2023 Reflections of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian

My goals for 2023 were typically overly ambitious – some would say megalomaniac. As usual I didn’t achieve them all, less than I was hoping, but it wasn’t a bad run.

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Summary of the Year

For the first time, I missed a few balagan posts this year. And the number of wargames played was down as well. It was just a busy year with lots of demands … work and home. I seem to have traded wargaming for watching teenagers play netball. Not a bad trade, but not what was I anticipating.

In terms of wargaming success I had two big focus area:

1. Burma Campaign using Crossfire
2. A four player campaign using Populous, Rich and Rebellious our English Civil War Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day.

Plus, of course, there was some other stuff.

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#1 Burma Campaign

Despite my brain twisting justification for collecting Japanese, Burma was my number one focus in 2023. I spent some time Musing on Japanese house rules for Crossfire. I looked at the Banzai Charge, Swords and Flags, Bravery tending to Fanaticism, Sneakiness, Tanks and Anti-tank, Bombs and Shells, and Specialists. The end result of all that is that deep thinking, is that I don’t need most of these special rules for the Japanese. I will stick with the Japanese rules built into Crossfire, and even those I will cut back on. I do like the flags though.

Like most wargamers I love shopping for wargaming figures. In my case 15mm. So I spent a lot of time researching 15mm Japanese Figures – you’ll see them below. I did the same for the 14th Army. Finally because I’m a nutter, I also researched 15mm Wargaming Figures for Chinese in WW2. Niche.

Like I said, I like the Japanese flags and, on a practical level, I had to make some, hence WW2 Japanese Flags – Free Rising Sun Wargaming Flags for 15mm Scale.

And of course I got Japanese Battalion for Crossfire to go with the flags.

Weirdly the first opposition I got for the Japanese were some British Trucks for the 14th Army in Burma.

Now Crossfire doesn’t actually need trucks. My motivation was all the research I was doing on Japanese Roadblocks in Burma and Roadblock Battles on the Retreat from Burma.

After that, and inspired by Brett Simpson, I just had to muck around and Improvise and make Japanese barricades for Burma. One of the options was using a capture British truck as the barricade, hence the trucks above.

After all that preparation I was keen to get some kit on table. And that resulted in our Japanese Roadblock – A Crossfire Experiment. Nice table, a few problems with the scenario.

By this stage I’d realised I need some raised roads for Burma. Which lead to a Design for Modular Raised Roads sections for Burma.

I sent my plans off to S&A Scenics and got back some actual Modular Raised Roads sections for Burma.

We used the new roads for our much more successful Ningthoukhong Experiment.

You’ll notice in that experiment I had my Gurkha Battalion for Crossfire

And at the end of the year I squeezed in making a Custom made Manipuri Hindu Temple for 14th Army fighting on the Imphal plain.

So lots of activity on Burma. Yay!

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#2 Populous, Rich and Rebellious

The next big area of focus was Populous, Rich and Rebellious. This is our four player English Civil War Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day. You can download all of this stuff: Populous, Rich and Rebellious [Download]; Tilly’s Very Bad Day [Download].

Part way through the year, Chris suggested I overlay the English Civil War Battles on the map for Populous, Rich and Rebellious. So I did.

It only took one game and we realised we needed a Quick Reference Sheet for Populous, Rich, and Rebellious.

Here are the battle results of the campaign so far

Game	Year + Round	Location	Game Size	Royalist	Parliament
1	1642 Early	East Midlands	Small	Adam Strategic Defender Tactical Attacker Defeat	Chris Strategic Attacker Tactical Defender Victory
2	1642 Early	Wales	Small	Steven Strategic Attacker Tactical Attacker Defeat	Jamie Strategic Defender Tactical Defender Victory
3	1642 Late	South-East	Small	Adam Strategic Attacker Tactical Attacker Victory	Chris Strategic Defender Tactical Defender Defeat
4	1642 Late	East Anglia	Large	Steven Strategic Defender Tactical Defender Victory	Jamie Strategic Attacker Tactical Attacker Defeat
5	1643 Early	Upper Thames Valley	Small	Adam Strategic Defender Tactical Defender Victory	Chris Strategic Attacker Tactical Attacker Defeat
6	1643 Early	Wales	Small	Steven Strategic Attacker Tactical Defender Victory	Jamie Strategic Defender Tactical Attacker Defeat
7	1643 Late	Lower Thames Valley	Small	Adam Strategic Attacker Tactical Defender Victory	Chris Strategic Defender Tactical Attacker Defeat

1642 Game 1 – “Battle of Ely” – East Midlands

1642 Game 2 – “Battle of Montgomery” – Wales

1642 Game 3 – “Battle of Stratton” – South-West

1642 Game 4 – “Battle of Colchester” – East Anglia

1642 Declaring for King or Parliament – English Civil War Campaign

1643 Game 5 – “Battle of Chalgrove Field” – Upper Thames Valley

1643 Game 6 – “Battle of Colby Moor” – Wales

1643 Game 7 – “Real Battle of Turnham Green” – Lower Thames Valley

My 2022 research on Contested river crossings in the Seventeenth Century convinced me I need make a ford section for my 4 inch wide river. This is so I can play several English Civil War battles featuring a river crossing.

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#3 Operational WW2

Now Martin Rapier’s One Hour WW2 (6 hit) is not an Operational game, it is a tactical game using my criteria for operational level wargames. But it is a higher level scale of game than our usual fair and I like Martin’s thinking on this kind of thing, so we gave it a go.

Firstly, I attempted to re-engineer one of Martin’s scenario’s and created Leshnov 1941 – A Scenario for Martin Rapier’s One Hour WW2 (6 hit).

Then we gave it a go: Leshnov 1941 – A Battle Report for OHW 6 Hit

I continued my experimenting with Deep Battle and making some buildings and trees. First up was Operational Terrain 8 – Monopoly Buildings to Fit 4 Inch Hexes

Then I made copses of 6mm scale trees using bumpy chenille pipe cleaners.

Having made 67 copses, I had a bit of a think on using Stands of smaller scale trees in Operational Games

Andrés Ferrari got me Musing on Free Form and Area Movement in Deep Battle. And this kicked off a huge debate in the comments. To grid or not to grid, that is the wargaming question.

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#4 Other Crossfire

Next up were a few other little things for Crossfire.

Cool Ruins for Crossfire

The year also saw some action on the Eastern Front. I designed and has cut out some cool ruin. Batch 1 and 2 are now complete.

I also did a special design for The Mill from Stalingrad.

Cossacks in Crossfire

My interest in Cossacks cropped up again and I looked at how to deploy a Soviet Cavalry Regiment in Crossfire.

And that led to writing a WW2 Painting Guide – Soviet Cossack Cavalry. I now know the difference between Steppe Cossacks (Don, Siberian) and Transcaucasian Cossacks (Kuban, Terek).

Crossfire in the Italian Campaign

The Italian Campaign saw me write up the Almost Fosse Bridge – A Crossfire Scenario. I posted the action report last year: Almost Fosse Bridge – A Crossfire Battle Report.

Then Gunnery Sargent Rock (Bruce Stewart) had a go at the scenario and wrote up Almost Fosse Bridge – A Crossfire Battle Report 2.

Revised anti-tank rules

My agonisingly slow revising of Crossfire’s’ anti-tank rules, see it unfold in my Crossfire armour musing, continued with Unlimited Vehicle Movement – Revising Crossfire Anti-tank Rules 8.

I’m sure being stationary is also a thing, so did some Musing on being stationary in Crossfire.

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#5 Tilly’s Very Bad Day Variants

I’m thinking about some variants of Tilly’s Very Bad Day for other periods. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day is a variant for Liberators. Deep Battle might be a variant for Operational level WW2. But I’m also thinking about the Italian Wars and Rise of Rome.

So with an eye on all those options I did some Musing on Units and their attributes in Tillys Very Bad Day

I also wrapped by head around The ‘To Hit’ Quandary – 5 plus or 2 minus. Only read this if you care about probability and rolling high.

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#6 Vietnam

I only posted twice about Vietnam, but there was a lot of research / time behind the first of these. I wanted to understand the ANZAC M113 Callsigns: Australian APC Tactical Signs in Vietnam.

And based on that I had to Revisit my plans for ANZAC M113s.

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#7 Spaniards

A couple of people contributed to my interest in Spain

As a result of the lively community discussion related to the No. 1 (Spanish) Company of the Pioneer Corps in WW2, John Vistuer sent through some photos of his grandfather, Augusto Perez Miranda – A Spaniard fighting for the Allies.

Long time contributor Jesús Dapenas painted a second Spanish FT-17 for service in the Rif.

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#8 Storage

DYMO Labels for Really Useful Boxes

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Did I achieve my annual goals?

That is a pretty good set of achievements for 2023, but how did I do on my original megalomaniac aspirations from the start of 2023? As you will see below, I had a mixed bag in terms of completion rate. There is a lot of “In progress” and this lulled me into a false sense of completion. Now, looking at the scores below, I need to focus on finishing. One of the Lean principles I advocate at work is, “Stop starting. Start finishing.” Time to start finishing.

Project	Rules	What happened in 2023
1941-45 Burma Campaign ➞
Japanese	Crossfire	Done. Japanese Battalion for Crossfire
Gurkhas, 14th Army	Crossfire	Done. Gurkha Battalion for Crossfire
Welsh, 14th Army	Crossfire	In progress. I’ve done the planning. Figures purchased and organised. Stands labelled up. I just need to get them painted and based.
Scenarios for the Burma Campaign	Crossfire	In progress. We did a couple of experiments: Japanese Roadblock; Ningthoukhong.
1941-45 Eastern Front ➞
Cool Ruins	Crossfire	Done, maybe, probably. Cool Ruins Batch 1 and 2 are now complete along with the The Mill from Stalingrad. I have further plans, but was exhausting. I might give up now. … … But maybe I could do the factory for Crossfiregrad. And those L-shaped features for Ponyri. And a 3 sector version of the Mill would be a plus. Sigh. I’m doomed.
1955-75 Vietnam War ➞
ANZACs in Vietnam	Crossfire	In progress. I was hoping to get the ANZAC armour done in 2024. I did masses of research. I have the revised plans. I have the kits. I even made the decals (you’ll see them next year). But the kits are unassembled.
Deep Battle ➞
Deep Battle	Deep Battle	In progress. After a slow start I made good progress. Early in the year I shared Beta version 0.5 with Andrés Ferrari and he made some good, if challenging, suggestions. This sent me into a bit of a spin and I’m only just getting gout of this now as I draft Beta version 0.7. But I in parallel I posted some material on operational wargames as my creative juices started flowing.
Official Crossfire material ➞
Crossfire freebie booklet	Crossfire	In progress but blocked. I drafted a Crossfire Freebie #2 early in the year. Arty didn’t like it. I’m thinking about what to do about that.
Crossfire Scenario book	Crossfire	No progress. The scenario book is on hold until I unblock the freebie.
Crossfire rule variants	Crossfire	In progress. I’m still drafting / play testing my revised anti-tank rules. This is with an eye on some rules to include in the new official scenario book for Crossfire.
1618-48 Thirty Years War ➞ and 1642-51 English Civil War ➞ and 1600-1679 Northern Wars ➞
Eastern Armies	Tilly’s Very Bad Day	In progress. I’m still finishing my Zaporozhian Cossacks so I haven’t been able to pitch them agains the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Populous, Rich, and Rebellious – English Civil War Campaign	Tilly’s Very Bad Day	Done (for 2023). Actually we achieved more than I set out to achieve. The goal was to play through 1642 and we’re nearly finished 1643. The campaign itself will roll into 2024.
1810-1824 South American Wars of Liberation aka Liberators ➞
Rules for Liberators	TBD	No progress. No further work on Bolivar’s Very Bad Day – A Tilly’s Very Bad Day variant for Liberators
Sipe Sipe (1815)	TBD	No progress. Need the rules first.