A Long, Long Time Ago…

 … I can still remember the way the music used to play….

Well, a long time ago I can remember finding Don Featherstone’s Solo Wargaming book, and the validation it gave to me as a, well, solo wargamer. I was but a lad at the time, maybe thirteen or fourteen and I had discovered the wargaming section of my local public library. However, none of my friends were interested in wargaming, and there was no club in the town I lived in. Most of the books assumed a live opponent, and the occasional copies of Battle magazine and Military Modelling I saw had a similar tone.

Thus Don’s solo tome spoke to me in volumes. I was a wargamer even though I had no opponent. My wargames were as valid as anyone else’s. I was not a sad and lonely oddity (as I said, I did have friends, they just were not interested in wargaming) and my wargaming was just as good as the next teenager’s. I must have read it several times before it was due to be returned to the library, and I borrowed it several times more, I am sure.

The book was crammed full of ideas. I suppose on reflection it was not particularly systematically done (why should it be?) but I remember writing out chance cards, and drawing up tactical cards, and, mostly, daydreaming about battles and campaigns for which I had no resources of either time or money. The enthusiasm of the work was clear; perhaps that was the key point for me then.

Fast forward (mumble) years and, as I noted a few weeks ago Henry Hyde’s Wargaming Compendium is, in some senses, mostly the enthusiasm bit, similar. It also makes an attempt (almost certainly doomed, of course) to be comprehensive. It is not a book about solo wargaming, and so there is no reason why it should be brim full of ideas for that activity, although it does have some. Ideas for how to play a solo wargame, mostly by automating one side, are there, and the enthusiasm runs through the pages.

Many wargamers, I suspect, are solo some of the time. Perhaps, like me, they have just got used to it and never sought a club. Perhaps they have lost their normal opponent though moving. Perhaps they just cannot get sufficient wargaming and launch forth solo as well as face-to-face. There are probably as many reasons for solo wargaming as there are solo wargamers.

The thing I find I need most as a solo wargamer is ideas. This is, of course, where the books come in. I can remember reading in fascination Charles Grant’s Table Top Teasers – one month the scenario was described, the next a description of the game was published. I even managed to try a few of them out myself. But there were never enough; my wargame sessions were weekly.

Still, it did set me thinking: if I were to write a book on solo wargaming what would be in it? What sorts of things would I like to see? Now, to be honest, there is an outside chance of me writing such a tome, but at the moment it is just a thought.

This blog, of course, has outlined a fair bit of my approaches to solo wargaming, but without really nailing things down too much. I like flexibility – rules are a matter of taste. Some people prefer everything to be a bit more free-flowing, others like everything to be nailed down. As a solo wargamer you can try to do both. One of the lessons of that is that you cannot write a rule for everything.

Anyway, what would I like to see?

Firstly, I would like a consideration of the different ways of running the sides in a battle or campaign. That is, do I divide myself as the general, or do I attempt to automate the opponent? Allied to this are considerations of ‘fairness’, that is not making your (implied) opponent a walk-over if you automate them, but on the other hand you do need a chance of winning. For the divided self as two generals there is the problme of too much knowledge, of course.

I think a section on battles and scenarios would be good. There are a number of different levels here, from the historical re-fight to entirely fictitious actions, via historical and semi-historical match ups. There are also questions of the scale of the wargame, from role playing through skirmishes to battles small and large.

Many of the solo wargame publications suggest campaigns are the way to sustain the solo wargamer’s interest, and they are probably right. The problem here is, firstly, that for the general in a scenario – knowing too much – and secondly that map based campaigns have a nasty tendency to get utterly bogged down in details. Hence, over the years, I have developed the ‘narrative’ campaign, which is achieved using the armies I have, a map and some imagination. There are limitations, of course. Attrition is one of them.

Moving on, I think some bits on idea generation would be good. Again, reading books, blogs, magazines and so on are a start. The Armada Abbeys campaign started by rereading Geoffrey Parker’s chapter on ‘what if the Armada had landed’ and a couple of books on the Elizabethan military. But there would be a lot more to it, and I think one under-exploited idea is taking a historical situation, such as the ECW siege of York, and re-working it in a different period. My vague idea here is Susa in Alexander’s invasion of the Persian Empire.

One of the things you can do (I try to) as a solo wargamer is aim at some sort of completeness. Included in this are ideas of naval and air operations, which are always related to land warfare, possibly logistics (although that tends to land up in accountancy) and siege operations. In a campaign these sorts of things are essential to reproducing in some form what was going on.

I have not managed to squeeze into this post other ideas – randomization, chance cards, campaign events, personalisation and so on, nor a consideration of which period to play in, or science fiction or fantasy games.

I only allow myself so many words in one of these posts, and I am already over that, but over to you, my loyal reader. What would you like in a book on solo wargaming?

Hannibal’s Oath

It is a well know story, of course: Hannibal Barca, leader of Carthage, stormed across the Alps and into Italy, sweeping all before him with a series of stunning victories and bringing the fledgling Roman state to its knees. The slow recovery of the Romans and their eventual victory over Hannibal is, perhaps, one of the greatest comeback stories of the ancient world, possibly of all history.

As you might imagine, I have been reading again:

Prevas, J. (2017). Hannibal’s Oath: The Life and Wars of Rome’s Greatest Enemy. Da Capo.

This is not an academic text, but really a history of Hannibal’s adventures from the beginning as the son of Hamilcar Barca, who thought that with a bit more support he might have won, or at least drawn, the First Punic War, to Hannibal’s suicide just before being taken by the Romans in Bithynia.

While at the more popular level, the book is not devoid of analysis. I think that books aimed at the more popular level are, in general, improving a bit in their ability both to reference the source material and provide a bit of ‘well, this is what the sources say but they might be wrong, biased or simply making things up to be a good story.’ This sort of issue is particularly acute with sources from the ancient world, of course.

That is not to underplay Hannibal’s achievements, of course. He did lead an army over the Alps and run rampant in Italy for a few years. If things had turned out slightly differently – if reinforcements had got through to him (and they nearly did) – then Rome might well have been reduced from nascent superpower to another city state in the middle of Italy. World history might have looked a little different.

While to book focusses on Hannibal, of course, the sources are Roman and so a fair bit of Roman reaction enters the sources. The early commanders against Hannibal in Italy mostly come across as overconfident and incompetent. It was only when the Roman strategy shifted from avoiding direct contact with Hannibal and his army, and undermining his strategy elsewhere that things began to turn.

For example, Hannibal’s hope was to get Italian and Italian-Greek cities onto his side. This sort of worked, but of course they needed protection and for Hannibal to continue to be seen as a winner. However, he did not have the resources to lay siege to anywhere, really, and certainly not Rome. Whether he could have successfully moved on Rome in the panic after Cannae is a moot question, of course. It is possible that given reasonable terms the Romans, or at least some of them, would have favoured surrender. Whether such terms would have been offered, and whether a faction of the Senate would have held out anyway, reasoning that Hannibal could not besiege the city, we will never know.

The ensuing long war in Italy was rather devoid of battles – the Romans learnt to avoid them and to shadow Hannibal while preventing their own allies from defecting. The rest of the war was fought out in Spain, where eventually the Carthaginians were defeated. This left North Africa vulnerable, of course, and so Hannibal and the remnants of his army were summoned to Carthage to defend the city.

The result, as any wargamer will know, was Zama and the clash between Scipio Africanus and Hannibal himself. As Prevas notes, however, Hannibal’s army was not the one he crossed the Alps with, while Scipio’s was much more experienced and had come from a string of victories in Spain. No wonder Hannibal negotiated before accepting battle.

One of the interesting things, which I did not know (I have not read much about the (Punic Wars) was that Hannibal’s third line included a Macedonian phalanx. I am not sure I was aware of that before. Sabin, in Lost Battles refers to ‘Livy’s propagandist tale’ of their being Macedonians present, and that it is almost universally disbelieved. It does go to show the risks of believing the sources too much, although I am not exactly sure why Livy should have included Macedonians for propaganda, although it would have justified the next Roman war against the Greeks.

With the defeat at Zama, Hannibal eventually fled east and tried his hand at being a military advisor with various potentates against Rome. These did not work out too well, as the Romans had the organisation and manpower to overcome pretty well any foe of the time. Eventually, Roman threats (thinly disguised as diplomacy) tracked Hannibal down.

An interesting book about a period about which I know relatively little. I do recall Terry Wise’s Introduction to Battle Gaming (I think it was) had a refight of Zama in its pages, part of the interest of which was spotting the Airfix figures used in the photographs – I recall the North American Indian mounted chief being one of them, as a Numidian light cavalryman.

I confess, I do not feel too attracted to the Punic Wars as a period, and I am not all that sure why. The battles in which Hannibal participated are not without interest, although they did tend to be a bit one-sided. The battles in Spain are probably the more interesting, while Zama, as noted, was probably a victory for quality. I am sure there are decent wargames to be had, but they do not feel ‘right’ for me.

It is odd how the choice of period works, or maybe it is just that I do not want to paint another load of Romans and various random bits which constituted Carthage’s armies of the time. Mind you, I do already have armies of Moors and Numidians and Spanish, so that might not be too bad. The Romans would be a bit more of a challenge.

Overall a decent book, then, especially if read with care. Prevas does not entirely subscribe to the ‘Hannibal was a genius’ school, and that, in my view, is a jolly good thing.

The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars

 It is the case that the painting of the Anglo-Dutch Wars ships is a bit stalled – fixing the sails has been a great deal more challenging than I expected, although I seem to have got four models ready for undercoating. Only another eight to go.

Still, stalled (or, perhaps, that should be becalmed) painting does not stop me reading stuff, and the latest tome is one that has been on my shelf for some years, which does seem to show the positive advantages of being interested in the same periods of history over more than twenty years.

The book in question is this:

Hainsworth, R., and C. Churches. The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars 1652 - 1674. Stroud: Sutton, 1998.

As the title implies this is an overview of the entire naval warfare between the English and Dutch navies from the Commonwealth to the semi-fiasco of the third war. As a slightly older book, of course, it does not benefit from colour pictures except on the cover, but it does make up for that by having a plethora of black and white images throughout.

Nearly half of the book is based around the first war, 1652-4. It is, I think, probably the most interesting for a variety of reasons, but it also is the one which the English really won, which might add to its interest in Anglophone nations and among those with a Whig view of history and the inexorable rise of the British Empire. Wargamers, I am sure, would never fall into either of those traps.

Still, as the book observes, there was a rather halting start to the war by the English. The Dutch were a great deal more experienced in naval warfare and command, as well as seamanship. On the other hand, the English had most of the strategic advantages. A Dutch politician observed that the English would be attacking a mountain of gold while the Dutch had a mountain of iron to attack. Most of the Dutch trade routes necessarily pass within naval strike range of English ports and anchorages.   

Leadership was another issue. The English admirals were generals, unused to handling naval vessels, unfamiliar with naval strategy and tactics. They were, however, brave, used to winning, and could learn from experience. Hence, it would appear that after the first few encounters, the fighting instructions were issued which included the directive to fight in line, rather than in groups.

This was largely a result of the different vessels that the English and Dutch used. While both resorted to armed merchantmen, the English ships were more heavily gunned and fought to batter Dutch vessels with cannonry to the hulls. The Dutch, being lighter and shallower drafted could not carry the same weight of cannon, and therefore shot to disable the masts and rigging of the English ships, close and board them, or destroy them with fireships.

To anyone who has even a passing interest in later naval warfare of the Nelson era, this probably sound familiar. The British and French navies of that era had the same sort of tactics. Even so, it was a bit difficult for the tactics to be pure: the Dutch had to shoot and the English, in order to actually win anything, had to get close up. The main difference across the hundred years or so between the Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-French wars was in the number of ships involved in a battle (which decreased) and the size of vessel involved, which increased. Hence by the mid-Eighteenth Century the line of battle did not usually involve anything less than a 74-gun ship, while in the 1650s 36-gun ships were perfectly adequate ships of the line.

The second and third wars were, relatively speaking, humiliations for the English. The Dutch ‘raid’ on the Medway was a disaster and much of the blame for that could be laid at the feet of Charles II, at least according to Hainsworth and Churches. Mind you, the earlier battles of Lowestoft and the Four Days Fight were hardly triumphs of English naval intelligence and command. Dutch naval command was consistently good, although many of the captains on both sides (more often reported by the Dutch, at least) failed to second the admirals and had a tendency to hide at the back of the formations and not engage (and, occasionally, shoot through their leaders….).

During the second war the Dutch built heavier gunned ships, even though some of their anchorages and ports might be denied to the deeper draft vessels. The alternative, of wider shallow draft vessels to carry bigger guns, was ruled out because the ships would have been slower. By the third war the difference in gunnery was much narrower, although the strategic position was very different.

The Third Anglo-Dutch naval war was really the project of Charles II in cahoots with Louis XIV to eliminate the Dutch. At sea, all the Dutch really needed to do was retain a fleet in being. Any projected naval landing of an army would be impossible if the Dutch fleet remained in the offing. As such the actions of the war were, from a tactical view, fairly inconclusive, although the French naval squadron’s behaviour was, at time, amounting to the treacherous, albeit with a degree of plausible deniability. As the authors point out, there was little that Rupert and his admirals could do to defeat the Dutch navy so long as they remained in the shallows and shoals off the Dutch coast. Getting at them was difficult, defeating them almost impossible.

An upshot of the Third War was the growing public distrust of the French and the Stuart monarchy. This was to have important consequences in the medium and longer terms, of course. Fourteen years after the end of the Third Anglo-Dutch War a Dutch naval fleet landed a Dutch army at Torbay while the English fleet and British army looked on. The die was cast for over a century of warfare between the British and French polities.  

Seven Mile House

 ‘So, the treaty is signed and being run from Paris to London via Calais?’

‘Yes, sire. The ambassador is on the move as well. They will pass through Arras soon.’

‘We need to intercept them somewhere along that route.’

‘Yes, sire. But the route is largely unknown to us. We could do to scout it out.’

‘Take some men and do so.’

*

Well now, a change of pace is on the cards. I recently rediscovered my stock of 25 (plus) mm English Civil soldiers, including, rather to my surprise, a dozen which had been painted to an acceptable standard. I suppose a caveat is relevant here: there are several dozen which are not.

Still, a bit of basing (along with some chariots and the mysterious blot shooters from a post of two ago) and they were ready for action. I have been playing with 6mm toys for many years. The biggars came as a bit of a shock.

The basic idea of the game was two-fold. Firstly, to see if I could sketch out some acceptable skirmish rules in a few minutes without getting bogged down in detail. With a bit of cribbing from Mr Berry’s Once Upon a Time in the West Country that was accomplished without too much pain and suffering.

The second aim was to move the Corbie campaign along a bit. As I mentioned, after Corbie fell in real life, the French and English negotiated over a treaty against the Spanish, which nearly, but not quite, happened. There was a draft treaty but by the time the details were hammered out the French military situation had stabilised in the north-east and they no-longer felt they needed it.

The conceit here is that Louis XIII and Richelieu signed the treaty and entrusted it to a group of ambassadors and their guards to get to London. The Spanish, having recently taken Corbie, would naturally like to stop the copy of the treaty getting through. The first opportunity is by cutting the Arras to Calais road.

The next conceit is that the English government, under Charles I, desperately wants to treaty to be enforced, for domestic political reasons. Essentially, by signing an anti-Spanish treaty Charles would get a lot of Puritan opinion off his back (and probably prevent the civil war). Thus the first skirmish action is between the group of Spanish scouts and two parties of English who are attempting to keep the road along which the treaty and ambassador must travel open.

The terrain was very simple – I do not have much big stuff. The roads runs north to south, along which the English pass, one group of three from each end. The other road comes from the east and the Spanish appear from them. The aim of the English is to clear the road, of the Spanish to hold the house to cut it.

I had to do a bit of experimenting with the camera to get any pictures at all. Finally, I hit on macro mode with the flash off and the camera on its tripod. The Spanish arrived four moves before the first parts of English and just about got to the house first.

 

So far as I recall there are a couple of Redoubt dismounted ECW cavalry above, and the rest of Landsknechts from an unknown manufacturer, probably Foundry before they went to packs of eight. The English, when they appear, are, I think, Outpost Border Reivers, but they do not seem to sell that range any more, which is a pity. The house is from the Usbourne Medieval Town, in 20 mm but it looks about right.

Anyway, the Spanish with muskets dismounted and took aim at the first party of English trotting down the road towards them. The small rectangular markers indicate who is mounted, by the way, because I was too much of a cheapskate to buy mounted duplicates (and still am, some things don’t change). The mounted Spanish pistolier also took aim and, by a miracle of rolling they managed three hits between them on the lead English rider. He also fell off his horse and so was rendered seriously hors-de-combat in a moment.

This left the dismounted Spanish unloaded, of course, and so they were charged by one of the remaining English horsemen, while the other took on the pistoleer. Remarkably, the foot managed to beat back their foe, although one of them was wounded, and another mounted Spaniard took over the combat, allowing the unwounded musketeer to start reloading.

The combat between the third Englishman and the pistoleer was interrupted by another Spanish cavalryman who attacked from the flank. Meanwhile the remaining English, the party from the south, had appeared and were cautiously circling the house, aiming to cut the Spanish line of retreat.

The unequal fight at the junction could not last much more and eventually the brave Englishman was downed. The southern English party had deployed into line looking for the chance to charge and sweep away the Spanish blocking the road, but the mounted Spanish formed up into a similar formation and, after the discharge of a crossbow (which missed) the English decided that retreat was the best option. The remaining member of the northern party broke off from his combat and joined them in the retreat.

The strange colours in the photographs are due to differing light conditions (that’s my excuse, anyway), but a good time was had by all. Now the French have the problem of clearing the road to Calais for the ambassador and the signed treaty, and I have the problem of needing to paint some more big toy soldiers….

*

‘So, now we have cut the road?’

‘Just about, sire.’

‘The French will be a bit unhappy about that.’

‘Yes, sire. So will the English. We have two badly wounded Englishmen to deal with as well, but they seem to be doing well on a snail diet.’

‘Snails?’

‘A French delicacy, sire. Actually, they have rejected the snails but we are feeding them English beer so they seem happy enough.’

The Wargaming Compendium

I admit it. I have come very late to the newer wargaming books party. I do not think I have bought a book on wargaming, as opposed to history (military or otherwise), which, as the gentle reader will know, I consume in near-industrial quantities, for a good number of years, probably over a decade.

Still, better late than never, I suppose, and when an advert email came in for this tome at a reduced price

Hyde, H. (2011). The Wargaming Compendium. Barnsley: Pen & Sword,

I kind of leapt at it. I suppose I have been looking for something that might make the creative juices flow a little and grow a bit of enthusiasm.

As probably most wargamers know of Henry Hyde I will not give a thumbnail sketch or try to classify his writing. The book does more or less what I needed: it comes with oodles of enthusiasm. Whether it is quite the ‘wargamer’s bible’ that some of blurb claims might be a bit moot, but it is certainly an interesting book and is a ‘treasure trove’ of advice, examples and vast quantities of eye-catching photographs of toy soldiers, bit and small, in all sorts of wargames, big and small.

There are all sorts of ideas and examples floating around in the book. The introduction is a guide to basic concepts, then there is a history of wargaming. Different periods from ancients to science-fiction are discussed, then making terrain. There is a long chapter on painting figures, the example being some 1/72^nd plastic Napoleonic British and French. If I have a criticism here, the quality of the painting would put me off, as a total beginner. While Henry’s tone is that of a kindly uncle all though, with ‘I recommend that you…’ and ‘I would add…’ liberally sprinkled through the text I would feel a bit overwhelmed by the painting guide.

On the other hand I do not have the patience for that level of detail and have never got the hang of  multiple layers of dry-brushing to build up a colour, nor of washes. That is probably just me, and you can tell by the (lack of) quality of even my more recent efforts at painting that I have always aimed to get the toys ready to go onto the table, even if the quantity of wargames played, do not reflect painted solider availability.

Still, minor grips aside, the book then moves on to what to do with the little chaps when finished. Duels are covered with two figures, and there are rules for gladiators. Skirmishes follow, with rules for the wild west. Battles follow, with a digression on military organization and how to reflect real battles, the really big ones. This section comes with some interesting ponderings on the literal approach, with the correct number of units, the bath-tub approach, by scaling the available space to the battlefield and then filling it with appropriate units, and then scaling down to figure size to permit the former to be done in a reasonable time and space.

In the latter bit I am not sure Mr. Hyde goes quite far enough. He recommends 6 mm for big historical battles. Myself, I would probably go for 2 mm for something like Waterloo.  If you scale down to 6 mm size the units can still get a bit lost in the sheer quantity of troops on the table, and the scale of the terrain and battlefield. Still, a minor quibble and a bit of a matter of taste, I suspect.

The book then moves on to campaign games of various forms. HH is clearly an enthusiast for campaigns, and starts with linked battles, so the winning force advances a table and the losers defend that. This would, I think, work well for WW1 or WW2 games, but perhaps not so well for, say, ECW. He then discusses map making, suggesting a Speed map for the ECW, for example (fair enough)  or other tricks like shrinking and inverting Australia (not literally) to be a desert island.

HH’s own preference is clearly for imagi-nations on fictitious maps, and that is fine by me. Inspired by Charles Grant’s The War Game and Tony Bath’s Setting Up a Wargames Campaign, he describes creating an imaginary map and populating it with terrain, towns and personalities. In the latter I have a bit of a gripe, perhaps, in that his personality generator uses d100, which gives a rather startling range of attribute values. According to HH this is how the original D&D did it. Never having played D&D I cannot comment on that, but Runequest used 3d6 to give less extreme results, and I think Tony Bath’s original used playing card. Anyway, each to their own on this one.

The author then shows how to drill down to his own five miles hexes and from thence to a battlefield. He also covers wargame journals. Here, I have to say, the Mr. Hyde’s skills as a graphic designer come to the fore. The maps are depressingly beautiful and the page of his journal showing the uniform of a regiment of imagi-nation infantry are extremely nice and far beyond my abilities. This wargamer, as with the painting and pictures, can only admire and move on.

The campaign rules which end the chapter are fairly straightforward and workable, although they include a bit too much detail for me. HH says somewhere that the wargamer, or the rules writer at least, has to consider what level the game is to be played at. Wargamers have a tendency to swap roles within a game, from general to commander of a wing to brigadier and so on. These rules have a similar feel to them, so I could be the commander of the army (or, indeed, monarch of an imagination) one moment and an individual scout having run into an enemy army group the next. It is great if you have the time, energy and attention to detail he has. I’m not sure, having tried it, that I do.

Next along are Mr. Hyde’s own rules, Shot, Steel and Stone for the Eighteenth century. The introduction is very good, with the troop types and excellent illustrations. The rules, I confess, I have not read, but a sample battle is given which seems to play very nicely.

Finally, more briefly, other aspects of wargaming are covered – naval, air, solo and multiplayer games all get their moment. The last bit is about wargaming in the digital age, followed by appendices on books and suppliers. As HH ruefully admits, this was out of date as soon as the book was published. Still, a good effort.

Overall, an excellent book to lend to someone considering wargaming as a hobby, and a burst of enthusiasm for us jaded old grognards. I did not intend to sit down a read it cover to cover, but I did and I am glad I did. Recommended.

 

The Bogged Down Painter

 

Well, I have been trying to reduce the unpainted lead mountain. As the long-term reader of this blog might remember, the original pile started out at around 2500 little men, and was then reduced by 1000 last year (1024 for you pedants out there). This left around 1800 toys to paint.

You might question my maths, but some were added – Muscovites and assorted buildings and fortifications. So, this year, the aim was to reduce the lead pile to under 1000. Now, for reasons I do not recall, my painting year starts sometime around October, and it is now March, so six months or so down the line how is it going?

The above shows, sort of, the state of play in October. The sort of caveat is because three of the rows listed above are later additions. I have the misfortune to have a birthday near Christmas. As a child I regarded this as a terrible tragedy, as relatives would contribute to the terrible ‘Christmas ‘n’ Birthday present’, which meant that for one of the events you would receive nothing. It could have been worse – I was due on the day before Christmas Eve but was several weeks late.

Anyway, the original total was around 1555, and that was augmented by 288 Baccus ECW infantry, because I kept running out, and the Commonwealth and Dutch Anglo-Dutch Wars fleets. These are the starter packs in 1:2400 scale from Tumbling Dice. So, as you can see, a fair stack of toys yet to go. I also keep turning up extra bits and pieces tucked away in various boxes, hence the addition of some ECW generals. There are a few more bits as well, as I empty more boxes and trays they will come to the foreground.

Still, the original plan was to paint around 750 little men, to halve the unpainted lead pile. With the advent of the ECW infantry, that was increased back to 1000. The ships I do not really know how to account for, so they are in the ‘other’ column, along with the chariots and blot shooters from the outstanding ancients.

How, you might wonder, am I getting on? Well, the current state of play, as per finished toys, is below.

This shows reasonable progress, I think, although as I might have mentioned, I have got a bit bogged down.

The Scottish cavalry have been painted as some Irish (with green bonnets) and Scots. The remaining Scottish cavalry are lancers, whom I have not got around to daubing yet. The Irish infantry are the other half of the six regiments that I painted, I think, last year. You might wonder why I have six regiments, but that is the way Baccus sells them, and I do not like to ‘waste’ figures.

The ECW infantry were the Christmas present, and I was determined that they would not sit in the package or draw for two years before I got to them. After all, I have mentioned a couple of time that I keep running out of pikemen. I suppose that, on reflection, I could have made up the numbers by using my copious quantities of Scottish and Irish infantry. I suppose I am a purist by nature. Either that, or I am subconsciously planning bigger ECW battles.

The rest of the figure painting has been a bit of seeing what I can do reasonably quickly. As noted, Julius Caesar suffered a bit from lack of cavalry and of skirmishers when he invaded Britain last year. The Marian Roman painting was the outstanding slingers and strictly Roman cavalry from the lead pile. The Greek cavalry came along for the ride, as it were, and were painted at the same time.

The Celts were painted as it seemed a bit unfair to paint Jules’ reinforcements without some Ancient Britons. They too got skirmishers and (light) cavalry, but the bulk of the foot are extra warbands. I suspect a good tribal army can never have enough of those. I would like to get to the chariots and Roman (and Greek) bolt shooters, but they are a bit more fiddly. Speaking of fiddly…

The ships that have been painted are the smaller ones in the starter packs – yachts, cromsters and hoekers. I find that I can paint these fairly quickly (because I have low standards and they are small). However, I now have got to the fifth rates which require some assembly – sails, in point of fact. My record on sticking things together is not good. I tend to use enormous quantities of glue and, when super gluing things, stick everything to everything else, except what was intended. I have attached various items to my fingers, of course. The last lot of ships I renovated were glued with PVA, which was OK but the masts needed lengthy support.

As part of the deal which acquired the ships for my birthday, superglue was also supplied. Now, I am old enough at this game to know that superglue, of whatever brand, is pretty well a one-use tube. By the time I get around to using it again, the superglue has superglued itself to itself, to the tube and also to the nozzle where it was supposed to emerge. So the current plan is to prepare all the bits of ships, sails, chariots and bolt shooters I can, prime the parts that need priming, and then have a superglue fest.

The other thing to add to the list are my recently rediscovered 25/28/31/35 mm figures, the aim of which were for skirmish and role-playing games. I never got that far with them, but some are painted to an OK sort of standard, some are in the throes of being repainted, and quite a few dismounted cavalrymen from Redoubt Enterprises (do they still exist?) are still in bits and need, guess what, supergluing together.

Then I will need to work out a rate of exchange: how many 6 mm figures constitute one 28 mm figure?

A One Hour Wargame

Casting around for a battle, I ordered up Neil Thomas’ One Hour Wargames, and started to look at the scenarios. My eye lighted upon Scenario 23 (p. 110-1) which was based on Yellow Ford (1598). As I have ECW Irish in abundance, and have just finished six regiments of ECW English, I thought this was a rather splendid opportunity to get the English onto the table and to get the Irish out again.

Having further pondered, I thought I would give the pike and shot rules in the book a go. I was only momentarily disconcerted by the discovery that my table is only 2’ 6” square, instead of the mandated 3’, but decided on reflection to ignore the fact.

The picture shows Blue’s deployment. The Irish rolled two infantry units and the other two were irregulars, which are bow armed according to the scenario. This is a bit interesting as it shows that the efforts to keep troop types down to four is not always going to work. Anyway, one regiment of foot is in the town, one is in reserve, and the irregulars are in the woods.

The English wound up with four infantry regiments, a reiter regiment and a swordsmen regiment, which I interpreted as polearms. I deployed them on turn one, as directed and the re-read the rules. This meant that I swapped the swordsmen from fronting the wood to fronting the town.

You can see above on the far side the swordsmen unit with an infantry regiment behind, then two infantry regiments. Nearest, just off camera, are the reiters and a supporting infantry regiment.

You can see that three of my bases make up a Neil Thomas unit – three 40 mm wide bases are nearly 5”, and the rules say 4-6” per unit. The rules only cover three sides in the book, so there is quite a lot missing. For example, how do units cross the bridge or fords, or move along the road claiming the bonus. I probably interpreted this erratically. The road bonus was given, and units could cross the fords without penalty.

It has to be said, the rules are fast, furious and rather bloody. The self-conscious lack of morale rules ensures that units hang on until they are eliminated. The out of ammunition rules mean that infantry units have to close into combat quite quickly. There do not appear to be any rules for withdrawing from close combat and being relieved, but we live with that.

There was also some ambiguity in my head when the reiters flanked to reserve Irish infantry. I decided that despite the rules they would charge (I mean, who wouldn’t?). They inflicted a lot of damage, but it was not clear whether that should be halved and doubled (i.e. as rolled) or doubled simpliciter. I chose the latter because, well, cavalry charging the flank of an infantry unit should get some sort of pay-off, surely. Maybe that was wrong.

Unfortunately, the ‘crisis’ picture turned out a bit blurry, but the final positions are above. The reiter on the left have disposed of their opponents. The English infantry in the centre have eliminated the forward irregular unit in the wood. The swordsmen, after a hard fight have done away with the Irish regiment defending the town, also after a hard fight. The only Irish unit remaining is in the central woods, and they have not really been in action. However, the English can exit three units on the road south now, and that is the end of the matter. They won.

I did rather enjoy the battle, even though, pace the book title, it took only about half an hour. The speed of movement took me rather by surprise. Even though there were no cavalry on the table (12” move) 10” and 6” are pretty speedy on a three-foot table. I was also not sure about the turning of units and whether the reiters should really have managed to crash the reserve Irish foot in flank.

As for the rules, well, they are what they say on the tin: simple without being simplistic. What is missing, I think, is a lot of the detail which takes up room in wargame rules, such as moving along roads, turning to face the enemy and interpenetration. The fact is that if you commit to hand-to-hand conflict, you are staying there until one side, or the other, is eliminated.

I suppose the best characterisation of the rules is “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! You are dead”. Each unit has a strength of 15 points and loses them in combat. As combat is by roll of D6, you get four or five turns of it before the poorer roller is eliminated. Shooting is a bit more problematic. Thomas has a rule where a unit shooting rolls a second dice and has a one third possibility of being declared out of ammunition. My problem is that from my reading of pike and shot warfare this did not happen very often. I suppose it adds to the randomness of things.

I was also a bit puzzled by the swordsman category of troops. While there were occasional polearm armed infantrymen or sword and buckler men around, they were not that numerous. Some of the fun stuff of the period is also missing – the interaction of pike and shot, dragoons, artillery and so on. I know that this was done for a reason, and a good reason, but I rather missed them. The difference between reiter and cavalry is also, in my opinion, overblown. But then I do not really believe in the caracole as a mainline cavalry tactic anyway.

The scenario was a good one, however, and I shall be playing more from the book, probably using my own rules. Having seen how the book’s rules work I can recalibrate the scenarios to my own efforts and make them work quite nicely, I think.

Overall, a very worthwhile book and battle. I shall probably have some more general comments in a bit.