indeed,
            But when she was bad she was horrid.

                       - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's possible that you are asking yourselves whether this Peninsular campaign hasn't been going on for rather a long while. It has, gentle readers, it has.

We fought through the conclusion of the latest battle between Spanish and French - Blake vs Marmont, but I still don't know where - over the last two Wednesday evenings. The first of those gave an excellent night's entertainment; the second didn't. Piquet, despite definitely being my rules of choice for Horse and Musket games, is a bit like Longfellow's little girl. Occasionally it is horrid.

Anyway, the Spanish duly lost, but did a reasonable amount of damage to Marmont's army. Elsewhere, Wellington has been trying to get to Sault, believing that he had inferior numbers. He did, but then a campaign card gave him the Old Guard, and then timely reinforcements to existing formations bolstered him even more. He was still too scared to take on the Iron Duke though and has attacked a nearby Spanish army instead. Will Wellington arrive in time to join the battle? I have no idea, because I clearly don't understand the campaign rules. 

As not requested yet

"The Pyrenees have stood for ages a frowning barrier, descending toward France on the northern side from gradually decreasing heights - but on the Spanish side in wild disorder, plunging down through steep chasms, ravines, and precipices - with sharp cliffs towering thousands of feet skyward, which better than standing armies protect the sunny plains below.”

- Mary Platt Parmele

The Mojo Dojo Casa House Epictetus once again has a functioning kitchen and so, with the aid of tea and biscuits, I can return to blogging. In my absence it would seem that someone has left a message on Mark's Blog asking him to give his version of the recently commenced Peninsular Campaign. I think it's unlikely that he will. No one has (yet) left any such request on this site and therefore, naturally enough, I will. 

First the campaign. The rules - all James' own work - are being played for the first time and are therefore inevitably being playtested as we go along and are even more subject to change than anything else that happens in the legendary wargames room. The attrition rules have, for example, already been somewhat streamlined, on the very sensible basis that simple is usually best. But, overall, they seem to flow both quickly and smoothly, so a thumbs up so far from me.

The first session of map moves saw a French force move towards Barcelona, a Spanish force moved to cut them off and the two met at Vich. This where perhaps our unfamiliarity with the campaign rules became apparent, specifically the means by which map would be translated to tabletop. We ended up, not surprisingly perhaps given that we were in the Pyrenees, with such difficult terrain that it didn't promise much of a game. Common sense once more prevailed and we decided to classify the various terrain features as less onerous than they should have been and carry on regardless. James' report is pretty thorough in terms of the first night, where the Spanish failed to press home their attack because they couldn't get the cards they needed. He hasn't yet written a report of the second night, but the luck was entirely the other way round, with the Spanish getting all the initiative and managing to withdraw and form a new line before night fell. So a draw, with no victory points being awarded to either commander. The Spanish suffered the greater casualties, which was only to be expected because they are mostly rubbish. In theory this is offset by the greater ease in which they will gain reinforcements. We shall see.

Most enjoyable so far.

PotCXXIpouri

 My absence from the blogosphere has not been entirely due to scorchio, my broadband hasn't been working properly either. Obviously too much has happened in the Casa Epictetus during that time to include all of it in detail here. Most notably there was a visit from the blog's Luxembourg correspondent involving food and drink aplenty and an erudite conversation which ranged from Qatargate to the dynamic pricing of tickets for Springsteen's Munich concert via Piltdown Man. There has also been a variety of musical and theatre entertainment of equally varying qualities. But you're all here for the wargaming.

First up was a run out for James' new Spanish Army for the Peninsular war. Given that they were newly painted and that they were Spanish troops in the Peninsular war, they inevitably ran away. But quite a bit of luck with the dominoes meant that they hung in there for longer than anticipated and a good time was had by all. The picture above shows a Spanish cavalry unit which having unexpectedly routed their opposition in melee were then effectively destroyed by what seemed to your bloggist to be a very harsh pursuit check rule. 

Next up was the battle of Harran using To the Strongest!, the outcome of which was a defeat for the forces of Outremer, just like the original. The photo is of Bohemund, who despite being the main hope on his side never really got going. A combination of the Armenians to his left suddenly going into an uncontrolled advance - which unsurprisingly ended in disaster - and me constantly choosing the wrong order in which to activate commands, took away all his room for manoeuvre. Not that Baldwin or Tancred did any better mind you. It was a very bad day for the forces of Edessa and Antioch.

All the right nobles...

 ... but not necessarily at the right battles.

I decided that one sensible way to rouse myself from my wargaming inactivity was to take a look at some of the sets of rules which I have accumulated over the last couple of years. Even more logical is to start with a period for which I actually have the figures, so the Wars of the Roses it is. I have a couple of unplayed sets, but first up is 'Test of Resolve', a card based WotR specific set which I briefly described on in a previous post. They should be straightforward for me to pick up because they are derived from/an homage to/a blatant rip-off of Piquet Inc's FOB albeit in a very streamlined and simplified fashion. I like the look of the initiative allocation system, which doesn't seem that it will result in me calling on the higher mathematics in order to prove that it's no good, and I'm also rather taken with the way they have evolved the Heroic and Lull cards. However all that is just from reading and having a play about with the mechanisms. What is required is a proper game.

When I bought the rules I also bought the scenario book for the first part of the wars (the book for the second half is also now available and an order has been placed), and so from that I have chosen 1st St Albans. The scenario book is really very impressive and could, I think, be easily translated to other rules. In the same way that no one really knows how they fought at the time, there is often also uncertainty about where they fought and what happened. Whilst this ought to be less of an issue for 1st St Albans, the road layout of the centre of the city not having particularly changed since then, there are still alternative views of what occurred. In this case the authors have gone for the Yorkist left and right swinging round and charging along Holywell Hill and St Peter's Street. This leads to my one small quibble. As the name implies Holywell Hill has a slope, quite a big one actually. I was in St Albans a few months ago visiting my sister - I stayed at the White Hart which is approximately where the middle house is on this side of the road in the photo above - and I can confirm that climbing up it carrying a suitcase is bad enough; one assumes it would be worse while wearing armour. None of this gets a mention in the scenario. Anyway, be that as it may, I'm going to play it as written.

Or at least I'm going to play it as written except for one detail. Notwithstanding having said in the first paragraph that I have the figures, I don't have models of all the requisite commanders. Therefore the Yorkist attack will be led by the next generation, those who fought at Tewkesbury to be precise. The Lancastrians will mostly be present and correct - I even have a Henry VI kneeling in prayer - but Sir Andrew Trollope has kindly agreed to deputise for Buckingham.

Even More Bell Curve Bollocks

 I'm sure everyone is familiar with the remark attributed to a senior French civil servant after something had been explained to him: "That's all very well in practice," he said "but will it work in theory?". I feel somewhat the same about the domino method of determining initiative for games of Piquet. I'd previously been very happy with it, and then I asked myself what theoretical underpinnings it had. I should have let it lie.

The winner's probability distribution is indeed, as I predicted, right-skewed and the mean (9.5) is higher than the mode (7). There is a long tail of high initiatives, which individually have a low probability, but collectively add up to quite a lot. One third of the time the winner will get 12 or more.

The graph of the loser's initiative isn't particularly illuminating. The loser gets a mean of 3.5, with a mode of 4. The system this replaced was opposed D20s with the winner getting the difference. That produces a mean initiative of 7 to the winner, with 0 to the loser (*). Therefore there's a net benefit of 2.5 to the winner and 3.5 to the loser.

Other points to note: 

• 7% of the time the loser still won't get any initiative at all.
• The mode of opposed D20 rolls is of course 1, so there's clearly less overhead involved in drawing dominos.
• The loser can get as much as 10 initiative. That sounds good until you couple it with the fact that it can only happen if the winner gets 20, 21 or 22. Because of the way the initiative interacts with the card decks the chances are quite high that the winner will end the turn with that much initiative and so winning an initiative of 10 is definitely not the same as getting to use an initiative of 10.
• D20s only give 20% chance of getting 12 initiative or more. 

So, my feeling that dominos give big swings to the initiative winner more often is (probably) correct. However, on average it's better for the loser, which was always the point. I still think I'd be inclined to take out all dominos with a six on, but basically, however unthought through the theory behind it was, it mostly works OK in practice.

 

* All the analysis excludes either the same domino or the same result on the dice, both of which indicate the end of a turn.

More Bell Curve Bollocks

 As will have been long apparent, my preferred approach to this blog is to write any old rubbish and then forget it, on the basis that no one reads it anyway. Occasionally this backfires, such as in the case of my recent post about dominos as a means of determining initiative in Piquet. I have been asked if I can justify my assertion that the result follows a normal distribution. In particular, the question was asked as to what specifically I was referring: the winner's initiative, the loser's initiative or the difference between the two? A reasonable question.

Well, the results of drawing a single domino and adding the pips follow a normal distribution. If both sides did the same then subtracting one from the other would be the difference between two independent normal distributions, which would also be a normal distribution. So far so good. But apart from the initial drawing of the dominos that's not actually how we allocate initiative. Even more importantly, what we do with the results of the draw renders the probabilities of the winner's and loser's respective initiatives non-independent. So, the answer to the question is: no, I can't justify it.

The author Michael Green wrote a series of books called 'The Art of Coarse Acting', 'The Art of Coarse Rugby' etc. He never got round to 'The Art of Coarse Mathematics' for some reason (*), but had he done so then I'm sure that he would have drawn the attention of readers to two cop-out phrases beloved of mathematicians who either can't or don't want to work everything out in detail: 'by inspection' and 'result follows'. Therefore, by inspection I'm going to assert that, under our methodology, both initiatives have a right-skewed distribution with the mean being higher than the mode. As for the net initiative - who knows?

This correspondence is now closed.

* I should point out that in geometry and topology 'coarseness' is a real and important concept

Bell Curve

The refight of Salamanca ended with a pretty overwhelming British victory. I came away thinking, as I often do after wargames, about probability theory. The ongoing rule changes to which I frequently refer are, as I hope you have realised all along, a feature rather than a bug. They are part of our (well James's really) Sisyphean attempt to develop the 'perfect' rules for any given period, usually but not always based on one of the Piquet family; a process which I rather enjoy and think the others do too. There are wargamers out there who indulge in a bit of Free Kriegspiel or in Matrix Games, but we in the Lower Wharfe Valley stick to the turning of cards, rolling of dice, drawing of dominos etc to establish the outcome of events. These randomisers usually involve probabilities which approximate a normal distribution (*). What we and other wargames developers are trying to do - although of course we wouldn't express it in this way - is to make sure that the centre of the bell curve is where it should be (**) on the x-axis, and that the outcomes which occur way along in the extremities of the tails don't ruin the game.

The second of those issues typically manifested itself in the original version of Piquet in the occasional very large swings of initiative leaving one set of players twiddling their thumbs while the other side got to move and fire all their units repeatedly. The second version of Piquet (i.e. FoB) got round this by giving each side the same initiative, while we adopted a domino draw mechanism that, for the most part, suits us by providing different, but mostly acceptable, initiative amounts for each side. It can occasionally go wrong though, and last night it did. The draw which one would most want is to get double six whilst one's opponent draws the six five. The chances of a particular side doing this are 1 in 784. Last night the British did it twice in an evening, say a dozen draws in total. I'll leave you to calculate how unlikely that is for yourselves (***). It did rather skew things. If I had been called in as a consultant by James, and I think you should assume that I haven't, I'd suggest taking out all the dominos with sixes on. As well as reducing the maximum initiative swing from 23:6 to 19:5 it would increase the odds of a turn ending early to 1 in 21, or virtually the same as in the original Piquet rules.

As for the other issue: is the centre of the curve for combat resolution where it ought to be? No, but it is of course still a work in progress. 

*     i.e. are normal in the limit

**   Given both our interpretation of history and our desire for a decent game

*** I believe that the number of times that particular draw of two dominos would be repeated in any given set of twelve draws would itself follow a binomial distribution, but I really can't be arsed to work it out.

From Salamanca to Elchingen

 I broke my recent wargaming fast in the form of the first evening of a refight of Salamanca. I wasn't at all familiar with the battle before, but if I've understood it correctly we're playing the part of the battlefield where the main fighting occurred and the British are not constrained by having to follow Wellington's plan. The main change to the rules in my absence seemed to be to do with infantry melees. The changes sounded interesting - I thought I detected some Black Powder DNA - but we managed not to have any infantry melees so I can't really comment. I'm on the French team and all is not going well on my side of the battlefield, although my reinforcements are about to rush out of the woods, so perhaps there's hope yet.

My knowledge of Salamanca is infinitely greater than my knowledge of Elchingen, of which I had never heard before Mark invited me round to try some DBN. Even now, I couldn't tell you much more than that it involved Austrians and French. We played it through twice, swapping sides, and the Austrians won narrowly each time.

It wasn't just my first time with DBN, it was the first occasion that I had ever played any of the DB family of rules. I have to say that I rather enjoyed it. The game was much as Mark had described it: entertaining and quick. One of the things I wondered about in advance was how it would compare to C&C Napoleonics. The best point of reference is the basic C&C game rather than the expanded EPIC version that I would play in the annexe, and despite very different mechanisms there seemed to me to be similarities. They are both easy to grasp and play, avoid minutiae, but yet have sufficient chrome (e.g. unit types, national differences) to render the period recognisable. Indeed they share the same fault, namely that because victory depends on destroying a certain number of enemy units it can all get a bit cheesy at the end when on is chasing the final elimination.

A very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Piquet Redux

 We finished off the game of Soldiers of Napoleon about which I was complaining here. We down graded the over-powerful British skirmishers, which certainly made things better, but the game still limped to a fairly unsatisfactory conclusion. Even before the usual post-game discussion there was clearly an unspoken consensus that SoN had run its course, at least for the time being. The rules have many good features, but things don't half take a long time to get going, and just when they do the game seems to be over because one side runs out of morale. I am quite prepared to believe that we aren't playing it in the right way, but then perhaps that in itself doesn't reflect well on the rulebook as published.

In any event, this last week we stayed in the Peninsular, but returned to Piquet with the best elements of SoN (as defined by James) incorporated. The version of Piquet now in use for this period (and indeed that used for the Seven Years War) have migrated a fair distance from the original core rules and incorporate bits and pieces that we have liked in other games; the primary influences before the latest amendments being Piquet's sister ruleset Field of Battle and Black Powder. It all seemed to gel together better than it had any right to, especially since the rest of us often didn't know what the rules actually were until we tried to do something.  What it did do was produce a rather good game.

It was  a Charles Grant scenario based, I am told, on Fontenoy. Given my earlier observation about games of SoN starting slowly it was perhaps just as well that, as the attacker, I got the bulk of the early initiative and was able to move forwards. I was literally one dice roll away from having one of infantry divisions broken leading to inevitable defeat, but turned the card necessary to bolster their morale and never looked back. I eventually won because the British guns in the redoubts were unable to inflict any casualties on the French cavalry as they advanced past them and then the British cavalry commander died in slightly unfortunate circumstances as he tried to rally them.

We going to swap sides and give it another go next week. Piquet always produces a different game and both sides have the advantage of learning where not to deploy (the British infantry need to be nearer the village in the centre and the French should probably not bother trying to advance through the wood), but we shall be lucky if it is as entertaining.

Soldiers of Napoleon again

 “Remember, there are more people in the world than yourself. Be modest! You have not yet invented nor thought anything which others have not thought or invented before. And should you really have done so, consider it a gift of heaven which you are to share with others.” - Robert Schumann

James has given a big thumbs up to Soldiers of Napoleon, as you may already have seen. We've now played three times (i.e. one and a half games) and I still get the impression I'm the least enthusiastic of the four of us. You can't read too much into that; apart from anything else it's an inescapable fact that someone will have be in that position. The context is important as well: we're clearly still not playing them as written; it has become obvious that the text does not adequately reflect what the author and his play testers actually did in practice; and even when one has the rules correct - whatever that means - one still has to get one's head around the best way to play. Picking up on that last point, I'm fairly sure we've been playing the skirmisher rule correctly from the beginning, but it was only last week that I suddenly had an epiphany as to how one used it in practice (*).

I agree with James that the way skirmishers are handled is elegant and makes sense. We had tried something a bit similar with Piquet, but for whatever reason didn't quite arrive at the same rule. On the other hand I think the event cards could very easily get a bit samey each game, because there aren't that many different ones. If one is lucky enough to get the ones that target the other side's artillery or commanders early on, when the situation is less sensitive to what card you play, then they will always get used; later on in the game they probably won't. As for the Big Battle rules as written (**) they are even more pants than the 'How Goes The Day' mechanism. 

One of the issues we had, and which led to the sort of calm, rational, evidence-based discussion so often seen in the legendary wargames room, related to infantry attacking buildings. A lesser man than your bloggist would point out that the answer received back from Warwick Kinrade - namely that units must adopt a special 'attacking buildings formation' - was precisely what I have been saying about the same situation in Piquet. But, as I hope you all realise, I am better than that.

* Apparently you put them out at the front of units and they shoot at things.

** Or to be precise, as James says they are written; I don't own a copy and haven't read them.

Go back to your oar, Forty-One

Five or so years ago, before the galleys were put away, I think we had agreed that grids were the way to go, not least because it avoids all debate about who can ram/board/rake what and when. When the galleys once again emerged from the display cabinet last week, we picked it up where we left it: hex grids with ships occupying two hexes, principally I think because ships are longer than they are wide. Whilst last week's game was fun, there was I think a consensus that it wasn't quite right. If you look carefully at the picture below you can see that one change made was that ships are now back in one hex

.

The big difference that makes is to make turning easier, not so much for the models, but rather for the players trying to figure out how to get stuff from A to B. The whole thing was, to quote Peter, "slicker" and I'd go along with that. There were other changes, pretty much all of which seemed to work, and the traditional post-game discussion came up with potential solutions to the few that didn't. This is the type of game that needs to be played to a conclusion quickly. Grids help, the 'slicker' turning and moving help a bit more, and what would really top it off is if the ships sank or surrendered a bit sooner.

The initiative rules have ended up as somewhat of a hybrid between classic Piquet and its derivative, FoB. It includes, I think by chance, the latter's mechanism for potentially interrupting one side's long runs of initiative by a short burst of activity from the other side. I seem to remember that we've tried that combination before, and I was reminded last night of its merits. For what it's worth I vote for all 'Dress the Lines' to become 'Lulls'. While on that subject, the deck for 'Fleet of Battle' - that's what the rules are called - contains one card whose name is frankly impossible to pronounce, to the extent that I mentally think of it as the 'She Sells Seashells' card. I need some help from this chap:

Jump or Burn

 A mere four years ago I wrote of the imminent return of 'Jump or Burn' to the legendary wargames room. Fittingly 'imminent' has proved to be as elastic a time concept as those contained in the rules, but after what has apparently been a whole series of 'Sitting Duck' cards (*) the game has finally arrived; and great fun it is.

Your bloggist was the German pilot in the above photograph which shows the situation after some excellent manoeuvring on my part. It also shows the situation after some appalling shooting on my part, i.e. I missed from there and the British aircraft carried out its bombing run - that's the target on the ground behind the Bosche front line - and safely dived for its own lines. However, the forgiving nature of this game meant I still got a victory point to carry forward to the next game on the basis that I didn't actually die. 

James wrote the rules the best part of twenty years ago and they were published by Piquet Inc (**), although they don't really share much with the rest of that company's games. The main overlap is in combat via opposed polyhedral dice rolls; there are no similarities in turn phasing, initiative management or morale. Having played 'X-Wing' relatively recently it was interesting to compare the different ways they deal with the concepts of simultaneous movement. What this game does is basically not worry about it too much. At the end of a full run of twenty one cards (***) all aircraft will have done (or more precisely, had the opportunity to do) everything their type is allowed to do. It's only at then that one can say that the table reflects their precise positions at a given point in time. In between it's all a bit confusing, which doesn't seem at all unthematic to me. Good stuff.

* On a 'Sitting Duck' card your plane doesn't do anything; depending on what you are flying you will have varying numbers of these amongst the cards that actually allow you move, manoeuvre, change height, fire etc. 

** It probably goes without saying that it's unlikely that we are still playing the rules as originally written and published.

*** These cards are played out from three hands of seven. Then they are all shuffled back together and the process starts again.

Une Bouffée de Fromage

 One thing that often occurs in our small (but growing) regular games group - and I suspect we're not alone - is that when one side announces that things are looking so bad that they are inclined to give up it is immediately followed by the wheels coming off their opponent's master plan and the party of the first part ends up winning. Well, it's happened again; quite astonishingly Vimeiro was won by the French.

"D'you know who's going to win?"

Obviously I was exaggerating for effect when I said in my earlier post that I thought my command would be destroyed in half an hour, but not by much. The morale rules are, shall we say, complicated but what it boiled down to in this scenario was that was either side could win by breaking the morale of two large and one small command group of the other side. Reviewing the table at the start of the second evening's play - whilst collectively laughing contemptuously at the Prime Minister - it was easy to believe that the British would achieve this quite quickly. However, from the off the dominoes, cards and dice seemed to have other ideas, and their progress was slow. It was still progress though and eventually they had broken two divisions and the French commanders (James and I) were moved to launch a number of columns forward into melee just to do something while we were waiting to lose. Perhaps inevitably those forlorn hope charges succeeded and before we knew it we had also broken two divisions. In the end it came down to who was first to cause a couple of UI losses to the other, and it was us. It gave a bit of tension to the evening and one player (no names, no pack drill) got quite excited. For me, it was a bit gamey: in both senses of the word.

However, having said that, let me make two points in favour of the way things panned out. Firstly, there has to be some mechanism for ending the game. If not this one, then what? Secondly, the aim of the rules, and the reason we're doing all the playtesting, is to give victory to those who do what commanders of the time would have done; or perhaps it's better to say that it is intended to deny victory to those who don't do what was done historically. In this case the relevant factor would be cycling spent divisions out and fresh ones in. The British had the chance to do it and didn't do it. From that point of view things worked out appropriately.

Vimeiro, eh what?

 James alternates a bit, when putting on games in the legendary wargames room, between made-up scenarios and historical refights. We have therefore replayed numerous battles from the Punic Wars, the Italian Wars, the Seven Years War and so on, none of which I had ever heard of before let alone knew anything about. Even when we got on to World War II we only ever fought Sidi Rezegh. However, now he has painted up a very large number of Napoleonic units I'm in with a shout. And so we are half way though Vimeiro, sort of. As you will know if you have read his blog he has given the French a chance by allowing all their attacks to go in at once. It doesn't seem to have done them any good, and nor has my knowledge done me any good, but I shall wait until we've finished the game to explain why. What I would say is that his mechanism for forcing the French to attack in the right locations if not at the right times is quite inspired.

The big question was what changes he would have made to the rules, and he didn't disappoint. As a quick summary:

• The movement rules are far better and lifted directly from Black Powder
• The morale rules are much better, but I still don't really like them
• The skirmisher rules are certainly the operationally slickest that we have tried, which is a result in itself.
• And for no reason that I could establish he has changed all the names of the cards, resulting in much confusion. 

So, we resume again on Wednesday when I might take some photos. I shall have plenty of time because I anticipate my command not lasting more than the first half hour or so. In the meantime if any of you are in communication with James you can get on his good side by asking him which card allows you to carry out a small sapping task and whether it costs any initiative.

2021

 I mentioned in a recent post that this is a time of year for tradition. The context when I wrote it was that I found myself, not for the first time, suffering a dental problem at a time of year when one can't get an appointment with a dentist. That has been swiftly followed by my central heating playing up at a time of year when one can't get hold of a plumber, again not without precedent. So, in order to try to keep warm by typing frantically I am going to revive the annual review of the year, which I couldn't be bothered to do last year. There has certainly been a little bit more to look back over this year, and thankfully quality was mostly high even where quantity was not.

Opera: I saw nine, plus a ballet, and I'm going to give top spot to Opera North's socially distanced 'Fidelio', in large part because it was the first that I had seen for a long time and because it's about freedom. I must give an honourable mention to 'A Little Night Music' in the year that Sondheim died, plus Mahler's 2nd Symphony. I know that's not an opera, but it's my list.

Theatre: I only saw four plays, and the best was 'Wuthering Heights' by the Wise Children company. I note that I also rated them the best in 2019. This production is transferring to the National Theatre in February; you should go. Incidentally, had I bothered to give my views for 2020 the top spot would have been shared between 'Kneehigh's Ubu' and 'Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort of)'. The former starred the wonderful Katy Owen as Pere Ubu, and she also featured prominently in 'Wuthering Heights'; the latter is also just about to open in London's West End and, once gain, I would urge anyone within striking distance to go and see it.

Music: A paltry two gigs to choose from, and I'm going with Martin Simpson, again largely because it was the first in a long time for him as well as me. There might be more of that line of thought in these lists.

Film: A mere three films in the cinema, and the jury has decided to withhold the prize for this year. One of the three was the Bond film: what a load of old tosh, although I did rather enjoy the action sequence in the Italian village near the beginning.

Talks: Talks mainly moved online, and I moved with them. I saw twenty nine, only two of which were in person. The best I think was one on building ventilation given by a member of the government's SAGE advisory committee; I may live the rest of my life outdoors. On a less gloomy note, I very much enjoyed the Royal Armouries talk on 'The Life and Career of Captain William Dawson RN'. The worst talk by some way was 'The Jewellery of Downton Abbey'; what was I thinking?

Books: I read 118 books, it clearly being something that one can do without leaving home. Books of the year were: for fiction 'The Good Soldier Švejk'; and for non-fiction David Hepworth's '1971' about rock music's greatest year.

Boardgames: Apart from the expansion to 'Maquis' - where I'm sorry to say that the French Resistance is not prospering under my leadership - I have only played two-player games. Of those I played 14 different games 84 times. I think I might do a separate post about which of those I would recommend. The local boardgaming club has resumed weekly sessions, and I trust that at some point in 2022 circumstances will be such that I feel comfortable in joining them.

Wargames: I think there were ten wargames played or umpired, although this seems to be the one area where my compulsion to keep records doesn't apply. They were mainly Piquet and its variants except for one game of To the Strongest! and one of X-wing. I enjoyed them all but probably for me the siege games had the edge; possibly because the rules gave a much more enjoyable game for the defender than I thought they would when I read them. During lockdown I have built up a mighty pile of new, unplayed rules and would hope that: a) I can get one or more of them to table in 2022; and b) they work half as well as these did. It was good to see Mark back on a regular basis as well.

Event of the Year: I am very tempted by the time I saw armed police intervening in a queue jumping dispute in a branch of Greggs, which for some reason I neglected to post about at the time. However, really it has to be the first wargame after a hiatus of more than a year. Just because.

I wish you all love in a peaceful world.

Moys Will Be Moys

 One of my more esoteric medical conditions is that I am unable to be injected in my left arm. Normally this doesn't cause any problems, but yesterday I had both a Covid booster and a flu jab in my other arm, which is now very stiff and painful. Being right-handed this is making typing difficult, which in turn means that the text quality of today's post may be at a level not seen since I used to produce it on a computer missing an 's' key.

So, we finished the second run through of Moys and yet again the Austrians and victory remained strangers. I'm not saying that the events of the two games proved conclusively my hypothesis that they can never win it using Classic Piquet, except of course that is exactly what I'm saying. I've spent more time on that already than is justified by anyone else's level of interest, so I will simply add that the morale rules are also crap and leave it there.

Word of the night was 'snazzy'.

The Moys Are Back In Town

 James set it all up again and we had at it for a second time, ending the evening after turn four of the eight which the Austrians have to capture all three objectives. James took some photos of the action and may post them on his blog. I didn't, but did remember to take one of the menu style Quick Play Sheets, which I rather like. What he needs now is a blackboard on which he can write the special rules of the day.

I've always bigged up Piquet for its ability to generate radically different games from the same starting position. However, I think any set of of rules would have done the same here. The scenario starts with three Austrian grenadier units about to storm the redoubt. In the first game some extreme dice results at that point saw that command blown away. Not only was that not replicated, but the Prussians spent all night unable to hit a cow's arse with a banjo. By the evening's end they had destroyed a magnificent total of no Austrian units at all and had lost control of the first two objectives. I think next week may be different though. Not just because I am expecting a reversion to the mean in terms of combat dice rolls, but also because my hypothesis about initiative is just about to be proven. We - i.e. the Austrians - are never going to get to turn enough cards to get all our forces up the hill and drive the Prussians off. We shall have to rely on the Major Morale rules to win. I would explain what that means, but I don't really understand it. It's something along the lines of the Prussians having to multiply their number of destroyed or routing units by the value of π and then roll dice and pay morale chips until James declares the game over. A full explanation will follow should we get that far.

Here's a music video, but not the one you were expecting: