I was pretty happy with my Burmese battlefield but our Experiment in Ningthoukhong proved I needed more. More temples. More houses. More roads. More bunds. All this kit can do duty in the Burma Campaign in WW2 and most of it is good for Vietnam.
Brushes for painting 15mm wargaming figures
About 3 or 4 months ago I started painting figures again. Specially the Patriots – Venezuelans and Colombians – for the War in the North during the South American Wars of Liberation. It has been years since I painted a whole army myself and looking at my brushes I realised I needed to upgrade. The best brushes are made from red sable, e.g. kolinsky sable, so I went looking and found Rosemary & Co.
Note: I’m painting 15mm wargaming figures using the Black Undercoat Method of painting.
Valour, Discipline and Training
I like the idea of using contemporary language within rules but I have two competing sets of terms: Napoleon’s “Valour and Discipline” and South American “Training and Discipline”. What to do? For Bolivar’s Very Bad Day should I replace the “Resolve” attribute of Tilly’s Very Bad Day with two attributes, one reflecting bravery and the other training? And what should I call them?
Perano – A Crossfire Scenario and Battle Report
Gunnery Sargent Rock (Bruce Stewart) played another game in the Italian Campaign using 2 New Zealand Division. This time it was Perano using my ideas for a scenario. All words are Bruce’s except where noted.
Revised guidance for terrain set up in Crossfire
I got into a discussion with George Breese on Crossfire maps on the Crossfire WII forum. We were talking about the attributes of a good table. George uses a guideline that “tables should be 1/3 to 1/2 terrain”. This echoes a guideline from the Crossfire rule book the table should have at least 1/3 coverage. And that got me wondering whether my maps obey a 1/3 to 1/2 terrain coverage guideline? The answer is no, but I’m not sure it is a problem.
Twilight of the Britons – A Battle Report 3
I have some newly painted dark age heroes along with tons of new armoured infantry, plus an update to the rules, so it was time to play Twilight of the Britons again. Chris and Adam were willing to give it a go.
Summary: Good game and very dark age in flavour. Chris overestimated the ability of his dark age warriors to manoeuvre and got into a bit of a tangle. Adam’s Briton cavalry crushed the English flank guard and hit the Great Fyrd at the rear of English line causing the English shield wall to collapse.
Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report
Adam and I play tested Bolivar’s Very Bad Day using my Tucuman Scenario. We wanted a small game to test my variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day for the South American Wars of Liberation.
Summary: Good little game with the Patriots strong in cavalry and the Royalists strong in infantry. My Patriot cavalry stripped off the weak Royalist cavalry and encircled the Royalist infantry columns. Then we had a hard grind with repeated cavalry charges against the staunch Royalist infantry. Eventually Adam accepted he couldn’t win and conceded.
Using geometry to find implicit crests on a hill
While I was ranting about Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules, I found two rules had a clever solution for dealing with line of sight on hills using geometry. I’d already thought of a similar approach, also using geometry. I call the two approaches “Parallel crest” and “Perpendicular crest”. Both solutions are clever. Which one is better?
Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules
Sometimes I get obsessed by tiny little aspects of the hobby and just have to write about it. In detail. A lot of detail, after endless hours of research. This time I’m picking on hills. You see hills were a thing in the South American Wars of Liberation – my current favourite period. A lot the battles featured at least one big hill e.g. Battle of Maipo. This hilly tendency could be extreme e.g. the Battle of Vargas Swamp was fought predominately on the slopes of a single giant hill and half the table top is covered in hills. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day, is going to have to cope with a lot of hills.
Unfortunately, hills are horrible in wargames rules. I’ve not seen any set of wargaming rules that cope with them really well, sadly, not even my own Tilly’s Very Bad Day. Certainly not my beloved Crossfire where hills are tiny mesas. I could have left it there, but I felt an obsessive urge to prove my claim of “horrible” so I got out a bunch of my wargaming rules, read the section on hills, and used a standard set of questions to test how well the rules handled hills. Here is what I found. It is horrible but there glimmers of genius.
Twilight of the Britons – Update to Version 1.1
I have updated Twilight of the Britons – Fast play rules for the English Invasion of Britain to version 1.1. As a reminder this is Vincent Tsao and my version of Twilight of the Sun King for the dark ages in Britain. I have a hankering to play another Arthurian game so thought I’d get the rules into shape for that. Some of the changes are to make it easier for Vincent to use the rules for the Fall of Rome but this is still not my focus.
Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
Feedback from the guys was that Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815), although a good game, was too big for regular play testing of Bolivar’s Very Bad Day. So they asked for a smaller scenario with less terrain. The Battle of Tucumán (24-25 September 1812) seems perfect for this. Although the deciding battle in the War of Argentine Independence, it was a small scale affair with, in game terms, only 11 units on each side. It also features the a wide range of troop types and troop quality. And it has Gauchos. This scenario is based on my write up of the historical battle and how to wargame the battle. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day is my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day.
Sipe Sipe – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report
Jamie and Adam came over to play test Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. I’d just finished the hill for Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815), so decided to give the associated Sipe Sipe Scenario a go. Because we were play testing the rules, we wouldn’t have enough time to complete the battle but we figured we’d give it a go anyway.
Summary: Draw because we ran out of time. But good play test of the scenario and rules. Lots on insights most notably, the jungle fighting felt wrong under the draft rules and there shouldn’t actually be jungle fighting at all in the scenario. Both rules and scenario need tweaks.
Sipe Sipe – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
I’ve been working on Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815) for a while now. So I thought I’d write a scenario for Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. This is a large game on a large table.
Mika’s Year 7 Castle Assignment – Berkhamsted Castle in 1:550th scale
Every Year 7 (age 11-12) student in the UK builds a motte and bailey castle. Dana did it five years ago with her Year 7 Castle Assignment – Lütjenburg Castle in 1:150th scale. This year it was Mika’s turn at a motte and bailey. As with the earlier project, Daddy was going to be involved. In fact, because Mika remembered watching Dana’s project unfold, she insisted on my involvement because she was determined to get the same recognition from the school as her sister had received. Luckily, I’d been thinking about this for five long years!
Battle of Vargas Swamp 25 July 1819
The Battle of Vargas Swamp (Batalla del Pantano de Vargas), fought on 25 July 1819, was the bloodiest battle of the 1819 campaign but set the scene for the liberation of New Granada. I cover the historical situation, the battle itself, the terrain and the two orders of battle.