Nellie Saves the Day

I suppose it would be only fair to show a picture of the map of the Burmese campaign.

The dark blue pin shows where Toungoo is, the light blue pins indicate the cities that have recognised my enlightened rule. Well, except Prome, of course, which I had to introduce to enlightened rule at the point of a spear (see the previous post). The above is the result of the first move, in the 1530 turn.

The second part of the turn is the random event. I hoped for nothing much to happen, which is quite likely this early in the campaign, as I do not have too many vassals and so on to revolt. Unfortunately, this was not to be and I ended up with some pesky raiders attacking my easternmost city, in this case Toungoo. Now, in the original Aztec game the raiders were Chichimec, which meant that they were almost all skirmishers. They were not really a threat, but difficult to beat. In this campaign, they are from Lan Xang, and consist of 8 infantry, 2 bows, and 2 skirmishers, which look to be quite a handful.

They were, indeed, quite a handful. My side of the table was fairly featureless except for a hill. Their side, however, could have been made for such an army – a village, woods, a hill, and a stream. The raiders deployed with their foot blocking the gaps and archers in the right-hand woods, and skirmishers in the village. The playing cards, as ever, are potential ambushes.

I decided to deploy all my infantry on my right to crash through their defences. This would be backed up by my elephant and general. On my left, the cavalry would mask the village, wood, and the rest of their infantry. What could possibly go wrong?

I imagine you have already guessed what could go wrong: bad dice rolling (for me) and good dice rolling (for the raiders). The shot above shows a few moves into the game. My infantry have gone in. On the raider’s left the first column is doing its job. The column with the general, however, has been bounced, while the raiders have had sufficient tempo to start to switch the rest of their infantry from their right to the left. Meanwhile, the bowmen in the wood have disrupted my cavalry. Humbug.

A move or two later and the raider infantry on their left have fled, pursued by my rightmost column. The infantry whose charge failed, however, have been charged in flank by some raider infantry and destroyed, their tormentors move pursuing (red counter) while the rest of my infantry is attempting to recover their poise. My cavalry, or some of it, anyway, is now sweeping around the village to take the enemy from behind.

A bit later still. My infantry have pursued across the stream and are in disarray. Their triumphant infantry has started to rally. My cavalry has charged their central infantry (and general) from behind and been bounced. The cavalry are now hors de combat for a couple of turns. On their right, the skirmishers and bowmen are now playing hunt the shaken cavalry base. On their extreme left, however, I have moved my elephant base up behind my skirmishers, and, as it says in the title, Nellie is about to save the day.

The picture shows the end of the game. Nellie has charged the raider infantry by the woods in flank and they are now routing. The rest of my infantry has now recovered their poise and are ready to advance, while the cavalry are recovering. The raiders have been forced to turn their central infantry around to face the cavalry. Even my detached cavalry base has recovered from its shakiness and is limbering up to make someone’s day a misery, hopefully not mine.

And that was it. The raider’s morale went to withdraw, and so they did. I was too relieved to pursue, and it was unnecessary anyway. With the loss of a single infantry base I had triumphed over the raiders, although it was a close-run thing. The raiders were a tougher opposition than I expected, I confess, and if the elephant had not intervened decisively, I am not entirely sure how it would have finished.

Still, a second scraped victory in the campaign, and my personal rating is up another notch. My losses are a single infantry base, so that should be restored in the spring of 1531 so while I had a narrow squeak, no long-term material damage has been done.

I do think, however, that I am still learning how to handle this army. I thought, when I pulled the cards for it, that the main advantage I had was in cavalry, but the experience of these two battles suggests that the major strength is in the infantry. While, admittedly, they rolled terribly in this game, they were not that useful, and in the previous one, they were, in fact, attacked by enemy infantry and only just fought them off. The elephant is a useful unit both defensively, as last time, and offensively, as this. In this game, I could, possibly, have led with the elephant to crush one side or the other of the enemy infantry, which could have then been exploited with the cavalry coming from reserve.

I suppose the other thing I am still adjusting to is the fact that this is a campaign. I feel I have rather fought these two battles as I would one-off wargames, throwing everything into the fray in an attempt to win outright, rather than making sure I preserve force and the army overall. It is a different balance in a campaign between trying to win and preserving units and force. Obviously, the attempt to win is still there – I do have my personal rating to reckon with – but I also need a viable army to back me up. Not everything can be won by reputation alone.

Still, I have survived my first year as ruler. On to 1531….

The Forging of Toungoo

A while ago I mentioned that I had tried out a campaign set in 16^th Century Burma, but it had not worked terribly well. Still, I got a wargame out of it, so not everything was a disaster. While the campaign mechanics were too complex, I do like the odd elephant on the table, and when a photograph of the battle came around on my screen background, it raised a smile. So that was encouraging.

After some pondering, I decided to have a go at a rather simpler campaign idea. This dates back to somewhere around the year 2000, when I wrote an article in Miniature Wargaming based on the rise of the Aztecs. More recently, I revived and slightly modified the campaign for the Siena series in the Italian Wars. The modification involved the addition of rules for someone trying to assassinate me.

For this sort of city-state warfare, it seems, the general idea works well. There are basically two turns per campaign year, one is a random event such as a famine, revolt or invasion, and the other is as the player determines. Battles are fought if cities to which the player moves do not submit, if there is a revolt or invasion, and so on. This is all controlled by dice and playing cards.

I spent a morning or so reviving the rules and transferring them to South-East Asia. This was mostly working out the composition of the random events table and who invaders might be. This turned out to be Mogul Indians, Siamese and Ming Chinese, which seems fair to me as some of the eastern peoples were Chinese culturally.

The first turn die roll indicated that it was my move to start with in 1530. I therefore attacked Prome, my neighbour to the west. While their submit roll was not too high, nevertheless they refused to become my vassals and a wargame had to be fought.

A complication (or refinement) of this system now is that the armies are drawn randomly. I drew 7 tribal foot, 3 cavalry, a skirmisher base and an elephant. Prome drew 5 tribal foot, 4 elephants, 2 bow and a cavalry. I was quite morose at this, I confess. Elephants are very powerful units on the board, and little can stand in their way, as the last wargame demonstrated.

I was daunted, but as I had implemented some rule changes after last time to reduce the total dominance of the nellies a bit – I had slowed them down to infantry pace from cavalry – I thought that I might have a chance if I could get my cavalry into the enemy infantry. This is the joy of random systems, I suppose. They throw up totally unexpected situations which the solo wargamer has to work out how to deal with.

The set-up is above. The army of Prome is to the left, deployed up to their centreline (as they are the defenders). I initially deployed them further back but wanted to get the archers onto the hill nearest the camera (hence the general’s elephant with them). My brave lads are deployed in a fairly compact formation on the right. My plan is to get the infantry onto the hill where they might have a chance against the elephants, and get the cavalry into the opposing infantry as soon as possible. The playing cards (there are, in fact, three on the table) were ambushes set by Prome. Fortunately, they were all false, as it turned out.

The game was played on the day of Storm Darragh here in North Yorkshire, so the room was dark and I was suffering from a lot of flash splash or, alternatively, camera shake. So the shots are not terribly good, but hopefully give enough to sustain the narrative.

Prome got their archers onto the hill, but then they were too far away to affect the action. The general had to rush off to get the elephants moving against me. The enemy infantry (the cheek) moved up and charged my cavalry. This looked bad, at least initially, as the cavalry were forced back by the shock. However, they did rally magnificently.

On my left, one column of my foot charged the Prome cavalry, downhill, and routed them. I also moved myself up to support the cavalry and moved my central column up to support the cavalry. Meanwhile, my elephant which was hanging around at the back, moved into place to protect my flank from the enemy elephants. A bit of a forlorn hope, I felt.

The above picture shows the scene towards the end of the action. I have just managed to rout two of the annoying infantry bases in the centre, and one of my cavalry bases has managed to bounce a rouge elephant. On my left, a remarkable event has happened. My lone elephant base, charged by three enemies including their general has, in fact, routed one of them. The others, after the unsuccessful charge, are in some disarray.

The end was not far away. My cavalry charged down the hill at the remaining Prome infantry and routed them, while my elephant turned against one of the enemy. This resulted in the rout of the Prome army and a hugely unexpected victory for Toungoo. Prome lost 7 elements, all 5 infantry bases, a cavalry and an elephant base, to, well, I lost none.

I confess to a huge slice of luck. My elephant should have gone down to the charge of Prome. The odds were stacked against it, but it rolled a 6-1 on the combat dice and pushed its immediate foe back. This left said foe on the back foot and without its supports, who had just gone doubly terrain-shaken post-charge. My nellie followed up and on another good roll routed it. Similarly fortunate, my cavalry base blocking the other elephant managed to get away with only being shaken.

In short, it was a damn close run thing. But most empires need a bit of luck to begin with I think. I’ll have to see what the random event brings.

Ethics and Wargaming

The last post on the blog managed to obtain some reaction, so it is probably worth pondering a bit further. I suppose I need to clarify some of my own thinking on the subject and attempt not to set up any straw men for reasoning about wargame period, army, or action choice. I suppose, first up, I should say I am not questioning anyone’s choice of wargame, as I hope the following might suggest.

Firstly, it is worth saying plainly that I do not think that there is a particular ethical problem with choosing any particular wargame project. I cannot see how anyone could have an objection to wargaming any particular historical period or army. History shows, after all, that any country, tribe, or whatever engaging in combat is liable to have to make some moral judgment, and some of those are going to be dubious. Burleigh’s Moral Combat, reviewed here, makes such a point. In the Second World War the Allies, with limited resources, had to decide where to deploy them. On the whole, they stuck to plans that would bring the war to an end as quickly as possible. They may not have always succeeded, of course, but that was, in Burleigh’s view, an entirely laudable aim. Bombing railway lines to disrupt transport to Auschwitz would have diverted resources and lengthened the war costing more lives, and probably would not have particularly slowed down the Nazi slaughter of Jewish people. After all, Auschwitz was not the only way they had developed of exterminating people.

In some moral philosophy, there are rights and duties, which are fine and dandy until they start to bump into each other. If the Allies had the duty to finish the war as quickly as possible, and the Jews had a right to protection from the enemies of the Third Reich, with a concomitant duty on the Allies to execute that protection, then in a resource-limited world the two demands are in conflict and one has to be chosen. It is no wonder that the consumption of alcohol and cigarettes by the leaders of the Allied powers increased radically during the war.

Not that WW2 is the only arena where moral issues come to the fore, of course. Similar considerations reverberate through history, at least for as long as leaders have attempted to justify their actions to their people or some sort of nebulously defined ‘world opinion’. The bottom line is, more or less, that the leaders have to have a degree of support from their aristocracy and those lower down the social order in order to get anything done at all, let alone declare war.

With respect to wargaming, however, we do not have any of these ethical concerns around us. We can place a 1943 German army on the battlefield happily without particularly worrying about what it was they were defending. Similarly, with such warfare as that between the Wallachians and Ottomans in the 14^th Century (or so, I forget the exact dates of Vlad Tepes). The game is the thing: impaling captives on sharpened logs and watching them die slowly is not part of any wargame I know, or would wish to be a part of.

It gets a bit more tricky with Science Fiction games and their ilk. As someone mentioned, players of these games often take a stance that suggests in historical games someone has to play the ‘bad’ guy, while in their games, as they are fictional, there is no moral problem at all. To some extent that is correct, of course, but it also is not bombproof. Science Fiction, often, is based on our current reality. Thus an SF game based around fascist states warring with each other is, in my view anyway, no better than Germany v Russia in WW2. The former, however, might be slightly more worrying to the neutral observer.

Still, overall, I do not detect an ethical problem here. I do detect, as I have said before, a matter of taste. Working backward, I do detect a lack of taste in some SF RPGs I have played – this is often disguised as ‘darkly humorous’ but can disguise, at least, tastelessness. It is not, however, unethical to play such games, I think.

Thus, the Russian Front in WW2 is also not unethical, although it might upset some people worried that such a wargame disguises the murderous nature of the regimes involved. The point is surely that history happened and it cannot be undone. As a side issue, of course, the current concerns about slavery and colonialism run into similar problems: they happened. It is what we do with the facts of the happening today that counts. History is never, it seems, wholly a matter of the past.

Sidestepping into the present, the original question was posed about current events in Ukraine and Gaza, and whether it would be ethical to wargame them. I am not sure about the ethics of wargaming present wars: as with history, the events have happened, even if we do not like them. On the other hand, I can quite see how some people would regard such games as being in very poor taste.

Taste is a funny thing, however. Imagine you are on a crowded bus, a few stops from your destination. The people around you start to engage in various unpleasant activities: urinating, defecating, engaging in sexual activity, and so on. Suppose that these activities slowly get more unpleasant, and ask yourself: at what point would I get off the bus and walk?

The point here is that offensive activities, such as those engaged in by the other passengers, do not actually cause us harm. Similarly, a wargame based around Ukraine is not actually going to cause anyone harm, but it might cause some people offence and, hence, by those people, be classified as tasteless. As with the bus example, is this just a case of deciding where to get off and walk? Or is there a deeper issue about representing current events?

I’m not sure I know the answer, but I’ll stick to pre-1745 wargames just to be on the safe side.

How Soon is Too Soon?

Normally, this blog is written a bit in advance, maybe a week or six. But not at the moment. I have been busy, as I said before, and wargaming has, while not taken a back seat, has certainly had to be fitted in around other things. Thus, this week, I had no particular ideas except the half-formed Hamptonshire campaign. Fortunately, as supper one night, the Estimable Mrs P. asked a question which saved the day, as it were:

‘How soon is too soon to wargame something?’

I asked for some clarification, and it turned out she was wondering whether anyone was wargaming Ukraine or Gaza. Well, I have not seen any such game, at least so far, except in professional gaming circles, but that is, after all, their job. But I dare say someone is at least considering Ukraine even if it is not being actively wargamed yet.

It put me in mind of some of the posts from the early days of the blog when I was wondering what the ethical implications of wargaming were. As far as I recall, there are none, in particular, but there are plenty of matters of taste. At least, there are ethical matters about behaviour, such as whether to cheat or not, but not about the choice of wargame subject, which is a matter of taste. The difference is, I suppose, that taste varies while ethical considerations at least make a claim to be objective. Whether or not they are is a matter of opinion, of course, but that seems to be the difference.

So, to return to the question, how soon is too soon to wargame something as a hobby game? I tried to avoid the question, of course and observed that I do not play anything post about 1745, but that was not permitted as an answer. I hazarded ‘about the last 100 years’, so included nothing which is in people’s living memory, more or less. That actually puts World War One in the frame, and I am unsure if I would really want to wargame that. I have seen, of course, very good and interesting WW1 games, but it just is not to my wargaming taste, I suppose.

However, I have dabbled in World War Two wargaming, such as the Siege of Malta game which is in that book (for the record, the Allies lost Malta and, presumably, the Suez Canal was cut). That was a more pen-and-paper game than one which included getting models out, however, and I still harbour suspicions that, except at a skirmish level, WW2 is best played in that way. I know that there are some operational and strategic level games out there which use models, and I think that is a good thing, but they are heading more to the pencil-and-paper resource management level of the game anyway.

So, having brought the wrath of all right-thinking WW2 wargamers down upon my head, what about more recent warfare. Korea is certainly done, of course, and can be regarded, I suppose, as an off-shoot of WW2 – the equipment, except jet fighters, was more or less the same. Vietnam is a bit more tricky, of course, with lots of airmobile units, helicopter gunships, and mass bombings, aside from charming ideas such as Agent Orange. Again, it is a matter of taste, but for me, wargaming counter-insurgency operations is heading into the tasteless, because civilians are heavily involved.

So too are more recent conflicts, many of which are Co-In in nature. For example, recent activities in Iraq and Afghanistan were certainly counter-insurgent operations, and while I have seen them wargamed, do not really seem to have caught on. Perhaps it is because the home countries of many wargamers lost, or perhaps because insurgents and terrorism make somewhat less than good wargames. I am not sure, and time will tell.

Arrival at some conflicts possibly gives us some pause. The Falkland Islands I have seen wargamed, but not all that much. Perhaps it became too politicised too quickly for many wargamer’s tastes. The assorted post-colonial wars are occasionally done, but most people, understandably, prefer some sort of imaginary game rather than the brutal reality of, say, Biafra or the death squads in Central and South America. For example, I did rather enjoy the board game Junta, where the rules stated ‘the coup starts with the traditional naval bombardment of the Presidential Palace’. But it was set in an imaginary banana republic.

There might be a geographical element to this. Playing a wargame of, say, the siege of Londonderry might be straightforward in Germany, perhaps less so in Ireland, or at least, it might raise some uncomfortable present or recent realities and interpretations. History is often the political present, after all. It is here that transfers of historical events to other canvasses, locations and time periods can, I suppose help, but that raises questions, I suppose, as to whether our historical wargaming is historical, or whether we are simply feeling pressured by current political and cultural trends into avoid uncomfortable historical truths.

Many years ago Paddy Griffiths published some articles on uncomfortable wargames, raising the question of whether we dare wargame something, or whether we did not because they simply made bad games. His main example was the WW1 Western Front, which, he felt, made a bad game. Of course, since he wrote (in the 1980s I think) wargame design has moved on and the games, as games, can be good ones. But as WW1 slips from memory into history it is probably worth asking again does it make us uncomfortable? Do we try to take on more recent historiography of the war and the front and suggest that perhaps the interpretations available 40-odd years ago have changed, and that ‘lions led by donkeys’ as a judgment is a bit harsh on the high command.

Fortunately, I do not have a sufficient grasp of World War One to say, so I am only posing a question. But I think it is worth posing: how soon is too soon to have a comfortable wargame?

What do you think?

Wagon Train

‘You gave him the money?’

‘We … negotiated.’

‘What did you get out of it? He’s got all the money.’

‘Well, I didn’t have to die a glorious but pointless death.’

‘So now you want the money back?’

‘Well, not really. But if the Germans make it to the Empire with it, they’ll buy themselves a patch of land next door to us, and that might be a bad thing for both of us. So if we get the money back, we can keep them from settling on our borders.’

‘Very well, my friend, we shall plan to do just that. But the Romans are usually not happy when people attempt to keep money from them.’

*

So, here is the setup for the next battle in the Sarmatian Nation campaign. Actually, it is based on a venerable wagon train scenario, from George Gush’s Airfix Guide to the English Civil War. I’m probably showing my age now. Indeed, the scenario was to be run with my ECW troops, but I decided to switch things around and use the ancients, in, for me, copious quantities. In the original scenario, the Parliamentarians were required to escort some wagons from Little Pottering to Puddleby, while a Royalist raiding force tried to stop them. In my reworking, the Germans are attempting to take their booty from Temeshvekovar to the Roman Empire to buy some land. The Dacians and Sarmatians are trying to stop them.

The above picture shows the starting positions, roughly. The Germans, at the far end, got a few moves to get started. The wagons (or, actually, pack animals – Dacia is hilly) are divided into three. Two on the left-hand road, three on the middle, and one on the right as we look at it. Figulus Modicum is in the distance, while Conlectus is nearest the camera, with the Roman infantry gathering. Rubigo Praetorium is in the middle distance, with a small Roman outpost. The Dacians arrive at the far end, on a cumulative tempo roll of 18, while the Sarmatians arrive on the right with a cumulative roll of 19.

A few moves later, things are starting to happen. The Dacians have arrived at the far end, moving along the roads in an effort to catch the pack horses. In the distance on the right, the German sub-general has moved his charges and tribal foot into Collis Agri and is preparing to defy all comers. This is because the Sarmatians have just arrived on the right of the picture and split into three forces: one to face the Romans, one to attack towards the middle road, and the other to intercept the left road.

It got quite complicated quite quickly. I managed to sort out who won the tempo and keep track of that, and the above picture shows the opening clashes in the centre of the battlefield. The first wave of Sarmatians charged and caught the German train guards before they deployed properly. They are now fleeing (yellow markers) while the Sarmatians follow up. In the right foreground, the German tribal foot are cowering in the field, while the Romans face more Sarmatians.

It went downhill from there for the Germans and Romans. Towards the river, the Romans started to cross the river, but they were a bit stymied by the Sarmatians under Vodkaschnapps himself. While the Sarmatians declined to charge the deploying Roman infantry, they did charge the deployed auxiliary cavalry and routed them in one go, on a fluky dice roll. This caused the Romans to fall back across the river, as they had, in addition, lost the Romans based at Rubigo Praetorium had also mostly been lost to Sarmatian charges.

At this point, the Romans and Germans conceded the game. The Romans were knocked out and the Germans had lost three of the loads of money, another would have to surrender as soon as Dubloswhiskos brought up some more troops. The other two loads, on the left-hand road, might make it to Roman territory but also might be overtaken either by the Dacians pursuing them or by Sarmatians spared from the centre.

That was a complicated but fun action. In this campaign the Sarmatians have really been devastating, I do not think Vodkaschnapps lost a battle, or, indeed, I suspect, and bases along the way. Neither the Romans, Germans nor the Dacians turned out to have anything much to oppose a full-blooded Sarmatian cataphract charge. The Roman cavalry, it is true, were unfortunate to get caught with their backs to a river and on the receiving end of the 6-1 roll, and in the centre Vodkaschnapps had to be careful, as the cataphracts are a definite one-shot weapon, although a rallying base of Sarmatians did manage to best some German cavalry at the end.

I am not sure if there are many more wargames left in this campaign. The Sarmatians can more or less do what they want, the Romans will remain behind their border fortification. Dubloswhiskos can live in peace with his Dacian tribe (which is all he ever wanted to do), while the Germans might be able to acquire a little land from the Romans and Dacians to scratch a living from. The campaign has resulted in 10 wargames since February 2020, it seems. Not bad for a campaign with no maps, I think, but Dubloswhiskos and Vodkaschnapps deserve a happy retirement, I think.

*

‘We did it, my friend.’

‘We? You did most of it. Those cavalry of yours are terrifying.’

‘They do the job. But now the boys would like to go home.’

‘Home. I thought you were trying to make this your home.’

‘Ah, well. They prefer the life of the steppe, rather than this so-called civilised activity, like planting and harvesting.’

‘More like paying taxes and having people marching through your land, you mean.’

‘Yes, there has been a bit of that, I grant. But it was all for a good cause.’

‘You mean taking three loads of Roman money back to the steppe with you?’

‘It will, of course, help. And, when the boys get bored again, or their wives start nagging, we might start on building my khanate.’

‘Farewell, Vodkaschnapps. Don’t be a stranger, but don’t bring an army next time you visit.’

‘Farewell, my friend. Keep the Romans at bay and enjoy your fields.’

To ECW or not to ECW?

For some reason, while I have a number of campaigns chuntering along, the English Civil War (Wars of the Three Kingdoms) do not seem to be one of them. This is a bit peculiar, as the ECW / WotTK is my oldest ‘serious’ wargame era. Many, many years ago I had quite sizeable (for a teenager) Peter Laing 15 mm ECW troops. They are still with me, remarkably, sitting quietly in a box in the cupboard.

All that time ago I had an ongoing ECW campaign, based in the Peterborough area. At the time I did not have extensive knowledge of the local ECW scene there, I just happened to have an OS map of the area and got on with it. As I recall, memory clouded by time and of course the rose-tinted spectacles of a more worldly and cynical older person, it was a lot of fun. Each side even put out a newspaper (on one side of an A5 sheet) which denounced the victories of the other, minimised their own losses, and even got into an argument as to whether weather forecasting was witchcraft or not. I do not recall why, but I do recall it happened. It cheered up my teenage years, anyway.

But more recently I have struggled a bit to get the ECW meaningfully onto the table. I have, as the blog will show, done a few bits. I tried out re-fighting the whole ECW in an afternoon, and that worked, although the points system for victory could have been done better. I also painted a large number of English, Irish and Scottish foot, and Irish and Scottish cavalry, along with some cuirassiers, and have used them for various small projects, most noticeably Benburb, which worked quite nicely. But not major to speak of.

A fair time ago I did run an ECW campaign in a county. The template was Hampshire (renamed Hamptonshire) and it worked quite nicely. Readers of the book will note some influence of this on one of the campaign suggestions for adding random elements. I also ran a campaign using the Speed map of Hampshire, which also worked quite nicely. I recall Royalist cavalry galloping around the High Street in Andover while the Parliamentary foot, hidden in the buildings, took potshots at them. Rather amusing and good fun all round. Not long ago, of course, the Jersey Boys campaign happened, which just about falls into the ECW remit, and was an amphibious operation to boot.

But more recently I have struggled to put something meaningful on the map or on the wargame table. I do, as it happens, have an idea which has been partially worked out, again using the Hamptonshire template, for one side or the other gunrunning, or at least delivering gunpowder to their forces, either in the county or beyond. I think it has legs, but I have not really got it off the ground yet.

Maybe the problem is my variety of troops. The ECW can feel a little staid, sometimes. The variety of troops is not great unless you introduce exotic ones such as highlanders (a bit difficult to do in southern England) and the more you read about the war, the more you realise that, firstly, it was quite local and secondly, it was mostly to do with sieges. Although I like skirmishes, there is a limit to how many I really want to run. And sieges, although perfectly possible to play, are a little bit of a pain and, again, are not something I particularly want to do often.

There is always the question in the back of my mind anyway, as to whether the royalists could really have won. As the blog reveals, I am not averse to a little alternative history, but with the ECW it is hard to find a convincing alternative which could produce a royalist victory, or at least give Parliament a longer run for its money. Strategically the latter had most of the cards – London, the south east and East Anglia, along with the navy. I suspect that the naval aspects of the ECW are underrepresented and little known, but it was important, both for importing (and exporting goods and hence yielding customs dues) gunpowder and for strategic flexibility, such as relieving Hull and Lyme.

Part of the problem, I think, is the decision to either go big, and look at the whole strategic situation, where the royalists are likely to lose, or to go local, where things can be a bit more balanced, but the sweep is lost. The thing is I would like both, and I have not found the correct level to design something at yet.

The upshot of this is that, lately, I have more or less avoided the ECW in my games and particularly campaigns. I have done the Italian Wars twice, of late, and even had a bit of a rampage in Asia with a few elephants, alongside the Japanese invasion of Korea, the British in Tangiers (which at least had ECW models on the table) and so on. Perhaps a slightly jaded wargamer is simply in pursuit of the exotic.

And yet I keep returning to the ECW as my sort of wargaming ground state. This is where I started, so there must be something in it, I feel. Of course, the only resort in these cases is often to stop overthinking the project, get some toys out, and play a game, I have done that, but still, there is something missing.

Perhaps, as I continue to read about the period, I simply know too much. Often, here, I bemoan the lack of information about a period and wonder how we can wargame it when we need much more knowledge. Here, perhaps, the opposite is the case. There is a lot of detail around on the ECW; is it possible to have so much that no simulation will match up to even the limited information we have about the reality? Am I really on a hiding to nothing?

The Third Battle of Temeshvekovar

‘But I cannot just give you the money.’

‘Why not, my friend, you don’t need it. All you are doing is stockpiling it.’

‘I know. We don’t live in a cash economy. But that is not the point.’

‘What is the point, then, my friend?’

‘The point is that the Romans want it, and I’ve got it, and that upsets them.’

‘But now, my friend, I want it, and I’m not a Roman.’

‘No, but you are someone who wants to give it to the Romans.’

‘Just so I can get somewhere to live, my friend. You can loan it to me as a mortgage. Money is supposed to do something, you know, not just sit there and be admired.’

‘No, really. I can’t just give it to you, nor do the other thing, whatever that is. Are you trying to make me a subscriber to the Tempus Oeconomicum?’

‘Well, if you won’t give it to me, I shall have to take it.’

*

Well, this time the Germans, who drew with the Romans in the last battle, you recall, are attempting to take the money from the Dacian stronghold of Temeshvekovar, to give to the Romans to buy some land so they can settle within the Empire. Even though the Dacians do not use money per se, they are not too keen on this idea, so will resist. As their tactics against the Romans in the previous two actions have proved successful, I shall try again.

The table is, as near as I could get it, as before. The river is fordable. Temeshvekovar is in the far right corner, and the playing cards show the likely locations of the Dacian forces. These were revealed either on German troops coming within 4 base widths of the feature, or getting line of sight behind a hill or wood. The Dacian commander could also choose to reveal his troops, on payment of a 1 tempo point penalty.

The action proceeded smoothly, with the first reveal of the Dacians in the enclosures, nearest the camera. There were no forces there, so the German cavalry pressed on to reveal behind the first hill. This is where the Romans tended to get ambushed and defeated, so I approached with caution.

As it turned out, there were only two Dacian light horse and a tribal foot base there. Clearly, the Dacians had decided to hold only lightly their positions on the far side of the river. The Germans deployed their skirmishers and then six bases of tribal foot against the threat, as well as the cavalry. The Dacian light horse made a mess of the German skirmishers but were no match for the combined foot and horse counter-attack. As they tried to cover the retreat to the river they were charged by the German cavalry and put to flight, as was the foot base.

The Germans pushed on, pausing on their left to reorganise after the fighting. The main German foot block crossed the river at the ford and deployed to threaten the Dacian foot on the hill across the river, led by Dubolwhiskos, the Dacian general (the sub-general had been lost with the light horse).

The Dacians deployed their archers and skirmishers to threaten the newly arrived Germans, while Dubolwhiskos summoned the remaining troops from their positions in Temeshvekovar and behind the woods as reinforcements. A lot now depended on the timing.

It all went a bit pear-shaped for the Dacians after this. More German tribal foot arrived and started to surround the hill, while a cautious advance (and some lucky tempo rolling) meant that some other German foot advanced into the skirmisher and archer bases, routing both of them. Humbug, as the Romanians might say if they spoke colloquial English.

This caused the Dacian army to waver, which meant that the columns advancing from the far end of the table stopped their advance temporarily. This allowed a number of things to happen. Firstly, the German cavalry, regaining the road, zipped through the lines and started to threaten the Dacian marching column flanks. Secondly, Dublowhiskos was rather stuck on his hill, as he dared not charge the victorious German foot, although he could catch them in flank, without exposing his own flank to the rest of the German foot.

The upshot of all this was that Dublowhiskos was more or less surrounded on his hill, as well as being heavily outnumbered, while his own reinforcements were stymied some distance away. This caused the generals some thinking. The Germans were not really interested in defeating the Dacians totally, and nor was Dubloswhikos particularly interested in a glorious death defending money he had no use for.

The picture shows the final positions. Temeshvekovar is just out of shot to the right, while Dubloswhiskos is on the hill in the centre left. It would be almost certain that the Germans would get him before his relieving columns arrived. The most advanced will almost certainly be attacked by the cavalry, while the other column although it is on the road, is a bit further back and the Germans would have even more foot, who have just forded the river, to face those. Dubloswhiskos therefore offered terms.

That was fun, and a different battle from the previous Temeshvekovars. The ambushers were deployed further back. Perhaps if I had launched the rearmost columns forward sooner things might have been different. On the other hand the Germans got across the river in force, and that was always going to be a bit of a handful. I thought the Dacians could hang on to the hill just across the ford, but that was probably a mistake. If Dubloswhiskos had retreated he might have had a better chance, but I thought he was pretty impregnable on the hill and dangerous if he charged off it. But the Germans worked around his flank and left him exposed.

*

‘Here you are. Three chests of Rome’s finest coins. I hope they bring you much pleasure.’

‘Thank you, my friend. I knew you would see sense. As your new neighbour I offer you the hand of eternal friendship, of course.’

‘Hm. Let us see. The Romans could order you to attack me. They are like that.’

‘What makes you think I would obey their orders?’

‘Living in the Empire. You would not have much choice, after all. Anyway, now you have to transport these crates to the Romans without losing it. I wish you well.’