Twilight of the Britons – Update to Version 1.1

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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.

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Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs – The Balagan Collection

Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs - The Balagan Collection - Banner

Lately I’ve developed a bit of an obsession about Macedonian bronze shields (chalkaspides). The Antigonids and Seleucids both had units named after these brazen shields and given the prevalence of artistic evidence, I suspect they were universal during the Hellenistic period. In this post I show 24 bronze shield designs, The Balagan Collection of Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs.

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Armed in the Macedonian fashion

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I’ve been re-reading all my books and articles on the Macedonian Wars. These covers the campaigns of Alexander through the Wars of the Successors (Diadochi), and ultimately to the wars against Rome. Fuelled with all that historical goodness, I want to write a series of posts on the Hellenistic armies with troops fighting “armed in the Macedonian fashion”. I start with, what does “armed in the Macedonian fashion” actually mean?

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2024 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian

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2023 went pretty well although there were a few bumps and I still didn’t complete nearly enough of my plans. So what is on the megalomaniac agenda for 2024? Well, you’ll see below. 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 2024, unlikely, and background activity.

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Musing on Units and their attributes in Tillys Very Bad Day

Musing on Units and their Attributes in Tillys Very Bad Day - Banner

Although Tilly’s Very Bad Day is for the Thirty Years War, I’m thinking of expanding the system into other periods. The Ancients, Medieval, and Gunpowder settings all look suitable. I’ve already experimented in the South American Wars of Independence with Bolivar’s Very Bad Day. I’m looking for inspiration so in this post I explore the attributes assigned to units in Tilly’s Very Bad Day.

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2023 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian

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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.

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Books – Reorganising my history bookcase made me think about my interests

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My big history book case is in the living area and not surprisingly my wife gets annoyed when the books get messy. Recently I tidied it up. Aside from the fact it took hours – which I didn’t enjoy – I found it interesting what this filing task highlighted about my interests. Aside from my enduring interest in all things Spanish and Portuguese, it turns out I have quite a big interest in World War II (okay, not so surprising), and a huge interest in Colonial Empires with a side order of Cold War.

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Gothic Shield Shapes – There is no such thing as a Gothic ‘Coffin’ Shield

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The wargaming community is full of myths that seem to perpetuate through the generations. Previously I poked at the the unconvincing myth about Visigothic Gardingi being unarmoured skirmishing cavalry, today I look at the ‘coffin’ shaped shield of the Goths. Early Gothic, specifically Visigothic, warriors are believed by some to have carried an odd ‘coffin’ shaped shield. It isn’t true. Germanic warriors only carried round, oval and hexagonal shields. Shapes that were used from the 1st century through the Fall of Rome. Round and oval shields continued in use into the dark ages.

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Download Twilight of the Britons – Fast play rules for the English Invasion of Britain

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For a long time I’ve been looking for a set of wargaming rules for the Arthurian age i.e. the Dark Age in Britain. Having tried lots of commercial rules, Vincent Tsao and I have written our own. Called Twilight of the Britons – Fast play rules for the English Invasion of Britain it is a variant of Twilight of the Sun-King (2001 version) . It covers the warfare in Britain from Roman departure (410 AD) until the English installed a Briton of Strathclyde as King of Scotland (1054 AD). The six page booklet contains only two pages of rules and four pages of army lists.

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2022 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian

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I am pretty happy with my efforts in 2021 and now it is time to lay out my plans for 2022. As always they are crazy megalomaniac plans. 2021 proved that even pumped I can’t achieve all my annual goals. But I’ll try.

I start with a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is split into three parts: likely in 2022, unlikely, and background activity.

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2021 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian

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2020 was a good year for wargaming projects and I thought I should lay out my plans for 2021. Crazy megalomaniac plans, of course.

As usual I’ve done a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. No off the wall fantasy here. They are all active but I have to admit that some of them are on a slow burn. A very slow burn. So I’ve split the list into parts: likely in 2021, unlikely, and background activity. You get to have a say in the priority order – see the aside.

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Four Player Big Battle Big Base Triumph in the Punic Wars

Triumph-295 Iberians form battle line in woods

We played Big Base Triumph in the Punic Wars – liked the Triumph rules but thought some of the troop types sucked. To really challenge ourselves and test out that impression, we played another, bigger, game with Iberians on the table in force. So “Light foot” for both Scutarii and Caetrati and “Javelin Cavalry” for Roman, Numidian, Carthaginian, big shield Iberians, and small shield Iberians. I felt, somehow, I was about to rub salt in the wounds. Of course this is Punic Wars.

Summary: Romans (Chris, Adam) beat Allied Carthaginian (Jamie) and Iberians (Steven)

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