Saturday 23 September 2017

The Odd Corners of Wargaming

Wargaming, it seems to me, can take you into some rather peculiar places, at least in terms of interest and trying to find stuff out. Wargamers, by and large and so far as I can tell, do not usually take part in expeditions to find the lost city of Machu Picchu (which was never lost, incidentally; the Inca knew perfectly well where it was, they just never bothered telling the Spanish), or trekking in the wastes of Siberia, but I find, at least, that I land up asking questions which only a few others have ever asked.

Take a recent incident as an example. The houses where I live are almost all tiled, as they are, I imagine, in most places in England. But it has not always been thus. I was brought up in the south and there thatch is still, in some of the more picturesque villages at least, quite frequent. As I am pondering a wargame based in the north, I wondered what people used to have a roofs in the past.

The Estimable Mrs P and I could think of a few examples of thatch in our local patch, but not many. Puzzled, I consulted my big book of northern history and looked up building materials. There, in a paragraph, was an explanation. Clay tiles came in during the seventeenth century, largely replacing thatch. I do not know exactly why tiles replaced thatch. Possibly the tiles are longer lasting, but a decent thatch lasts 20-30 years and, from painful experience, modern tiles at least do not seem to last much longer than that.

Now, we can also ask what the thatch was made of. In these parts there was a mix of straw and heather thatches. This was a minor lightbulb moment for me at least, as we had been a little puzzled by the relative absence of reed beds and the like to make the straw for thatching. After all, animals would have taken the priority for fodder and bedding over human comfort. Heather, at least in some parts, would have been plentiful, cheap and not much use for anything else.

This, of course, hits the next question: what colour was the thatch? Now here we hit a real problem, I think. I know that real thatch is grey or black. I have, as I mentioned above, seen a fair number of thatched cottages in my time. And yet my thatched cottages for the wargame table are distinctly yellow in colour. That is correct, they are the colour of straw, as you would expect, of course.

Now we land up in some obscure place in human psychology. More precisely, we land up pondering what ‘looks right’ on the table. A thatch with a black roof just would not, I think, look right. Even though I know that in real life thatch is not yellow, my table needs to look right.

Either that or I am, yet again, in a minority of one, and should be rightly regarded as barking by the rest of the world.

It does not stop there, of course. I do, I realise, many things wargame wise because thy look right. Armour is shiny, even though by the English Civil War it was being carefully blackened to avoid rust. Cannon barrels are black and carriages are wood coloured. For the matter of that, wood is brown, while really, when it has been weathered for a bit, it is more grey.

Of course, there are also problems of scale, which I have mentioned before. My houses are in scale with the troops, so they are much bigger than the ground scale. At present, this is being further complicated by the presence of smaller scale ships in the town harbour, and even smaller scale ships for the Armada. I have tried this out. Somehow, despite all the jumps in scale, it looks about right.

I have worked it out, in fact. From the 1:300th scale castle tower, looking out to sea, the Armada on the horizon is about a mile away, given that the Armada ships are 1:2400th scale. The assault ships which are to be used are, of course, in the correct figure scale, but then they will only become of major interest to the landlubbers when they are near the beach anyway.

There may, of course, be undetected problems. In my role as the Spanish commander, I might try to use some of the smaller ships to rush the harbour. Naturally, as the English counterpart, I have a battery of ships guns to place on the mole to protect the harbour from just such an eventuality. The ships are the small ones, the guns are the big ones and the ships in the harbour from which the guns came are somewhere in between. It might look right, but I can foresee madness looming when the shore batteries and Armada ships attempt to engage each other.

The human mind is a flexible and subtle thing, of course. I have a suspicion that all of this does not really matter. Firstly, of course, everything is an abstraction anyway. The Armada troops are not really going to be put ashore by half a dozen small rowing boats. The town, even Whitby after the Abbey closure and its subsequent decline in prosperity (wagaming as a portal to economic history. Who knew?) was still larger than the ten or so buildings I have for it. The ships in harbour are, in fact, seventeenth century – the French La Corunna and the English Speaker. They are also in full sail, which would be ludicrous when in harbour, and one of them, at least, does not have the room to turn to get out.


I know all this, and yet, somehow, it is probably the ‘nicest’ terrain I have ever set out for a wargame planning session. I might have to dig out the camera and treat you all to a photograph of it, so you can point out all the flaws to me.

34 comments:

  1. Wargaming rivers have to be blue , roads brown !

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    1. I go for dark brown roads and light brown shiny rivers. It works for me.

      I think...

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  2. And of course, British coats bright red. Er, scarlet.

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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    1. And, of course, once they have been worn in the rain they change colour anyway. It was only with chemical dyes in the later 19th Century, I think, that the colour didn't wash away.

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    2. I think it depends on the dyes and the mordants. Some are more colourfast than others. The Victorians made too much of the idea that old dyes faded to lighter colours of the original colour, as is evidenced in the so-called 'ancient' tartans. Some dyes fade to lighter colours, while others fade to brown instead.

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    3. I dare say that results varied, but I'm still using it as an excuse for the blotchy nature of my ancient Briton's woad.

      I think that the bottom line is that pre-chemical dyes were unstable, and so nice uniform uniforms were not, um, uniform...

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    4. Certainly there would not have been any uniformity unless material came from the same batch.

      Pre-chemical dyes were certainly not as stable as modern ones, but their lack of stability is often overstated. And the use of mordants like iron helped to fix the dyes in the material.

      I seem to recall that woad is actually one of the more colourfast dyes available. Just saying. :)

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    5. Aye, batch variation must have made a difference. I wonder how big a batch of material would have been - how many uniforms per batch?

      I suspect that even modern dyes, if subject to sun, wind and rain, will show a little variation, but, as with the rivers, we are heading into having a load of different reds for British uniforms.

      As for the ABs, a joke:
      Q: What do you call a cohort overrun by the Brigantines?
      A: Woad-kill.

      I didn't say it was a good joke, of course...

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    6. I like that joke and plan to use it alongside comments borrowed from Sellar and Yeatman about the ancient Britons being true blue and led by Woadicea.

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  3. I always size my buildings and terrain to the size of the footprint of the units being used. I find that it looks good and keeps the terrain in scale.

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    1. Yes, it works. For me, at least until the Estimable Mrs P looks at the battlefield and asks some innocent questions, like 'Won't they hi their heads on the door frame?'

      Ross remarks below on having enough height to look right. It does seem to be an issue.

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  4. I like the idea of using smaller scale ships to 'telescope' the groundscale. What came first the models or the rationalisation? If I ever get round to one of my long-term 'projects' ; ) (actually more of an aspiration) I will 'leverage' the idea for the Siege of Lyme.

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    1. Argh! One of my meaningless management trigger words - 'leverage'!

      The models came first, of course. Then I had to work out how to make the game work.

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    2. I'll see what else is in the Lingo Bingo lexicon for the next post.

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  5. Your comments on thatch strike a chord with me, as does the comment above about rivers being blue. I remember reading of problems in a game when someone had made very realistic brown rivers that the players mistook for roads. Hmmm. Mind you, not all rivers look brown even, so perhaps some stylised colouring is in order to provide the right visual cues.

    On the scale front, I have recently started using Brigade Models 1:1000 buildings with my 1:300 micro armour. It's much closer to the actual ground scale and really does not look too out of scale at all. I'm planning to try using either 10mm (1:144?) or 1:300 buildings with my 15mm figures to see how that looks too. I already have 1:300 terrain, so I'm hoping that works well enough that I don't have to spend on 10mm terrain. Of course, all of this goes out of the window when I play skirmish games. Ho hum.

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    1. Detailed investigation of the stream that runs at the end of the road suggests, well, they can be different colours. After rain it is brown. After no rain it is clear so you can see the brownish stones at the bottom. And so on. I think we need chameleon paint, to be honest.

      Scale is always a bit tricky. We are used to suspending our judgment over figure scale to ground scale, but terrain items fall into the gap. Perhaps we need both scale buildings and swap one for the other as the troops approach?

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    2. I live near the Humber. Some days it is Coat d'Arms Tan Earth because of silt. Other days it looks almost black. Google Maps shows it that colour. Because yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, I looked at the Derwent and Ouse on Google Maps too. The Derwent is more Humbrol 29 Dark Earth with a drop of green in it, while the Ouse is a Dark Navy with a hint of brown. We're going to need a lot of different rivers for our games!

      As with most aspects of games, scale is an area that requires us to find a compromise that is both practical and sufficiently aesthetically pleasing. The use of small footprint structures of the right height for the figures that is mentioned below is one reasonable solution. My experiment with smaller scale buildings seems like another. One other approach that I have considered is going completely 2D with my terrain and playing the games on maps of the right scale to match the rules. If I ever get around to it, I plan to draw up period-style maps of the battlefields and print them out at the right size to suit the rules. I rather feel that it will offer a certain olde worlde je ne sais quoi to the aesthetics of the game, as well as being easier to store than innumerable trees, hills, buildings, etc. Naturally, the next job after that will be to make a digital tabletop using an old television so that my storage requirements become even further reduced.

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    3. I have to say that fighting on olde worlde maps is a nice idea. I've certainly run ECW campaigns using reproductions of Speed county maps, and jolly aesthetic it was too - I can tell when the Estimable Mrs P has more than a quick glance.

      I'm not sure about going totally 2D - sometimes the mark one eyeball and a bit of judgment to see if a unit has sight of another one can save a lot of measuring and head scratching.

      The other problem with technology is that you spend so much time setting it up that you no-longer have time or energy to wargame. That is why I have no computers for my wargaming - no rules, no campaign diaries, no nothing....

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    4. Your ECW campaign maps sound just the ticket.

      Good point about the MkI Eyeball. I did also consider doing a limited relief map, perhaps using mount board or foamboard to make the contours. Could be a reasonable compromise that gives more visual indication of lines of sight.

      I take your point about computers. I use computers for the planning stages and for keeping track of things, but not during the actual game itself. But then I enjoy using the computer for all these things, and sometimes think that the planning and record-keeping are the parts I most enjoy!

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    5. There used to be loads of reproduction Speed maps around, but I've not seen any for years. Just about right for the ECW. For the Armada I'm using a reproduction of Saxton's map, assuming the Spanish actually get a beach head. Mind you, just looking at the maps is fascinating enough.

      I think some sort of relief is a good idea - contour maps are OK but there is nothing like the 'lie of the land'.

      I spend most of my time working with computers, so I don't really want them infesting my hobby time. So everything is pencil and paper. But then I am biased.

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    6. Maps are amazing creations and fascinating on so many levels.

      Yes, having some physical contours there can help. I've had problems in the past with board games where the contour colours make it appear that the contours are inverted. Poor colour choice on the designer's part. Some physical contours, even if only mount board thickness, would preclude that happening again.

      I spend most days sitting in front of a computer, but it's just another tool to me. If it's useful for my hobby, I use it. On the other hand, it is often a relief to step away from the screen, and probably good for my state of mind.

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    7. Yes, even a vague hand wave in the direction of contours helps. I doubt that true scale hills would look right on the table, though.

      Computers are, of course, the spawn of the devil. Just because they give me employment, it doesn't mean to say I have to like them. I'm with Douglas Adams in that, I think referencing the Terror in the French Revolution:
      'Have we not shared and enjoyed with you?'
      'Shut up you creeps and get on the cart'

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  6. ....and the comments on the colour of wood. It does go grey.

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    1. On the rivers, a lot depends on distance, our river looks clear up close, greeny-brownish from a low elevation at fairly close distance and the colour of the sky if seen from a hill top or other elevation (ie bright blue of the sky is clear, slate grey if it is cloudy). Since I look down from a great height onto my table, the rivers are usually blue.

      Trees and woods puzzle me, very few or none are a single colour and most contain hints of brown and grey but from any distance most appear dark. (apart from silver birch which don't look realistic in life let alone on a table).

      Weathered wood though, more light grey than anything unless brand new.

      Beyond that, I like compressed terrain esp houses etc, as small a foot print as I can get away with but with enough height not to look silly beside figures unless you really look. Its about fooling the eye.

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    2. I suspect rivers are only blue on a sunny day. As, I think, General Slim once remarked, the British army fights its battles on the side of a hill in the pouring rain at a point where two maps join.

      Fooling the eye is exactly what we seem to be about. My towns have the 'right' footprint for the game ground scale, my buildings the right figure scale. It seems to work, in that I can still see what I want to.

      Woods are odd, I agree. I guess it is the way light reflects from the trees and leaves, and with lots of gaps they look darker than you'd think.

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  7. In horse and musket games, all units appear in spotless full-dress, never a greatcoat in sight:all battles must occur in perfectly dry conditions on the first day of campaigning. Yet in WW2 games, all vehicles must be grubby, weathered and festooned in non-regulation kit; no-one ever cleans their tank. Hmm..

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    1. And after all the arguments as to how many buttons there should be on Napoleonic gaiters, no-one ever seems to have lost one.

      There was a trend a while ago for manufacturers making 'campaign' figures, but it doesn't seem to have caught on. From 17th Century art of the Thirty Years War, most soldiers should be dressed in mud and rags, except the officers, and the two sides are fairly indistinguishable.

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    2. I guess I have to admit that as you and Nundanket say below, wargamers have an idea of what looks 'right', and in horse and musket the splendid uniforms are part of that, though it's sad if other approaches are looked down upon. As it happens my (more theoretical than practical) main interest is in the 30YW/ECW period, and I rather like the ragamuffin aspect of those armies - I may say, especially as I am a very poor painter!

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    3. It does make you wonder a bit about what 'realism' in wargaming might constitute.

      I mean, how many hussars really charged looking like that?

      Interestingly, so far as I recall, 17th Century art shows ragged soldiers. Napoleonic art shows them more or less in parade ground dress. I wonder if that is a) true and b) makes a difference.

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  8. I remember years ago a company here in the US came out with what you call "campaign figures" - they were Napoleonic Brits in great coats. Writing in The Courier I remarked that this will be a great boon to my finishing my Peninsular British army as long as I can get enough grey paint. A reader wrote in that he felt that the line was incomplete as there was no figure with cased colors! This was in the day when lines hardly had drummers and flag bearers and one had to make them out of infantrymen. My cased color was simply the lead(yes..lead) from the inside of a tootpaste tube wrapped abound a thin brass rod and painted grey.

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    1. Wargamers do not change much - the most frequent complaint is that the range is incomplete because it doesn't have such and such a figure, of whom there were probably no more than a dozen in real life.

      I think sometimes some wargamers can obsess about things which really shouldn't be obsessed about.

      As for lead in the toothpaste tube - I'm impressed. Health and safety has clearly come too far over the years. I recall someone theorizing that Rome had fallen because of the lead pipes used for water supply. They seem to miss that the health benefits of piped water might outweigh the risk of lead poisoning....

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  10. I suppose a lot of this is one of the questions about why we wargame the way we do. If we all know that the rigours of campaigning led to armies looking like crowds of ragamuffins, why do we persist with painting our toys in full regimentals and in nice neat lines usually in exactly the same pose (at least pre-20th C soldiers)? Yet if we take the more 'realistic' approach and paint our Napoleonics in grey overcoats, or faded coats, with lots of brown, makeshift clothing, we'd lose the spectacle that attracted a lot of us in the first place (as well as making it harder to see who was on who's side let alone whether they're chasseurs, fusileers, grenadiers or whatever). Back to your old theme about models.

    Hairroller armies anyone?

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    1. I think there must be something here about the interaction of the models (as in rules), the models (as in scale - terrain and figures) and aesthetics. There has to be a certain practicability as well, in terms of moving things around and distinguishing them.

      There are acceptable rules, acceptable models and painting, and it has to look right. I'm not sure we can define it, but we know it when we see it.

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