All Over By Christmas

 Big technical problems at the Casa Dojo Mojo House Epictetus, which have been affecting all sorts of things. There has been a very brief bit of wargaming though. We're still in the Great War and using Square Bashing, but now it's 1914.

These are 28mm figures from Mark's collection. I think they're Renegade, but don't quote me on that.

Cavalry as well. The infantry which look as if they are French, are in fact French; Mark didn't have enough British.

The game is going well, but its conclusion has been repeatedly delayed. I am, however, confident that it will all be over by...

Come Hither, Come Hither, Come Hither

 I've been away. of which more in due course. But some wargaming action awaited me on my return.

Firstly, the tanks advanced at Amiens once again. It's the only scenario in the Square Bashing book for which I have the forces, and so when short of time it's the one which gets put on. It was a victory for the British on this occasion. I obviously don't mean to criticise the good people of Peter Pig, but which side wins is entirely down to how high the die rolls the Germans make in their countdown phase at the end of their turn; nothing else actually matters at all. Still, it passed the time very pleasantly.

Then there is some Cruel Seas news. Not progress, you understand, just news. It would probably be impossible to overstate just how much wargaming crap Peter had accumulated and, while continuing with the task of sorting it out for his widow, James has turned up some more relevant bits and pieces. The most pertinent were a couple of freighters, shown above with the 3D printed one which I bought in an early burst of enthusiasm, that's the one at the back. Now I have a convoy worth sinking it almost seems churlish not to paint a couple of MTB's up and do so.

Bash That Square

 If there's one thing that this blog can be relied upon for it is its unreliability. I said two weeks ago that we would be playing Square Bashing last week in the annexe, and we didn't. However, this week we did.

If there's a second thing that this blog can be relied upon for it is that I never take enough photos to tell the story of a game. In brief then, the Germans looked like they would see off the British attack, but their commander - who'd never played the rules before - decided that having beaten back the first assault then subsequently advancing from behind his defensive positions was a good idea. It wasn't. The photo shows the only barrage that the British artillery managed to deliver all game, but it was an effective one.

The rules, provided you overlook the somewhat complicated pre-game set-up and don't bother at all with the post-game victory point calculation, give an interesting game that clicks along at a fastish tempo, which suits me fine.

Boardgaming Q2 2025

 One of the few aspects of this blog that would without doubt be helpful if absorbed into AI's learning database is my pithy - and always on point - summaries of the boardgames which I have recently played. Here's some more:

Ark Nova: This game from 2021 is a big hit, currently ranked number 3 on boardgamegeek, but this was the first time I'd played it. It was OK, if somewhat overlong. For that reason alone I doubt I'll play it very often.

Bantu: This on the other hand dates from 1955, is long out of print and doesn't outstay its welcome on the table. Games & Puzzles Magazine rated it number 68 in the list of great games that never made it. It's a racing game without luck and I very much liked it. Not sure about the name though.

Castle Combo: A neat little filler.

Century Eastern Wonders: The second in the Century Spice Road series. It's OK, but not as good as the first.

Forest Shuffle: Another nature themed game that is well-spoken of, think Wingspan with trees. I'll be honest though, I couldn't see what the fuss was about.

Galileo Galilei: This was much more to my taste. It features a rondel, cleverly utilising a telescope, and the appearance of the Inquisition is, of course, unexpected. Perhaps my favourite of those on this list.

The Great Wall: Cooperatively build and defend the Great Wall, whilst keeping an eye out for any opportunity to take advantage of your fellow players before they do the same to you. It's fine.

The Grizzled: The first of two small card games that I played for the first time in ten years is a cooperative game in which one attempts - and fails - to survive the first world war as a French soldier in the trenches. It is seemingly impossible to win, and therefore may well not be seen again for another ten years., 

Guillotine: This is the other, and is a feel good filler about executing aristos during the French Revolution. They had it coming.

Kelp: Shark vs Octopus: An asymmetric two-player game about, well, sharks and octopusses. I made the mistake of playing with one of my occasional companions; it was fraught.

Last Light:  A good looking space-themed game with, inevitably, rotating board elements and 3D planets. I think wargamers might enjoy the area control elements in particular.

London: A perfectly good economic game about building London in a peculiar mishmash of time periods.

Mille Fiori: Another hit game that I was playing for the first time. It reminded me of playing a roll & write game, although there is neither rolling nor writing. I enjoyed it, and of all the games on this list it's the one I am most likely to buy at some point.

Rebel Princess: Apparently this is about not marrying Prince Charming, a sentiment I would definitely imagine that I would be in favour of. I can't recall a single thing about it.

Rebirth: A rather peculiarly themed game from the prolific Dr. Knizia. Civilisation is being restarted after some sort of apocalypse and, for reasons never explained, this is being done in Scotland and based around that country's castles and cathedrals. If you treat it as an abstract then it's actually pretty good.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: We finally managed to get all five of us in the same room and played the next two scenarios after a gap of more than twelve months. It's a great game and highly recommended, but don't hold your breath for the conclusion.

Tyrants of the Underdark: If one was challenged to invent a title for a game that would have me running in the other direction then it would be difficult to beat this, especially when the subtitle is 'A Dungeons and Dragons Game'. However, appearances can be deceptive and I thought it very good. It's another one that wargamers might enjoy.

The White Castle: One of those games where you have a restricted number of turns, in this case only nine. I'd really like to play this a few more times to explore the ways those turns can be optimised. It has random set-up and plays quickly, so I don't think one would get bored. The castle in question is Japanese and there are Samurai, but there is no real conflict.

James Was Right

 Now there's a headline that you don't often see. He said there wasn't another night left in the game, and there wasn't. Even feeding in a new Union unit every turn couldn't fend off the Confederates for very long.

I do rather like Fire and Fury, but experience suggests that if the men in grey charge in column and keep charging then they will sweep all before them. The issue seems to be that Union brigades are all very brittle, whereas Confederate ones retain cohesion much longer. I've never read the rules for myself so I'm not really sure if that's a central feature of them, or just something specific to the scenarios which we have been playing.

There has been some slight forward movement in the set-up of the Square Bashing game, with attackers and defenders now deployed. However, whilst I had intended to fight this solo it has, in an unexpected development, been decided that it will be next Wednesday evening's game instead. This will allow James to 'spray his cloth'; not a euphemism.

The Bees Have Ceased To Be(e)

“What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant." 

                                                          

                                                       - Aldo Leopold

The bees having left us for higher planes access to the annexe has once again been possible. For no real reason at all my thoughts have turned to the first world war (*), and I have set up a Square Bashing scenario (**). I haven't yet run through the typically extensive Peter Pig pre-battle routine, so things will definitely change before the game starts.

Meanwhile, in the legendary wargames room, we have continued our exploration of the Slaveowners' Rebellion and the highly entertaining Fire and Fury rules.

It currently looks like a walkover for the Confederates, but James' wishes have been over-ruled and we are going to carry on playing next week.

* OK, it was the sight of things being gassed. 

** I can't remember if I've mentioned this before. but although the cover of the rulebook states that they are for the period 1900-1928, the OED dates the first use of the term itself to 1943.

Burning, but not jumping

"... for it had unquestionably been one of the most successful ‘shows’ ever undertaken by the squadron." 

- Captain W.E. Johns

It is a sad reflection of the current state of this blog that this will be the fifth post out of the last six to deal with wargaming. However, the game in question, 'Jump or Burn', is a firm favourite of mine. These used to be commercially available, but they were published in 2003 and I'm not sure whether they've ever been either reprinted or made available digitally. Unusually for one of James's games - especially given their age - the version we play is quite close to the as printed version, with just a couple of changes made to speed up play. The photo below shows the end of the game with various cards, measuring sticks etc laid out as well. The thing in the very top left corner is for measuring the turns of banking aircraft.

As befits a game I'm so fond of, the evening was a triumph for your bloggist. That's my DH4 front and centre, having just crossed the British trenches diving for home after a successful bombing mission. Admittedly the co-pilot is dead and, although it's a bit hard to see, the plane is both on fire and has suffered serious damage to its struts. However the chasing German fighter failed to draw any machine gun cards in the current hand and therefore I shall soon be off the board and therefore live to fly another day.

The Builders Will Always Get Through

 Apologies for my absence, but I have the builders in, with all that entails. 

In my case it mainly entails going out a lot to avoid the disruption, which gives me plenty to write about, but no time to write it. When I was married and the Misses Epictetus were very young we had a large amount of work done on the former marital home, during which I sloped off to Belgium for several weeks leaving the first Mrs Epictetus to cope with the dirt and dust and the small children, all with no kitchen. Did I mention that I was divorced?

On a happier note, there has been gaming, including a welcome return to 'Jump of Burn' and WWI aerial combat.

It had been so long since we played this excellent game that I had forgotten that my British pilot had sufficient track record to qualify for an 'Ace Pilot' card (this is a good thing) and so I flew without it. However, I still successfully completed two bombing missions in the DH4 on the right of the picture above and have now advanced my status sufficiently to qualify for two 'Ace Pilot' cards next time (this is an even better thing) and you can be assured that I shall remember those. Or possibly I won't, because it's unlikely to be any time soon as next week sees the long anticipated kick-off of our Peninsular campaign.

Sleepwalking

 And so to the opera. I have been out and about for the last week or so, including a brief trip to Glasgow, to which I may return in due course. But most of my time has been spent at the Buxton International Festival, specifically the opera part of it. 

The best thing I saw was an excellent production of Bellini's 'La sonnambula', which transcended the original sexist power set-up in a rather novel, and much appreciated by the audience, twist at the end. Set in a sixties staff canteen - more 'Made in Dagenham' than 'Dinnerladies' - the period details were finely judged; Lisa dropped more than her handkerchief following the arrival of the mysterious stranger. Both musically and dramatically it was very good indeed.

I was less taken with performances of Mozart's 'Il re pastore' and Handel's 'Orlando', although as I'm never likely to get the chance to see either again I am glad that I was able to on this occasion. The singing and playing was very good, but the operas are somewhat slight, especially dramatically. Alexander the Great appears in the Mozart piece and was played as Napoleon, which was amusing even if the characterisation was mainly displayed by him wearing his bicorne sideways. If neither of those pieces gave one the opportunity to be emotionally invested in what was going on on stage that was made up for in the musical 'The Land of Might-Have-Been', in which the story of Vera Brittain in the First World War was told accompanied by, mainly, the songs of Ivor Novello. I thought it all worked rather well, albeit being very reminiscent of many similarly toned plays I saw between 2014 and 2018 as the centenary of the war which didn't end all wars was commemorated. Still, I hope the story of the losses and sacrifices and futility of those years never ceases to have an impact on me, and it certainly did this time. 

Fighting for Mexico - the unboxing

 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a wargamer in possession of more money than sense must be in want of a set of rules for a period for which he has no figures. I have, therefore, bought a copy of the newish Peter Pig rules 'Fighting for Mexico'.

They consist of 132 ring-bound, black and white pages within colour covers. There are a number of photographs, mainly showing examples of suggested unit basing, terrain types etc with only a couple appearing to illustrate points from the rules. A first read through gives the impression that they are easy enough to follow, and they do contain a number of snippets of the designer's thoughts. Peter Pig have a house style which involves those explanatory sections also being used to tell anyone who questions their decisions that they are wrong, which I have always found a bit irritating. The same could be said of their approach to editing and proofreading; pages 31 and 32 for example seem to me to contain exactly the same information repeated twice in pretty much the same words each time. 

They are inevitably gridded - which is good - and I understand that the RFCM rules which these most resemble are PBI and SCW, but I've never read those so can't confirm that. They do have some resemblance to Square Bashing, and many of the differences appear, at first glance, to address things I don't quite like about that set. In particular they allow units to be spread over more than one square, which would sometimes make sense in SB, and for which I have seen house rules on other blogs. It does, however, worry me that units are going to be very difficult to tell apart from each other without some sort of elaborate base marking system. That is, of course, all moot because I don't game the period. While I was ordering the rules I did take the opportunity to buy a couple of packs from Peter Pig's extensive Mexican Revolution range, but that was just by way of a look see...

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.

PotCXIIIpouri

 I haven't written about wargaming for a while, mostly because there hasn't been any. We played an Italian Wars game a couple of weeks ago, but frankly it wasn't very good. Unlike the previous weeks, when we were trying something new, this was a bit unexpected. The rules we were using - whose name escapes me, but will inevitably be something to do with blood - were written by James and Peter quite a few years ago and we'd happily used them on many occasions. In any event the pair of them spent the evening tutting and saying "Of course, we'd never do it like that now". My two pennyworth is that the problem wasn't either the rules or the scenario, but was just a combination of bad luck and player choices. However, I anticipate that a substantial rewrite is on the cards. If I was going to be heretical I'd say that we should just use Black Powder, which has always seemed to me to work quite well for the period. Still, who am I to deny them their fun. As Camus said: "Il faut imaginer sisyphe heureux".

Another endless task has been clearing my tabletop, except for the minor detail that it's now clear and the job is finished. But it did take a long period of not very intensive effort to achieve. I needed to find somewhere to store all the siege stuff, which meant repacking a lot of other things, which meant that every time I turned round there was more piled up on the table than when I started. I forced myself to throw away some pieces of home made, and quite possibly never used, scenery. I shall hopefully be setting up something WWI shortly.

On the plus side, the wind has dropped sufficiently for me to be able to get the spray can out for some priming:

It Won't Wash

 If you live in the northern part of Britain then you won't need me to tell you that the weather is shite. We are being bombarded by back-to-back storms. Still, at least the one currently raging outside is named after a wargamer. The one due on Friday, on the other hand, shares a name with a flame-haired doxie from my youth. ["I beg your pardon," interjects the Rhetorical Pedant "but you can't call someone a doxie. It's not nice."] Fair enough, although I doubt very much she'll be reading this. And good to hear from you again, RP, it's been too long. I haven't thought about the lovely Eunice for several decades and for some reason the main thing that comes back to me is her throwing a complete paddy when the restaurant we were in ran out of steak. ["Nope, can't say that either".]

A different Eunice

Anyway, the storms mean that there is still no opportunity to spray resin casts with primer. Clearing away the previous game in the annexe took quite a while as I found that I didn't have anywhere to put anything. The fortress and all the siege works had been laid straight on the table from being laser cut or cast, and then painted with nary a thought as to what I might do with them afterwards. Some biscuit tins have been pressed into temporary service. A tin full of resin is very heavy though, so I am reluctant to put them high up on a shelf.

I then tried setting up a medieval siege, the idea being to have three players against the umpire. But inspiration has been sadly lacking, so I'm now thinking of perhaps a WWI action. To that end I've been painting some odd German figures that I had handy. But when I came to apply the black wash that I have used on all their kameraden, it wasn't there. I am baffled by where it can have gone; it's not a big house (*). Anyway, online orders have gone in for a few alternatives and, while the weather is bad,  I shall be experimenting with various ways of making figures look better without doing the hard graft of actually painting them properly.

* Can I refer anyone who wants to know why it's a small house to the early entries of the blog wherein I documented my divorce, the subsequent period of nomadic wandering and why I don't wargame the War of the Spanish Succession.

Gamage's No More

 The following newspaper clipping has come into my possession. Can I make it clear that I in no way condone the sentiments expressed, except of course that I like to see large numbers of toy soldiers on a table.

I believe that the year is 1915; I wonder if they were saying the same thing by Christmas 1918. It's also interesting to note the sexism which they've sneaked in among the warmongering. The Daily Sketch was absorbed into the Daily Mail half a century or so ago. It provided the downmarket bigotry which when added to the Mail's existing establishment right-wingery (they of course are the paper that supported both Hitler and Mosley) produced the current appalling publication.

Bring me sunshine

"If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my choice." 

- Napoleon Bonaparte

As those readers in the UK will know, it has once again been what the Met Office refer to as 'well hot'. At such times it is custom and practice at the Casa Epictetus to abandon wargaming, blogging and the like in order to frolic outside. And so, with due regard to social distancing and no regard whatsoever to social decorum, that's what has been happening for a few days. The reason that we in this country drop everything and rush off into the sunshine is that we know perfectly well that it won't last long, and inevitably the rains have now come back, and tagging along with them is your bloggist.

Before I disappeared I had played out some more of the game currently in progress in the annexe. Although I can vaguely remember what happened I can't really bring to mind any of my associated thought processes, so basically this is a couple of photos to bring us up to date. The British rolled better dice than the Germans once again and called in a barrage which has, for the moment at least, stopped the assault on the town and destroyed a field gun into the bargain.

Unable to attack, the Germans responded in kind and for the first time one of their barrages was both called in and hit its intended target. However, it achieved very little actual damage when it got there. Elsewhere the Germans did what they should have done the previous turn and attacked in the centre, with great success.

The attackers now hold three of the four objective squares, although not the one that I seem to have flung all their strength against. No doubt there's a learning point in there somewhere. I'm not sure what options the British really have left, except to try to roll high numbers at the end of each turn and finish the game quickly. To be continued...

Urgent Arrival of New Rules

"Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war." - Pablo Picasso

Both I and the stepladder have returned to the annexe. If the time spent decorating has taught me anything, it is that my previous practice of paying someone to do it for me was the entirely correct approach and one to which I should return forthwith. 

When we last visited the table, the British had a big hole in their line and needed to fill it. The normal route to bring on reserves in 'Square Bashing' is the reinforcement phase, which occurs right at the end of one's turn. There is also the option, in the opening phase, to select Urgent Arrivals as one's asset. Only one asset is allowed each turn, and that is presumably to speed up game play. I'm happy with that, but it has always seemed to me that some assets give more value than others, and so the same ones - artillery barrages mainly - always end up getting selected. If one rolls well then a barrage can do damage to a number of squares and an even larger number of units. If one rolls well when choosing, say, Hasty Defences one can put some sandbags up in one square. They just don't seem comparable to me. I therefore allow a modest upside to a couple of the asset classes to reward good (i.e. lucky) dice rolls. In this case the British rolled two sixes and three fives with five dice and thus two infantry units arrived and moved into the gaps. Not much else happened on the British turn until the very end. The game starts with a clock set to 21, and the defender rolls a D6 as the last action of their go to reduce it; when it reaches zero the game is over. Six turns is therefore a reasonable forecast for the length of the game. On this occasion the British rolled a one, implying that there are most likely still six turns to go. That rather suits the Germans.

So, the Hun commander decided to take advantage of this probable extra game length by not immediately assaulting in the centre, but giving himself an extra turn of barrage. Unfortunately the German artillery, having missed everything on the first turn, failed to even fire this time. The only assault that occurred was against the town objective where, having successfully rolled to use their Higher Command ability to add to the attack, the Germans were rolling thirteen dice against nine. Perhaps inevitably they nevertheless lost the melee. My tactics of constantly assaulting built up areas doesn't seem to be the right one after all. Still, a flamethrower unit has arrived and next time perhaps they will do better. British shooting improved and one German unit, which had failed morale based on last turn's shooting casualties and therefore couldn't move, took a bit of a pasting.

Let's see some more action

I said that the delivery of my rubber railway track inspired me to set up a 'Square Bashing Game', but it was also because I have been reading C.S. Forrester's 'The General', as recommended by David form Suffolk on his blog. As with his other recommendation, 'Private Angelo' by Eric Linklater, I thoroughly enjoyed it and have no hesitation in adding my praise to his. Towards the end of the book the unimaginative eponymous Lieutenant-General is astonished as his Corps is very quickly overrun when the dastardly Hun comes up with some new tactics. Crucial to these tactics were the Stoßtruppen (I'm going to call them that, not for the usual pretentious reasons which often find me using untranslated foreign languages, - vous savez parfaitement de quoi je parle  - but in order to distinguish them from the Nazi thugs of a later generation) whom I mentioned the other day. So, there are two things in particular that we know about these units: they were specialised assault troops and were equipped and armed to facilitate that role; and whenever they came up against a well-defended strongpoint rather than attack it themselves they by-passed it and left it for the ordinary troops following behind to deal with. You don't need me to point out that there is a bit of a contradiction there. The rules writers at Peter Pig have opted to follow the first line of approach, presumably on the basis that if you had a special type of unit whose main objective is to rush across the board and leave by the opposite baseline then no one would choose them and even if they did then it wouldn't make for a very good game. All of which is a long-winded way of justifying my decision to charge the German's two Stoßtruppen battalions straight at a defended town.

That all happened on the special opening phase, so now we are on to the first German turn proper. This opens with the asset phase. When we played 'Square Bashing' a few times a year or so ago I came up with a number of brilliant alternatives which greatly improve this aspect of the game. Unfortunately I didn't write them down and, with one minor exception, I can't remember them, so I shall be using the rules as written. The board above shows the assets available to either side. I decide to call in a suppression barrage with the aim of pinning the units in the town while the main German attacking force comes up. I committed eight of the available twelve dice to this and succeeded. 

Or, to be more precise, succeeded up to a point. The barrage came in and missed everything, a combination of overs and unders ensuring that no British units were hit. Still, those in the town can't now withdraw in their turn, which both suits the Germans and, by removing one decision, makes it easier to play solo. (By the way, there will be no overhead photos for the time being as I am doing some decorating and the stepladder is required elsewhere.) Next comes the higher command phase. This is also one that seems ripe for a tweak or two, but for this game I'm playing it straight. During their respective turns the Germans will be able to attempt to improve the fighting spirit of selected units and the British may do the same to the morale of theirs. On this occasion the Germans try to affect the less weakened of the units attacking the town, but fail. After this is the German morale phase in which the unit half way up on the left of the above photo, badly beaten in a failed assault in the opening special phase, turned tail and ran away, although it didn't rout. 

Moves and assaults are next. The whole line moved up meaning that those remaining in contact with the town were now supported. I decided that they would assault again, because even though they would do so at adverse odds and probably lose (they did), it probably wouldn't suffer more casualties than they would be letting themselves be shot at (which they didn't). On top of which there was always the remote chance that they could have forced the British back into the barrage thereby inflicting heavier casualties.

In 'Square Bashing' you shoot in the opponent's turn if you haven't been assaulted. The unit above found itself in the open and targeted by two mortars and a field gun. However, the dice have swung back against the British and nothing happened. The rather odd looking deployment along the British line was caused by some dreadful dice rolling during the depletion phase of the set up. If I was the Germans - which of course I am - I would be intending to put some gas down to stop the off-table reserves moving forwards and reinforcing the line at this particular point.

Lastly, the Germans brought on their only off table unit to add to the attack along the road in case the gas ploy doesn't work.

Stoßtruppen

Re-reading yesterday's post I find that I may have given the impression that, after setting up the terrain, I followed the official rules for setting up the game. Obviously, and as I think we now all realise, great men of history such as myself are exempt from the sort of petty constraints that are appropriate for lesser beings; in other words, that's not exactly what I did. Instead, having established that the Germans were not only attacking, but were doing so with overwhelming force, I decided to give them some stormtroopers and fiddled the rest of the force around to make the points still even. The rules, which are not always either clear or consistent, say that you have to choose your forces before determining who attacks and who defends, but rather confusingly also say that the Germans can only have stormtroopers if they attack.

On the centenary of the start of the Great War some years ago various figure manufacturers launched WWI ranges on the assumption that there was going to be lots of demand from wargamers inspired by all the commemorations. There wasn't and very few, if any, of those ranges, were ever completed. In the case of the producers of 20mm plastic sets a fair number of them seemed to start with German stormtroopers - presumably because they are exotic - and then they never got round to anything much else. That is why most of my German forces are metal whereas most of the British are plastic. I mention all this because, whilst I have some stormtroopers painted up I wouldn't bother using them for a game at this level where each unit represents a battalion. On my table the units so designated look just the same as the other German infantry.

This is also consistent with the way that Stoßtruppen are handled in 'Square Bashing'. Basically, they are infantry units that are deployed further forwards than everything else and get an extra assault phase right at the beginning of the game, during which they get to throw some extra dice. Given that the attacker moves first this effectively means that they get to attack twice in a row. After that first phase, they stop having any special abilities and count as the highest quality of infantry. They are allowed to deploy last, after the defender has both set out his units and they have been depleted to represent the initial barrage, meaning that they can attack the weakest point in the line if they so choose. I went down a different route, choosing to use them to try to seize the town that is one of the objectives. It didn't work. The British (or, to be more precise, their coin toss) decided to stay and fight and won the fight quite handily. I have clearly not only forgotten the rules, but also what tactics are best employed with them.

The Germans on the left have failed in their assault, losing one figure (half a base in terms of the rules). The casualty marker counts up losses until the next time morale is taken. The British losses were caused during the depletion rather than the assault, but in any case if you win the fight then then any casualties are ignored for morale purposes. Speaking of 'winning the fight', that's what the red token signifies, meaning that they will be able to claim extra dice in the next melee. I bought the tokens from Warbases and they're crap; unreadable in fact. When I gain access to the lasercutter once again I have a plan to make some better ones, also acrylic. The coloured beads indicate the quality of the unit.

The second unit of stormtroopers fared even worse, but my photograph of that turned out to be rather blurred. These others are now sitting in the open with two machine gun units ready to open fire on them. I think that the first German turn proper will need to open with a barrage on the town and hope that it doesn't fall short.

Let's see action

When the railway track that I had ordered prior to lockdown arrived it proved sufficient - at least once the hot weather was over - to motivate some wargaming activity. It was easy enough in the first instance to set up a Square Bashing scenario incorporating said railway. However, doing that made it clear that I had completely forgotten everything about the rules. I have now re-read them and the game is pretty much ready to go.

Although I laid out the terrain on a whim, I followed the rest of the pre-battle sequence in full. The Germans rolled exceptionally well and the British exceptionally badly, so I think we must interpret this as part of the German Spring Offensive in 1918. They have pushed through the front line and the unprepared British reserves are trying to stop them. The defenders' poor dice continued into the depletion phase so a big chunk of their force - including two thirds of their field guns - start off table. In addition their heavy artillery is presumably needed more urgently elsewhere, because their barrage assets ended up being very low.

The railway track

The Germans are clearly going to win the battle, but the somewhat convoluted victory point system means that they have to win big in order to win overall, if you follow me. Added to the variable game length (a die is rolled after each turn until a target total is met and the game is over) means that they will have to get on with it. That makes it ideal for a solo game, and - always assuming my enthusiasm is maintained - I shall play it out. The main decision the British have at the beginning is whether to resist the stormtrooper attack just about to be launched on the town - which is one of the victory objectives - and risk destruction at the hands of crack troops, or to withdraw in the hope of retaking it once reinforcements arrive. I shall toss a coin I think.

In Praise of Idleness

 I have been pondering on how little I have managed to achieve in the period in which I have been confined to my home. I have read a great deal, but other than that I have done nothing of any value. I was reminded of the words of Bertrand Russell, who said that he didn't mind the time he spent in prison for his pacifism during the First World War because the lack of visitors and other interruptions meant he could get on and do something useful. Later on, in 1932, Russell wrote an essay entitled "In Praise of Idleness", in which he pointed out something that, judging by the way the UK government's financial response to the crisis has been structured, is clearly still true today: the idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

In addition to his fame as a philosopher, his campaigning for nuclear disarmament, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature etc, Russell was of course a very distinguished mathematician. A while ago I formed the intention of writing a post about why so many wargamers are mathematicians; or possibly it was going to be about why so many mathematicians are wargamers. That lack of clarity about the aim might be why I never got very far with the exercise. In fact the only thing I had decided, was to preface the piece with a quote from Russell: "Mathematicians neither know what they are talking about nor care whether what they say is true". I suspect that we all know at least one wargamer like that.