I must go down to the seas again

Or 'more DBSA antics' (and apologies are probably owed to John Masefield).  

After my initial outing with the rules proved to be a reasonable success I have been thinking about the issues I had came across.  OK there was nothing major thrown up, and I'm prepared to bet that all my points were considered by Phil Barker and decided against for the sake of keeping the rules simple, but, well you know how I like to bolt on additional chrome.  

The first point was that in the real world damage to a warship has an effect beyond making it easier to sink.  This is either a reduction in combat efficiency or a reduction in speed/manoeuvrability.  Secondly, a crippled ship simply halting feels wrong (inertia and all that) even with fairly long 15 minute game turns some headway would be maintained.  Lastly I think the Hong Kong Wargame Societies idea of having some differences between the capital ships (Cruisers and Battleships) has merit.  This should include both a reflection of different armament, weight of fire in the different shooting arcs. and some reflection of advances in range finding and gunnery technology.  All that said I don't really want to loose the essential simplicity of the rules as conceived by Mr B.

Other players have tried to address some of these issues previously so I'm going to incorporate those ideas where ever possible.  There is a bit of retro-engineering involved in some cases to attempt to understand how their changes were arrived at, but nothing too difficult.  The hardest part will be finding a way to calculate a factor to reflect weight of shot in each firing arc as that will have to be done on a ship by ship basis.  I'm thinking some sort of Excel calculator (you know how I like to play with Excel).

My initial thought is to use some combination of shell weight, rate of fire and perhaps range finder capability, although the latter is problematic.  That would create a number for weight of fire reaching target but wouldn't take into account ability to penetrate armour.  I need to have a bit of a think on this.

Through the Square Window Rules review

I promised a review of the 'Through the Square Window' rules for the Thirty Years War  I picked up at Partizan recently, so here it is.

The rules cover and the one colour illustration

Summary

I like them.  The author has a similar view on how seventeenth century warfare worked to my own.  The combat mechanisms are elegant and uncomplicated and there are straight forward rules for depicting the various combat formations that evolved as the TYW progressed.  There is also a nice section covering the various armies involved and how to depict them on the table top, not dissimilar to my blog posts on the same topic for my own rules.  There are no grids (hooray), but a lot of dice, although this speeds up combat and especially morale/reaction tests so I don't mind that.  They use the battalia/squadron as the standard combat formations which is where I like to operate for pike and shot gaming.  All dice used are D6 so there are no oddball dice to acquire.  I haven't played them yet but other than changing the base sizes and ground scale to reflect the fact that my own troops are 6mm rather than the author's 15mm chaps I don't feel any need to fiddle.  The price doesn't hurt either, my copy came in at £10 from the author and I think they are also available from Caliver for £15.  

Details

The rules come as a spiral bound A4 book with clear plastic front and back covers.  It's printed on a good quality heavy paper, almost a light cardstock, and runs to 50 pages overall.  Of those only the first 16 pages are the rules.  Once set up, unit formations and definitions are taken out of the equation there are only 11 pages of rules covering the fighting on the tabletop.  Don't be put off by the short page run for this section though as despite the larger than average font used (Looks to be around 12-14 point which is nice as my eyes are not as young as they were) there is a lot subtle game play mechanisms in those pages .  This is achieved by the use of different tactical styles and formations.

There are few illustrations and these are simple black and white diagrams covering formations and arcs of fire.  To be honest the rules don't need more.  There is a good contents page so finding things is fairly easy which is good as there is no quick reference sheet.  The author says he tried to create one but couldn't compress the information to a single sheet.

Here are some images of my 6mm troops in the relevant infantry formations.  Apologies for using non 30 Years War figures I went with what I had.

A Dutch style battalion

A Swedish equivalent looks weedy but gets a salvo bonus

Wallenstein style Imperial battalion note shot bases in front of pike

Unit basing and formations all make perfect sense and, as mentioned above, do have an impact on how each different formation fights.  Each formation has a training/morale class of well trained, trained or poor, again this impacts how a formation fights.  I will create some specific mixed pike and shot bases for the Imperial squadron shown above so that they are closer to the concept in the rules.  That is probably the only change to my basing I need to consider.  Units also have a number of strength points based on the troop types in it and the number of bases of each type.  This defines how much punishment a formation can suffer before it breaks.

Spanish style large Tercio

Later Spanish Small Tercio

The rules use square bases but I have not fully followed that  as I already have 6mm troops based and don't want to change them (again).  If I was starting from scratch I would definitely go with the basing as suggested.  As it is my square bases are equivalent to those in the rules and my longer bases are equivalent to two of the square bases.  There was a chat on Face Book about basing and the consensus was (including the author's) was that as long as both sides are using the same base sizes and they are not too different to the rules it will be fine (but see bit about command rules below).

Each unit has a number of actions it can take each turn although there are some restrictions on doing the same thing more than once per turn.  So for example infantry and cavalry have two actions per turn while light cavalry have three.  Infantry cannot perform the same action twice in their turn.  Cavalry (except for shooting) can carry out the same action twice.  This limits how fast foot can move compared to cavalry.  There are 14 possible actions for units to to use, although three are artillery only and one is dragoons only.

Combat is straight forward with each base in a formation allocated a number of dice for shooting and a separate number for melee.  This varies based on the troop type on the base and their training level and brings more period flavour to the rules.  The combat system  is roll the total number of dice for the bases in combat and count hits, which are usually 6's but can be 5or 6's in some situations.  Each hit removes a strength point from the enemy unit.  

Morale works in a similar fashion.  There are several trigger events which cause a morale check and once triggered some additional situations add extra dice to the roll.  Every dice with a score of 1 or 2 can create a morale effect other scores have no impact.  Scores of 2 only effect poor troops while scores of 1 effect all troops and take precedent over the less severe outcomes of rolling a two. Scores of 1 are cumulative within the one set of rolls, think of it as a unit being overwhelmed by the number of things not going their way.  Its quick and effective with minimal charts required.  The effect of failing a roll can halt an advance and then cause a unit to rout if a further dice score of one is in the same set of dice rolls.  It sounds cumbersome but is actually fast to resolve.  It's worth noting routing troops can be rallied.

Command uses a command radii to test if units are able to take new orders directly.  The rules don't ask for specific orders for each unit they simply advance to contact.  Lack of command works by forcing halts and potentially removing a unit's ability to act, which I think means they are stuck in place and can only react to enemy actions.  This is possibly the least well explained part of the rules.  As a unit simply halting and not doing anything seems odd.  I'd expect them to at least be able to shoot.  I suspect that the number of generals is the defining factor here and that command needs to be modelled down to brigade level.  The only clue I can find is in the army costs (page 16) which gives a point cost for a general and says there must be a minimum of four generals.  That would suggest a CinC and a general for each wing and the centre.  This is something where I probably need to have game under my belt to fully grasp. As a secondary point this is where changing the base sizes might cause a slight issue.  Placing troops on much larger bases then recommended would have the potential to move unit's out of command range as it would spread units out more.  There is of course an easy fix, extend the command range by the same percentage that the base sizes are increased by.

Conclusions

Are these a detailed simulation of pike and shot combat ?- No, but no set of rules can cover every detail especially in a period where there was substantial change under way.  I don't hold this against the rules.  Every writer has to make a decision on which aspects to leave out and I think the author has taken a sensible view on this.

Do they provide  differences between the different tactical styles and formations?  Yes, this is one of the strengths of these rules and clearly was at the forefront of the author's mind.  The differences will allow players to feel that an early Spanish Style Tercio has to be used in a different way to a Swedish Brigade and reward doing that.

Do they feel right?  Well I haven't played a game yet but reading through my take is that they will give a period feel to game play.  There are enough differences in troop types to allow an early TYW army to act differently to a late TYW army or a BCW Army.

Overall, I think I have found my go to set of rules for the TYW.

Oh and yes the title is a nod to both The Defenestration of Prague and BBC's old pre-school programme Playschool.  Don't you love it when the author is a similar vintage to yourself?

Partisan 2025 and a sacrifice to the carpet people

So I stirred my stumps and drove down to Newark for this years Partisan show.  I was a little later than I had hoped and some 1,200 gamers had already arrived before me at 11.45am and some had already made their purchases and were heading for home.  As always the first impression is one of the scale of the show and how busy it is.  It is a show which tends towards some huge display games and this year's show is no exception.

I was slightly disappointed that many of the large games were simple table edge to table edge lines of troops as that gives little scope for doing anything other than an advance to contact and slugging or shooting it out.  I like a bit of space around the troops as the real world rarely has hard edges you can use to shield the flanks of your army!  One game really caught my eye though, as being the exception to this.  This was the Tradeston Wargames Group presentation of the Battle of Rocroi 1643.  Even better the team running this were chatty and keen to explain how the rules worked unlike some other display games.  The game was using a set of rules I don't know much about 'Through the Square Window' and the author, Gordon Crawford, was on the team so we were able to have a good chat about the mechanisms and concepts.  I was rather taken with the system and went back later to buy a copy of the rules, which I will review in a later post (spoiler alert; I rather like them).

Rocroi using Through the Square Window rules

Close up of the Spanish Infantry in the Rocroi game

Next up was a trip to see that honest purveyor of wargames figures that is Peter Berry at Baccus 6mm.  I splurged on figures here as I needed to buy castings to complete my Moorish and Gothic armies.  Funds didn't permit me to add the additional Hunnic cavalry I need so there will be more splurging to come. 

This was followed by a quick chat with old Sealed Knot friends Paul and Christine Eaglestone of Empress Miniatures although I managed to avoid the temptations of their western gunfight range this time.  I did mention to them that I had an issue with their figures as they are far betting castings than I really know how to paint!

While I was doing the rounds I also had a chat with my old gaming friend Graham (Trebian) Evans on the Northamptonshire Battlefields stand where I picked up a copy of their 'Wargamers Guide to Edgcote'.  I didn't take a turn at the display game of the battle as I have played it a couple of times before and there was lots more to see. It seemed to be keeping Graham busy though without my trade.  The game is fun and a great introduction to Wars of the Roses games so if you see it while it's doing the rounds I strongly recommend giving it a try.

The Edgcote booklet is a rather useful item nicely illustrated in full colour with a really welcome section covering the heraldry of the combatants and a set of entry level rules as well as an explanation of the military background to the fight.  It's a great companion to Graham's earlier work 'The Battle of Edgcote 1469 - Re-evaluating the evidence' which is also a rather useful volume to have on your bookshelf if you have an interest in the Wars of the Roses.

My last purchase was from Warbases who now do a range of pre-painted buildings under the banner 'Table Ready Terrain'.  I bought another store for my town of De Lancy, Texas.  This was the Trading Post kit.  I have to say the colouring is really well done and I will be adding some more of these to the collection at some point.

Pretty sure I know who and what this game is.  It was nicely presented

I missed recording whose game this was, but this is what I mean by edge to edge deployment

So having spent my filthy lucre, I took myself around the display games.  First port of call was The League of Extraordinary Wargamer's Wake Island game.  I know a couple of these chaps from the SK and they are as mad as their selection of headgear for this game suggests.  The game looked pretty good too.  A fictional attack by the Japanese in the mid 1920's.  It gives a good excuse to get some toys on the table that were too late to see action in the First World War and were obsolete by the start of the Second.

Wake Island, Houla Shirts optional.  The outfits did make sense honest!

I was quite taken with the selection of oddball topics to be found.  Witch Racing around Ankh-Morpork looked fun and the figures being used were straight from the Josh Kirby cover art for the Discworld books.  How you stop Granny Weatherwax winning or Nanny Ogg cheating I couldn't tell.  There were also pig mounted Hobbits having jousting fun available on the next table.  Elsewhere there were a number of very large games on big tables not all of which I got details of.  

Gladiatorial Combat with a very nice amphitheatre

Racing around Ankh-Morpork.  Apologies to the presenter who clearly had just lost (again)

I couldn't resist this shot, a banjo playing Nanny Ogg rides again

I did stop and chat with the Doncaster gamers who were putting on a Gun Fight at the OK Corral game using Deadman's Hand rules.  Given the amount weaponry being displayed on the side of their table I doubt there would have been much debate about the rules.

After a good three hours I headed home and had a pretty clear run back to home.

Ah but what about the sacrifice to the carpet people I hear you cry?  Well once I got home  I decided to dry fit the parts of the Trading post kit and so popped them out of their frames.  The fit was perfect (as if I expected anything different) so I popped them onto my book purchases to carry to my hobby space.  I got up there and turned to put the books on my desk and 'pop' the book flexed and all the parts headed floorward.  I could see where they landed so down to my hands and knees I go to pick them all up (down is easy getting back up is the real trick).  Except two window frames and an awning support were nowhere to be found.  This morning I have turned my office upside down but can I find the little blighters?  Nary a trace to be had.  I checked my route from downstairs several times to no avail, moved the furniture in my office, nothing and even cleared my desk in case they were buried in one of the deeper dust drifts!  So I can only assume that the carpet people got them or that they are nestling deep within the dog, and I'm not looking for them there.  So I'm off to scratch build replacement parts now.

Damn Battleships Again...again

So I played a test game of DBSA this week using my 1/4800 home made ships.  One thing I learned is that naval wargame pictures at that scale are pretty boring...lots of blue and a few tiny ships!  So I'm sorry if the pictures don't inspire you.  For an opening game I kept it pretty simple and played a fictional River Plate based game set in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese war.  One Russian pre dreadnought battleship the Pobeda v a Japanese cruiser squadron consisting of one armoured cruiser the Azuma and two protected cruisers the Kasagi and the Chitose.   The Pobeda is escaping from Port Arthur and has been separated from the rest of the Russian force, so is heading south looking for safety in a German naval base.  The Japanese squadron has steamed to intercept and delay pending the arrival of heavier elements of the Fleet.

The table is open sea and covers an area roughly 14,400 yards long by 7,000 yards wide (roughly 7 Nm by 3.5 Nm).  The two sides enter via the opposite short edges and already have sight of each other's smoke.  The Japanese are in line astern.  There are four hours until sunset and the sea state is moderate with a moderate breeze from the North West.  Each game turn represents 15minutes of action.  Shooting into the sunset will be penalised for the 30 minutes prior to sunset (deemed to be shooting into an arc from SW to NW of the shooter's position).   The Pobeda needs to exit the opposite short table edge to gain safety the cruisers to inflict sufficient damage and delay to allow the fleet to come up the following day. 

The Pobeda enters in the centre of the North edge of the table (a narrow edge) and steams due south at maximum speed.  The Japanese enter heading North East also at maximum speed.  At this point the range between the lead cruiser (Azuma) and the Pobeda is 11,000 yards.  It quickly dawns on me that the range shortens very quickly with the combined closing rate being 2,000 yards a turn if both side head directly at each other.  Extreme range for the Pobeda is 6,000 yards while the Armoured Cruiser can also reach out to the same distance the chances of it doing any damage before closing to Long Range of 4,800 yards is slight.  The Protected Cruisers have no chance of hitting until within 4,800 yards and ideally would need to be within 1,600 yards to have any chance of damaging the Russian.  The tactical position is simple the Japanese need to use their speed to close the range and the Russian wants to keep the cruisers at arm's length.

The range closes until at after 45 minutes steaming at full revolutions the range closes to 6,000 yards and the Azuma open fire, but no hits are observed and the Pobeda's reply is also ineffective.  Movement is IGO - UGO but both sides shoot in both players combat phases, with the phasing player firing first. The effect of any hits scored being applied before the second player replies.  Torpedo attacks happen in the same sequence but are resolved after all shooting is dealt with as torpedoes take longer to reach the target. .  This leads to some interesting manoeuvring to try to cross range thresholds in your own turn so as to get first chance to cause damage at the more effective shorter range!  

The Russians now close the range further and initiate a further exchange of fire from 5,100 yards with neither side scoring any hits.  The Japanese cruisers, still in line astern close to 4,400 yards for the Azuma at least as the trailing protected cruisers still being out of range. The exchange of fire is now scoring hits but with no damage (I decided that an equal result for adjusted shooting and defence dice scores meant a hit but no significant damage simply to help build a narrative for the game) neither side has their shooting heads on it seems.  The Pobeda continues to close and fires again at 3,800 yards on the Azuma, again the exchange of fire has no effect.  The Japanese aware that their current course will not close the range enough to allow effective shooting turn towards the Pobeda and fire a salvo at 2,600 yards and hit the Pobeda but again do no damage.  The Pobeda returns fire with no effect (I'm beginning to wonder if either side has actually loaded live shells!).  The Pobeda now turns away from the approaching cruisers to maintain the range.

As the Russian battleship turns away the Japanese decide to split their squadron to try to hem it in.  The protected cruisers make a turn to the west while the Azuma continues directly towards the  Pobeda.  At 1,400 yards the Azuma opens fire again but the Chitose and Kasugi are still not within effective range as they are over 2,000 yards from target.  They fire but don't score any hits.  The Pobeda continues to turn away and fires another salvo which hits and finally inflicts damage on the Azuma, the return fire from her also scores hits and causes damage.  So both the Pobeda and Azuma are damaged.  In the basic rules hits are cumulative, multiple damage results make it easier to score a crippled or sunk result.  How easy this is depends on the size of the ship being hit.  As with DBA 3.0 rules the adjusted attack and defence dice scores are compared and a defence result of less than the attack score but more than half causes damage or if a third damaged result a crippled result.  If the defender is doubled then the target is immediately crippled and if tripled it explodes and sinks.  Torpedoes and mines create a greater risk of a straight crippled or sunk result.

Things are hotting up now but the Japanese have to get closer to have a serious chance of any hits doing damage.  The damaged Azuma closes to 1,600 yards and scores a second hit, the Pobeda is also getting the hang of things now and hits the Azuma again.  All of which means a second damaged result on both vessels.  The protected cruisers are closing in too, but at a range of 2,000 yards don't hit the Pobeda.  It's a big ask for the protected cruisers as they are on an attack score of zero until they close to under 1,600 yards, the battleship has a defence of four and with no dice adjustments likely, the dice would have to be creating one - six split in favour of the cruisers to damage the Russian.

The Azuma now goes for broke and closes to close range of 600 yards to launch a spread of torpedoes along with her gunnery attack  Sadly for the Azuma everything misses, unlike the Russian response which hits and cripples the Azuma.  The Azuma is now dead in the water.  While this is unfolding the Chitose and Kasagi close to under 1,400 yards and fire a salvo neither scores a hit.  The Pobeda now turns into the oncoming protected cruisers while firing a broadside at the crippled Azuma.  Hits land and the Azuma starts to sink!  The closing act after two and a quarter hours is for the Pobeda to turn further into the path of the protected cruisers and engage the lead ship.  The dice are not kind and the leading protected cruiser is crippled.  With this the remaining undamaged Japanese cruiser makes maximum speed and passes the Russian battleship heading for safety.  The Pobeda in a rare act of gallantry does not fire on the retreating ship or it's crippled sister ship instead opting for a run for safety and neutral German port at Tsingtao.

I quite like the free flow and simplicity of these rules but have a few little niggles that some house rules will easily sort out.  These are mainly centred around the damage and crippled status and how they impact on gunnery and movement.  I also want to incorporate some of the Hong Kong Wargame Society house rules as well as those from Rob's RJW campaign amendments.

1/4800th Russo-Japanese war battlefleets

Well if I'm honest only roughly 1/4800th and vaguely like the Russian and Japanese ships (think of them as caricatures).  On the other hand they are scratch built from cardboard and odds and ends I found in the bits box.  They are a step up from counters (just) and for me are part of a long history of making stuff from layers of cardboard.  It started when I was young (stop laughing at the back there, I really was young ...once) when my then best friend and I were playing a sort of proto-wargame based on a comic strip from the now long defunct boys comic/magazine Ranger.  This was 'The rise and fall of the Trigan Empire' a sort of science fantasy adventure story with some strange looking aircraft involved.  Of course our beloved Airfix didn't make any of these, so we had to make our own.  The first ones were created by my friend and I very quickly jumped on the idea.  Light and Heavy Fighters and bombers soon appeared but we never really came up with anything like a set of rules to use them.

A sample page from the story, the art work was actually pretty good

Over the years I have used the same techniques for any number of things but I have to say that it does work rather well for cheap and cheerful ships or space ships.  I think this is because once you create something remotely resembling a deck plan and give it a bit of texture and height the eye sort of fills in the rest.

The current Russian Fleet

You can see how a bit of texture makes them come alive (Russians again)

Any way, back to the Russo-Japanese war at sea.  Rob of the Cabinettewars blog has been good enough to supply me with his version of Damn Battleships Again as well as his campaign rules and map for that war.  I also have the Hong Kong wargaming society's additional rules some of which will be incorporated alongside Rob's rule additions.  The ships are fairly easy to create although the funnels are a bit fiddly.  Basing is on transparent plastic with some wakes and bow waves added.  I can knock out half a dozen in an afternoon pretty easily (I of course actually mean lovingly craft and not knock out).  Terrain is easy as its mostly sea which is basically flat and blue grey coloured with the odd island or coast line which is more lumpy and green-brown coloured.  You can tell I have studied this stuff extensively can't you?

The Japanese opposition

You can see how crude the models are if you zoom in on the nearest line

So far for the Japanese I have three battleships, one armoured cruiser and three protected cruisers while the Russians boast four battleships, one armoured cruiser and one protected cruiser.  I also have three bases of torpedo boat destroyers currently unassigned.  They may look outnumbered but the Russians have four more battleships awaiting funnels and a coat of paint and hulls for three protected cruisers are cut out and awaiting some superstructure.

RAF museum Hendon

Albatros DVa.  I started with this image to avoid the next one being the headline

Just back from a week long stint of looking after two of our Grandchildren.  The older of the two decided that he wanted to go to the RAF museum (without any prompting from me I must add).  So last Wednesday after lunch me, my son and two grandsons set off for the short drive from Watford to Hendon.  Well it would have been short had it not been for the small matter of an overturned lorry and a couple of cars all blocking the M1 for almost two hours.  Should have used the A41 I suppose but that was the way the sat nav said was fastest and I wasn't the designated driver for the trip.  

At least we were only in a queue, poor devils in the crash were much worse off

The result being that rather than a leisurely stroll around the museum, which it really does deserve, what we had was more of a fast trot or at least as fast as a five and eight year old can be persuaded to move when there are screens and buttons to press!

The lack of time was a real shame as there is a lot to see and do at the Hendon museum and it has grown since I last visited around 15 years ago.  There is a lot more interactive stuff both linked to the physical  displays as well as standalone stuff.  The later is mostly by the gift shop on the way out.  New from my last visit is the Short Sunderland flying boat, the expanded Second World War display and the World War One section.  A big hit with the tinies was the small airplane themed play park.

Tank buster Typhoon

The museum itself is free to enter, a donation of £6 is suggested, but car parking has to be paid for although coach parking is free.

I managed a few photos but not as many as I would have liked.  I will be going back next time I'm down there with the intention of making a longer visit.

SE5A with an DH4 (I think) hanging partly out of shot

Sopwith Triplane

BE2C slow and stable, so stable it was Eindekker fodder

Its DBA Jim...but not as we know it!

No it's Phil Barker's 'Damn Battleships Again' a pre-dreadnought naval ruleset using some DBA mechanisms.  I was rooting around following links from wargaming websites and I came across a set of AARs for a Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) naval campaign using these rules and my interest was triggered.  The rules were drafted around 2003 but never made it to a final publication and it seems almost everyone who used them had house rules.   Now naval wargaming is an area I have dabbled in once or twice over the years but without ever finding a set of rules which really grabbed me.  Typically this time around I have found a set that seem like they may actually be interesting enough to make me play a naval game but they are twenty plus years old and not fully finalised!  What was worse was that at first I couldn't find a copy anywhere.  Then I found a post with a link to the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine where I was able to see a copy of the rules and another link to the Wargames Society of Hong Kong with their house rules and amendments.  Of course I immediately started thinking about what changes I might want to make!

Damn Battleships Again (lets call it DBSA for short) is a deliberate attempt to create a simple set of pre-dreadnought naval rules.  To do that they assume that all ships of the same type are identical.  Which to be fair is not too wide of the mark.  Warships are split into battleships, three classes of cruiser, submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers.  There are also armed merchant cruisers and raiders which are classed as cruisers plus some merchant ships.  Each warship has four arcs of fire forward, aft and port and starboard broadsides.  They have a single combat factor which reduces with range and for larger ships can split fire between two arcs but at reduced effect.  Combat is resolved in the usual DBA way by comparing attacker and defender dice rolls.  Unlike DBA there are step reductions showing levels of damage but no recoils or flee outcomes.

The Hong Kong society additional rules assign individual factors to ships rather than have all battleships and cruisers given the same stats.  They also add torpedo gun boats (the precursor to torpedo boat destroyers) and allow capital ships to fire torpedoes.  There are combat deductions for three or more ships firing at the same target to simulate difficulties working out fall of shot for individual firing ships, changes to torpedo attack rules and the interestingly named 'Windy Corner' rule.  Windy corner is the point where a group of ships in line astern turn in sequence on reaching the point where the lead ship turned.  shooting at ships passing through that point is not subject to the multiple shooter deduction as fall of shot isn't as important when targeting an area rather than a single ship.

So I have a set of rules that look interesting but no ships; what to do?  You know the way I think.  I have cardboard, plastic broom bristles, clear plastic sheet and glue, lots and lots of glue, result teeny tiny ships!

Trial run.  It's more of a marker than a model

I'm aiming for 1/4800th scale or there abouts.  The models will be a very rough approximation of the ships they represent but the prototype is good enough for me purposes.

With a ruler to show the size I'm working at

That model is the IJN battleship Mikasa.  Armed with a pair of twin 12" guns in turrets fore and aft and 14 x 6" guns in barbettes and deck mounts.  On top of which (like all capital ships of the period) she mounts multiple smaller calibre quick firing guns as defence against torpedo boat attack.

The tactics of the pre-dreadnought period are interesting.  Other than a straight stand up fight with other major warships attack by a swarm of torpedo boats was the biggest risk to battleships and cruisers.  The initial defence was to have a lot of smaller guns to lay down a hail of fire before the torpedo boat reached firing range.  as torpedoes improved that firing range increased from a few hundred yards to over a thousand yards.  The solution moved to having small fast boats tasked with destroying torpedo boats further out first torpedo gun boats and then the torpedo boat destroyers.  The torpedo boat destroyer also replaced the torpedo boat in the attack role and hey presto the destroyer was born.  Torpedo boats became an obsolete concept until the advent of fast patrol craft like MTBs, MGBs, PT boats and of course the E-boat in the Second World War when the wheel once again turned full circle.  Modelling those little beasts is going to be a bit of a challenge!

Megalomania strikes again!

When I first started to collect 6mm BCW troops the plan was to play Marston Moor using the Forlorn Hope rules.  I don't think I really had a grasp on how large the armies would need to be to do that!  The plan stalled for various reasons, but as a result I had a decent number of Scots Covenantors both painted and lurking in the lead pile awaiting attention.  I also had a number of Highlander and Irish figures which are now just screaming Montrose at me!  That would have the advantage of needing rather less units for the actions from the 1644-45 campaign in Scotland than Marston Moor would require and gives a use for all those Hodden Gray hordes!  With that in mind I painted up some of the lead mountain refugees as O'Cahan's and Laghtnans Irish regiments, using some IM Irish pike and shot castings I found in the depths of the lead pile.  Yes it's a new rabbit hole to go down folks!

Two of the three Irish Brigade regiments plus some Highlanders

Of course that hasn't stopped me drooling over Marston Moor!  I need to organise my troops so I may as well use the Orbat for Marston Moor for that, don't you think?  I'm not overreaching honest!

Byron's Royalist Cavalry Brigade  (poor iPhone image soz)

I'm working on a rough (very rough if I'm entirely honest) 200 men per full base or 100 for a shot half base (as seen in the Irish Brigade).  I'm making no attempt to show proper pike:shot ratios as those differed across the period of the war.  Instead I will have a note of the actual number of pike and shot for each unit for use in combat calculations.

The rebasing project has also set me on a path looking for a set of BCW rules that is flexible on unit sizes versus the actual number of men in the original unit.  I suppose I could adapt my own set or use 'In Deo Veritas' but my curiosity has been peeked by the 'For King and Parliament' rules and you can never have enough rules; right?  Reviews online seem positive but what does the assembled brains trust think of these rules, anyone played them?

Irregular Miniatures 2mm and 6mm ranges update

Some good news to share.  Things have moved on at Irregular, Ron has retired at the grand old age of 98 after a mere 44 years of building up the business, Lawrence and Tara are moving on and Ian and Anne have decided to concentrate on the 10 mm to 54mm ranges.  The 2mm and 6mm ranges have been taken in hand by Nas Bat an ex-Irregular employee who will take on casting and handling orders for those ranges.  He currently has the 2mm moulds and some of the 6mm ranges.

More information at IRREG-2mm 

Painting Irregular Miniatures Covenantor shot

So far so good with regard to 2025 and painting, my mojo remains intact and shows no signs of wandering off on vacation again.  Painting Scottish Covenantors is fairly quick compared to the ancients I have been doing where there is a lack of uniformity.  Mostly its a case of give them a coat of Hodden Grey and pick out a few details and done.  The problem is I'm running out of Scot's infantry until Irregular reopen sales of 6mm figures or Ian Kay takes pity on me.  Still I have lots of other BCW 6mm to paint so all is well.

Hodden Grey...it's grey but what shade exactly?

So what shade of grey was Hodden Grey.  The answer is that isn't the right question!  Hodden Grey was a type of cloth rather than an exact shade.  It was made by mixing the wool of one dark fleece with wool from about a dozen white ones.  Now as white and dark cover a multitude of sins when it comes to sheep the resulting colour would vary from a neutral mid grey through to grey with a brown tinge!  which is nice when mixing paint shades as it is very forgiving.

For these I primed white and gave a thin wash of black ink to bring out the detail and a bit of pre-shading.  Bases got a coat of Vallejo Khaki as it is a good match for my basing sand and then it was time to slap on a coat (and britches) of grey.  This was literally a slap on job as at this stage accuracy doesn't really matter.  Dotting in the faces and hands and a dark brown for the muskets, a pale blue for the bonnets and a mix of red brown for hair and the job is almost done.  Last pick out some straps and scabbards in a light brown and a few lower legs in a contrasting colour to high light the hose (hoes?  long socks).  Once that's dry (a matter of a couple of minutes with acrylics) a coat of satin varnish for protection and a wash of Agrax Eathshade.  I leave them upside down on the painting sticks balanced between two paint pots to get the ink to pool where shadows would naturally be and then lastly a touch of silver where gun barrels can be seen and a bit of the light blue to ensure the bonnets 'pop'.  All done in under an hour if you ignore drying times.

The Irregular figures paint up well and have the advantage of being available in individual strips (or will be as and when they come back on the market).

These will be joining Crawford Lindsey's regiment

The castings have improved a lot over the years from the original dolly peg style figures and are not far behind Baccus now in terms of quality.  I emailed Ian Kay about filling the gaps in my project and he has said he hopes to be more organised in about a month's time and to ask again then, which sounds promising.  So for now it's on to some Scottish Lancers as the next units.

Catching up on old projects (a slight reprise)

I have actually achieved a target for 2025 before January is out!  My Irregular Miniatures 6mm British Civil War troops are rebased and a limited amount of repairing and repainting has been carried out as well.  The standard of painting is OK but some of the details needed updating as I know a bit more than I did when first painting them!  For example I had given  a handful of Scottish infantry royal standards (the red lion rampant on a yellow ground) when only the King or his appointee were allowed to carry it.  Most foot regiments had a white colonel's colour with perhaps the colonels coat of arms so a number of flags were updated.  The cast on bases had to be redone so they blended into the basing sand I use as well.

So here we are all the painted 6mm ECW are rebased

Scots at the front two lines and English behind them.

For the unpainted figures I managed to undercoat all of them as I had a day with low humidity, reasonable temperatures and no wind so out came the rattle cans of primer.  Some of these are on the painting table awaiting  my attention.  I'm considering giving for King and Parliament rules a try they sound interesting and are a reasonable price.

I like this view apart from the poor exposure on my iPhone camera washing out the green cloth's depth of colour

In other news there is a new Facebook group for fans of Irregular Miniatures called Highly Irregular.  It covers 2mm and 6mm as well as their larger scale lines.

Lord of the Rings Risk

You may recall a few posts back I mentioned that the family had played a game of Lord of the Rings (LOTR here after) Risk.  This got me thinking about the possibilities LOTR Risk offers.  Of course the game itself is great fun as written but the board is just screaming out to be used for a campaign of some sort.  If this sparks an interest in obtaining a copy of the game, I don't think it is available new any longer and a quick trawl through the net showed a number of different versions of the game for sale second hand, some at really rather silly prices.

The box (apologies for the poor image )

Lets start with a look at the game as written.  Opening the box finds a good quality hard backed game board, the traditional five dice two black (Defence) and three red (attack).  The playing pieces are cast in a hard (but potentially brittle) plastic.  These are in denominations of one, three and five 'battalions'.  The rules are printed in a full colour booklet and are easy to understand.  The only unclear point is with regard to sea lane attacks, but more on that later.

The game map

The map covers all of those areas of Middle Earth that feature in the books plus a couple that are simply hinted at or just shown on maps.  Apparently some early versions did not include all of the areas from the book (I think it didn't have the southern part of the map).  Thankfully I have the later edition, there was an expansion made to to extend the map for owners of the early version  but whether that is available any longer I don't know.  Like traditional Risk it is divided into regions which if a player controls the entirety of  provide bonus re-enforcements each turn.  Unlike the real world map used in normal Risk there are no easy to defend 'continents'.  The regions bordering the board corners are the nearest to safe area but there are sea lanes that allow attacks on them.  Some borders between regions are uncrossable (mountains and major rivers) although bridges do allow crossings of rivers you need a special event card to pass through a mountain range.  There are also strong holds such as Mordor and places of power such as Weathertop in a few regions.

The playing pieces the top set are 'Evil' bottom are 'Good'

There are four armies, two good and two evil so this limits the game to a maximum of four players.  There are also two leader pieces for each army who provide bonuses to combat dice rolls and can also obtain event cards if they meet certain requirements such as being present when places of power are captured. There are two packs of cards rather than the traditional one.  The first are the event cards these give special bonuses to movement or combat when played, the second are more like the traditional risk cards marked with a region, and a troop type.  They also have good or evil status noted for the region which comes into play in the deployment stage.  Other than that these cards are collected and traded in for re-enforcements just as in standard Risk. 

Deployment has a nice twist built in.  Each player gets a starting allocation of troops (45 'battalions' in the four player game).  The deployment cards are then sorted so those showing a good or evil affiliation are withdrawn from the pack .  The two good players get half of the 'good' regions drawn at random and the evil players the same from the evil side of the deck.  They then place one 'battalion in each region they have been dealt.  This creates a deployment that puts good forces in good area and vice versa for bad.  Next those cards are retuned to the deck which is shuffled and set aside, the pack plays no further part in deployment.  Instead each player in turn places one 'battalion' in an unoccupied region until all areas are claimed.  After that they continue going round the players re-enforcing regions already held by their army until all the allocated troops are deployed.  I rather liked this mechanism.

The game is now played pretty much in the normal way.  The only differences being that leaders grouped with an army give a bonus on attack or defence dice rolls and event cards can be played on the holding players turn to effect re-enforcements, combat or movement.  Traditional Risk might have similar options for all I know, my copy is from the 1960's and doesn't have there bells and whistles!  Sea lanes are more threatening than in original risk as they allow rear areas to be attacked.  The rules are unclear as to whether only one step along a sea lane is allowed or as my son insisted they allow movement past multiple ports.  Personally I prefer a single port to the next port hop and no further. 

There is one final twist the game has a limited but variable number of turns.  This is controlled by the progress of the One Ring along a path from the Shire to Mount Doom.  In most cases the ring moves forward one region along the path at the end of each player turn, but some zones are hard to leave and require a dice roll of better than three on a D6 to move on.  On average I calculate that each player would get four or five turns before the ring is cast into the fires of Mount Doom.  At that point victory is calculated by looking at the number of regions, strongholds and places of power held and completion of any quests thrown up by the event cards.  All in all a nice little game.

As I said at the start of the post the map would be really good for running a campaign on.  The obvious one being a LOTR fantasy game.  I would probably do that by playing the game as written for map movement and fighting any resulting battles as a table top game.  Still I suppose I should finish the Dark Age campaign first, after all I have only been messing about with that since the 1970's!

Catching up with old projects

For reasons that will not be immediately apparent I spent a couple of hours earlier trawling over some of my past blog posts.  It became very clear to me as I swiped through the pages that I do not have a great record of following projects through!  For example Altar of Freedom has only seen two games played, Western shoot outs haven’t been followed up for eighteen months or so and it’s been several years since the last look at the Dark Ages campaign or a World War One dog fight being played.  Clearly I need to get more games in.

So with that in mind the plan is to finish the AI general project by filling in the deployment matrix and then to stop work on that.  Actually once that is done it will be pretty much ready for use and I can start playing some games to test it.  However, while that is happening I'm going to try to pick up the Dark Ages campaign again.  This may or may not involve using ADLG for a few trial games or I may just set up some test games to play under DBA and repeat with ADLG.

Meanwhile an order from Warbases has arrived which has allowed my 6mm BCW rebasing to get underway.  I may achieve one of the objectives for 2025 before the end of January if I'm lucky!

I ordered a couple more of the Antonine Miniatures Strength and Honour units while I was at it more about those once I have them painted.

One Wargamer's Library

There are some books that have really influenced what I do as a wargamer and which I wouldn't really want to part with.  I suppose we all have those books which grabbed our younger selves' attention and shaped how we saw things be they hobbies or more important stuff.  So what follows is my list of those books which really influenced my wargaming life over the last 50 years or more.

1. Battle - Charles Grant

Still worth a look even after all these years

Actually it was the Meccano Magazine series of articles from circa 1968-1969 (which when collected together became this book) which were my first step up from playing soldiers with Airfix figures to wargaming with a set of formal rules.  Not all of the rules made it into the compilation shown here but an expanded edition is available that I presume does have the missing parts.  This wasn't just a set of rules but most importantly included an explanation on why the rules worked the way they did and the thought process that led to them.  Really rather old school now but still capable of providing an enjoyable World War Two game.  

2. Discovering Wargames - John Tunstill

I'd love to get another copy for nostalgia sake

I lost my copy of this 1971 book, or rather booklet so I have parted with it but can't ignore the impact it had .  The Discovering series was intended to give an introduction to a number of hobbies, I recall Discovering Brass Rubbing as another title in the series .  In this work John Tunstill did for Ancients, Napoleonic's and American Civil War gaming what Charles Grant had done for WW2 wargames.  It provided a set of simple rules, but more importantly an explanation of how they were designed.  I still recall his explanation of how a figure's base size was linked to ground scale , how many men a single figure represented (I don't recall if it was 20, 25 or 33 by the way) and the spacings for ranks and files.  Without this and Battle I don't think it would ever have crossed my mind to play around with creating my own rules.  These gave me the toolkit that allowed me to understand the process.

3. WRG Ancient's Rules and Army Lists - Phil Barker et al

Based on a desire to play the rules in Discovering Wargames a friend of mind and I converted lots of Airfix figures into various pre-gunpowder troops (very badly to be honest) but they gave us hours of enjoyment.  Then two things happened in quick succession firstly a model shop opened in Blackburn which stocked Hinchcliffe 25mm metal figures and in my first term at university I saw a game played with an early set of WRG Ancient rules using full armies of 25mm metal figures.  These were a huge step up from previous rule sets I had used.  I think I have copies from 3rd Edition onwards.  Out of fashion now a days but for the 1970's these were the standard other rules aspired to.  The army lists were also a huge innovation as they took much of the guess work out of army creation.  They also stopped the creation of unstoppable but non historical armies as well as creating a shopping list of new must have figures!  On the other side of the coin they fostered the rise of the 'min-max' army creator mentality.

4.  WRG Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome (and all the other 'Armies of' books) - Phil Barker et al

In the world before Osprey's these were the go to reference works for any armies tied to the WRG ancients rules.  I still have a good few of these on my bookshelf and refer to them on a regular basis.  They provided almost everything needed to gain an understanding of the history, main battles, equipment and tactics of the period covered.  The only thing missing was coloured illustrations.  I went as far as getting the coloured pencils out and coloured in the Late Roman shield illustrations to see which ones I wanted to reproduce on my 25mm Hinchcliffe's.  My copy of Imperial Rome is now getting a bit battered after almost 45 years of use! They still get used as my initial reference for any new army I think about creating in the period they cover.  While a lot of more recent information has been published since these first came out they have the advantage of being a one stop shop for the information wanted by wargamers.

5. Warfare in the Classical World - John Warry

It was the cover illustration that grabbed my attention

I saw this in a tiny wargaming shop in York  in the late 1970's or early 1980's, the shop is long gone now (aren't they all) but I still have the book.  I forget how much it cost but suffice to say I was more than slightly nervous about walking into the house and facing the "and how much was that then?" question from Mrs E.  Not that I needed to have worried really.  Its a cross between a general military history of the period from (roughly) the Trojan Wars to the Fall of Rome and a look at weapon's armour and tactics as they developed during that time.  I suppose much of the detailed analysis has been superseded by more recent research but the illustrations and battlefield summaries are still worth a look.

6. Atlas of Military Strategy 1618 - 1878 - David G Chandler

Sorry about the shine from the dust jacket

Ever since I first saw a couple of pages from this book detailing the classical military strategies of antiquity I had wanted my own copy.  Once I actually laid hands on one I was not disappointed.  It really does do what it says on the cover, provide maps and analysis of strategy and tactics as applied for the pike and shot and horse and musket periods.  Well written and easy to digest with some really useful maps and plans to support the text.

There are others of course: the original version of DBA showed just how far a set of rules could be stripped back to while still being playable.  The 1970's Western Gunfight Rules provided an introduction to skirmish level wargames that is still hard to beat.  Then there are the works of fiction that make you stop and think "Ooh that would be an interesting period to game".  Yes, so many books and so little reading time (or book shelf space).

Solo Gaming & AI Generalship a short(ish) update

I am working towards a two or possibly three stage system for the AI opposition.  Stage one is the Fight or Fly decision, stage two is a deployment system and stage three will be a battlefield tactics decision, except it may not be!  This is because the deployment may be all I need, I'm currently wondering if it's going to be the case that once a deployment is decided upon by the AI the actual tactical plan is obvious.  Time will tell on that one.

Here is what I have so far for the deployment stage, the results from the fight or fly test are merged together into four deployment groups, these being:

1.  Aggressive (Fight or fly result one or two)

2. Balanced (results three, four or five)

3. Defensive, (results six or seven) and

4. Retire (results eight, nine or ten)

For each of the four deployment groups there will be ten possible deployments, imagine a grid of four columns of ten rows giving forty possible choices of deployment. To generate a deployment the column is selected that matches the fight or fly result and a single cell obtained by a di roll or card draw.  A result of one being a less aggressive deployment and a ten being the most aggressive deployment for that column.  Some of these results will be duplicated so for example the three least aggressive deployment options in the aggressive column (numbers 1-3) would be mirrored as the most aggressive deployment options of the balanced deployment options (numbers 8 - 10).  This should mean that I need 31 deployment descriptions.  Which is where you 'dear reader' come in!  It would help me enormously if you could suggest some deployments to fill the spaces in the grid.

An example of the sort of thing I am looking for is:

"No reserve line, extend cavalry wings, mass at least 70% of any shock cavalry on one wing (dice for which) deploy light infantry and cavalry to screen the assault troops balance to the weaker wing."

It might help to go back and look at the fight or fly test factors which would create the outcomes that I grouped up into the four deployment categories.  In principle the aggressive deployment group expects to simply roll over the enemy, the balanced deployment expects a fight but with an advantage to the AI, Defensive expects a stiff fight with the enemy force having advantage, and retire is an AI general having an 'Oh bugger we are in the deep do do here, what can we salvage'.  Remember that each column covers a range of fight and fly outcomes so I'm attempting to generate a range of deployments for each column.

It's worth knowing that the deployment layout uses a nine box grid taken from Rob's suggested blog site 'Grid Based Wargames' (thanks Rob I found some rather useful ideas there).  These are three lines each with a right wing, centre and left wing.  The lines from front to rear being Advance guard, main Line and Reserve.  I may add a fourth line but with only a central box for a grand reserve or similar.