Moving Further On…

You never know, something coherent might emerge. Another update on my painting activities and the next wargame thinking are nigh. Incidentally, if you want to keep up with the slow drip of things moving chez Polemarch, you can check Facebook. It even comes with occasional pictures. It is a page rather than a profile, which seems to mean there is less gunk on the feed. Maybe.

Still, with a minimum of delay, the first round of painting recently has been these:

The creation of a Korean navy has inched forward, with these five turtle ships. During the Japanese invasion, the Koreans deployed a maximum of seven of these in any given battle. While iconic and famous as the craft that saved Korea, there were not that many of them. Apparently, and understandably, after the war, the Korean navy went a bit turtle ship mad and had dozens of them The black flags are authentic, the glyph is supposed to read ‘turtle’ in Korean. Like that is going to happen in 1:2400 scale.

Next up, and slightly overexposed, are a bunch of dismounted cavalrymen and such like:

So far as I can tell, these are all Redoubt Enterprises dismounted cavalrymen, multi-part figures, except for the Musketeer second from the right, who is a Redoubt figure as well, in even more parts. I had some difficulty with him of persuading his scabbard to stay fixed to the figure. Perseverance paid off, sort of.

These were not the only batch of big figures completed, remarkably for me. There are some more dismounted cavalrymen:

The two figures at the left are, I think, Wargames Foundry of some vintage. These were multipart figures when ‘multipart’ meant coming with a separate arm which you could position as you wished. The others are dismounted cavalry as previously. A slight problem with some of these figures is the positions of the legs and torso can make them a bit unstable, the two figures third and fifth from left being being cases in point because the the backhand slash posture they are in (there may be a more technical term in fencing for that).

Finally in this romp through the last of my unpainted 25+ mm figures are these Parisienne folk from Warbases, acquired at the Stockton show last autumn. Yes, you did read that correctly, these were purchased last autumn and are now finished and based. The others have been in stock, I would say, for well over 20 years.

I quite like these figures, I confess, although as is common with civilian figures I would not want any more. There are only so many uses for plague doctors and people who follow horses with a shovel that you can find. On the other hand, I do wish some manufacturers would make more civilians, just straightforward merchants, market traders, customers, and people drinking a pint at their local, for example. Most of the world, at least in my RPG or skirmish game universe, is a civilian. For that matter, some soldiers who are not brandishing weapons would be nice too. Still, mustn’t grumble, as they say. I couldn’t do any better.

You might be wondering where all this is leading. So am I. I suppose that the Korean fleet is fairly obvious, at least when, in the dim and distant future they have a Japanese fleet to engage with. But these big figures? Well, I do have an idea, and the kernal of it is to be found in the picture below.

Here you see a nice, peaceful, street scene. The date is 1635, and the location is Paris, somewhere in the Latin Quarter, near the University. The buildings are Usborne 20 mm card, from their old Medieval Town set, and I think they are rather nice. I might be about to be told off for not having ‘proper’ 28 mm buildings, of course. On the other hand, most people opt for smaller footprint buildings these days, because it saves space on the table.

The wagons and market cross at the far end are from the same source. They are, perhaps, a little undersized, but the point is that these sorts of things are there to get in the way, rather than anything else. Along these lines I am considering making up the Usborne beehives. Nothing gets someone’s attention more than throwing a beehive at them, I suspect.

Along those lines, many years ago, when I was a RPG umpire running Flashing Blades, the player characters encountered a harpsichord at the top of the stairs. ‘Why is there a harpsichord there?’ I was asked. ‘So you can push it down the stairs at people, of course.’ Sadly, they never got the chance, but the idea was good. In role playing games these things matter.

The picture shows the opening scene in my new Flashing Blades based skirmish game. My character, as yet unnamed, is nearest the camera. His aim is to arrive at the tavern in the marketplace unscathed, where he will rendezvous with a certain M. White (whom you can see standing outside the pub in the distance, to the right).

Unbeknownst to me, of course, there are a fair number of interested parties. M. White is an English agent, sent to negotiate a treaty between Charles I and Louis XIII (and Cardinal Richelieu, of course) against Spain. The Spanish, of course, have an interest in stopping the treaty, as do the ultra-Catholics in the French government opposed to Richelieu’s policies. There are also pro- and anti-treaty English factions, as well as other French parties with interests in stopping or facilitating the treaty. At the moment, I am blissfully ignorant of all this.

The plan is that I will proceed from my edge of the table to the tavern in the marketplace. At 6 or so locations along the way, a random encounter will occur. The encounter can be anything from sober students (and drunk ones) to ruffians and thugs, street players, or agents of any of the parties interested in the treaty. Any combat will be resolved using my own solo swordplay rules and Flashing Blade. These rules are actually described in the Solo Wargaming book, so I won’t repeat them here.

So, a nice easy scenario to start with. What could possibly go wrong?

That Book Again

Well, it is still a while until publication, but someone on the Lone Warrior site has asked about the content of the book. Well, not exactly asked, but grumbled there was no list of chapters and doubted that there would be anything new.

Fair enough. If you put a book out there you can expect grumbles and criticism, although it might be a tad unfair before the book and its content have been revealed. Authors have feelings too!

Still, it is probably a good idea to reveal, even slightly, what is in the book, and, possibly, whether there is anything new. That, of course, is rather subjective. None of it is new to me, naturally, because I wrote it. On the other hand, it was submitted to the publisher last June (or thereabouts) and my memory of the details is getting a little shaky. There may be things in it that will surprise even me.

Still, with little further ado, here is a list of the chapters and some idea of what the content consists of.

Chapter 1: Why Solo Wargame

Naturally, the book starts with a discussion of solo wargaming and why it is a reasonable proposition. It is a bit of a surprise to find people around who still denigrate solo wargaming, but they do. So a bit of justification might be considered to be required, although I’m not really sure it is necessary. Anyway, the answer to ‘why wargame solo?’ is ‘why not?’ of course. There are advantages and disadvantages, but that is life, and I try to discuss them.

Chapter 2: Battles

By a ‘battle’ I mean, here, of course, a wargame. The chapter covers setting up a one-off wargame, choosing a historical period and size of the game from role-playing to large-scale actions. There is also a consideration of how to generate terrain, and two incompatible systems are suggested. That might give the reader a bit of a warning that the book is not a consistent set of rules for solo wargaming. It is, more, a compendium of ideas for the wargamer to take and use to their own ends.

The chapter also contains a discussion of how (and whether) to general both sides – dubbed the divided general and the automated general, and finishes with a discussion of bias and how to detect and correct it.

Chapter 3: Campaigns

Campaigns are, of course, sets of wargames strung together, but how they are strung together is the backbone of this chapter. Various historical periods are considered, as are the assorted scales that can be used. The use (or not) of maps is included, as is my ‘campaign in a day’ system, which some readers of the blog might recall. There are discussions of map moves, reconnaissance, communications, and getting from the map to the tabletop and back. Finally, there is a discussion of recording your campaign and mixing scales.

Chapter 4: Personalities, Logistics and Randomization

It might possibly be thought that the content of this chapter is a bit of a rag-bag of stuff that wouldn’t fit in chapter 3, and to some extent, you would be right. However, a couple of systems of character-creation are described (compatible ones, this time), and then some suggestions for how to use personalities in campaigns. Next, unit histories are suggested – units have personalities too. This is, admittedly, an old idea but worth reviving, I think, if only for the entertainment of the solo wargamer.

Next up, logistics, that topic most wargamers shy away from, is considered, with a couple of ways of dealing with it which, hopefully, will mitigate the pain. On the other hand, I did land up looking up the payload of a Dakota while writing it. The scars still show….

Finance, recruitment, and diplomacy are also thought about in this chapter. There are, of course, a number of ways of dealing with this and it depends on your campaign and its scale; an imagi-nation will have to consider it, a simple theatre game not so much. Still, it is quite interesting to ponder, and I make a few suggestions how to handle such matters.

Random events of various kinds are suggested, ranging from high command demanding half your units to the weather grounding the enemy air force. All sorts of things can and did happen in warfare; I think all you need is a table and a bit of imagination, and I make some suggestions.

Chapter 6: Siege, Naval and Air Wargames

Those slight prima-donnas of wargaming are then discussed. Every time I say that, actually, I am bombarded with examples of siege, naval, and air wargames, but really I think most wargamers are interested in land warfare. Sieges in a campaign can be thought of as a slight inconvenience or as a potential set of wargames, and ways of dealing with both are suggested. Naval wargames are also discussed with thoughts about scope and scale. It is inevitable that these are different from land wargames, of course. It is similar to air games, and there are a variety of ways of dealing with it, again. There is also an example here of what you can do as an air campaign, which is interesting (I think – I lost Malta when I tried).

Chapter 6: Advancing

This, the final chapter (who cheered?) discusses how to keep going. I consider sources of inspiration – books, films, magazines, and even an opera. I ponder why reading military history can be less useful than expected. There is also some discussion of taste in wargaming, although I refrained from a full-blown examination of wargame ethics. I also explain what I had to miss out of the book and reiterate the purpose of writing it.

So, there you are. That is what is in it. Does it contain anything new? The footnotes will indicate from where I have obtained ideas and suggestions, so I will grant that not everything is new. There are also one or two bits from the blog included, but I do deprecate self-plagiarism. A lot of it is, in my view, fairly new or ideas that really should be looked at again.

There are no photographs of nicely painted soldiers in the book. Firstly, that would have massively increased the price point and, secondly, I would have had to find out how to take nice photographs and how to paint wargame figures nicely. I know my limitations. It is much more a book for ideas of how to wargame solo, rather than show off my wargames. There might be a place for both in the wargame canon, but pretty pictures are not me, as a quick review of blog posts here will reveal.

So, there you have it: a bit more than the publisher’s blurb, but a bit less than the actual content (you’ll have to buy the thing for that, I’m afraid). I should imagine that the website also takes cancellations of pre-orders if you are put off by the above.

If you have questions, please comment. You can check on progress (what progress?) toward publication, and what else I’m doing, on Facebook.

Of Dungeons and Things

Well, more of the things, really. The dungeons part of the title is really because I saw the other week that 2024 marks the 50^th anniversary of the launch of Dungeons and Dragons (TM, no doubt) by Gary Gygax and David Arneson. This was brought to my attention by an article in the Guardian, which is quite interesting in its own right.

I confess I have never played D & D. My own role-playing days started with Runequest and progressed through Call of Cthulhu, various science-fiction-based stuff, and finishing up with Steve Jackson’s Toon and Flashing Blades (which is still available, I notice). I once got banned from playing Toon as a character because I was too good at it. The knack of playing Toon was to do something, no matter how silly, rather than to hesitate and get ‘boggled’. Possibly I am so saturated in TV cartoon lore that I just do silly naturally.

Flashing Blades was very much up my street. I recalled watching the badly dubbed series on daytime TV when I was off school for the summers (and doubtless my parents were out; they didn’t approve of daytime TV. O tempora, O mores!). Still, having got all the science-fiction and fantasy out of my system, perhaps all that was left was historical silliness. And Flashing Blades provides that.

Of course, now, as a fully paid-up solo wargamer without a role-playing group to boot (they all stayed in the south), I have to try to figure out how to role-play on my own. Now, this is not a problem, really, but the Guardian article has an interesting take on the whole idea of role-playing games, which I agree with and which will, I think, be of considerable assistance in my ruminations.

The article suggests that role-playing games are ‘collaborative world-building’ games. The idea is not to win something necessarily, but to construct as believable world, most often, of course, a fantasy world with monsters and the usual plethora of weird and wonderful creatures. It does not have to be like that, of course. Any sort of world can be built.

The rules of the game then become more like guidelines for the collaboration of world building. A monster that takes a swipe at the player characters is not necessarily a mindless brute, but in a properly run RPG has a purpose of its own, is set in the landscape (mental or physical) for a reason, and has some sort of motivation. In a world like that, simply killing a monster because it is a monster, or because it has a gold coin, or whatever, starts to get frowned upon. A world is more complex and subtle than that.

Another way to look at RPGs (and indeed, wargames in general, I think) is that they are exercises in telling stories. We do not know the outcome of the story when we start, which is why a wargame is not a novel, but we tell the narrative in such a way as to start to progress towards some sort of end, some sort of satisfying finish, or at least, end of a chapter or scene.

Writing a RPG campaign, or a wargame scenario, is not as straightforward as writing a novel. While novels are (the best of them) character-led, an RPG is player plus chance-led. We cannot know when planning, whether a particular outcome will occur. I once had half the PC party jump off a tall building in pursuit of something or other, and die. So I had to consider how to get them out of that and back on the track of the plot. This is not necessarily something that can be planned for. Similarly, in a wargame scenario, it is difficult to accommodate one side rolling a load of sixes and the other ones. But such things do happen.

As a solo wargamer, things are both a little more pointed and a little less. They are more difficult because there is no collaboration in the world-building. This might be an advantage in that as the dungeon master I might have a vision of the world that the players do not grasp; that cannot happen in a solo RPG. On the other hand, the world relies on one imagination only, and my character’s actions within it. This might be somewhat limiting.

I think the overall design of the scenario and campaign in solo RPGs is one which, even more than group games, is episodic in nature. Thus, there is an overall narrative arc – escort the ambassador to the port – and a series of scenes within that – meeting the ambassador, getting him from A to B, avoiding ambushes, the ambassador’s own attempts to get captured and so on. As a solo player, I can be more flexible, not deciding on the next scene until the last one is completed, keeping within the overall narrative arc.

The fount of these musings has been the painting I have just been doing. As seen recently, I have finished 5 more dismounted cavalrymen, and just now a bunch of civilians (Parisian folk, by Warbases). The question arises as to how to use the, of course. I have in mind reviving the Treaty of Corbie scenario and reworking it a little better than the original. There is certainly enough scope for a bit of skulduggery (hard to do as a solo player? Not necessarily), with different interest groups hoping to lay their hands on the treaty – pro and anti-English factions, French factions, and Spanish factions, and probably quite a few bystanders (hence the civilians). I have also been building some 20 mm scale card houses, which fit in quite nicely.

All I really need to do now is some design of the initial scenario or two, and the overall arc, which I already know. I might invest in some trees and hedges and so on, but most RPGs dispense with such niceties, and so I probably will as well. I shall have to see.

Running Another Marathon

It is always nice to re-enter known territory, and for me the most known territory wargame-wise is Marathon. This is not particularly because I have re-fought it a lot, records suggest that this is the fifth time, but, as I am sure I have mentioned before, it was the first account of a wargame I read, many years ago, in the now apparently defunct Military Modelling. This was by Charles Grant and I recall reading the first article, which was about the historical background and battle. I remember, all these years later, the anticipation of the account of the wargame in the next month’s issue.

Even then, as I carefully traced the (colour) illustrations of the hoplite, Persian infantry and cavalry and dreamed, I hoped that one day I would have Greek and Persian armies to call my own. It took decades, but eventually I managed it and the Persian Wars were ‘on’.

As it happens I have done a bit of campaigning with the Greeks and Persians. The best campaign I had was set in the fourth century BC and involved the Greek cities you would expect. Before much action took place on the mainland a Persian expeditionary invaded an island lair of pirates, who happened to be Athenian allies. The complication was that Athens did not want a full scale war with Persia, so the Athenian forces could not directly engage Persians. This led to some unusual, shall we say, manoeuvres.

Still, I decided it was time for an ancients battle and, after a few minutes consideration, opted for Marathon. Ibt is an easy battle to put on the table, after all, and time was a little limited. The basic tactical issue is whether the Athenians can get in contact with the Persian line before the arrows cause too much disruption. While Persian cavalry was present it seems to have had little influence on the action.

The picture shows the situation as the Greeks (on the left, obviously) have just about come into range. A little damage has been inflicted by the Persians, but a lot depended on who got the tempo for the next move, that is, whether the Athenians would have to stand another round of shooting before contact. In the original battle, according to Herodotus, the Greeks doubled through this zone to minimise Persian archery. The model here is that it depends on who wins the tempo.

The Persians actually won the tempo, and, say you can see, inflicted a fair bit of disruption on the Athenian right and centre. On the Persian right, the Greeks have got in, and the wing is under pressure with one equal fight, one losing and one which looks seriously dodgy. Still, there is a lot to play for.

A turn or two later and the Persian right has collapsed, more or less totally. The remaining bases will rout in the next combat turn. However, all is not lost as the Persian centre and left is still stalling the Greeks very nicely. A tempo win would be nice to launch some local counter-attacks here, and maybe get the cavalry moving towards the vaporized right wing.

Alas, it was not to be. The Athenians won the tempo and turned the bases under their general (the only ones which could receive orders, incidentally) onto the flank of the Persian centre. A decent combat roll meant that they routed, and, more to the point, routed away from the direction of the oncoming enemy, which meant that they swept away the rest of the Persian centre, including the general.

In the final analysis, the Persian morale was so negative that no dice roll would have retrieved it. That seems fair enough, given the absence of the centre and right wings, plus to loss of the general. The Athenians had done it again. Actually, I don’t think I have ever run Marathon with anything but a huge Greek win.

That raises interesting questions, of course. Was the original battle so unmatched that really the Athenians did not need to hesitate for a week before committing? On the other hand, it was one of those situations where the Athenians could have lost the war in an afternoon. If the army had been defeated, Athens would be defenceless. A bit of caution might have been wise.

On the other hand, whether it was so one-sided is a bit moot. Now, granted, the rules might not be very good (I wrote them, after all) and perhaps the hoplites get too much of a bonus. But, on the face of it, while the Persian infantry are outmatched in close combat they do have their chances, as shown by the Greek right, in particular.

The other option, pointed out by Phil Sabin in Lost Battles, is that the Persian infantry can be strengthened to balance the game up. From my account above, a second line of Persians would have made it much more difficult to destroy the Persian centre, and so that seems like it might be a productive rote to take for re-fighting the action. A reserve line would mean that the Athenians could not as readily turn on the flank of the Persian centre, and that would give the archery a better chance in those places where the Greek advance had stalled.

It has to be admitted, in the above, that some of the Persian rolls for both tempo and in combat were rather poor, and things could have shifted in their favour a bit more. On the other hand, they won the crucial tempo roll and got the Athenians subjected to two rounds of archery and on the second round they did inflict some damage. Keeping their general out of trouble would also have been an idea, as would have been the ability to launch local counterattacks, as I said. The thing is, with the archery, the Persians have to sit back and wait for the Athenians to get into range and then into contact, which automatically gives the hoplites and advantage in combat.

So, lots to ponder, but given that I have some more bases of Persian foot painted, I might well investigate further and will report back, unless you beg me not to...