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.

1600 – Something: Galleys and Galleons

As you are probably painfully aware by now, the final action of the Spring 1606 campaign turn features a raid by the Barbary Corsairs on the coast of Portugal. This caused a bit of head scratching here at Polemarch Towers, because I have little idea what the forces involved might be. Not that I let that put me off, of course.

I could have taken the easy way out and fought out a land action, claiming that the raiders had landed. But that might have constituted cheating, and I have had to cheat myself enough in this campaign move. So, dice rolling was pursued, with the result that the game was to be all at sea. This caused some further head scratching, as I have no rules for mixed oared and sail ship actions. On that basis I am also concerned that the Koreans and Japanese might have at each other next turn. I’ve got the models, just not the rules.

Anyway, nothing (or not much) daunted, I sat down and added to my extant naval rules so bits of galleys, galleasses and galliots. Galleys turn out to be much like 17^th Century 4^th rates, at least in these rules, and galliots are fifth rate equivalents. This is of course arguable, but it should be borne in mind that a fifth rate in the 17^th Century threw a much lighter weight of shot than an equivalent at the end of the Eighteenth Century. Galleys and galliots are restricted to only firing forward, of course, and are highly manoeuvrable, at least by comparison with sailing ships. They also pack a punch with heavy cannon; sailing ships of the era tended to be much lighter in terms of shot.

Anyway, the cards were drawn for two random naval forces. The corsairs got four galliots, two unclassified scout ships, and six galleys. The Portuguese got a galleass, a 4^th rate, two 5^th rates, three unclassified scouts, and five 6^th rates. The dice told me that the corsairs were escaping south with their loot.

The corsairs got four turns head start. They started in the top right-hand corner of the picture, and need to exit from the diagonal corner. The wind is blowing from right to left (south) and is a force 6. This is unfortunate for the corsairs, as galleys and galliots are at half speed in such circumstances. So they are going to be crawling across the table.

The corsair unclassified ships made a break for the corner (left), pursued by the Portuguese scouts (bottom centre). With the main fleets, the Portuguese 6^th rates have just come into range of the galliots, and have opened fire, without much success.

While the scouts chase on, the galliots have turned to face the Portuguese sixth rates and opened fire, without noticeable effect, although return fire has slightly damaged the leftmost galliot. The galleass and fourth rate are aiming for the galley lines behind. The dynamic has also meant that the Portuguese fifth rates are now behind the sixth rates, and a bit out of the action.

Things started to warm up with the main fleets. The first line of corsair galleys turned and opened fire on the Portuguese 4^th rate and galleass. Three of the sixth rates took on the isolated galliot, while the rest tackled the rest of the galliots, one of which has taken damage from a broadside from the galleass. Smoke was starting to get in the way of the shooting in some places on the table, in spite of the wind.

On the left of the picture, the scouts have come into contact. Sailing on opposite tacks, they only got one shot at each other, and all of them missed. In the centre things are hotting up. The Portuguese sixth rates are still harassing the damaged galliot, while the other galliots are undamaged and starting to slip away. The rest of the corsair galleys have turned and attempted to blast the rest of the sixth rates, without result, while the fourth rate and galleass are shooting at anything they can see, with limited effectiveness.

Next move and disaster has struck the corsair galleys, as the fifth rates have come into action. A lucky broadside forced the leftmost galley to shear off, meaning it fouled the next galley along, which in turn fouled the other one. All of the galleys took some damage, the central one being the worst hit.

While the other galleys attempted to shoot up the galleass, the rightmost of the fouled galleys managed to break free. The fifth rates, fourth rate and galleass, however, continued to take pot-shots at the fouled galleys, which struck their colours. However, the Portuguese were now on the wrong tack to have another go at the corsairs, and, as they cannot turn across the wind (shear) to change tack because it is still force 6, they would have to wear, and the mobile galleys would probably get away. So, the wind which hampered the galley fleet in evading the Portuguese eventually managed to save most of it.

I have not had many naval battles, and the scribblings on my rules attest to that. Still, they do seem to work quite well. There is lots of shooting and not much damage. When you consider that the English shot at the Armada for days, and that Anglo-Dutch Wars actions went on for hours, it seems to get the balance about right. Galleys at this period, incidentally, were not built for ramming. Shooting and boarding was more the tactic, and the corsairs in this action had no interest (or, probably, ability) to board.

So, that completes the Spring 1606 turn. The games ranged from the Far East to the Far West, and a lot of fun it has been as well. Now I will have to sit down and work out the implications of the results and, of course, what happens in the summer. I could be some time.

Going Global

Africa, it seems, is getting reasonably well embedded into my thinking about the 1600 – Something campaign. In some senses it is a natural progression from the Europe and Asian campaigns, the eastern part of Africa being, of course, heavily embedded in Indian Ocean trade patterns, including, of course, the slave trade of East Africa, which moved people largely to the Ottoman Empire.

As an aside, I do have to wonder why this aspect of the slave trade (which was significant, and went on for a lot longer than the Atlantic trade, I think) does not cause me as much angst as the Atlantic slave trade. Perhaps it is because Britain, or Western Europe, was not involved in it. Or perhaps, at least as far as I know, the consequences in the here and now are not quite as significant. Or, maybe, it is simply that it is not as well known in the English-speaking world. I am not sure, but, anyway, the African nations on my map only require populating with armies and diplomatic relations, and they are ready to roll.

And so we come to the Americas. This is getting more complicated than Africa, it turns out. A lot of Africa was unknown at the time, of course, and remained so until the mid-1800s, more or less. But a fair bit of South America had been explored, conquered, and exploited by Europeans for a century or so. Now, granted, using JWH’s suggestion (in a comment) for shimmying around the problems of the slave trade, that is much less of a problem than it could have been, but in terms of a map, the indigenous peoples are a bit of a problem.

Now, in West Africa I did come up with a problem, in that there are two areas of very small states – the Akan and Igbo areas. The current thought is to have these as single entities on the map, and to ensure that they cannot simply be conquered. That is, a hostile force entering the area will, even if it wins a battle, not conquer the province. In South America, I am thinking of a similar system, only one with limits. The Akan area had, according to the map I found, 33 independent states, while the Igbo states were 45 – 50 independent political entities. In South America, the tribes could (eventually) be conquered. More or less. So I think the provinces will have to be listed as to how many victories by European armies are needed in order for a conquest to be achieved.

There are other complications, of course. Historically, while the Europeans did have the unwholesome habit of massacring the natives (and did so to the end of the 19^th Century, at least), much of the destruction of Native Americans was achieved by introducing European diseases. This weakened the political entities as well as the constitution of the survivors. I am not intending to model this, but it does mean that some of the native tribes, at least in the early days, were quite small and struggling, I imagine, to maintain ordinary lifestyles. I think, therefore, the natives will be fairly quiet, and only respond to incursions by Europeans or random events. It means I do not have to track their diplomatic relations.

In a similar but different way, North America was, in 1600, largely unknown territory to Europeans, and, as Jeremy Black notes, relations were fairly good, based on trade for furs and fish. These tribes too, of course, suffered from being immunologically naive to European diseases, but also (sort of) benefitted from only fairly small numbers of initial European settlers. Here, too, then, I can keep the natives as being fairly pacific (they did fight each other, and that might need to be handled by random events) and only reactive to European incursions.

In terms of mapping, North America is easier than the south, because the native tribal names and areas have been broadly speaking better preserved. A map I downloaded from the Library of Congress shows the whole slew of tribal names and areas across the continent. This is, possibly, in far too much detail for my purposes, so I am thinking of collecting the tribes into areas and treating each area much as I suggested for the Igbo and Akan areas.

For both North and South America, it might be worth going into more detail for the coastal tribes. These were the ones (obviously) with most contact with Europeans. After all, only occasional explorers tried to get up the Amazon, and even now it is a big adventure for Europeans. And European expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains was (sort of) blocked until the later Eighteenth Century. Indeed, I have seen it suggested that this was one of the drivers for the American Revolution, along with British court cases ruling that no one could be enslaved while on British soil (I do not know enough to comment on the veracity of these claims, by the way. I stop in 1700).

I suppose that the other issue is that these sorts of tribal polities had no idea, or need for, European concepts of boundaries. Many of the tribes were semi-nomadic, moving on so as not to exhaust the local flora and fauna. I do not think they were early environmentalists, by the way, just that this was a better survival strategy at the level of their times and location. This sort of nomad activity would, however, take place on a fairly small scale, that is, within my areas on the map. So I can ignore it.

The only other thing to consider is the nature of the sea-borne empires – the Portuguese and, latterly, the Dutch and possibly the English. The current idea is to give the Portuguese some fortified trading posts – Luanda, Goa, Malacca, and so on. These will be in areas still ‘owned’ by the locals, but can have an army and a fleet based in them. And they can be attacked.

So, those are the opening ideas. I am hoping that they will not make the running of the campaign too painful; the Estimable Mrs P is concerned that it will get too complicated and issue forth is torrents of expletives, depressions and swearing off playing with toy soldiers. But I am a bit more hopeful that this sort of light-touch approach will keep it manageable, and me sane.

Processes, Outcomes and Campaigns

 You might be relieved to know that I have just finished C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score, and a very interesting read it is too, as witnessed by the fact that this is the third post on the subject. There is a lot to ponder here about the world, and even about how I look at my blog. Nguyen’s main target is the reduction of most of our world to easily comprehended metrics. So, for example, when looking for a car, I can decide that, for example, acceleration from 0 – 60 MPH is the most important aspect of a vehicle, and rank my choice by that. I can focus on the single metric because someone has measured it.

But not all of life is measurable and, certainly from a point of view of efficiency, not all of life conforms to creating and meeting the perfect metric. Nguyen’s measure of this is play. When we play, we engage in a process, rather than an outcome. If we play, say, a card game with our partner, we may well try to win, but that is not the point. The aim is, usually, to have fun along the way. Yes, there are occasional people for whom winning is everything. The secret is to avoid them.

Nguyen’s main example of play is tabletop role-playing games. These are rules-bound, at least to some extent, but otherwise creative and free-flowing. The rules give the spur to creativity. A bad roll needs an explanation in the narrative of the game. We have to create one. In this, there are no winners as such, although there can be losers – the dead player characters, for example. But even that is not really an inhibition to the play. The narrative flexes to absorb the loss and the game moves on.

I have written before about narrative in wargames, both here and in that book. I still think it is probably one of the most important and overlooked aspects of wargaming, but I do not intend to try to defend that view here. But the point is that creating the narrative is part of the process of wargaming. After all, I could set the troops up on the table and roll a dice to decide who won. But the reason I do not do that is an interest in the narrative, the process, of how one side won or lost.

This links back to the rules giving a spur to creativity. As recently happened, a perfectly good cavalry attack on a baggage train was repulsed. I had to adapt my narrative of the action to accommodate this unexpected result. The baggage train incident became a heroic defence by the camp followers. Actually, the winner or loser of the action became a little submerged by this aspect.

Pulling back the focus a bit, I could say the same about my 1600-Something campaign. In my experience, your campaign is going well when the system starts producing results you do not expect, in ways which are perfectly understandable, or at least, in terms of the narrative, explainable. The 1600 – Something campaign is entirely run by dice and playing card draws. Aside from setting the system up initially, I am doing my best to simply let it run. The result is a very human drama of failure, unexpected success, and occasional trauma. But it all fits into an overall arc of a narrative, which I can adjust to accommodate the ‘facts’ of the game.

You might well say, ‘that is all very well, but what is the aim?’ A good question, but there is no overall aim. The actors in the campaign have their own strategic imperatives, such as holding or breaking the Spanish Road from Italy to the Low Countries, or, simply, surviving as an entity in the game. But there is no overall aim, no point at which I can say ‘This side has won.’ In this, the process is everything.

Granted, there are smaller aims. As noted, the countries have their own strategic goals. The overarching aim is to have wargames, preferably connected in some way to each other. But as in real life, no-one is really going to win. All I will have at the end of it are some blog posts, a scrappy map of Eurasia with lots of pin-holes in it, and some happy memories of wargames played.

I have no doubt that my way of wargaming is not to everyone’s taste. I do not like the process of painting; I only paint because the Estimable Mrs P. has, and imposes, the ‘no grey armies’ rule. Other wargamers, to judge by their blog posts, take a great deal of pleasure in painting soldiers. That is a positive part of the process to them. To be honest, for me, painted figures is the desired outcome. The process is not fun for me.

Hence, there is no ‘right way’ of wargaming. And that is part of the fun. At the end of the book Nguyen describes the Boardgame Geek website. It has scores for the games, but they are not really the point, at least, not in the way that the score is the point on Amazon. There is a lot of more nuanced comment on the site, and the score is just a gateway towards accessing that. The point is that a good game is a good game from someone’s point of view, which might be playing with a ten-year-old, or simulating Stalingrad in real time. Good is subjective in this sense.

As with board games, so with wargames, I imagine. It is quite possible people are totally bored with my campaign. So be it. I think it's fun. It is possible that I am very impressed when someone shows pictures of exquisitely painted medieval knights (say). But I know that that is not for me. Different parts of the process give different people pleasure. And that is how it should be.

Which might bring me to the number of views that this blog gets, or the number of followers. I could worry that I do not have as many followers as the next blog, or that this or that post gets fewer views than another. But to adjust my writing to get increased numbers of hits is to be what Nguyen describes as ‘value captured’. What becomes important is the number. And I do not want that to happen, especially as most of the hits on the blog are by ‘bots presumably stealing my intellectual property.

But none of that is going to stop me blogging, or wargaming in my own way. And, sometime, I will probably write the rules for 1600-Something up properly, so that, if there is a like-minded person out there, they can see what is going on under the bonnet.