Lightest Africa

In order to expand the 1600 – Something campaign to include Africa, I am having to do some digging. First of all, of course, I need an atlas (which I can manage) and the DBR army lists. The African lists are contained in volume three of the lists, published, it would seem, in August 1997. Thus armed, I started to establish some of the players in Africa at the time, and started to encounter problems.

The first issue is that, actually, very little is known about most of Africa in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century. There are hints, and a fair bit of stuff in the journals and accounts of mostly Portuguese travellers. But the Portuguese were not Africans, and they imposed their own views, worldviews, and prejudices on what they saw.

So, we have a problem of Eurocentrism. This is not unexpected, but, as a wargamer, it is a pain. We know a bit about what was happening on the coasts of some parts of Africa, but as to what was going on internally, we have little clue. The heritage from colonial Africa does not help at all, by the way. A lot of names have been changed (or, I suppose, changed back). The old political units of Africa have been roundly destroyed, some as late as the 1880s (or even beyond). And colonialism generally had the view that Africans could not govern themselves, which is patently untrue.

A case in point might be the rather mysterious ‘Zimba’ in list 8, East African Pagan. Just as an aside, the list covers more or less the whole of East Africa, at least away from the coasts. In the notes for the list, the Zimba are described as expanding from the rolling grasslands of the interior to the coastal plain and terrorising the inhabitants by their ferocity and cannibalism. They sound promising as a wargame army, but where, in fact, did they live and, perhaps more usefully, who were they?

The description continues with a brief account of the siege of Mombasa, where the Portuguese fought, and fought off, an expedition from the Ottoman Empire. ‘Hang on, a moment,’ I can hear you cry. ‘I thought we were dealing with East Africa, what is now Kenya. What has that got to do with the Ottomans?’ A good question.

Fortunately, the good old internet (which had hardly got started in 1997, of course) came up with this paper: Global Politics in the 1580s: One Canal, Twenty Thousand Cannibals, and an Ottoman Plot to Rule the World. Cracking title, I am sure you would agree, from Giancarlo Casale, in the Journal of World History, volume 18, number 3, 2007. But you might be forgiven for wondering what on earth was going on.

Well, the paper is available for free on Academia.edu; you are quite free to read it and decide for yourself. My own takeaways from it are, firstly, that the influence of the Ottoman Empire in the Indian Ocean was a lot more extensive than I thought. Apparently, Ottoman troops fought in the Far East (in Aceh, on the northern end of Sumatra, so far as I can tell). There was also a great deal of rivalry between the Mughals and Ottomans, particularly over the route to Mecca, the protection of the Holy Cities and the distribution of alms there. The Ottomans were also engaged in a protracted war with the Persians, and extricating themselves from the war with Spain, although not with Portugal. As a note to that last comment, of course, in 1579 Phillip II of Spain took over Portugal and its Empire. The Ottomans wanted a free hand in the Indian Ocean, so did not want to promise not to attack the Portuguese.

If you are still with me, some Ottoman officials in Yemen and Egypt sort of conspired to try to divert resources to the Indian Ocean, including suggesting building a canal from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Part of this was launching a raid on Mombasa in 1588 (an interesting date for Armadas, of course). The Portuguese responded by sending an expedition from Goa. The Ottoman force was welcomed by the Mombasans, and set up a defensive position with plenty of artillery and the galliots defending the harbour. This could be unbeatable, even given the numerical disparity.

However, the Ottoman position was undermined by the appearance of twenty thousand Zimba cannibals on the shore, which split the Ottoman forces. The Portuguese, when they arrived, overwhelmed the seaward-facing fortifications, while the Ottomans fought off the Zimba. The Ottomans surrendered to the Portuguese, and the Zimba crossed, terrifying the inhabitants and causing mass panic as the Portuguese only managed to save a few. The rest, including women and children, seem to have been butchered.

Casale interrogates the accounts of the action which we have, and dismisses quite a few aspects, including the idea that it was fanciful or made up, that the Zimba were really cannibals, and noting that the Portuguese chronicler might well have inflated the account to show that they, too, fought the infidel. But the point of interest here is to ask who, exactly, were these twenty-thousand Zimba?

Unfortunately, we cannot tell, and Casale does not probe too deeply. Were they a mercenary army brought from the Zambezi? Or a migrating band of Maravi warriors moving north, having been disrupted by the coastal Muslims? Or were they locals unhappy at the idea of an Ottoman takeover? Unfortunately, history does not tell us.

On the other hand, the decisive intervention in the whole affair was by a bunch of otherwise unknown Africans. The Zimba, whoever they were, determined the outcome of the confrontation of the two technologically advanced empires. How this came about is unknown; it could have been entirely fortuitous, or they could have been allied to the Portuguese, or influenced by them in some way. The point is that Africans were perfectly well able to act on their own behalf, under their own leaders and polities, however obscure to contemporary Europeans and historians those leaders and polities might be.

1600 – Something: Patience is a Virtue

The next action in the Summer 1606 turn of the campaign is, again, in South-East Asia. This time, a Laotian army is responding to the invasion of Vientane by the Vietnamese. You will doubtless recall that the Laotian army was a bit unlucky to lose against the invaders in spring, and was forced to retreat into garrison. The main Laotian army was in the north, invading bits of Burma. Now, they have turned south and with the aid of the garrison, are aiming at turfing the Vietnamese out.

The Vietnamese army also has support, and so it is two eighteen-base armies that are going to face each other. The Vietnamese totalled three elephants (including the general), two cavalry, six bows and crossbows, five bills and two skirmishers. The Laotians had two elephant bases (including the general), two cavalry, eleven tribal foot bases and three bows.

I rolled a fair bit of terrain, as you can see above. The Vietnamese are on the defensive, even though they are in Laos, and are to the left. I decided to leave the skirmishers protecting the train, while the main strength of the army is deployed on two hills, the central one with the general, and the far side with the sub-general. The cavalry are on the extreme left (if you look carefully you can see the edge of one of the bases), and the elephants are in reserve.

The Laotians were not looking forward to this. Previous experience shows that bill elements are very tough when uphill against, well, more or less anyone, and perhaps especially tribal foot. They deployed in two blocks, one in the centre under the general, the other on the right, to outflank and hit the hill on the far side. The cavalry were flank guards.

The Laotians advanced cautiously. I am trying to learn not just to slam tribal foot into any passing target, but to try to gather them up into a decisive strike. The Laotian ‘right hook’ is advancing, the archers having deployed. In the centre, the general is dividing the tribal foot into two, while pushing up the archers. On the Laotian left, the cavalry have advanced, but they have been disrupted by bow fire from the central hill, and are now a bit scattered, and the foremost element is looking a bit vulnerable.

The Laotian centre deployed and, with the Vietnamese on the hill masked by archers, charged the Vietnamese bows in the centre. Neither side had really planned for this. The Vietnamese elephants were too far away to support them, while the Laotians were also a bit flat-footed by it. Nevertheless, they are wreaking some havoc among the Vietnamese bows. On the far side, despite losing the archery duel, the Laotian right hook is making progress, even though charging bill bases uphill still sounds dubious.

Two-thirds of the Vietnamese bows were routed, although rather to everyone’s surprise one base stood its ground and recoiled the tribal foot. The Vietnamese on the hill advanced down it into the covering Laotian archers and routed them, while the remaining Laotian tribal foot charged on, encountering the Vietnamese elephants. The Vietnamese cavalry is being moved across to the volatile centre, while on the Vietnamese left the reserve bills are moving into position. At this point the Laotian morale drooped a bit, and they fell back.

Nothing daunted, however, the Laotians fought on. Their right hook charged up the hill and, rather to everyone’s surprise, took out a bill base, following it up with a flank attack on the reserves led by the sub-general, which they also won, killing the general. In the centre, the marauding Laotian tribal foot with the general were bounced by the elephants, and were falling back in disorder. However, the destruction of the Vietnamese left, and the death of the sub-general pushed Vietnamese morale to a critically low level, and a poor roll left them with a status of withdraw.

Overall, the Laotians had lost two bow bases, while the Vietnamese lost two bows, two bills and the sub-general. So it was fairly close, the main difference being the success of the flank attack. Strategically, the Vietnamese will now have to withdraw from Laos, and try to work out how to pay three armies from two provinces. The Laotians have just about survived the invasion, and the land grab in the north might, in time, give them the upper hand.

Along the way I discovered a problem with the Vietnamese list I was using. I referred back to the DBR list and discovered a whole pile of warbands (the DBR equivalent of tribal foot) which had dropped out of my twelve-base armies. So a revised list has been prepared, with two elephants, a cavalry base, four bows and crossbows, a tribal foot base, a skirmishers base and a rocket, cavalry, elephant or tribal foot base decided at random. It was a bit of a humbug moment, but invoking guideline 1 of that book I let the previous results stand, of course, but I must do some amendments to my lists.

I also am considering adding some singly-based elephant commanders to my collection. The problem is that in the armies with elephants, the elephant is the general, and this can lead to the general exposing himself to a lot of risk. Additionally, elephant bases are slower than cavalry or light cavalry bases, which most generals move as. This is not really a problem when both armies have elephant bases as generals, as here. But when one army has an elephant base as a general, and the other does not, the latter is a bit more flexible, which seems unfair. So I am trying to work out an order which rectifies this shortcoming as well.

Still, a good battle which shows that a patient build-up with tribal foot can pay off, even when attacking bills deployed defensively on top of hills. Mind you, the Laotians were lucky with some combat rolls.

Next up, I think we return to the Middle East, where the Persians have invaded Mesopotamia again.

Inching Towards the Goal

 There must have been a theme developing in recent posts about patience and slow progress. I can report a bit of the latter, again, but I am not sure about the former.

A recent game (actually in the Autumn 1606 campaign turn) more or less denuded my stocks of Japanese, so it is, in a wargaming sense, at least, as well that I am currently painting some more.

On the right you can see the 72 Samurai foot which were painted the other week. On the left you will see the now finished but unbased ashigaru foot with yari. There are 60 of them, which somehow does not make for the poetry of 72 Samurai. But no matter, they are there, painted to my usual low standards are ready for basing. They will have to wait for that, however, as I still have three bases of bowmen and musketeers, and two of Samurai cavalry to start (let alone finish). I tend to base in batches of teens of figures, I admit, although these strip-based figures (they are Irregular) are easier to base than some others.

In other news, I have been adding to the campaign rules, realising that I now need formal rules for Off Board Zones, sea-borne empires and the differences between galley fleets, home fleets and ocean-going fleets. This, of course, adds a bit of complexity to the campaign, but I really cannot have Mediterranean galley fleets nipping over to the Caribbean. You might be a bit surprised to see the difference between ocean-going and home waters galleons, but in reality, most English, French and Dutch warships of the era were designed for home defence, not really have the capability of going a long way. Long-distance routes were usually sailed by armed merchantmen, which had a greater carrying capacity for provisions as well as cargo, and had a far smaller crew than a warship. It was only with the advent of frigate-designed warships in the middle of the Seventeenth Century that ocean-going fleets really got going.

The other major change to the rules is the advent of the African nations and American tribes, along with the Portuguese and Spanish empires. The latter has caused some head-scratching, as you might be able to imagine. After all, the Portuguese Empire stretched from Madeira to Brazil, East and West Africa, India, Ceylon, South East Asia, the Spice Islands, Japan and China. Mind you, most of these places were held only lightly, as factories or trading stations, rather than for occupation and colonisation. The exception to this seems to have been Brazil. Migration there from Portugal seems to be the reason that the rest of the Empire was only lightly held.

Rather fortunately, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires were always kept and administered separately, as, basically, an eastern and a western entity. The main Spanish Empire was, of course, Central and western South America, as well as part of the far south of South America. There were also the Caribbean Islands, southern Florida and, rather stuck out on its own, the Philippines. The latter was linked to the rest of the Empire through Central America, rather than the route back via Africa.

The map has, thus, been rather radically altered, although it might be a bit hard to spot the difference in the following snapshot. The Americas are in the bottom left-hand corner, by the way, just below Africa. Looking at the whole thing, I have deleted the Atlantic off-board zones, given that the Atlantic world is now connected, but the Pacific and Siberian OBZs have survived the cull, and assorted North American OBZs have been added. While I do have the information for which tribes inhabited these areas, the chance of any external forces arriving there in a sufficiently wargame-able number is fairly small. I can always expand the map (again) if I need to.

The major items to note on the world-sized picture are the yellow pins representing the Spanish and Portuguese forces of empire. These are fairly thin on the ground. The Spanish have a Caribbean fleet. The Portuguese have an army each in Luanda, Goa, and Malacca, plus a fleet in the latter two. The empires are both pretty rich, but getting that wealth back to the metropolitan power might be interesting.

While the Spanish ‘own’ central and southern American provinces, and the Portuguese do so on the Brazilian coast, the rest are defined as factories, which means that they do not draw taxes from the provinces in which they are found, but that the income derives from trade. This is usually mutually beneficial, but I am still working out how to model the interaction of the factories with the surrounding area. While the local rulers did occasionally attack Portuguese stations, more commonly it was other European powers which, either on their own or with local allies, did the assaulting. This slowly caused the fortification of the factories, and hence the export of the trace italienne to the rest of the world.

The final map of Africa was a bit of a juggle, but is above. There is a relative concentration of states and forces in West Africa, the Horn of Africa, and also in a strip roughly across central Africa. This is really as much as I could find documented; the only power which might be missing is Buganda. That is not to say that the rest of Africa was unpopulated, or did not have any political organisation. It is just that Europeans had not got there, and that the organisation was small, quite likely nomadic, and unlikely to be of interest to European traders. Africa was not a tabula rasa for European powers to inscribe themselves onto, nor was the technological difference as big as it became in the Nineteenth Century. It was a big, squabbling continent with political entities with their own politics, warfare and interests.

The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is the Americas. I noted that the Spanish possessions were, really, colonial enterprises, and so were the Portuguese on the coast of Brazil. Expansion of both was limited by local resistance, disease, and the sheer low numbers of settlers. It would be a bit similar in the north when the Europeans arrived there. The idea for the Portuguese Brazilian provinces is that they are a bit like the factories; mutually beneficial unless relations go wrong. The Spanish provinces act more like normal provinces, although the random events system has the possibility for rebellions of the locals to take place. In fact, in Spanish America, most rebellions were against the distant monarchy and its representatives. Given that it took a couple of years for dispatches to get to Madrid, be answered, and for the reply to find the original sender, you can see why the metropolitan centre and the periphery got a bit distant.

So, there you are. The final expansion is nearly ready. The spreadsheet needs to be populated, and I am still learning where some of these entities and provinces in Africa are. But I will get there, I am sure, and I am hoping that Africa will provide a good number of very different sorts of forces involved in my wargames.

Incipient Megalomania and a Test Game

For reasons entirely unconnected with wargaming, I recently attended a course on the philosopher Nietzsche. Few people know much about Nietzsche, even how to spell his name. One thing people seem to know is that he went mad due to syphilis, which is only half true. He did go mad, but not because he had syphilis. The other thing people know is that he declared the death of God, even though he did not argue for it. There are reasons for what he said and why, but I am not interested in them here. What I wish to note is that just before he descended into irretrievable madness, he became megalomaniac, writing to friends about how he ruled Europe and would have all anti-semites shot, among other things.

I have for many years, in fact since the DBR army lists volume 3 book was released, pondered Africa in the early modern period. It never made it into my original 1618 – Something campaign, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the figures are simply not available. I have a fairly flexible approach to building Early Modern (for the sake of argument, let us define it as 1500 – 1700) armies, as the regular reader of this blog will know. However, it gets increasingly difficult as the forces and troops get more obscure, and Africa is definitely getting obscure. It is even more so with 6 mm figures, of course. Even so, back in the 1990s there were few figures around in any scale.

The next problem is finding anything out about Africa in the time frame. There was practically nothing about the subject. Even now, in the age of the Internet, there is not much. Mostly, what we have is reports from Portuguese merchants and adventurers, which we can believe or not, as we choose. So it is all a little tricky.

Not to be deterred this time, of course, I am planning a further extension to the 1600 – Something campaign, which has come to dominate the blog and which you are probably all bored silly with. But perhaps Africa in the late pre-colonial (or early colonial) period might be interesting for some. I have started with a map (which is proving difficult, as noted above) and sourcing figures. Having given up on finding the ‘correct’ figures, I am going to use what I have from my North African and Arab box, assorted Asian types and, of course, the Aztecs, who provide plenty of tribal foot, bowmen and skirmishers.

As a proof of concept game, or rather, just for fun and to show that it works, I set up a game, above, between Somalis (of an undefined location) to the left and Abyssinians to the right. The Somalis have a skirmisher (in the palm trees), two cavalry, three bows, and six tribal foot bases. The Abyssinians have four light horse, two shot (in the fields), a skirmisher, a bill base, and five tribal foot bases. I also rolled a fair bit of terrain, as you can see, which means that the Abyssinian light horse are, unusually, in column.

As this was not a campaign game, I was possibly a bit more gung-ho than I would normally be. The Abyssinian light horse have moved onto the flank in the foreground and deployed. The first thing they did was halt the rightmost group of tribal foot, so the Somali cavalry have moved across to cover them. The rest of the Somali tribal foot are moving forward into charge position.

The leftmost Somali foot charged home, shaking their opponents. Then they had a disaster, and the Abyssinians fought back, recoiling them and then, under the leadership of the general, routing them. This led the rest of the Somali army to waver. As they were doing so, the central block of Somali foot was charged by the Abyssinians and forced back. Meanwhile, the light horse were still entertaining and disrupting the Somali cavalry.

The coup de grace came when the Abyssinian general led the light horse onto the flank of the central block Somalis. The shaken Abyssinian tribal foot stepped up and recoiled the Somalis again, and they vaporised. In the meantime, the dancing Abyssinian light horse on their left subjected the Somali cavalry to a withering barrage and hit one base twice, the Somali general having just brought it back into line. The Somali general had to roll for risk, and failed. The Somalis were now four bases and a general down, and the morale roll came up ‘rout’.

That was fun, although I did not manage to get any firepower into the action on either side. Tribal foot armies then to either win big or lose big, and this was no exception, although the Abyssinian dice rolling was pretty good. With the general dead and the centre gone, the Somalis were toast.

So, the principle is proven. I can run wargames in East Africa, at least. The map is slowly being extended from Egypt down the Nile, and resources are being garnered for West Africa. I am even considering buying a few Ashanti, colonial Abyssinian and Zulu figures, just as markers for what is going on, but I suspect that the Aztecs will continue to provide the bulk of the troops.

As for the megalomania, well, you be the judge. The campaign currently stretches from Portugal to Japan, and Norway to Egypt, with, I think, twenty-eight political entities on the map (I can’t say countries, as Cambodia currently has no territory). By my reckoning, Africa will add approximately fourteen more, plus Morocco and Oman as separate actors.

The last map turn took me about an hour and forty minutes to run, and provided seven wargames. I reckon, then, that once Africa gets going, it would generate another three battles and another 20 minutes of preparation time. Mind you, the Indian subcontinent has been going for a few moves so far and has produced nothing.

So, there you are. Am I becoming a megalomaniac? Or simply going mad? You be the judge.

Thoughts on World-Wide Wargaming

Probably, hardly any other wargamers aside from me consider going, as it were, global. When I was a young, green wargamer (I am now an old, green wargamer), there was a real trend for setting up your own world, more or less based on this one, and using variants of Tony Bath’s Hyboria scheme. I, of course, tried it, but my worlds and continents never really worked. I was never sure why, but part of the problem was the complexity. Having a cast of hundreds might have worked for Mr Bath, but it was not for me.

But still, one-off wargames can, for some people, pall after a while. And, after all, many, if not most, wargamers seek some variety, skipping quite happily from ancients to World War Two without so much as a temporal dissonance. I decided fairly early on that the period before about 1700 was quite enough for me. All right, I have considered the ‘45 and even the French and Indian Wars, but I have never quite got there.

My original focus was on the English Civil War, which I slowly expanded to the Thirty Years’ War with the figures that were available to me. At least, I read a bit about the TYW. But reading history has a knack of leading you both forwards and backwards chronologically, and, mostly, in my experience, backwards. So I was drawn backwards to the Italian Wars (the board game Machiavelli, which is still a major influence), and some later medieval wars.

With the advent of a wide range of 6 mm figures, I got moving on the broad canvas that DBR’s army lists offered. This was true wargaming on a potentially worldwide scale. Everything (not quite, but nearly) was in those lists from Maori to Aztecs, Siberian tribes to Zimba (whoever they may have been). Ever-widening reading, and some innovations in military history such as Parker’s The Military Revolution, inspired an internet campaign starting in Europe in 1618 and spreading to the rest of the Eurasian landmass. This was a campaign that offered scope for historical match-ups and all sorts of troop types. But it got too complex and petered out.

Over the intervening years I have tried several sorts of campaign types, mostly documented in that book. My solo skirmish campaigns have provided a bit of light relief, but have not really gone anywhere. The future of my 25+ mm collection is under review, by the way. The Armada Abbeys narrative campaign was a success, and led to some really good wargames. This was followed by the Reconquista campaign, which was a lot of fun, mostly in the write-ups with the tension between King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Slowly I drew back the focus and started to allow random events to dictate the campaign process. I reinvented my Aztec campaign for Burma in the 1530s, which worked, although I am not sure the victory conditions were particularly stretching. But still the wider canvas beckoned.

Further developments allowed me to record the relations of multiple powers to each other, starting with the Very Mogul Civil War. With this, the diplomatic table was married to an initiative roll, which ensured that not all actors on the map moved each turn. It also allowed diplomacy and subterfuge to take place, although the rules for the latter were somewhat fuzzy. One thing lacking was some idea of the costs of military operations. Actors were limited by the number of armies they could deploy, not whether they could pay for them, except when raising the forces.

After this, a detailed map of the British Isles was developed for the War of Stuart Succession. This included the innovation of the God On Our Side score, to keep tabs of who, in the public’s view, was the anointed victor. In the Early Modern World, this was important, and although no particular side managed to win the war by getting to 100% GOOS, it did have an impact on the campaign, especially when the Scots started losing. This was married to the diplomatic table to see who was allied with whom. The Spanish won, by the way.

And so to the big one, the real worldwide wargame campaign, 1600 – Something. Of course, this is a return to the original idea of a wargame across the Eurasian landmass, and, as it turns out, beyond. I started with a Europe-only approach, which tested the ideas. Essentially, each actor is identified by four entries in a spreadsheet. The first is in the diplomatic table, giving relations with other powers, the GOOS score, first introduced in the War of Stuart Succession campaign (which does not appear to have a page of its own; I must have been having too much fun with it), and the initiative score. The second entry is a list of controlled provinces on the map. The third entry is a list of armed forces and their location. And the final entry is the financial one.

After a bit of practice and rule writing and refining, I can run a campaign move fairly quickly, in about an hour and a half for Eurasia. The turns create between two and ten wargames to be fought out, and the variety has been huge, from Korea invading Japan to Siberian nomads attacking the Muscovites and Bedouin raiders in Egypt. This is just what I hoped for, and just what early modern wargaming can deliver.

So now, I stand on the brink of adding in Africa and the Americas. The African actors can be treated in much the same way as the Eurasians, but the Americans are perhaps a little more difficult. The indigenous Americans were not, particularly, actors on the international scene. In Central and South America they had already been conquered by the Spanish and Portuguese (up to a point, anyway), and North America was only just beginning to be explored. So, to limit the number of actors, at least to begin with, the Native Americans are being treated as reactors, rather than actors in their own right, unless, of course, they act as the result of a random event. I will have to see how that goes.

1600 – Something: Patience is a Sort of Virtue

 As you might have noticed, the Spring 1606 campaign move has just finished. There is a little outstanding business, however. Firstly, the Muscovite / Swedish army, forced to retreat by the locals from Estonia, withdrew to Latvia. The Muscovites failed their GOOS score and so will face the wrath of the Latvian locals. At home, the Muscovite civil war continues. In other news, the Swedish civil war has ended, and the French army and train defeated in Burgundy has retreated to Champagne. The mutinous French army, which defeated them with Spanish help, has dispersed. Finally, the Burmese army which had invaded Vietnam dispersed, having lost its general.

There were a few other reactions to tie up. The Laotians reacted to their loss of Vientaine by raising an army there supported by their army in Liang Prabang. That will cause a battle with the occupying Vietnamese. Spain failed to engineer further dissent in France, while the Swedes raised an army in Gotland. And so to summer….

The summer move turned up further conflicts. The random events yielded a lucky country in the West having an economic surge (don’t spend it all at once) while the Koreans lost their fleet in the East to a naval disaster. In the round of initiative rolling, the French subverted the Basques into rebellion against Spain. The Muscovites moved into Smolensk and the Moguls moved to Oudh. The Vietnamese raised another army in Dai Viet, and the Japanese, taking advantage of the Korean disaster, moved their fleet into the Sea of Japan.

In the actual moves of military forces, the Spanish moved on Ile de France. In response to the Venetian request last move, the Ottomans moved on the Austrians in Bosnia. The Persians had another go at invading Mesopotamia, and the Siamese invaded Ngyren, the southern bit of Vietnam. So with the Muscovites and Latvians and the Spanish and Basques, we have seven wargames in the summer season.

If you have found that confusing, you are not alone. I have mentioned before that this was supposed to be quite a simple campaign mechanic, aimed at producing lots of linked wargames. It just goes to show that any simple system with a sufficient number of variables can quickly exhibit complex behaviour. But now we can focus on the wargames. Firstly, the Siamese invade Ngugyen province in Vietnam.

As the Vietnamese army is occupied elsewhere, the defending forces are a random local force. In this case, the Vietnamese field two elephant bases (one of which is the general), a cavalry, four bows, three bills, a skirmisher and a rocket. The Siamese consist of one elephant (the general), one cavalry, six tribal foot, two bows and two skirmishers.

The Vietnamese are to the left in the picture above, their aim being to hold the two gaps in the centre with bill and bow combinations, and wait to see what the Siamese did. The rocket in the centre is firing away happily, disrupting the Siamese tribal foot in the centre. The Siamese aim was to strike in the centre with the tribal foot each side of the central rough going, which will be occupied by the skirmishers.

The picture actually shows the action after several moves. The Siamese had the worst tempo rolls I have seen for a while. The general did not panic and rush the foremost tribal foot into action, but patiently got everyone else moving. He has just succeeded.

Things started to happen finally as the troops moved into range. The central Siamese tribal foot have been hit again by rocket fire and disrupted. One of the bases has charged some Vietnamese bows and routed them, however. In the foreground, the Siamese bows are exchanging shots with some Vietnamese, nervously eyeing the cavalry. On the far side the Siamese tribal foot are moving into position. They should be being aided and abetted by the skirmishers, but good shooting by the Vietnamese bows has put paid to that for the moment.

Assorted crises appeared across the front line. On the Siamese right the tribal foot, three deep, charged home. With appalling combat rolls they were bounced, being thrown into confusion. On the Siamese right the bills and bows attacked. The bows were hit by archery and halted, but the bills are making inroads into one of the bow bases. In the centre, the victorious Siamese tribal foot have decided to try to rally in front of the Vietnamese archers in the field, and are now in a bit of trouble.

The Siamese general, on his elephant, charged across his front line to save the badly shaken bowmen on his left. This was highly successful, and the Vietnamese billmen vaporised. On the other flank, the Vietnamese bills have advanced into the shaken tribal foot and are driving them back, while the bows have taken their toll on the skirmishers.

The end came on the Siamese right, as the tribal foot fled before the Vietnamese blades. The Vietnamese elephants started to advance on the Siamese centre, which is looking a bit vulnerable now the general is charging off towards the left flank. Siamese morale sank to ‘withdraw’, and the general, with the right gone, the left in some disarray and the centre looking weak, decided to do so.

Losses were close – three Siamese bases to two Vietnamese. But the important blows against the Siamese were the poor dice rolling, both in terms of tempo points and combat dice. Really, the tribal foot on the right should have done a lot better. On the other hand, the Vietnamese could have closed their elephants up towards the centre earlier and prevented their bills on the Siamese right from being charged in the flank. Mind you, two of the Siamese bases are within a recoil combat result of routing, and so getting out of trouble was probably the best option.

That was a slow-burning game, but the end was quick and fairly decisive. Next we have another action in South-East Asia, this time the Laotians trying to rid their land of Vietnamese invaders. Watch this space.

Slow Progress is Progress

As summer winds itself down towards the inevitable, wargaming activity proceeds in fits and starts. In the background, an attempt is being made to tidy up the 1600 – Something rules and make them presentable for a wider audience, which almost certainly is limited to me in the future. By ‘tidy up’ I mean things like giving sections proper titles, adding captions to tables, and generating a table of contents and list of figures. I am trying to avoid the temptation of amplifying and adding to the rules. At 16 pages or so, they are already quite long enough, in my view, although a lot of those pages relate to random events, so are not used that often. Still, I do know that overcomplicating campaigns leads to death, and I don’t want that to happen here, so the watchword is still, ‘keep it simple, stupid’.

Some revisions to the tactical rules are also being pondered. The first tactical rule change under consideration is to make foot skirmishers a tiny bit more powerful, by giving them a ranged combat tactical factor of 2 rather than 1. This should allow them to occasionally stop other troop types, while remaining with a 1 defensive factor should mean that they are fairly easily cleared out of the way. A long time ago I fought out a campaign with Aztecs, who have (under DBA, which I was using) three troop types: blades, auxilia and skirmishers. I was using a system of hidden enemy units, and the skirmishers were most useful in flushing any enemy forces hiding in ambush out. In pitched battle they are less handy, of course, but that seems to be as it should be. Still, I don’t think they should simply be targets, so I’ll try giving them a bit of a barb.

The second change under consideration is to artillery. These are starting to be used in the 1600 – Something campaign, having been largely neglected in previous wargames with my rules. The thing is the guns seem to be a bit powerful in ranged combat, with a tactical factor of 4. When in point-blank range, that is less than 4 base widths, this means that they can hit most troop types very hard. Thus, in defensive positions, artillery are very good indeed. Probably too good. After all, the Cornish pike at Lansdown (1643) did get up the hill and stand in the face of fierce artillery fire. So a reduction to 3 seems to be on the cards. On the other hand, I think that a change in the point-blank ranges is due, with light guns staying at 4 BW, mediums getting 6 and heavies 8. All this means is that the heavier artillery will not have to roll for targets over 4 BW, as they do now. I am pondering this, as it may make the heavy guns a bit too effective over the whole battlefield.

As an aside to this, I am also working on some proper measuring sticks for the wargames. My current stick has a tendency for the distances to get wiped off by perspiring fingers, and so a more permanent solution is hopefully in the pipeline. Mind you, painting even slightly straight lines is not easy, so it remains a work in progress. The unfinished prototypes are below and are, fortuitously, 8 base widths long. You might be correct in suggesting that the maximum artillery range of 8 base widths is somehow linked.

On the painting front, the seventy-two Samurai have, slowly and painfully, crawled across the painting table and are now finished, although the bases have not been so lucky.

The picture probably does not do true justice to the poverty of my painting efforts, but at least they are painted. These bases do, in fact, double the number of foot Samurai bases that I have and, when complemented with ashigaru and cavalry, increase my Samurai army potential from one and a half armies to three.

Speaking of ashigaru, I have started the yari-wielding troops.

As can be seen, progress so far is limited. Only the faces, hands and armour have been tackled so far. You might also note that there are 60 ashigaru, rather than 72 Samurai. This is because, for reasons I am not sure about, I have seven bases in stock already. I am sure it made sense at some point, even if I cannot recall what sort of sense it made. Eventually, this lot will make up five bases of ashigaru, but there is still a fair bit of work to be done.

So, in spite of the leaves turning, the brutal sunshine fading and the days shortening, at Polemarch Towers things wargaming are still proceeding. The work on the maps for the major expansion of 1600 – Something is more or less complete, although I am still working out rules for the functioning of sea-borne empires, specifically, initially of course, the Portuguese (and, to some extent, the Spanish). Having gone global, I can hardly reduce the Spanish flota to a d6 addition to Spanish income. Working it out, both Spanish and Portuguese income from their empires is relatively colossal, so I will need some reductions for local defence and administration, let alone paying for fleets to return the money to Europe. Mind you, in the campaign the Spanish are sitting on an immense treasury at present anyway, due to not actually having sufficient armed forces to defend their possessions in Europe and winning battles to stop that becoming a crisis. As in the real world, it cannot last forever, surely.

That said, I refer the reader to my earlier comment, the KISS principle. Returning the colonial loot to the metropolitan power has to be simply administered. I have run campaigns where one aspect, conceived of as being minor, has taken over the game to the detriment of the big picture. While colonial shenanigans were important, they were not the whole story and, from the treaties and truce in the early 1600s to the outbreak of war again with the Dutch in the 1620s, largely seem to have functioned normally. In fact, as I recall, that was the point from the Spanish point of view: to build up some cash to have another go at the rebels.

Trying to achieve this without over-complicating things takes a bit of thinking about, and probably some trial and error. Plus I have the Native Americans to think about. I fear at the moment I have robbed them of agency, but we will see.