Carlist Wars

The Carlist Wars in Spain were the last major European civil wars in which pretenders fought to establish their claim to a throne. In 1833-40, 1846, and 1872-76 the Carlists – followers of Don Carlos and his descendants – rallied to the cry of “God, Country, and King” and fought for the cause of Spanish tradition against the liberalism, and later the republicanism, of the Spanish governments of the day. Although now little known outside Spain or Portugal, in their time these wars were international in flavour. The other European nations looked on with considerable interest, and forces from Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France were involved.

Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules

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Hills-102 Questions about hills in wargaming rules - Banner

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.

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Battalion line, column, and square – Tactical formations during the Napoleonic Wars

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Napoleonic Tactical Formations - French Infantry Battalion 1808-1815 - Banner

Line, column, square … the tactical formations available to infantry of the Napoleonic Wars, South American Wars of Liberation, and Carlist Wars. Line is pretty straight forward but I thought I’d describe the others, in particular column. People think of columns as long and thin, and some were, but most columns of the Napoleonic Wars were usually stubby. I use the post 1808 French as the main example because the Spanish followed their lead, but the other nations were similar.

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Horse and Musket Crossfire – Crossfire for the Horse and Musket Era

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Rule - Horse and Musket - Crossfire - Banner

I wrote this about five years ago because a couple of my projects, i.e. Albuera in the Peninsular and Sipe Sipe in South America, had stalled because I didn’t like any of the available horse and musket rules. Inspired by Roland’s WW1 experiment I wondered if I could make a horse and musket variant for Crossfire. These rules have now remained raw and unplayed for some time. I stopped work on them because I decided I had bent the rules so far that it is no longer Crossfire. But rather than having it lurk on my hard drive any longer, and because Jamie asked about it, I thought I’d share. What do you think?

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Terrain Cards – Random terrain placement for pick up wargames

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Terrain Cards - Banner

In our recent game of Tilly’s Very Bad Day Chris observed that, as the defender, he could exploit the terrain placement rules to his advantage. This is my proposal to address Chris’s concern. These rules allow randomised terrain for pick up battles in any period.

The terrain placement rules described here borrow heavily from Terrain Cards for a ECW Campaign.

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15/18mm 1st Carlist War Range from Capitan Games

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Carlist War Figures - Banner

About 15-20 years ago a Spanish Wargaming company called Fantassin Minaturas produced a range of 15/18mm figures for the First Carlist War. The company subsequently became War Modelling and a couple of years ago kind of evaporated. Now the War Modelling figures are available from Capitan Games including the 15mm Carlist Wars range. I wanted one place where I could see a list of the entire range. Particularly as Capitan Games have a 10% discount to celebrate relaunching the range.

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Oriamendi Matrix: An Engle Matrix Game set in the First Carlist War

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Oriamendi Matrix - Banner

A bloody civil war has waged in Spain for four years. King Ferdinand died and left the crown to his daughter, Isabella, and the power to his wife Cristina. The King’s brother, Don Carlos, has violently contested Isabella’s right to succeed. The main drama to date has unfolded in the north, in the Basque provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, and Alava, plus the adjoining province of Navarra.

It is now early March 1837. In yet another bid to to crush the rebels, the three government generals in the Basque provinces – Esparetero, De Lacy Evans, Saarsfield – are preparing a simultaneous advance on the Carlist heartland. They believe victory is assured as Don Carlos doesn’t have enough men to face all three threats simultaneously. The three Carlist commanders – Don Carlos, Don Sebastián, Brigadier Iturriza – intend to show the Cristinos they are wrong.

This Engle Matrix Game for the First Carlist War has been germinating for a long time. The draft appeared on 2 July 2006. Nearly 10 years later I thought I’d better finish it. Partly because Roland Davis wanted me to run it for him, in PBEM mode.

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