Spanish and Portuguese Military History,
Wargaming, and other stuff
Steven Thomas 
Jamie and I played the second game of Populous, Rich and Rebellious, our four player Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day, and set in the English Civil War.
Summary: At the “Battle of Montgomery”, the defending Parliamentarians (Jamie) defeated the Royalists (Steven) in five game turns.
I thought I needed a Quick Reference Sheet for Populous, Rich and Rebellious, my Campaign set in the English Civil War.
Adam, Chris and Jamie agreed to play Populous, Rich and Rebellious. As I hope you recall this is a Campaign set in the English Civil War. Chris, representing Parliament, invaded the East Midlands from London. The Royalists rose to the challenge and Adam tried to take it for the King.
Summary: At the “Battle of Ely”, the heavily outnumbered Parliamentarians defeated the Royalists in seven game turns.
I found my 15mm trees are too big for my 4 inch hexes on a Deep Battle table. I figured the answer was trees scaled for 6mm (1/285th) or 5mm (1/300th) wargames. Although I had some trees for 6mm scale, I realised I needed to get a lot more, quickly and cheaply. The method I describe here got me over a 1,000 trees for £10 (more or less).
I’ve been looking at trees. What trees to use for Operational level wargaming in my draft Deep Battle rule set. Since my Experiment on a 4 Inch Hex Grid I’ve gone for increasingly smaller terrain including Tiny Hills and Monopoly Buildings. And now I find my normal size 15mm trees are too big for the look I’m striving for, so I’ve gone for copses of small trees – trees that would normally be used for 5mm (1/300th) or 6mm (1/285th) scale wargames.
I couldn’t find my box of sabots. Chris had turned up with his Picts based for DBx but I use Big Bases so I needed my big base sabots. Where were they? Or that Russian Church I know I have? Or the Goumier? Every time the guys turn up I found I’ve lost something. In one of hundreds of boxes that all look very similar. The answer: labels using my DYMO LabelManager Wireless Label Printer.
Having done quite a bit of research on ANZAC/Australian M113s in Vietnam, I’ve decided to change my plan for collecting them. I’ll recap my original plan from 2020 (ANZACs in Vietnam – Steven’s Wargaming Project), have a look at the kits I have today, and then outline my new, slightly more megalomaniac plans.
I’ve started looking at my ANZAC project for Vietnam. I’m hoping I’ll be able to start making progress on this in 2023. But I got stuck on the tactical signs for the Australian M113s. Despite having a few books on Vietnam, I had no information on the tac signs. So I did some research. I found two pretty good sources: Ian Johnston’s “Australian M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers in the Vietnam War” and M Heaust: M113A1 APCs at Long Tan 18 August 1966 and a bunch of slightly more dodgy sources. Then I added in a bit of guess work. Here is the result.
It is very common for game systems to give different units different to hit scores. The big question for me is, is it better to (1) give good units a higher to hit score or (2) reward higher dice rolls?
I’ve been doing some more musing on Operational level wargaming for my draft Deep Battle rule set. My Experiment on a 4 Inch Hex Grid forced me to get Tiny Hills to Fit the 4 Inch Hexes. Now I’m doing the same thing with buildings. In fact I’m using Monopoly buildings which are more like … Read more
So 2022 went okay. And now it is time to lay out my megalomaniac plans for 2023. I will try to tone them back a bit as, despite a lot of activity, I achieved depressingly few of my goals last year.
As usual I present this as a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is then split into three parts: likely in 2023, unlikely, and background activity.
My goals for 2022 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.
My Scots-Irish army arrived and I wanted to get them on-table, so I convinced Chris to bring over his Picts. Chris took the Picts, of course, and Adam commanded my Scot-Irish. This was Arthurian Big Base and Hordes of the Things (HoTT).
Summary: Quick Scots-Irish victory.
I’ve drawn a new table top map for the Battle of Moscow. This time I’ve gone for a square grid with one square per 60 km. This is all part of the agonisingly slow development of my Deep Battle rule set. These rules will be Operational in nature hence the grand scale of the map.
Jamie was coming over and I quickly knocked up this Crossfire scenario to continue my experiments with the revised Anti-tank rules. This time I wanted tanks on both sides and we ended up with three Panzers attacking and two Shermans in defence.
The scenario is extremely loosely based on the Coldstream Guards and Scots Greys defence of the Fosse Bridge on 13 September 1943. One of the many small actions following the Salerno landings in the Italian Campaign. Emphasis on the “extremely loosely”. At the time I only knew the battalions/regiments present and the location of the bridge which gave me a modern google map of the modern site. Not much to go on historically, but it gave a good game. I’ll write up the scenario later although a real Fosse Bridge Scenario will be quite different.