I Just Wanted To Point Out...

...something that, as a SYW wargamer, is one of my little hobby horses. 

In the introduction to my copy of Koenig Krieg, the eighteenth century is described as 'the golden age of warfare'. This concept will be familiar to any wargamer who has read the works of such giants as Charles Grant (senior) and Donald Featherstone (RIP), although these sensible gentleman expressed the thought rather less naively. This kind of thinking occasionally also surfaces in various current blogs which don't have the excuse of being written many years ago.

I have long thought such judgements misguided. Having recently come across the following quote from Dennis Showalter's Frederick the Great: A Military History (2012), I wanted to share it with other wargamers. 

Few interpretative structures have been as thoroughly shredded in the past quarter century as the one describing the eighteenth century as an age of limited war. Images of battles fought in vacuums by marginalised men while normal people freely go about their business no longer survive even in textbooks

The interested reader would also do well to consult Szabo's The Seven Years War In Europe, or Duffy's The Military Experience In The Age Of Reason. War has no golden ages, and the wars of the 18th century appeared 'civilised' only in comparison to the appalling excesses of the Thirty Years War which preceded them.

My hobby is about playing with toy soldiers, and must in the end be conclusively separated from real warfare. Doing this means educating oneself about the historical reality in ways other than uniform details and weapon statistics. Such an educative process is our responsibility as thinking wargamers, and ultimately also as citizens.

So there.

A New Project (5)

How time flies. It was nearly a year ago that this project began, and it was supposed to be all over by Christmas; (that sounds familiar). The target of Christmas 2012 has become Christmas 2013. Maybe I should stop having targets.

Anyway, real progress has recently been made, and yesterday I was able to set up the table and attempt a solo run-through of the scenario, to check how things would look and play. The captions to the photos will tell the tale. The whole setup is based mainly on the attack on Ypenburg airfield on 10th May 1940. Those unfamiliar with the blog should also note that the rules in use are Blitzkrieg Commander.

So this is how the table looks, at 6' x 6'. The airfield is the main objective, with the airport buildings and the bridge in the background forming secondary objectives. Fallschirmjaeger have landed to the north and south-west of the airfield. The grass 'runways' are for effect only - I believe the airfields in question were mostly just large grass areas.

With their high CV, the German paras closed quickly on the airfield defences. Here units from the south western DZ overrun the airfield command post.

Their colleagues from the North also attacked the airfield defences aggressively.

Move 3 and the first wave of Ju-52s lumber over the eastern airfield boundary. Things had gone better for the Germans than in the real attack and AA fire was light.

The first wave has landed largely intact. Having completed 4 moves of what is supposed to be a 12 move game, I had seen enough to be going on with. The full scenario involves Polish reinforcements competing with the build-up of German airlanding units for possession of the airfield and secondary objectives.

I was fairly happy with the setup itself, but the scenario conditions appeared to favour the German attack too strongly. In real life they received a bloody nose, with the inbound airlanding units taking heavy casualties from AA fire that had been largely unsuppressed by a scattered fallschirmjaeger drop. In fact, the Dutch eventually succeeded in retaking the airfield later in the day. So a few tweaks were needed to make the German air assault a bit more risky.

With only 8 model Ju-52s available, and 4 models in each airlanding wave, it is necessary to have rules whereby they are recycled for use in subsequent waves. This is mostly achieved by allowing them to take off again, just as they would have done in real life to avoid getting destroyed on the ground. I have settled on a simple 50/50 dice throw for a successful take off - apart from enemy fire, the airfield was boggy in places and there were friendly aircraft to avoid. I will also make an extra 40mm Bofors model available to strengthen the Dutch AA curtain. AA defences in the Ypenburg area were strong historically. When everything is finalised I will publish a full scenario with forces and map.

The only real problem is that this is a game needing a bit longer than a couple of hours in the evening. Organising the time, place and opponents to do the scenario justice might be tricky. I guess we'll see. No more target dates for the moment!

DBA - We're Lovin' It!

Very pleased to have got into this gaming system. If it wasn't for DBA, I wouldn't be getting any wargaming in at all.

My buddy Paul and I have got into something of a routine. Paul will pop over for a couple of hours, we'll set up a game, play it, then reverse forces for a second game. Then it takes me about 10 minutes to pack up. Simples! Our limited free time has hardly been dented but we have enjoyed an absorbing and enjoyable game with real toy soldiers. 

A couple of photos from our latest session below. I am experimenting with a bit of railway scenic background that I bought a while back. Forgive the quality - these are just quick snaps.

My Ancient British warband waits on the hill in the foreground. As the legionaries inched closer, they couldn't resist a downhill charge, but it didn't come off. Too many elements lost, and victory for the Romans. 

Second game. Now I was the Romans. Waiting for a favourable turn, I charged uphill into the enemy warband, this time with even worse results than my last attack. I thought stacking my auxiliaries in column near the river, ready to pounce across the bridge, was dead clever, but casualties amongst the legionaries lost me the game anyway.

I find I'm getting back into felt scenery these days. It sticks so well to TSS tiles and is very flexible and cheap. I don't think it looks too bad either. The felt bases for woods are essential in DBA, as the wooded area needs to be clearly defined. In my SYW and Polish games, I find I am deploying my felt roads almost all the time now. The fancy rubber roads I bought a while back tend to stay in storage.

If you're thinking of moving into felt terrain pieces, these guys have an extensive range and provide good service:

The Wool Felt Company

I find the 30% blend the best for wargaming uses. Less fluffy. Happy felting!

Consumerism Gives Purpose

Sometimes it's best to just come clean. 

A number of posts on this blog have expressed concerns about over-commercialisation of the hobby and the growth of Corporate Wargaming. The only time I had an article published in a glossy magazine, I concluded by encouraging readers to chant, 'I am a wargamer, not a consumer' (see this post from 2010). But, well... let's say I've been a bit down lately. I've been living away from home during the working week, and actual wargaming (that is, fighting battles with my toys) has dried up. So I'm afraid I've sought solace in retail therapy. This is not really what I want to be doing, but let me admit everything. Mea culpa, mea maxi culpa...

Books

Ah yes, I'm always a sucker for books. To start with, I told myself time and again I didn't need Henry Hyde's Wargaming Compendium. It would be full of stuff I already knew and that I would have read before in any number of general wargaming books. But then a moment of weakness came over me and I saw I could get it cheap on Amazon. So there went twenty quid or so.

I'm fairly glad I bought it. It is indeed a labour of love by Henry, and a great deal of effort has clearly gone into this weighty tome, but for my money some of those gushing Amazon reviews are a bit over the top. For a book aimed particularly at beginners in the hobby, I reckon it will be read mainly by experienced gamers, which is interesting as (to repeat) a lot of this is well known stuff. So we have a newly published book which many will immediately see as a nostalgia read.

Contemporary nostalgia. The view from my armchair on one of the last days of summer.

Let me give you some examples of my fairly minor reservations. In explaining some of the basic mechanisms, I feel Henry is beaten in clarity by George Gush's 1980 book A Guide To Wargaming, which remains my favourite general guide despite being thirty years out of date. I also reckon the section on blogging could have been a bit longer, to give the book some more modern relevance. And whilst Henry's rule set was interesting to read, it was a bit too complex for my taste. 

Nevertheless, there is a lot in this book (including much advice on modelling and painting) and I know I will be coming back to it in the future, which is the test of a worthwhile purchase. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Also obtained are Charles Grant's Fontenoy (1975) and the Osprey Zorndorf 1758 (2003). Both good, solid wargames reads. I won't go into detail - if the 18th century is your thing, they are both recommended.

Magazines

And the list continues. Miniature Wargames 365 was purchased, then Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy 68. Both were OK, and kept me occupied for a few hours, but 'OK' is as far as I would go. No great inspiration here. Ho hum.

Figures

Oh, I hate those wargamers who write about how they just 'couldn't resist' some set of figures they've seen. But on seeing the new armed civilians range from Minden Miniatures, I just couldn't resist them. In my defence, I only bought ten, and the 'civilian militia' unit is already ready for action, thanks to Neil Parsons at Mount and Blade.

Neil's photo sent to show the (excellent) job he had done.

My photo after basing. Yes, plain flocking - the basing of champions!

After my last post, I had decided to leave the subject of painting alone (particularly as I know very little about it). However, I think it's worth noting that many figure painters would consider the figures unfinished. This is not down to Neil, who simply followed my instructions. I did add a spot of dark flesh to emphasise eyes and mouths, as well as flocking the bases, but the point I want to make is that the top photo in particular shows the figures in close up. They are nice figures nicely photographed, but a good part of the impression that they might be 'unfinished' is generated by the illusion that they are at least 40mm in size, or maybe bigger. But they are only 30mm figures. From 'wargames ranges' my own opinion is that these little marvels are indeed as finished as they need to be.

Continuing to trawl the adverts in my wargames magazines in search of a fix, I happened upon the one placed for Eagle Figures. These are nice looking miniatures with a 1980s pedigree, and a good SYW range is available. Just what I needed to flesh out some of my final units with command groups.

When I first received them, I thought they were lovely figures but too bulky to match with my elegant RSM95s. On reflection, and looking at the photos I took for the blog, I'm not so sure. I think they will blend nicely, and I will give them a go. Thanks to Ian at Eagle for excellent service.

Eagle officers, drummer and standard bearer with RSM infantrymen at either end.

Gliders

Oh, the shame! These were my most straightforwardly unnecessary purchase. A box of 4 Battlefront DFS230 gliders were bought on a whim, at the end of a lonely evening in my digs at Oxford. The excuse is that I am probably going to keep most of the fallschirmjager that I bought a while back, and these gliders will give me an additional reason to trot them out in fictional Poland 1939 scenarios. 

The good news is that the models are great, being easy to put together and very nicely moulded, as well as being reasonably priced. 

What me, bothering to paint splinter camouflage? I don't think so!

I chopped 10mm off each wingtip to reduce the table footprint of these babies, and left off the optional machine gunners as these wouldn't be correct for the 'A' model that would have been used in 1939. The wing cropping doesn't alter the fact that these gliders are over-sized when compared with the Zvezda 1/200th Ju-52s that I also have (see below). However, since airlanding troops would be unlikely to operate with glider troops, a mismatch can probably be avoided.

My name's Keith, and I'm a consumer-holic

Oh for heaven's sake, why worry? The lead hillock is hardly increased, and I have some nice books and models in my possession. But a quick tally shows all the above cost me around £120 in total, including painting services and postage. That's a not inconsiderable sum over a few weeks. 

Let this be a warning to you all.

Rick Priestley On Painting Standards

In a June post regarding wargames magazines I mentioned (in rather rude terms) my views on what I consider the excessively high standards to which some wargames figures are painted these days. I thought it worth highlighting that none other than Rick Priestley has been writing about the same thing in Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine. Many thanks to the producers of WSS for making this particular piece of writing available online.

A worried man.

The article is an excellent one and well worth reading. As you might expect, whilst Rick seems to have some doubts about how things are going, he is much more positive and circumspect than myself. But what is one to think when a wargamer with Rick's high standards ends up writing "now I sometimes despair of picking up the paintbrush and showing the results to my fellow gamers"? Sad indeed. 

Rick's insider's view informs us of a major reason for the trend in wargaming figures that are just too good. I wrote in my post that "dedicated figure painters have much to answer for", blaming hobbyists for the tendency. Rick indicates that commercial pressures must bear much of the blame (assuming you believe 'blame' is the right word). It seems launching and sustaining new and existing ranges can only be done if the figures are shown as individual subjects painted to the highest possible professional standard, regardless of how much it might cost. 

The barrage of such images online and in magazines inevitably buttresses the view that this is the standard we must all strive for. To anyone who holds that view, my response is, balderdash. But make your own mind up. To this end, I recommend this blog post, which is a good one, although I tend to disagree with it. Certainly, if Mr Priestley is having doubts (even polite ones), I think we have confirmation that this is a subject worth airing. And I would like to encourage as many gamers as possible to ignore the deviation into 'miniature works of art' and to paint their figures to what is often called 'a good wargames standard'. And be proud of it. Let the producers of over-painted and over-costly figures be the ones to despair. 

Block painters of the world unite!

Back From Hols

So, just returned from a very satisfactory 2 weeks off work, consisting of a few days around Exmoor with the lady wife, then a week on the Union Canal in Scotland en famille. The latter included an evening at the Edinburgh Tattoo, which was as good as ever.

Thanks to Steve J I had a number of back issues of Wargames Illustrated to pass the time, as you can see below. Despite my occasional caustic comments on the corporate nature of this publication, I have to admit that some very readable articles continue to be published therein.

The man behind the bullshit relaxes on the afterdeck of his (rented) narrowboat

And here's an idea...

Of course, the above bit of fluff will hardly constitute a satisfying post for the discerning wargamers who frequent this blog. So, let me pass on an idea that occurred to me whilst reading an article on hidden movement in one of said magazines. In a post from 2009 I mentioned my use of the old-fashioned idea of a curtain across the middle of the wargames table, to create a 'hidden' set up which gives a bit of interest to a basic encounter game. Further thought suggested that not only the armies but the terrain as well could receive the same treatment. 

So set up your curtain across the middle of a bare playing surface, allocate forces and a selection of terrain to each side, then each player can set up their own side of the table independently. This represents not only ignorance of your enemy's deployment, but also the frequent situation where the countryside on your opponent's side of the hill is a mystery to you as well. 

Now I admit I have not tried this out yet, but it would seem to be a way to give interest to a simple encounter game. If players have a selection of both units and terrain to choose from, they can indulge in the task of making a terrain that suits both the force balance they have selected as well as their tactical intentions for the game ahead. Of course, they may have a nasty surprise when their opponent's choices are revealed. 

Let me know what you think.

The Seven Years War - Number Crunching

"Look, just bugger off. We're trying to concentrate here."

Trying to work out how well our rules create games that might approximate to real events is one of the central conundrums of wargaming. Of course it gets harder the further back in history we go, as the stream of film, photos, statistics and written records thins out and then disappears.

A rare chance to check out my own rules occurred this week whilst I was reading Christopher Duffy's The Military Experience In The Age Of Reason. On page 209 he briefly tackles the problem of how many bullets might have been fired for each death caused to the enemy. There was enough there for me to take things forward and see how my own rules squared up to historical reality.

Getting Down And Dirty

Apparently, after the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz, Frederick instigated an investigation to try and discover how effective his troop's fire had been. A gentleman writing in 1756 used the figures to estimate that around 650,000 rounds were fired at Chotusitz, resulting in about 2,500 deaths, 'and as many wounded'.

This gives a figure of 260 rounds expended per death. According to Duffy, this is in the same ballpark as figures arrived at for a number of other 18th century battles, although the examples Duffy gives are for some of the lesser known actions rather than the main battles of the SYW. Looking up Chotusitz online, it is easy to discover that the total Austrian casualties in that battle (killed, wounded, prisoners, missing) were around 7,000. In round numbers, this gives about 100 rounds per casualty. As Duffy explains, this ratio would be reduced by an allowance for casualties produced by artillery and cavalry, but increased by the fact that a good proportion of the rounds expended were not actually fired but quite likely simply discarded by the soldiers. We can already see that this whole 'investigation' is a very rough and ready process. However, let's continue.

And so to my own rules. I designate a turn length of up to 10 minutes (which seems to be the fashion these days. Those old 2 minute turns seem to have gone for good). As I'm not saying a turn is exactly 10 minutes, let's assume that an infantry battalion which is firing does so for an average of 5 minutes in a turn. So 600 guys fire 3 rounds a minute, making 9,000 rounds heading the enemy's way during 5 minutes. Using 100 bullets per casualty gives us an average of 90 casualties per turn. This would give 180 casualties (nearly a third of a typical enemy battalion) in 2 turns, and 270 casualties (nearly half a battalion) in 3 turns.

I found this generally reassuring. Firefights using my rules are generally resolved, at least temporarily, in 2 or 3 turns (retreating units may rally later). Whilst it was not uncommon for battalions to suffer more than 50% casualties in hard fought battles, even when winning, I am reasonably happy that a third or half casualties would be enough to take most battalions out of the fight for a bit, if not permanently.

Now of course the various assumptions and estimations used in arriving at these figures may well be inaccurate, or may have varied from situation to situation. There's not much we can do about the inaccuracy, except perhaps devote a lifetime of research to the surviving primary sources. As for the variety, I am prepared to let the dice and modifiers take care of that. At least my rules didn't seem to be wildly at variance with these particular calculations.

The Old Moving And Firing Problem

Following the example of Black Powder, I have left out a negative modifier for moving and firing in my rules until now. However, prompted by this post on Ross Mac's outstanding 'Battlegame of the Month' blog, I have decided to relent. My original decision was based on,

1. Simplicity. One less modifier, and more importantly no need to remember who's moved and who hasn't.

2. Encouraging aggression. I found that knowing your fire would likely be less effective than the standing enemy you were attacking made players (me included) reluctant to close to musket range. This is, I believe, a main reason the modifier doesn't appear in Black Powder.

Nevertheless, I find I can no longer ignore the rather obvious conclusion that the fire of moving units would be less effective than those not moving. Therefore a -1 modifier for moving and firing now appears in my rules.

As for aggression, players will have to behave more 'realistically', and gain advantage in an attack by artillery preparation and/or by arranging to outnumber the defending troops in one way or another, even if this means counting a first line as expendable.

In Black Powder, I have also succumbed in the area of moving and firing, by accepting a house rule developed by other players based on one of the special rules introduced in the Last Argument Of Kings supplement. My rule reads as follows,

'Infantry deduct 1 firing dice if they move twice, and 2 firing dice if they move 3 times.'

I give Prussian infantry an advantage by only making them deduct 1 dice if moving 3 times, with no deduction for moving twice. I suppose for really poor infantry (Reichsarmee for example) you could disallow firing completely if moving more than once. 

For any Black Powder players reading this blog, this set of house rules posted by Bill5549 on his blog are well worth your attention.

I'll Be Back
I wish I could promise some real wargames action on this blog in the near future, but spare time for proper battles is limited at the moment. The wargaming world will, however, be relieved to know that I have ordered some new deciduous trees to take the place of the lumps of lichen on sticks I have been using for the past 20 years or more. So the battlefields might look a bit better when they finally feature again on this blog.