Wargaming in 2024

Well, the scores on the doors indicate 24 wargames played in 2024, which I do not think is a bad score. Such is the nature of the blog that I suppose they might be described as ‘eclectic’ in terms of periods. I have ranged from a couple of re-fights of Marathon (the Greeks won both) through to the couple of test scenarios I have tried for the 1635 skirmish campaign.

There were a few tries at an ECW scenario, the Bridge at Muchado, which were nice games but which were supposed to spark a campaign, which did not take to flame. I seem to have a bit of a block at the moment when it comes to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. I am not sure why. On the other hand, I transferred the scenario to the Ancient Spanish and that was a most enjoyable action, with skirmishers ebbing and flowing across the stream.

In terms of ongoing campaigns, at the start of the year, the Siena campaign was ongoing. I was very successful as the Sienese commander until the French invaded. I lost the battle badly and decided that retirement to a roomy French Château with its own vineyard with a decent pension was preferable to carrying on. That, and the fact that I had more or less run out of army.

The Siena campaign mechanics were based on some older ones I created years ago for the rise of the Aztecs in Central Mexico. The transfer worked rather well, I felt, although the Italian Wars version is still on scribbled notes. It was revived again for the current and ongoing Burma 1530 campaign, this time with randomised troop selection and, of course, added elephants. It is nice to have a sensible sequence of games featuring elephants; I feel they do add rather a lot to a wargame table, even when they are 6 mm scale and painted by me. Still, I have properly written up the campaign rules this time, which means that they might see the light of day somewhere, somewhen.

The other things that happened on the wargaming front were the painting of a bunch of civilians for the 1635 France games and the making of a load of 20 mm card buildings for the same purpose. I have used them a couple of times, which was rather gratifying, but I really should get on with the campaign, which is a cross between skirmish and role-playing levels. Too much detail bogs play down, so I have evolved a method of simply noting the NPCs who join in the action and rolling them up as needed. Something fairly quick is needed, and, as it is a solo campaign, nothing that will bog it down in minutiae. In my professional life I have had to deal with minutiae, and I am not entirely sure I want to in my hobby time.

The only other painting that took place was of Far Eastern ships. I was very pleased to discover that Tumbling Dice produced a 1:2400th range of these – Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. I have been wondering why no-one created them in a usable miniature scale for over 20 years, and suddenly, there they are. Anyway, I am not good a painting and even worse at modelling, but eventually the ships were painted, with masts stuck more or less firmly in place. I also read a book about the Japanese invasion of Korea at the end of the Sixteenth Century, and very good it was too, although the events, let alone the place names, are somewhat complex and confusing. Still, a minor campaign was started once I found a suitable province-based map of the peninsular. This is a couple of wargames in, but unfortunately in planning I omitted a trigger point for the Chinese intervention, so it needs a bit more work. We shall see. I could also do, probably, with some more Japanese cavalry.

A slight hiccough this year has been the disruption of my dreams of expanding some of my more obscure armies, due to Irregular ceasing production of their 6 mm figures. This is a shame, although with the vast ranges they did have it is probably understandable. Mind you, every time I think about expanding an army, or starting a new period, part of me starts shouting ‘But you hate painting’, and that is still true. On the other hand, I still have a 28 mm King without a Queen, so I might have to rectify that at some point.

On that point, of course, I failed to get to any shows where I might have rectified said problem. I was due to go to one, but I woke up in the morning fired up for it (sort of) looked out of the window and saw …. nothing. Really. The snow was blowing horizontally against the windows of the windward portions of the house. When it eased off a bit I observed the black ice forming on the lane and decided that it was too dangerous to set off. Actually, the Estimable Mrs P inquired as to whether I really thought it was safe, and I had to confess that it was not. It cost me, as I promised to buy her a book about German vehicles in the Spanish Civil War if she did not make it to the talk at the show, and she did not.

Reading has rather slowed down. I do have some history books on the go, of course, but that has been interrupted by doing some philosophy courses, at least in the autumn. These were very worthwhile but surprisingly hard work. After all, I paid to do them, so I do need to do the reading to take full advantage. That, of course, eats into time for reading other stuff, and thus my banks of history, wargaming for the use of, are a bit run down at present. I can, however, bore for England on Simone Weil, ontology and ethics.

So, a brief run-through (rather belatedly, I confess) of activities in 2024. Where to in 2025? I shall, I dare say, have something to say about that fairly soon. Either that, or we shall all have to sit back and see what happens.

Toungoo Revixit?

Well, after the disaster of the rebellion of Mrauk-U (see the last post) my forces were reeling more than a little. The next campaign turn, 1535, saw one base (infantry) returning to the fold, but my field army was still denuded of troops. Which made it all the more unfortunate that the random event came first, and consisted of Lan Xang raiders attacking Chiang Mai, my easternmost city.

Grump. Why could I not draw something simple, such as ‘no event’? Anyway, the raiders are hard to deal with but not too scary, he said hopefully. At 2 skirmisher bases, 2 bows and 8 infantry I should manage to get the drop on them with the cavalry and, hopefully, my ever-faithful elephant. Still being rather short of troops, I called in two sets of vassal allied, from Chiang Mai itself and also Mone. These brought a welcome boost to my forces and meant that, except for potential ambushes, I just about outnumbered the enemy.

The battlefield is above, with the raiders to the left and myself and the allies to the right. I was hoping to outflank the enemy with my cavalry and roll them up by crossing the stream. Unfortunately, my wily foe spotted this and has placed the skirmishers and bows on the stream, backed up by a block of foot to see off anyone foolish enough to try to cross. So I had to revert to plan B, which was to threaten with the cavalry while using my foot, supported by the elephant, to smash the centre.

As you can see there was fair potential for ambushes, and with my raider hat on I hoped that they would happen and could cause disruption and chaos. Unfortunately for them, none of the ambushes were live troops, so that was a relief, although I did not know that until the end, of course.

As you can see, the plans developed. I have forded the stream with the elephants (in these lists the general is always mounted on an elephant) and the cavalry have deployed, menacing but out of bow range. My bows (technically, allied bows) have also moved up and have caused a little damage to the enemy skirmishers. The infantry are about to bite the bullet, as it were.

The infantry have crunched home but, rather to my disappointment, the impact, even though I charged, was less than I hoped. Only a couple of recoils which, while not a disaster, given that my foot are 4 or 3 deep and theirs are only two, could have been better. On the other hand, my cavalry and bow base are keeping 8 bases of the enemy amused, or stuck to their positions anyway.

A few moves later and my left-hand infantry column has prevailed, although the right hand has been bounced (as has their’s, incidentally). My elephant has performed heroics routing a base of bows and a base of skirmishers, while my right-hand infantry column pursues their fleeing foes. This could get messy in the centre, of course, but the enemy morale has just dropped to fall back so I’ve a little space to manoeuvre.

As so often it depended on the timing. In spite of losing another base, the enemy morale actually improved, while I managed to stop my elephant rampaging too far after its charge. My left-hand infantry column also started to rally, while my own and the enemy infantry on my right clashed again. I needed, however, to do something about their infantry who had spent the game facing the stream, on the left of the picture. If they turned and attacked my disordered infantry I was in trouble. In slight desperation, I turned the disordered elephant base into the rear of their infantry and, mercifully, routed two more bases, which was enough to rout the entire raider army.

Well, although I have now defeated the raiders twice, I still think they are pretty tough. The terrain favoured me, slightly, I think, in that they had to cover their flank from my cavalry, but could not advance against them for fear of being charged while disordered. On the other hand, my cavalry could not attempt to cross the stream for the same reason. I was a bit surprised by the infantry fight turning into such a slog. I am used to four deep tribal foot blowing away the enemy, but poor dice rolling on my part meant that it was rather closer than I liked. If they had got the initiative a few more times my infantry could have performed embarrassingly.

I am still, incidentally, pondering the details of the charge moves. In the current version, a charge which strikes home but is then repelled gets the bases disordered. This is a change from the rules on the page here, by the way. But what I have not worked out yet is whether a charge which does not even attempt to strike home should also be penalised. It would make declaring charges more costly, and often it might seem not to be worth the risk, but on the other hand, someone shouting ‘Charge’ and the men looking out and replying ‘Not likely, guv’ might well cause some confusion. So I am still pondering this. After all, the model of charge combat is of various people looking fierce and waving weapons and shouting ‘Grrr’ to see if they can intimidate the other side. ‘They are not falling for it, sir’ might be a reasonable response which would not disorder anyone in particular.

Rules considerations aside, the campaign is throwing up its challenges, as noted. While I have in fact won most of the battles, each of them has had its struggles and been a lot closer than I am really comfortable with. While some people might not like the degree of random events which is in the system, one a year is probably not unreasonable and certainly keeps the solo player on their toes. As I mentioned, keeping an army in being becomes important, which I nearly failed to do last time. If my army routs then I suspect I will have lost the campaign….

The Apogee of Touangoo?

The next few turns of the campaign were fairly quiet. A full-strength army moved about the map, cities submitting cheerfully and gladly to my rule. Truly, I thought, I cannot be far off actually winning this campaign. My personal rating was in the teens, the city count approaching half the cities on the map, and I had avoided capturing Manipur, which would have provoked the Mughal army to invade. I was nearly a distinctly regional hegemon.

I did, unfortunately, lose a third of the army to a famine, which was a shame, but by 1534 these were more or less replaced, I was only an infantry base down. The southern cities were falling into my grasp, and all was well with the world. My personal rating was hitting 20, heights unheard of in the past.

The latter part of 1534 raised a problem, however, in the shape of a random event. This was that the city of Mrauk-U rebelled, with external aid. Not only that, but when I appeared before their walls demanding their obedience, they refused. Not even a personal rating of 20 could persuade them (I needed to roll over 11 on a D20 and failed).

A few dice rolls established that the allies were 2 contingents of Moguls, six bases in total, consisting of a base of shot, 3 cavalry, 2 bows and a light horse. If you are about to object that that is seven bases, you are correct, because I drew a Jack on the cards for the forces, which indicated that I had to draw two extras.

The Mrauk-U forces were 4 elephants, 1 artillery, 1 bow, 1 cavalry and 5 infantry, plus their general on an elephant, of course. The enemy on the table, thus consisted of 20 bases.

A bit of pondering led me to call in some allies from my vassal cities – Pagan and Ava. These were 4 foot, 1 cavalry and a bow unit, giving me with the general and my own 11 bases a force of 18 to tackle the problem. This is not, I thought, going to be easy.

Deployment can be seen above. Somehow I managed to roll a wood in the centre of the field, which was occupied by all of the enemy’s firepower, except for the artillery which is on the hill on the far side (and did not hit a thing all game, snigger). The enemy cavalry, over whom I have a slight advantage, is deployed to block mine, with a trap set of me with bowmen lining the near edge of the woods. The enemy's plan was to hold with their cavalry and in the centre while using their enormous elephant advantage to get into my infantry block before it captures the wood. My plan was the inverse – to get into the wood with my infantry before their elephants arrive, holding them up with my bowman who you can see looking rather lonely on my left.

The above indicates that both sets of plans proceeded more or less as outlined. The elephants are menacing my left flank, although my archers are in the safety of the wood. My infantry are within striking distance of the wood, although the left-hand column has been recoiled by the shooting, which will, as it happens, in due course, cost me dear. On my right, nearest the camera, the cavalry are engaging in a standoff, just outside charge distance.

In an effort to keep the pressure up, I moved both my cavalry and infantry up. The infantry blew away the shot and archers in the wood, as you can see, while the cavalry did not do too badly (or at least, not as badly as I expected) against the charging foe. My elephant intervened against one enemy base, and my extreme left held firm. On the other hand, the enemy elephants have got into my delayed infantry column, which looks (and is) messy.

Both sides were starting to reel from their losses, and the forces were getting scattered. As you can see, my infantry contacted by the elephants have vaporised, and the elephants have just charged, en masse, my skirmisher base. Talk about overkill. The skirmishers have understandably routed. On the near side, the cavalry combat has tiled slightly in my favour, as I managed to charge an isolated base and see it off – it is fleeing in the bottom right of the shot. My infantry have moved through the woods and assaulted the waiting enemy there. The column with the general was successful, but the other were pushed back. Fortunately, the sensible enemy infantry declined to charge them, so it became a bit of a stand off.

At this point, however, the morale of my army hit ‘withdraw’. The enemy was not in much better nick, admittedly, but I had lost the battle. Casualties were high: 1 skirmisher, 2 cavalry, 3 infantry and a sub-general for me, while 1 shot, 1 bow, 2 cavalry, 1 infantry and a sub-general for them.

This was a bit of a mess as a battle. The best I could do, I thought, was to get my infantry into and through the woods, out of the way of the elephants. This indeed, turned out to be the best plan, but the disruption by bow fire of one of my columns left it vulnerable to being stomped on, which it duly was. I thought I had made a mistake in allowing my cavalry to be charged, admittedly, and it probably was an error, but in the longer run the combat was fairly even, especially when my elephant got involved. As often happens with cavalry combat, the results left neither side in a particularly good place to continue the fight.

More broadly, of course, I could be in some trouble as far as the campaign goes. Not particularly because of my personal reputation, although that has dropped by 4. 16 is still pretty good. The problem is the 7 bases of the army which have been lost. I will need to divide these up between the allies and myself, of course, but even so, the loss of 4 or 5 bases could be a major issue, as I only get one back per year. It could all be downhill from here.

Richelieu and Olivares

I have been slowly picking up on my wargame-related reading, after my sojourns in Simone Weil and Reality, and finally got back to this slim volume:

Elliott, J. H., Richelieu and Olivares, Cambridge, CUP, 1984.

This is another work I remember from being impoverished, and I concluded that there was never a chance that I should read it. However, umpteen years later, the advent of the internet and second-hand bookshops thereon, selling off ex-library books on the cheap, means that I have obtained a copy. And worth reading it was.

Now, I am no expert of France and Spain in the 1620s and 1630s, which is when both gentlemen were at the height of their powers. From a wargamer’s point of view, however, the interest is more in the 1630s with the cold war for Italy, including the Mantuan Wars, and then the start of the war between the two countries in 1635. There is, of course, a lot more to it than that.

The historian's interest is, of course, somewhat different. Richelieu and Olivares were the chief ministers of Louis XIII and Philip IV respectively, and both had their problems in staying in power. Richelieu was regarded with hostility by a group of courtiers around the Queen Mother, called the dévots. This group believed that France’s foreign policy should be aligned with Catholic Europe against the Protestants. Richelieu, of course, famously allied France with the Dutch and the Swedes against the Empire. This led to such excitements as the Day of Dupes, in which Richelieu nearly lost power, but emerged triumphant.

Part of the reasoning behind Richelieu’s foreign policy was the fear of being surrounded by Spanish and Hapsburg territories. Olivares, it would seem, had no such concept, but was trying to gain Spain a sort of peace with honour, at least with the Dutch. He believed that this was only achievable by close cooperation with the Hapsburg Emperor, who should support Spain’s war with the Dutch. While Ferdinand was quite happy to cooperate with the Spanish in the events that led to Nordlingen (1634) he was a bit less keen to invade the Low Countries. All the powers, after all, had their own internal problems to deal with.

Richelieu dealt with the major problem within France’s borders, the semi-independent Protestant Huguenot, in 1628 at the siege of La Rochelle. This included the attempted intervention of both an English fleet and a Spanish one. The English failed, which led to the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham. The Spanish arrived too late. This was more or less the tone of Olivares’ time in power; the Spanish were always scraping around for resources of men and money to defend the Empire from assorted enemies. There was never enough, and this led, indirectly, to Olivares’ downfall. From the 1620s he had pushed for a union of arms across the Empire, including all the semi-autonomous regions of it – Naples, Catalonia, the Americas, Portugal as well as Castile. As it was, the main burden fell on Castile which was becoming bankrupt and depopulated. However, the result was that Portugal, Catalonia, and Naples all rebelled causing even more problems and leading to the retirement of Olivares himself.

Richelieu, after 1630, was probably more secure in the confidence of the King, although neither man could count themselves as wholly safe in power. On the other hand, the great lords of France had a tradition of rebellion and revolt, rather than loyal service to the crown, which was a problem that Olivares did not have. Thus the King’s brother and mother were, and remained a problem, whether living in France apparently reconciled to the King, or in exile hostile to Richelieu. Given that Olivares was interested in causing dissent in France, of course, they offered a cheap way of attempting to undermine Richelieu. The fact that the conspirators were not actually that good at conspiracy (or that Richelieu was very good at blocking them) to some extent did not matter. The Cardinal had to spend a fair bit of time and energy watching them and nipping any dissent in the bud. This also led to some summary trials and executions, which led to Richelieu’s reputation as a tyrant.

Both men would, in fact, have preferred to spend their time on internal reform. Both kingdoms were hotchpotches of semi-autonomous regions, directly controlled crown lands and various jurisdictions. Both regimes needed money, and that only came from taxes – ultimately at least: loans had to be repaid sometime. Both countries needed to increase trade and industry while breaking down internal barriers. Some efforts were made in these directions but any reform became impossible with the advent of warfare between them.

Richelieu is often regarded as the winner of the contest. This is perhaps a little unfair on Olivares, who played a perhaps weaker hand with skill and determination. As Elliott points out, after Richelieu died, France was convulsed by unrest which led to the Fronde. He did not leave a well-ordered, obedient, and quiet country, but one seething under the burden of war taxation. The weak government, albeit under Mazarin, was open to noble revolt and the nobles duly revolted.

Spain, of course, suffered more revolts and the Empire partially collapsed. Catalonia and Naples were restored to it, but Portugal was lost. While Elliott does not go into it, the loss of Portugal was a strategic decision by the Spanish high command – Catalonia and Naples were deemed to be more important, so the Spanish did not really give any attention to Portugal until 1660.

The results of the comparison could probably be described as a score draw, which is more the most historiography ascribes to Olivares and less than it give Richelieu. The real interest of the book, however, is in the career parallels of Olivares and Richelieu. The latter gets the kudos for making France great again, and the former gets opprobrium for the dissolution of the Spanish Empire. Neither judgement is above criticism, however. History is, after all, contingent.