Archive for April, 2003

Rotten Dice

Tuesday, April 29th, 2003

I have a reputation at the club of rolling very bad dice. This certainly bore true on Monday night when I played game of Napoleonic Piquet against Nick.

You don’t want to roll bad dice in Piquet more than any other game as if you roll very low PIP dice you don’t get to do anything! To be fair, towards the end of the game, I managed to gain some runs of initiative, but at the beginning a lot of it went Nick’s way.

I think the height of bad dice rolling was failing to cause any hits with 3 shots from a Spanish battery where I was rolling a D12 against a D6!

I haven’t played Piquet for a while and I forgot the first cardinal rule of the game: guard your flanks. Because the initiative can swing against you and you can sit there as the enemy cavalry swings around your flank, it is vital to protect the flanks of your infantry. This is a lesson that I had forgotten and I sat my Cavalry on a hill thinking I would see what the French cavalry did. The next thing I know, two of my infantry units are routing…

The game was only Nick’s second of Piquet and as such was more of a learning exercise, but it did highlight the major failing of the system, in my opinion, that you can’t get a definite result in two to three hours. At least, you can’t predictably get a result in that time. For gaming at home, or all day games it is a brilliant system and it is my system of choice for Napoleonics, but as a club game it has problems.

I think that this type of problem is why DBM has become so popular. You merely have to turn up with two armies. The terrain is sorted out by the terrain generation system, so there is no need to think of a scenario. The game will play to a conclusion within the three hours that is a typical club evening.

The problem I have with DBM is one of scale: it is too abstract for me. I like to see a unit win a melee or be pleased that my unit of cavalry has finally won something this game. Not fiddle about with elements.

So, I play Warhammer Ancient Battles, which has its own flaws, but which does provide a fun game with set results and which has some character.

I like DBA, so I’m not against everything WRG. But, to me, DBA is an abstract game like chess. It’s not a representation of an ancient battle, more a game of tactics with a set of twelve game pieces.

As I get older I find I’m moving to simpler and simpler rules - that must say something about me!

Posted in | No Comments »

Salute

Saturday, April 26th, 2003

Just back from Salute at Olympia, tired and not that much poorer. Like several people I spoke to, there seemed to be very little to spend money on. No new ranges caught my eye and said BUY ME.

I did spend some money with Gripping Beast, adding to my Saxon and Arthurian armies. Mostly to get the light horse that I needed for the Arthurians. I also picked up the new El Cid book for Warhammer which looks good. The El Cid demo game was one of the best at the show. Lots of very brightly coloured figures on good terrain with a wonderful city wall as a backdrop.

I have been struggling with the Scheltrum flying boat I’ve been building and took along my digital camera in order to take a few shots of the model on the Scheltrum stand. The guys there were kind enough to give me the model to look at and take photos of. I now have a much better idea of how it all goes together.

I think the lack of things to purchase may just be a symptom of the growing spread of the internet, rather than a lack of new figures. I used to only purchase wargames stuff at the two shows a year that I attended: Salute and Colours. This made them big occasions at which I’d spend about £200 a show and come away with bags of figures and rules.

Nowadays it is so easy to order figures off the web that I tend to spread my purchases around throughout the year. Also, I did promise myself that I wouldn’t buy any new ranges of figures until I have finished some of the outstanding projects.

Now that some things didn’t catch my eye - I-Kore is a very professional outfit and I will be tempted to get some of their Void figures at some point. The Xyston 15mm are also excellent and seemed to be attracting a lot of interest.

I have also been very tempted by the Renegade WW1 25mm range. There are some wonderful characters in it.

Also new was Mark Copplestone’s explorers range complete with sledges, dogs, polar bears and a pack of penguins! They look a lot of fun.

The show itself was relatively uncrowded. I met some old friends, managed to have a drink in a pub distant enough from Olympia to be free of Salute Bags and there were some good games on display. Though, nothing startling, I thought. The El Cid game I mentioned before was good, there was a game called All Quiet of the Sea Front with a huge zeppelin that looked fun. But, most of the other games didn’t stand out for me.

I’d better unpack the figures I bought and work out how to put this flying boat together…

Posted in | No Comments »

Glutter of Ravens

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2003

No games at the club this week as it is a Bank Holiday, but last week I played Glutter of Ravens again with Nick using my 25mm Gripping Beast Arthurians and Saxons.

Ravens is a very simple, yet fascinating concept for a set of Dark Age rules and one that captures the atmosphere of a small Dark Age battle really well. It is based on an article published yars ago in Practical Wargamer (I think) on the Dark Age Slog system, but has been expanded on by Dan Mersey who wrote Glutter of Ravens.

The concept behind the rules is simple: Each of your warbands has Agression (Used for attacking people), Formation (used when defending) and Strength (effectively hit points, but also used for missile fire).

At the start of the game, each commander starts with 30 points that they can allocate to Agression or Formation (Strength starts at full). This usually means that you allocate 1 to each unit for each characteristic and then have a couple of extras to distribute.

Each turn, you roll for Command PIPs and these are used to either order a warband (or group of warbands) forward, or to up the Agression or Formation values.

This is where the game comes into its own for me: do you build your warbands up but keep them stilll? Do you build up agression hoping you get to attack? Or do you build up Formation if they are attacked? Add to this the uncommanded moves as heady warbands charge in regardless of your plans and everything quickly becomes a struggle for control.

I am a big fan of these rules. I need to do some work on basing my 25mm figures on temporary bases, probably double the size listed in the rules, and I will also probably double the move/fire distances in the rules as well. That way they’ll work properly with my figures that are based for Warhammer Ancient Battles.

I think that what I like about the rules is the subtle tactics that are involved and the feeling of uncertainty about whether your warbands will do what you tell them! This is why I also like rules such as Piquet with its command and control/ Fog of War or G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. with its unpredictable move sequence or Warmaster with its command and control rules.

I never really like to feel that I’m completely in control of my armies…

Posted in | No Comments »

So much lead and so little time

Wednesday, April 16th, 2003

My painting schedule seems to have gone to pot this month.

Like most, if not all wargamers, I have lot of unpainted lead. I want to get this stuff on the table and, as I’ve already discussed, I don’t play games with unpainted figures. So, I need to paint regularly.

Luckily, I enjoy painting. I find it a relaxation to come home from work and slap a couple of colours on a unit. I try and paint 12 figures at a time, which is enough to get a feeling of progress without feeling that painting those boots black will never end.

My current pressing project is to finish the troops needed for our demonstration game at Valhall 2003. This is just 20 Rocketmen and a flying boat.

After that, I hav 36 Arthurians left to finish to complete my 1,000pt WAB army.

After that, there are the Franco-Prussians. I decided to buy a few Prussians secondhand to match my Home Service British from Redoubt. As they aren’t currently produced by Foundry, I decided to buy some secondhand. I was contacted by someone who had been given a large collection in lieu of painting fees. I obviously didn’t want all of them, just some prussians and maybe a few french. But, he kept dropping the price and I ended up taking the lot which is why I have over 1,000 unpainted Franco Prussians in 25mm.

My unpainted totals are something like 2,000 25mm, 2-300 15mm, a BEF 1940 SHQ army for Rapid Fire and a Goblin/Orc army for Warmaster…

I’m not buying any figures at Salue (honest), well, just a couple to complete the WAB Saxons, and some light horse for the Arthurians…

Posted in , | No Comments »

Rules without Rulers

Monday, April 14th, 2003

Our latest all day game at Guildford Wargames Club was a WW2 Eastern Front game. Set out on three tables with linked scenarios, it used the Crossfire rules. This was the first time most of us had used the rules but we picked them up pretty quickly and had some very enjoyable games.

Crossfire is very different to any other wargames ruleset I have ever played. It was written as the result of a bet that a set of rules couldn’t be written that didn’t use rulers and that didn’t have fixed game turns. It achieves its aims admirably whilst providing a very simple, yet subtle, set of rules.

The basic concept of Crossfire is Line of Sight. This means you need a lot of terrain on the table. The terrain elements block LOS and provide cover against fire. The player with the initiative moves his forces from one obstacle to another. As the force is moved, the other player has a chance for reactive fire and can shoot at the troops scurrying from one bit of cover to the next.

If the player shooting manages to suppress the opposing unit then they gain the initiative.

The initiative swings back anf forwards pretty rapidly as you shoot at units that move across the open and get the initiative back, or you fail to hit a unit, fail a rally, etc and pass the iniative to your opponent.

All in all, Crossfire has a lot of very interesting ideas and works very well for an infantry based WW2 game.

I have played Rapid Fire a few times against an occasional opponent Francis, who is currently in Poland, but hopefully will return in July. Francis has French and German forces and I bought a BEF 1940 army to use with Rapid Fire with the intention of getting them painted before Francis returns. I have manged 16 infantry and 3 trucks so far, so I need to get a move on.

I still can’t seem to fix on a set of WW2 rules, and so I’ve mounted all my infantry individually so I can use them for any rules. I currently have Rapid Fire (which seem a little too simple), Point of Attack (The piquet ruleset), Battlefront (looks very good) and BAPS skirmish.

I think I might be adding Crossfire to that list soon as well…

Posted in | No Comments »

Naked, Shiny little men

Friday, April 11th, 2003

There has been a lot of discussion recently on The Miniatures Page about playing with unpainted figures or even whether you should have to paint your figures. The discussions have been excitable with people either split into the “You shall paint” or “I don’t have time to paint - you paint nazi” camps.

I have to admit that before these discussions arose that it had never occurred to me that I might want to play with unpainted figures. Sure, back when I was 11 or 12, when I first started wargaming I used unpainted Airfix figures. After a while, we moved to some basic paint jobs. I painted the British jackets red and the French jackets blue.

Even with the 6mm Heroics and Ros that I used, I made a vague effort at painting them red or blue, even if the whole figure was red or blue. (As I am sure whoever bought the lot at a Colours Bring and Buy will attest).

I think that the wargames hobby must be splitting into two camps:

There are the “old school” gamers who collect their figures, research the uniforms and paint them. For these people, painting is part of the hobby. For a lot of us it is a major part of the hobby. I paint more than I game. The appeal of a wargame is moving painted figures on nicely organise terrain.

The other extreme are “The Gamers”. These are people who simply want to play a game. It is the tactics of the game that attract them. They would be playing boardgames or even CCGs such as Magic if they weren’t playing wargames. As such, having to paint all your figures before you can play is a distraction, something that is unnecessary to actually playing.

There are, of course, people in between these two extremes. The DBM players, for example, that use basic painted armies and very basic representative terrain, because they are more interested in the game than the look of the table.

Personally, I don’t see the point of playing games with unpainted fiures on a bare table top. That, to me, is not my hobby. The game is the reward for the hours of painting and preparation.

And sometimes, the hours of painting and preparation turn out to be much more fun than the game…

Posted in | No Comments »

Introduction

Wednesday, April 9th, 2003

Hello and welcome,

I am a long time wargamer who also has an interest in websites and computing. As such, I already run both the Wargame Reviews website and my own club website for Guildford Wargames.

As I have a reseller account and a lot of spare webspace and capacity, the idea of Planet Wargaming came about. I am hoping to offer some cheap hosting to other clubs and individuals that want to run their own websites.

It will also give me the opportunity to ramble on about wargaming topics and hopefully someone will find it interesting… :-)

I originally started wargaming in 1974 after watching a TV report on the original Salute convention. It intrigued me and my friend John Foreman and I went to the library the next day to get a book on wargames. The only book they had was Little Wars by H G Wells and armed with the book and four boxes of Airfix 54mm plastic napoleonics we started wargaming.

We involved another friend from school, David Lyons, and gradually build up the forces with matchstick firing cannon. The original cannon I had were too small to fire pellets that would knock over the soldiers, so we used the guns from a game called Ambush, placing the gun on top of the cannon to aim.

These games continued until Dave Lyons found the book Practical Wargaming by Charles Wesencraft in the library. We changed over to using 1/72 airfix napoleonics and then eventually moved on to Heroics and Ros 1/300 napoleonics.

After that, I moved away and changed schools and started playing with Bruce Quarries rules and 25mm Metal Minifigs Napoleonics at the school wargames club. That only lasted a brief time and then I discovered roleplaying games and stopped wargaming for a number of years.

When I started again, I bought some Essex 15mm Napoleonic starter packs and use Bruce Quarries rules again. Coincidently, playing with an old schoool friend from the school games club who had started wargaming again at the same time.

We stuck to Napoleonics for a year or two and then branched out into English Civil War, a mix of old Minifigs that I had lying around and Essex again, using Forlorn Hope.

After that, the gates seemed to open and the periods came thick and fast. My opponent, Ian, moved away and now lives on the Isle of Wight and runs the Fighting15s painting service and I joined the Guildford Wargames Club.

I now have armies for 15mm Napoleonic, 25mm Darkest Africa, 25mm WAB Ancients, 10mm Warmaster, 25mm Victorian SF, 15mm ECW, 25mm Three Musketeers and a whole load more that are only partially completed or not even started yet.

It seems to be a common disease amongst wargamers: expanding on your interests. In some ways, I am quite envious of those people who find a period and stick to it. But then again, look at all the beautiful figures they are missing out on.

Posted in | No Comments »