So I’ve been Musing on the Vulture’s Feast, a Thirty Years War version of my Populous, Rich and Rebellious Campaign for Tilly’s Very Bad Day. Most of the flavour of the campaign comes from the Campaign Cards. I’m not sure which ones I’ll end up with but I thought I’d share the possibilities. Please comment if you have endorsements, tweaks and/or new suggestions.
Gunpowder Warfare
Black powder guns from arquebus to flintlock musket. I have chosen to start this period with the discovery of the New World (1492) and end it with the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855).
Sub-categories: New World, Italian Wars, Eighty Years’ War, Thirty Wars’ War, War of Spanish Succession, Napoleonic Wars, Liberators, Liberal Wars, Carlist Wars, New Zealand Wars.
Musing on the Vulture’s Feast – A 30YW version of Populous, Rich and Rebellious
We’re really joying Populous, Rich and Rebellious, our four player Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day, and set in the English Civil War. But people keep asking me, what about the Thirty Years War? (Most recently Peter Godden.)
1645 Game 11 – Wales – English Civil War Campaign
Adam and Chris played the 11th game of Populous, Rich and Rebellious, our four player Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day, and set in the English Civil War.
Summary: In probably the best game yet, Parliament thoroughly crushed the Royalist defenders in Wales.
1644 Game 10 – South-East – English Civil War Campaign
After a 10 month gap, Adam and Chris played the tenth game of Populous, Rich and Rebellious, our four player Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day, and set in the English Civil War. Unfortunately we’d forgotten about Game 9 so it was a bit of a replay … with a different result.
Summary: A strong Royalist attack crushed the Parliamentary defence of the South-East.
1644 Game 9 – South-East – English Civil War Campaign
Adam and Chris played the ninth game of Populous, Rich and Rebellious, our four player Campaign using Tilly’s Very Bad Day, and set in the English Civil War. Actually, they played it on 9 Apr 2024 and I forgot to post it.
Summary: Parliament successfully defended the South-East from a large aggressive Royalist army.
2025 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
I wasn’t a happy chappy when I wrote my reflections on 2024. I did lots of stuff, but only played six games, and didn’t achieve many of my annual goals. It was a wargaming disaster. So what is on the megalomaniac agenda for 2025? Do I tone back my ambitions or try to make up for lost ground? Megalomaniac, right, so it has to be “make up for lost ground”. Same goals as last year, plus a few. 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 2025, unlikely, and background activity.
2024 Reflections of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
My goals for 2024 were typically overly ambitious – some would say megalomaniac. As usual I didn’t achieve them all, in fact hardly any. This year was a wargaming disaster.
Valour, Discipline and Training
I like the idea of using contemporary language within rules but I have two competing sets of terms: Napoleon’s “Valour and Discipline” and South American “Training and Discipline”. What to do? For Bolivar’s Very Bad Day should I replace the “Resolve” attribute of Tilly’s Very Bad Day with two attributes, one reflecting bravery and the other training? And what should I call them?
Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report
Adam and I play tested Bolivar’s Very Bad Day using my Tucuman Scenario. We wanted a small game to test my variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day for the South American Wars of Liberation.
Summary: Good little game with the Patriots strong in cavalry and the Royalists strong in infantry. My Patriot cavalry stripped off the weak Royalist cavalry and encircled the Royalist infantry columns. Then we had a hard grind with repeated cavalry charges against the staunch Royalist infantry. Eventually Adam accepted he couldn’t win and conceded.
Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules
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.
Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
Feedback from the guys was that Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815), although a good game, was too big for regular play testing of Bolivar’s Very Bad Day. So they asked for a smaller scenario with less terrain. The Battle of Tucumán (24-25 September 1812) seems perfect for this. Although the deciding battle in the War of Argentine Independence, it was a small scale affair with, in game terms, only 11 units on each side. It also features the a wide range of troop types and troop quality. And it has Gauchos. This scenario is based on my write up of the historical battle and how to wargame the battle. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day is my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day.
Sipe Sipe – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report
Jamie and Adam came over to play test Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. I’d just finished the hill for Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815), so decided to give the associated Sipe Sipe Scenario a go. Because we were play testing the rules, we wouldn’t have enough time to complete the battle but we figured we’d give it a go anyway.
Summary: Draw because we ran out of time. But good play test of the scenario and rules. Lots on insights most notably, the jungle fighting felt wrong under the draft rules and there shouldn’t actually be jungle fighting at all in the scenario. Both rules and scenario need tweaks.
Sipe Sipe – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
I’ve been working on Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815) for a while now. So I thought I’d write a scenario for Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. This is a large game on a large table.
Battle of Vargas Swamp 25 July 1819
The Battle of Vargas Swamp (Batalla del Pantano de Vargas), fought on 25 July 1819, was the bloodiest battle of the 1819 campaign but set the scene for the liberation of New Granada. I cover the historical situation, the battle itself, the terrain and the two orders of battle.
Musing on Commander Special Attributes in Bolivar’s Very Bad Day
I like the way John Fletcher (2005, 2006, 2011, 2018abc) assigns special abilities to the generals of the South American Wars of Liberation. In Liberators QPR generals are classified on a five rating scale from abysmal, through poor, average, good to excellent. That is nice but then he goes further and gives some generals extra abilities e.g. improved initiative. It is these special attributes that I really like. So how would that work in Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day? This post is about the rules mechanism, the framework, and I’ll post separately about the actual generals of the South American Wars of Liberation.