The Second SoN

 We played the second half of our initial Soldiers of Napoleon game last night. I don't own a copy of the rules, but both James and Mark do. When I arrived they were both observing that they had re-read them since the previous Wednesday and were engaging in mutual congratulations as to how we had got absolutely everything correct despite it being the first game. Now, one doesn't have to be as big a cynic as me to realise that this was all a bit of a hostage to fortune. Inevitably enough, a series of errors became steadily apparent throughout the evening: saving throws against artillery (there aren't any), what happens when you fail to pass a morale test to charge home (you fire instead, which I rather liked without being able to justify it thematically), the way reserves arrive (not intuitive at all, but makes sense once we'd bothered to read it), and too many others to mention. In the end we called it a draw and decided to start again next week. Mark and I had nearly won by then by throwing everything into a cheesy attempt to achieve one of our hidden objective cards and accept that quite a few units would evaporate in the process. It came down to the need to throw a 4,5 or 6. I threw a 2.

James wondered whether the rules had been written around how the playtesting group played the game rather than it being fully thought through as to how anyone picking them up cold would do it, which I thought was quite astute. But, having said that, we all changed our approach over the two evenings and no doubt will do so even more next week. We're going to try the big battle rules - main difference apparently being that each player has their own hand of cards - and use a larger playing area. I hope we drop the 'How Goes the Day?' bit, because it's pants; not the idea as such, just the manifestation of it.

Six Bridges to Cross

Nikita Kruschev once said that politicians were the same all over: "They promise to build a bridge where there is no river". Whoever was running the part of eighteenth century central Europe over which last night's game in the legendary wargames room was played out had a new twist; he - one must assume it was a he - built several bridges in a place where, as it turned out, one could simply walk across the river in the first place.

We were playing James' interpretation of a scenario from C.S. Grant's book of much the same name. It provided a pleasant evening's entertainment, but James was heard muttering about various things he would change before he wrote it up in detail, and I think he was right as it didn't quite gel. This wasn't helped by the fact that my units, which you will recall are of somewhat arbitrary quality in Piquet, turned out to be much better than Peter's. We also, as distressingly often these days, weren't entirely on top of the rules, which only really mattered because when we remembered what we had left out until that point Peter immediately proved that he can always be relied upon to throw a one on a D20 when he really, really doesn't want to. Anyway, I think we agreed on the appropriate rules for game play when trying to fight across a bridge - helpful as James has been building both them and rivers in industrial quantities - and what the tactics would be to take advantage of the rules that we just made up; so progress of sorts was made. Incidentally James advises that second hand copies of 'Scenarios for Wargamers' change hands for around £100. I think for that money I'd expect the author himself to come round to my house and run the game for me.

In other wargaming news I have bowed to pressure and acquired a couple of tanks for the Great War. It is thus that I find myself assembling a plastic kit for the first time since, probably, 1971. I'm actually finding it a fair bit easier than I remember. In part that will be having the right tools - sprue cutters are very simple, but very effective - but also I think due to patience, a resource in very short supply when I was a teenager. I have also bought a couple of aircraft: a Sopwith Camel, of course, and an Albatross. These are the old Skytrex 1/144 models now produced by Red Eagle Miniatures. They look far more difficult to assemble than the Emhar Mark IV and so, employing my new found reserves of patience once again, I have put them to one side and haven't done anything with them.

Luck Be A Lady Tonight

And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'Guys and Dolls'. It turned out to be one of those shows/films that I would have sworn blind that I had seen before, but the watching of which made clear that I hadn't. It is, as you probably already knew, based on Damon Runyon's short stories of the inter-war New York demi-monde, and as such I was rather surprised by the uncanny resemblance to certain wargamers of my acquaintance.

It wasn't so much the unlikely names of the characters: such as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, the Seldom Seen Kid or Harry the Horse, although one of my first wargaming opponents was, and is, always known as Len the Ink (*). It was more to do with the rolling of dice. The programme contained an explanation of the rules of craps which left me none the wiser except to appreciate that it is clearly more possible to roll the wrong number than it is the right one; if that's not a pithy description of wargaming then I don't know what is. But in particular there was the solution to that problem employed by Big Jule, the Chicago mobster: he has the spots removed from a set of dice, but before it is done he memorises which side was which number so when they are rolled he can tell the other players what the blank faces currently uppermost would have been displaying. Tell me that you don't know a wargamer like that.

Anyway, here's Marlon Brando annoying Frank Sinatra both in and out of character:

* Also several decades ago I shared a house with the Teddy Bear Kid, but that's a digression for another day.

Pot70pouri

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing" - Marcus Aurelius

Autumn has arrived  in the Wharfe Valley which must mean it's time for the Derby Worlds. As James has written in his blog a highly untrained scratch team will be putting on an Italian Wars game. In Peter's absence the role of crap dice supremo is still up for grabs, but driving duties have been passed my way. The Stoicmobile has seen better days, but with a full tank and some more air in the tyres it might yet get us there and back, wherever 'there' actually is this year; all I currently know is that it's even further away from Derby than ever. Someone more clued up that me tells me that we're 'just inside the entrance to the right' so feel free to come and chat about the impending launch of my new range of gender neutral wargames clothes.

Speaking of toxic masculinity, I have been in a fight (OK, scuffle) for, I think, only the second time in my life (1). I don't count giving the National Front a bit of a kicking from time to time during the seventies; that comes under the heading of public service. Nor do I include the occasion a fellow student thumped me in the union bar; sadly he's no longer with us and, on reflection, he had a point anyway. In this latest incident the owner of the local launderette upon discovering that he had misplaced my duvet lost the plot completely and tried to physically throw me out of the shop (2). A few brief moments of pushing and shoving was only brought to an end by the arrival of another customer. At that point the madman drew out a very fat wallet and started slapping down twenty pound notes on the counter with great force. Showing immense restraint I only took two and then walked around the corner and bought a replacement for £16; the rest is going into the Derby Worlds new toy fund. The whole thing was very funny.

(1) By coincidence one of those present at the first fight - which took place in 1975 and accounts for the shape of my nose - will be helping out with the game on Saturday.
(2) It is possible that I had first expressed my dissatisfaction with the level of customer service in a fairly trenchant manner.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Galley Battles

We finished refighting Actium last night, or to be more accurate we decided that we didn't want to carry on any further. As I said when I posted about the first night's play I have a nostalgic fondness for a bit of galley action, so it's disappointing to have to report that I didn't really enjoy this game.

On the plus side, I am more convinced than ever that hexes work very effectively for a game that is basically about manoeuvre and contact. A less clear cut question is the use of two hexes per ship rather than one as in the original paper and cardboard version. On balance I think it makes sense - beyond the obvious physical constraints of the size of the models - because not only are ships longer than they are wide, but they also move forwards so during whatever time period is meant to be represented by a turn their path should be harder to cross in a perpendicular manner than it is to avoid them head on.

The command and control also worked reasonably well. I like the random nature of squadron activation including the use of jokers. It may be that further friction could be introduced by adding more tokens to the bag. We didn't really use the double activation option much, so I'll reserve judgement on that.

So what doesn't work? I'm afraid I have a bit of a list:

• Visual differentiation between ships: This might just be me, but beyond the obvious fact that some are bigger than others I really can't tell the difference between them let alone which ones have towers and engines and which ones don't. The knock on effect of this is just to make every other aspect of the game - moving, shooting, ramming, raking, boarding - painful to calculate. Funnily enough it's very easy to identify crew quality even though crews aren't modelled at all.
• Shooting: There is far too much of it, and it's far too complicated.
• Burning: Seems much too easy to set ships on fire and then ships sink very quickly while on fire.
• Grappling: This seems very difficult to do, although there was a view that I was just rolling badly. In common with everything else in this game, it's somewhat complicated.
• Boarding: Calculation of casualties is more complex than it needs to be. I also don't understand why it isn't possible to split marines between the original ship and the captured ship, especially as one can split the fire of marines on the same ship between different targets, thereby increasing the complexity if that exercise even further.

James has already made some suggested changes with which he intends to finish off the game solo. These are intended above all to simplify shooting and reduce the number of ships sinking because of burning. Personally I'd go for a bucket of dice approach and get rid of all the tables; the game it most resembles on the table is actually X-Wing, and it works there. Interestingly he has also taken the view that a floating ship is more likely to be able to keep a sinking ship afloat than a sunk wreck is to be able to drag down a floating ship. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. Perhaps what is actually needed is a quantum approach, a sort of Schrodinger's galley, whereby one doesn't know whether a fouled ramming ship has sunk until it disengages.

Pike & Shotte

"Fashion wears out more apparel than the man" - William Shakespeare

And so it is with wargames rules; new ones displacing old more perhaps because they are new than because they are better. One set that has definitely been fashionable for a while is Black Powder, but I personally hadn't played any of the family of rules before this week. We actually used the period specific Pike & Shotte supplement that James had picked up at Derby, with his Italian wars figures as pictured here.

As a first game we obviously got things wrong, especially the best tactics to use, but I enjoyed the game and was left with a positive impression. They contain a number of elements familiar from other newish rulesets that we have tried such as To the Strongest! and Lion Rampant. We shall have another crack next week and hopefully will have a better grip on things thereafter. In the meantime:

Good points:

• They are a toolbox. They will stand up to the inevitable tinkering which we (for which read James) will inflict on them.
• They were definitely quick play; we finished a sizeable enough game with a completely new set of rules in less than three hours.
• The movement rules definitely appealed to me. There isn't much measurement and manoeuvering is treated - in most circumstances - in a very broad brush fashion.
• I quite like the fact that you can't ever rally stuff back to full strength.

Bad points:

• The rulebook is not well written or proofread. The reference sheet and the rulebook are not always in agreement with each other.
• The rules for the restricted movement of units in close proximity to each other are difficult to understand; or at least they were difficult for me to understand. 

Sort-of-in-the-middle-there points:

• There doesn't seem to be scope for the sort of fire, cause morale downgrade and then charge type of tactic to which I am used. It's probably that I just haven't worked out the correct combination of actions.
• There are a variety of special rules (skirmish, elite etc etc) and we didn't really get to grips with these. One must assume that they add to the game.
• One of James' criteria for judging rules is whether they allow - or indeed demand - that one 'wangle the angle'. These don't when opposing units are far apart, but seem nothing but angle wangling when they are close together. Once again, it may just be that I haven't got my head round it yet.

I won the game, as the Imperialists. I had a plan based on the rules for breaking command groups, and which didn't work at all. In the end my victory came because of rather good luck both in a cavalry melee where I got charged both in the back and the front and still came off best and in the final clash of pike blocks. I prefer games which are unpredictable, but hope that the way this game turned on a few dice rolls isn't what always happens. I should also mention that I lost a Gendarme vs Stradiot melee by rolling five dice and getting five ones, a less than 7,500 to 1 chance; I'm prepared to write that one off as a fluke.

His little chronicle, his memories, his reason

"Have common sense and stick to the point" - W. Somerset Maugham

There has been a request for less introspection fuelled by advancing years and heartache, and more posts about wargaming. Fair enough, although I must mention that I had a really lovely day on my sixtieth birthday, the Misses Epictetus taking me to Whitby, a place where astonishingly I had never been despite living in Yorkshire for the last twenty years.

So, wargaming then. Firstly, there has been some. We finished the Seven Years War battle from the previous week. James may write it up in due course, but I'm not going to report anything further myself, beyond saying that it must be a candidate for the most one-sided game that I've ever played in; quite astonishing. Some of the rules changes are here to stay, some aren't. It seems that James is planning on doing a Seven Years War game at Derby in October, so no doubt everything will be revisited anyway. We reassemble in the wargaming annexe this Wednesday for some To the Strongest!. Tempted though I am to refight Tewkesbury yet again, it's actually going to be a Romans vs Celts game featuring for the first time both the crap chariots and the Hamian archers.

In addition there has actually been quite a lot of progress in the Great War project. Three second hand Ospreys have been received, read and digested:

• The British Army in World War I (2) The Western Front 1916-18
• German Stormtroopers 1914-1918
• The German Army in World War I (3) 1917-18

I enjoyed the first and third of those, but the second is hampered by dull illustrations and dodgy politics. Interestingly it doesn't subscribe to what seems to be the otherwise generally accepted line that German tactics weren't any better than those of the Entente by the end of the war. I also bought the Two Fat Lardies scenario book, Stout Hearts & Iron Troopers. I have already painted three quarters of the British required for the first scenario so have turned my attention to the Germans. I have previously explained the paucity of ordinary German riflemen available in plastic, so I have been having a tour of the available metal options and have placed orders with Lancer Miniatures, Tumbling Dice, IT Miniatures and Early War Miniatures, although not for Germans in the last case. I passed on Irregular Miniatures because they don't do late war and are in any case rather on the small side. The Lancer and Tumbling Dice have arrived and, together with a selection from Emhar and Revell are being painted. The various greys, browns and khakis of the First World War fall smack in the middle of the range in which I am colour blind and I have therefore taken the easy route and gone for Vallejo German Uniform as the main shade. Also acquired have been some British rifle grenadiers and some unpainted shell holes in thermoformed plastic. I'm not sure how I shall present them on the tabletop. They're fairly solid, but could probably do with being based; the question is really whether to put them on hexes or not.

And I went to the crossroad, mama

The last time we played the Seven Years War it was a playtest of some roads, which turned out to be excellent. This time around it was to playtest a whole raft of rule changes. Were they as good? Well, they were certainly better than my generalship and my dice rolling. Things started going wrong from pretty much the first thing I did. A Prussian unit moved into range of a unit of Russian Grenadiers, I turned a Musket Reload card and so I fired. In the exchange my unit ended up at half strength and shaken, and it was all downhill from there. James has blogged here about it - with pictures of the situation as it now stands - so I won't say much more. I still think the Russians have a good chance of winning - more troops and a lot more morale chips - but it won't be the most glorious of victories. And the officers are dreadful so a failed Major Morale check will probably see a lot of that morale eaten up.

James ascribes the way the game has developed to Peter having gone down to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil. Perhaps, perhaps not. His dice rolls weren't particularly good, and mine weren't especially bad; it was simply that his were consistently better than mine, and when I did beat him it was only just and not enough to cause any damage. Such is life.  Anyway, to the new rules:

Flank support: In Piquet units get a bonus when testing morale for having flank support. Under the previous interpretation (I have no idea whether this was the core rules or some house rule that grown up over the years) it was almost literally impossible not to receive the maximum amount. Famously encircled historical figures such as Custer or Gordon would probably have counted as having two secure flanks the way we used to do it. This has been swept away with a much simpler and harsher version of which I approve. It will certainly encourage both maintaining one's own formation and trying to puncture and then turn enemy lines

Routing: This has again been simplified. The anomaly whereby better armies ran away faster has been removed, the disruptive effect from the movement of routers is more logical and it is consistent with the ability to provide the flank support mentioned above. Again I approve, although I suspect that virtually no units will now ever be rallied from rout.

Overhead fire by artillery: The rules for this have been clarified - essentially in terms of James' current terrain setup - and one can now, under certain circumstances, fire over troops on the same level as oneself. I can't speak to the historical accuracy of this, but it will make artillery more useful in attack.

Infantry Arc of Fire: This has been reduced from 45 degrees to straight ahead only. I think there may be a few problems with this:

• It is now possible - as we proved - to initiate melee against a unit that one can't fire at because it's out of arc; makes no sense to me.
• It makes the Prussians' ability to oblique at full speed even more powerful.
• I envisage units being manoeuvred to all sorts of peculiar angles so that they can shoot without being shot at, rather changing the nature of the game.

 So, mostly a thumbs up from me. I imagine that the new rules on flanks and routing will, when coupled with previously introduced changes to morale challenges, make games end a lot more quickly. We shall see.

Do your worst, for I will do mine

And so to the wargaming table, and about time too. However, although we brought to an end the recent barren spell, we didn't break the sequence of somewhat disappointing scenarios. We had the Seven Years War battle where no one wanted to attack (least of all me); then there was our first try of Lion Rampant where is was obvious from the very beginning that the convoy should have started on the table instead of off; just before our break we played an X-Wing game where the rebels (or possibly the Empire - I am hazy on the details of all this) didn't have the manoeuvrability to shoot down the razor blades; and now we had another Lion Rampant set-up which wasn't robust enough to cope with a series of extraordinarily bad activation rolls by the Ottomans very early on.

The 18th century stalemate was just one of those things, but the others were caused by unfamiliarity with the rules. In the case of Lion Rampant I continue to be impressed with their simplicity and playability. We need to make some clarifications and/or tweaks because of using multiple instead of individually based figures, but that's no real issue. In this particular case I think I hadn't sufficiently adjusted the basic messenger scenario (a) to allow for the larger table. If I were to replay it I think I would add to each side a unit of cavalry who had been sent ahead to seize control of the bridge and I would restrict the crossbowmen to the ramparts of the town wall, perhaps giving them a range extension in return. I'd also be specific that the Timar's wild charge needed to be tested for. Clearly none of that means anything to anyone in the absence of OOBs, scenario notes, maps or photographs, but it's my blog and I don't care.

In other wargaming news I have moved on to painting a British bombing section. The figures that I bought only contain two bombing poses (b) so I have been busy with the Stanley knife and the superglue. I'm quite pleased with the results, although as usual with 20mm plastic we find that kneeling figures would be seven feet tall were they to stand up. I particularly like a couple of my conversions which look as if they are throwing the grenades downwards into a trench. On top of all that the Great War project got a further boost with first of my second hand Ospreys arriving. It looks very new for a previously-loved book and, even better, has printing on both sides of every single page.

(a) we actually played the messenger as a kidnapped princess solely in order to get some use out of my kidnapped princess figure, one of many I own to not yet have seen any action.
(b) both of them pretty stereotypical; one 'third man throwing back to the wicket keeper' pose (first figure second row here) and one 'off-spinner planting his left leg on the popping crease' (second figure top row here)

An Epictetian 'return'

"Luck is of little moment to the great general, for it is under the control of his intellect and his judgement." - Livy

I really like the Piquet family of wargames rules. I didn't 'get' them at all when I first came across the Ilkley Lads playing them at a Society of Ancients open day at the Royal Armouries a dozen or so years ago. Some of it - the missile fire resolution/reload action for example - isn't intuitive. It was von Neumann who pointed out that in mathematics one never understands things, one simply gets used to them, and the same could be said to some extent of shooting in Piquet. However, for flexibility, adaptability across multiple time periods and geographical locations, and fine tuning to one's own view of how things should be they are excellent; they provide a toolbox with which one can let one's imagination loose.

I also like the unpredictability when the game hits the tabletop. The same scenario will never play out the same way twice even if the commanders attempt to do the same thing. There are too many random influences at play. I regard this as a good thing. Over time the luck evens out and in the short term it adds a bit of spice. However, as with any spice, a concentrated amount in one place at one time can rather spoil the taste of the meal. And so it rather proved last night.

We were back at James' for some more Seven Years war action. He was the Prussians, Peter and I were the Austrians. One might suspect that this is where my luck started to go wrong; Peter's wargaming karma is so bad that I've always assumed that in a previous life he must have stood on and crushed a whole regiment of H.G. Wells' troops or something similar. However, yesterday I matched him throw for throw in rolling crap dice. One of my first tasks of the evening was to establish the quality of the commander of our right flank. I threw a one on a D20, he was abysmal, and things went downhill from there. Pre-game preparations left us with less morale than the Prussians, a worse card deck and a plethora of poor units and commanders compared to a range of skilled and superior generals and troops facing us; our artillery is notably bad. Insult was added to injury when James then won all the initiative and advanced across the table and started knocking stands off our infantry line before we'd even turned a card.

The night ended with our right flank about to disintegrate. Our one small success, routing some infantry who passed by a village we had garrisoned, was undone when Frederick himself rallied them and sent them forwards again. So, am I downhearted? Well yes, actually I am. Our only hope rests on a spectacular cavalry victory on our left flank and then sweeping along behind the Prussian line. You will recall that I said exactly the same thing about the previous Seven Years War game that we played. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now.

"For this is the mark of a wise and upright man, not to rail against the gods in misfortune." - Aeschylus

Lützen and Ligny

We've once again had a run of C&C Napoleonics games in the wargaming annexe here at Casa Epictetus, having moved on to the fourth expansion - the Prussians. Last week it was Lützen (the early part of the action with the French on the defensive) and this week Ligny, from which the photos come.

Both proved something that we've suspected for a while, that it is very difficult to attack in this game, especially against infantry in towns. Of course, and before anyone else suggests it, it's possible that we're just not very good at it, but we've been playing for a while and don't seem to be getting any better at that aspect. Last night admittedly James was handicapped by an inability to draw anything other than left sector cards, a problem exacerbated when he lost all his units in the left sector fairly early on.

Peter's normal complaint is that he rolls rubbish dice and, in all fairness, he often does. However, on both evenings he found himself rolling one dice with a unit of Lancers and on each occasion he rolled three flags in a row.

The terrain collection for this set-up continues to develop. Ligny calls for four bridges (as does Wavre - there's something about the hundred days and bridges) and so I made a trip to Wargame Vault, bought a download card model for 50 cents and made up four copies printed off at half size. Both scenarios need a church, which I didn't have and so had to substitute a walled farm. But today lurking in a charity shop in Otley - on the lookout for glasses from which to drink my breakfast orange juice since you ask - I found a nicely sized Lilliput Lane church which was immediately added to the collection. Inevitably, next week's scenario doesn't feature either church or bridge.

Prussian reserve infantry hold the 'church' next to the bridges

 I think it will be the last battle in this sequence and so I'm going to set up one with both Russians and Prussians, Katzbach. The French contingent also includes troops from Italy, Naples, Hesse and Baden, all of which I have, so there will be some colour on the table. All I have to do now is learn how to take some decent photographs.

No worries

Enough of strange folk customs that out forefathers may (or more likely may not) have been following since time immemorial. What about the wargaming?

Well, the run through of Zorndorf - the game that James is putting on at Triples - ended in a vaguely historical stalemate.Peter and the Russians had lots of troops, but no morale and I had the opposite. It was however a good game until that point. My grand cavalry charge didn't break through, but the impact in terms of initiative and morale chips prevented the Russians from counter attacking elsewhere. That and some continuing poor dice rolling on their part, except in melee where the cossacks stood up better than they had any right to.

Now then, rule changes. The latest involves a sort of quasi disordered/blown status as a result of interpenetrating. I think I'm comfortable with it, but I would make its removal free on turning of the appropriate card, at least for cavalry. My logic is that recovering from blown is the cavalry equivalent of reloading, which is free when the appropriate card is turned.

Like Romans, like Prussians

The Punic Wars have gone temporarily into abeyance to be replaced with an early run through of Zorndorf, James' demo game for Triples. Fate had decreed that I had not received a sufficient kicking as the Romans and should therefore receive another one as the Prussians. The scenario requires Frederick to behave much as he did on the day (including the bits he didn't plan) and therefore it is more than usually about the cards drawn and the dice thrown.

Bollocks

Events were, I think, quite instructive. The luck was quite evenly split, but heavily skewed within specific areas. Peter won the vast majority of the initiative, thereby proving that the gods of the dominoes can also have their favourites. We are just about to end the second turn and I won't have cycled through even half my deck in total.

Temple to the gods of the dominoes

On the other hand his dice rolling was pathetic even by his own standards, especially when it came to unit quality. I, in contrast, rolled highly for the effects of my pre-battle artillery bombardment, for unit quality and on my defence dice, but in melee and in particular on morale dice I was truly dreadful. So, I hear you ask, what was the outcome? The result, dear reader, was that my attacking infantry force ran away. That's right, they weren't destroyed - I haven't lost any units in that way - the whole lot of them just took off. Now I'm no expert on the Seven Years War, but I'd always thought that Frederick was best known for his ruthless discipline which if it achieved anything it was to stop his men deserting their posts. Not this time.

Gaming update

As the nominal purpose of this blog is wargaming I ought to bring things up to date. The Punic Wars campaign continues to go not that well, but also not badly enough that it's a foregone conclusion. My invasion of North Africa was decided on because of the cards I happened to have in my hand and could have gone worse. Admittedly I have lost my entire army ( all my commanders will have to start the next turn in the same place), but I still hold a province and a port and we end the turn all square in political control. In fact it would have been quite easy for things to have worked out quite well, especially if the Carthaginians had not gained a temporary naval superiority.

The battle just concluded was a protracted and bloody affair that then ended rather suddenly. I had the luck with the cards until all at once I didn't. But, as usual, I could so easily have won; this time if I had destroyed a unit that I had seven dice against, hitting on everything possible. C'est la vie. Still, I did kill all the elephants though.

On the boardgames front, celebrations of International Tabletop Gaming Day involved games of Small World, Alhambra, Family Business, Articulate!, Coup and Quantum. The last was the only new game for me and I was very taken with the design. The theme is rather pasted on, but without it the result would perhaps be too abstract. Anyway, it's on the wishlist.

"Don't forget your great guns,"

Said this blog's increasingly go to quotation man before continuing "which are the most respectable arguments of the rights of kings."

The Russian commanders

The first wargame of the new year was the same one as the last of the old year. Once again in command of the Prussians I continued my assault on the hill once again with astonishing success. The same couldn’t be said of the cavalry action on the other flank where two units of cuirassiers were seen off by three units of Cossacks and a unit of hussars got pretty much blown away while charging in, although it did then win the subsequent melee against a unit of grenadiers; it was that sort of night with the dice. The luck was actually fairly evenly spread. I turned three cavalry move cards in a row to get into a good position, but then rolled rubbish when the melees happened. C’est la vie. And I managed to prolong both my batteries right to the top of the hill (where they have already started to do damage) despite not turning all my cards in either of the turns that we played. I also had some terrible rolls while trying to rally units and now don’t have enough morale left to try any more. Basically the result will hinge on whether my morale runs out before either of us fails Major Morale.

James shows off his birthday present

We took it at a fairly leisurely pace as we were also marking James’ 50^th birthday which had occurred on New Year’s Eve. So congratulations and best wishes to him with the advice that perhaps that’s enough celebrating for 2014.

Toys on the Table

Привет всем моим русским читателям.

Парень с бородой

There are, I know, those among my loyal readers who would wish me to write more postings on the subject of witch burning. For my part however, I think that the time has come to put that behind us. And so the blog returns to its proper purpose: to report on my failings as a table top general.

Last night saw the first part of a big bash, all the toys on the table Italian Wars fictional battle in James' opulent wargames room in Ilkley, a small spa town on the edge of the Dales which some have compared with Moscow. Anyway, as usual the Olicanalad blog contains lots of pictures and all the detail that you need to know; including the extremely sad fact that James seems to have counted each figure on the table. I have always wanted to be able to paint like James; now it seems that he wants to be an accountant like me. "Каждому свое." as they say in Moscow.

However, back to my abject performance of last night. The first die that I rolled was a D12 to establish the quality of my commander-in-chief: it was a one. After that things went steadily downhill. Actually, the collapse on my left could have been a lot worse as Peter was only able to take advantage of one of the six Lull cards in my deck on the first pass through. My real problem was that whatever idiot shuffled the cards - that would be me then - had sorted all the Command cards to the back which meant that when any of my units started to retreat they basically carried right on going. Even when I turned my 'Gott Mit Uns' wild card instead of being able to use it for some sweeping (though non specific) strategic advantage, I had to instead attempt to rally the remnants of the Imperial cavalry. 

I did have some success with my skirmish cavalry, where a succession of even rolls and some cheesy use of a two segment move nearly, but not quite, repeated the previous week's success against a unit of heavy cavalry. And one of my foot skirmish units halted a Swiss pike block; albeit briefly and at the cost of them all dying to a man. So the scene is set for the game to be fought to a conclusion next week; a conclusion that is already, I fear, predetermined.

Novara, the refight

Or, the blog makes a return to its real purpose, There was no discussion of politics last night, except perhaps one or two murmurings that I had been too kind to the evil old bat.

Baroness Thatcher after drinking the blood of small children

Anyway, what of the game. Firstly, and disappointingly, from the French side of the table the quirky, wacky, zany diagonal nature of the layout wasn't anything like as obvious. In fact one might as well have been playing across the table. Very dreary. I have no doubt that the Olicanalad blog will contain a write up with pictures etc so just a brief run through from my point of view. I've said it before, but in my view the sign of a good set of rules is that one can set up exactly the same game twice and have it play out completely differently. The whole Piquet family of rules meet that requirement for me. About the only thing that was the same last night was the group of Swiss skirmishers on the extreme right wheeling onto the flank of the Landsknecht pike block. Oh, and the fact that the French lost. It was a closer run than the previous week, partly because Peter Jackson once again threw some of the worst dice possible. Had we been playing standard Piquet there is the real possibility that he wouldn't have turned any cards at all. On the other hand I as the French opened with a sequence of cards and dice rolls that enabled my light cavalry to flank and then see off a unit of Gendarmes and a small pike block. This, it seems to me anyway, is unlikely to have happened in real life but was possible and, under the 'Hell Broke Loose' rules is unlikely to happen but is possible. Job done. So, big kudos to James and Peter for the rules, which I very much enjoy playing and probably still would even if I understood them.

Peter and James - respect is due

I have been studying the non-transitive dice and sadly can find no wargaming use for them. The problem is the very skewed number distribution on each colour; such as one of them having 5 fives and a blank for example. I have now passed them on to James to ponder over and am quietly confident that he will find some suitable, non-cheesy, role for them on the table-top.

Mama Weer All Crazee Now

Wargamers are generally regarded as fat, unwashed blokes with beards and no interpersonal skills. And that's just by other wargamers. God only knows what the general public would think of us if they became aware of our existence. But, I am proud to be able to report that one man is single-handedly leading the way in showing that wargamers aren't at all dull and boring.

James Roach

Last evening in James 'Olicanalad' Roach's legendary wargames room we played a game diagonally across the table. That's right, you heard me; corner to corner - and we didn't care! Rock and roll or what?

The game itself (Novara 1513 - full details available as usual on James's Olicanalad's blog - was very enjoyable; not least because I won. I did it the hard way with my large pike block taking for ever to get into the action, As so often happens one of my units - in this case some innocuous looking skirmish shot - swept all before them and then fought a unit of French Gendarmes to a standstill. I don't think there is any doubt however that my triumph was mainly due to Peter Jackson throwing some of the worst dice it has ever been my privilege and pleasure to watch from the other side of the table. My own dice throwing was nothing to write home about, but if your opponent rolls a one then a two will do.

So, is wargaming 'on the bias' the way forwards? Just possibly. If we can move on from cubic dice to embrace the other Platonic solids  then why not? I have the highest hopes for a table based on the principle of the moebius strip; it would definitely increase the likelihood of flank marches succeeding.

Cerignola, 1503

Regular readers (?) have had to put up with a series of posts whose relevance to wargaming has ranged from none to, well, still none. However in a massive turn-up for the books I have played a game and, even better, am going to write about it.

The game was hosted by James 'Olicanalad' Roach using his gloriously painted Italian wars figures and using the 'Hell Broke Loose' rules developed by him and Peter Jackson from Piquet's Field of Battle. I won't attempt to explain the rules or the battle; partly because I'm not up to the task and partly because James has already done it on his blog Olicanalad. I say both James and Peter are responsible for the rules, but I lost count of how many times last night James turned round to Peter and said "Oh, I've changed that rule".

Peter ponders James' latest rule changes

Anyway, readers of James' blog - and if you aren't you should be - will know that he was asking for opinions on what formation he should deploy his Swiss pikes in: square or squareish. I can exclusively reveal that it doesn't matter. The Swiss, in what was referred to as Deep Square, formed the centre of the French line and moved very swiftly to the ditch, soon crossed that obstacle to come into contact with the defenders behind their defences and just as quickly got repulsed back. They then came under sustained fire from artillery and small arms, lost their commander and retreated from the field. Being Swiss they did this in good order, but the hole in the middle of the French line was just as big.

You will have guessed from the above that I was rolling the dice for the French, and in that capacity also managed to lose the commander of the left flank as well. However, there were various elements of compensating good fortune: the French reserves have arrived on the battlefield promptly and are poised to attack the area of the Spanish line weakened (!) by the Swiss and the Gendarmes on the French right have remained unscathed by the Spanish artillery and have belatedly reached the ditch. Perhaps more importantly, due to a tied dice roll, the three turns allowed for the French to assault the Spanish will involve cycling through the cards almost four times. With plenty of morale left all is not lost for the Duc de Nemours. The battle is to to be concluded next week.

I understand that James and Peter are to put the game on at Triples and I'd urge everyone to go and take a look because it looks fantastic and the rules are well worth finding out about. I don't know what name the game will be put on under. The schism in the Ilkley Lads gaming group appears to be approaching the level of the Bolam/Bewes feud; a case of life imitating life rather than imitating art.

Thelma is not amused