Spanish and Portuguese Military History,
Wargaming, and other stuff
The fifth game in our Fall of Hispania Campaign will occur in 448 AD, 2 game years after the last battle. Chris Harrod rolled Roman and I got Visigoth. Despite misgivings I have chosen Basic Impetus as the rules.
Basic Impetus has army lists but, even after I reformatted them, I don’t like them. So I tweaked the two that we are intending to use. Okay, I only made two small changes to troop types, but those changes stem from mistakes that get me quite het up.
I’m thinking of using Basic Impetus for the next game in our Fall of Hispania Campaign. The good news is that the army lists for the Fall of Rome period are freely available at Vol 7. Rome and Empire and Vol 8. Fall of Rome. The bad news is I don’t like them. Firstly, I can’t read them because of all the abbreviations, for example, “FP” does not leap out at me as “Heavy Infantry”. Secondly, the format of the table is counter intuitive for me; I want to know who the troops are first before seeing how they are classified. Thirdly, I disagree with some of the army lists. In this post I’ll content myself with addressing the things about the format that annoy me. In a subsequent post I’ll revise the army lists.
I’m thinking of using Basic Impetus for the next game in our Fall of Hispania Campaign. The good news is that the army lists for the Fall of Rome period are freely available at Vol 7. Rome and Empire and Vol 8. Fall of Rome. The bad news is I don’t understand them.
Roland Davis has been painting for me again – some Swedes for the Thirty Years War. So I’ve been mulling over how to base them. Part of the answer is obvious – on big bases. The potential dilemma is what figures to put on each base given these are mixed pike and shot units. Here’s a few options I considered and a bit of a journey to get there.
I’m interested in refighting the Battle of Zama. This is quite a popular focus for historical scenarios so I thought I’d have a look at what other people have done before collating my own thoughts. By chance, Zama was the theme of the Society of Ancients Battle Day in 2010. Not surprisingly the Battle Day, and Zama, got a lot of coverage in the Slingshot, the society journal, over the next few months. I’ve used those accounts to explore some key questions about how to refight the battle.
I’ve decided to go for big bases for the Peninsular War. Couple of reasons for this.