Hark! A questioning Scotsman.

Proud son of the glens, Mel Gibson, photographed singing "Scotland the Brave"

Scotland has given the world many great men.  Thinkers, scientists, theologicans, philosophers and engineers. They have brought forth ideas and words that will be remembered for centuries and that have shaped the lives of millions. They are a proud, curious people, given to questioning and inquiry.

Lord Kelvin asked "Jus' how culd is that anae wae?"

Adam Smith asked "What sort of price is tha'? Ar' you fer real mate?"

Thomas Carlyle asked "So you ken yer a big mawn, de ye?" 

But none of these no doubt very important questions, concern us today. 

Nor does the eternal Scottish question, posed by the warrior-philosopher "Franco" Begbie

"Ar' yo' lookin' a' me pal?"

Some frankly gratuitous eye candy from Phil's War Cabinet

Head over there for more. 

 The question that concerns us today was posed by that august son of Scotland, my esteemed colleague, friend and former editor, Mr. Phil Olley of Phil's War Cabinet* posed the question. 

"Do other wargamers and collectors set out a planned order of battle [...] to follow, or is it a case of simply picking whichever unit you fancy painting next?"

I was thinking about Phil's question and pondering how I go about collecting an army.  I think in some ways, I start backwards.  I think about the game or games I want to play and what troops I would need to complete those. I count up the troops needed to play all of those games and make a master list.

That's assuming that I haven't either somehow come into part of a collection or bought a box of plastic soldiers on a whim or because they were cheap. Actually now that I think of it, a number of these incidents have involved OldJohn and a small pile of used readies.

My good pal General Du Gourmand always maintained that the most dangerous box of figures was the first box of a new period. Collect one box of 1879 British infantry and suddenly you're committed to another 300 Zulus. Buy one squadron of 17th lancers because they look nice and before too long you'll be adding your ninth battalion of Russian infantry and worrying about the uniforms of Caucasian Riflemen.

But in a perfect world, where I'm starting from scratch, I tend to make a list based on the scenarios I want to play.

Once that's done, I pick the smallest scenario and aim to collect for that, the idea being to get troops onto the table in as few steps as possible.

Some of Michael's work

(which you can find here) 

I don't have enough projects on the go at present and between maintaining my marriage, work and studying at night, my copious free time is a burden to me.

I've been fighting a losing battle with Michael Dippel's Second Afghan War scenarios on the Battlecry website for a little while now and I think Phil has provided the last shove I needed to finally crack. I've been collecting colonials for The Sword and the Flame for a while now and this would appear to be a good opportunity to use those figures in a larger engagement.  Of course, TSATF is a skirmish game and the larger battles portrayed in Battlecry will require more troops, most notably cavalry, but I should be able to get a workable force relatively quickly.  It's just a matter of working out which of the six scenarios requires the smallest number of new troops.

Looking at the scenarios written so far, the troops required are as follows.

Afghan
Rifles 5
Melee (swords) 12
Cavalry 6
Artillery 3
Leader 3

British
British Infantry 7
Indian Infantry 9
Highlanders 2
Sappers 1
Ghurkas 1
Royal Artillery 3
Royal Horse Artillery 2
British Cavalry 1
Indian Cavalry 3

I'll have to post a progress report in the New Year.


*Who I profoundly hope is actually Scottish, rather than just living there, otherwise this joke will have well and truly gone for it's tea. 

Wargaming at the Teachers Club II

For our second outing at the Teachers Club we got two games in.  

This is the first game - one of the two Overlord scenarios included in the Sword of Stalingrad expansion.  This is "Rats in the Factory", which is based on the struggle for the Dzerzkinsky Tank factory during the early phases of the battle. It's a tough scenario, the German player has air surperioity and advantages in terms of troops and command and control, the Soviet player has the edge in terms of terrain and begins the game holding several valuable objectives. 

Note the Balkas in the foreground. 

These are deep ravines and are a major headache of the German player as they slow movement down to a crawl. I intend to play this particular scenario on my five inch mats some day and I am damned if I have any idea how I will model them. I was thinking of building drifts out of kitty litter, but I usually use litter to mark roads, so it would run the risk of turning the entire map into a sea of kitty litter. 

That said with my new sandbags and barbed wire, this is looking like more of a possibility. 

ccattlecry.net

There was a demand by popular acclamation for another American Civil War game, so I went scratching around for a scenario.  Now as it happened, I wasn't aware the boys behind ccnapoleonic.net had a website for Battlecry, but I was very happy to find out that they did.  This has the rules and all the scenarios up on it.  There are also fan made scenarios, including some for the Indian Wars and the Zulu War of 1879. 

Union troops move swiftly into the centre

Given that it was our second American Civil game - Gettyburg seemed like an obvious choice.  It was an interesting game, made all the more so by some trash talking from the internet. 

Old John, dyed in the wool rebel that he is, wasn't able to make this games day, but sent a message to the boys to let them know that he was with them in spirit. It concluded with. 

have some great games and kick General Creanor's Yankee ass for me :-))

I read this out just after General Creanor had been defeated at Stalingrad, because well - Wargamers are a cruel breed. Consequently General Creanor, playing Meade, was determined not to be defeated at Gettysburg. 

TK and General Creanor discuss tactics, while Boomer remains stoic. 

The game was played with 6mm figures on two standard boards.  I substituted cork tiles for hills and model buildings for built up areas.  Unfortunately, despite scouring the dungeon for them I have so far completely failed to find my 6mm trees - though they must be in there somewhere. 

Anyway, this led to an interesting battle as Boomer & General K fought a long range sniping engagement around the Peach Orchard. Neither was convinced that he had sufficient strength to cross the open ground and deal a decisive blow the other. 

However, the game took a drastically different turn when General Creanor led a sudden movement in the Federal centre against an uncharacteristically defensive General D.  This allowed him to dictate the pace of the engagement while TK and Fatz slugged it out on the Rebel left.  General D managed to put together a defensive line after being pushed off the hills, but it wasn't enough to salvage the situation. 

The victorious Federals 

A specially posed shot for Old John.