Getting my soldiers on the table

Regular readers will know that I have been painting Napoleonic British in 28mm. Now as we all know, these models are not just intended to sit in a foam tray in a cardboard box, I need to get them on a table. As this project has been going on for some time now, I have had time to look into and purchase various rules. Painting Space Marines then playing with them is easy, you buy a copy of Warhammer 40,000 and away you go (although these days there is the argument of which version of those rules are best, if you aren't playing in store, why not go back to 2nd edition? I loved the Dark Millennium add on rules.)
The problem with historical wargaming, or maybe the advantage, is that there are countless rule sets out there. 

As my models are 28mm scale and I learnt to wargame through warhammer, I really wanted to play something closer to 1 model equals 1 man than 1 equals many. Now, obviously this is not actually practical unless we go to a skirmish level, using something like Sharpe Practice or Chosen Men. The problem with these rules however, are that I really won't get a full table of models without meaning the game will take days to play. 

Going up scale, we have Warhammer Historical, Waterloo. Now it has Warhammer in the name, surely this will feel familiar, after all I am a massive fan of the Legends of the Old West Warhammer Historical rules too. These rules feel like what I am going for, but they are just slightly too complicated. We played them, but I just couldn't get my head round TAC points and when models are removed as casualties. It left me and my fellow gamers scratching our heads, wondering if we got it right or not. Also, the first models I painted were my British Riflemen (I will openly admit all my historical wargaming is heavily influenced by totally inaccurate fictional versions from movies and tv.) These rules meant I would only be fielding about 8 models from my lovingly painted green jackets.

Neil Thomas has written an excellent set of rules called One Hour Wargames, which have a chapter on the Napoleonic era. These are excellent rules but a little basic for what I want to do. That is obviously their intention and I will probably use them at some time when I do only have an evening to play. Especially as they are also designed for the smaller table. I also feel these rules would easily scale up to a larger table and are simple enough to not slow down play. I do however want to have a little bit more complication by including some congreve rockets. (Wargaming has to be fun after all, what's more fun than misfiring rockets?)

My own crude Congreve rockets conversions

All this leads to one conclusion, I am going to have to write my own rules. What I am looking for is something that falls between the rule sets I have. Another reason is learning wargame rules is hard, it is very difficult to learn a set a rules from reading them. Just like boardgames, we all find it easier when someone else shows us. It is extremely difficult to to fully convey the authors intention in a readable rulebook.

 If I write my own rules using methods my local wargaming group already understand, we will more likely spend a day enjoying a wargame, than constantly referring to the text of a book written by someone we have never met. The age of the internet has helped this a bit, authors can now easily answer queries via the internet. One of my favourite current rulesets that I have taken the effort to learn is Rogue Stars from Osprey, mainly because the author Andrea Sfiligoi is so willing to discuss his rules on Facebook. But nothing is more useful than having the author of a ruleset in the room to immediately answer a query, interpret his intentions or fill a gap in the text.

This did at first seem a daunting task. The most I have done so far is write extra "houserules" for systems already in place. As I have mentioned in previous blogs I have written my own sci fi version of Advanced Heroquest and a WW2 version of Warhammer Legends of the Old West. I have been confident that these would work as the hard job of the bare bones of the system is done for you. This would be more of a challenge. Luckily help is at hand.

This book comes in very handy. The authors are experience wargame writers. The book won't do the hard work for you, but it answers a lot of questions I had when I first thought about writing my own rules. It not only goes through the mechanics of writing rules but also how to identify the language of rules writing. If it is something you have not done before it is a tricky writing style to master. All I have to do then is some playtesting, but that is the fun bit.

And finally....

Now I am going to talk about something that the purists will baulk at, so if you like your wargaming perfectly historically accurate,(surely you have realised by now that is not me.) look away now.

Seriously, I don't want to upset you.

You aren't going to like this.

Right, now the grumps aren't reading I'm going to make a suggestion. Now, don't get me wrong, there is a time for historical accuracy, the educational benefits are clear to see, but sometimes wargaming has to be a bit fun. So I have taken some inspiration from this humongous tome.

You could break a toe dropping this book.

If you haven't read the book, Mr Norrell goes out with the British army to see what he can do in the Peninsular wars. After being ignored by Wellington for a period, he eventually assists the army mainly by magically conjuring up nice flat roads for them to march on, then removing them afterwards so that the French cannot take advantage. I love the idea of having a Gentleman magician on the table, accompanying the Officers in doing what he can to stick it to ol' Boney.
Obviously I need to give the French something equivalent. Now, in the story there arent any magic users on the French side, but I came up with the idea of giving them a Necromancer, perhaps a mysterious bearded stranger from Eastern Europe? He could raise up units of recently deceased Imperial Guard to shuffle across the battlefield. I just need to purchase some Perry plastics and maybe some Mantic zombie sprues. It's been a while since I've done some kit bashing...

Rattle dem bones

Why do you have so many dice?

One thing that all us gamers have in common is our dice. Yes there are games systems that use cards, (Kobolds and Cobblestones from Osprey use poker style rules to resolve combat.) I have taken part in a roleplaying session where players took a piece from a Jenga tower every time their character did something risky, but most modern wargaming systems use dice to introduce that random factor into games.

It wasnt always this way, Little Wars involved cannons firing wooden dowels and close combat was resolved by comparing the numbers in each opposing side. These days though, most wargaming tables have a pile of dice cluttering up one corner (or the whole table sometimes.)

I must pre warn you, the following image may be upsetting to fellow gamers...


Brace yourself


It isnt pretty...


here it is...

This is what happens when your offspring gets into your carefully organised dice collection.  My youngest loves to play with the dice, I really don't mind, it really has helped him with counting. I remember to this day using wooden counting cubes in school, I'm just giving him a head start.

We all have different dice for different uses, not just the obvious differently sided dice. We use tiny dice as to indicate how many hits a character has taken, giant wooden dice to indicate what turn we are currently on. I know some people that have a different set of D6 (six sided dice) for different armies they have, green dice for their Orcs, red dice for their Napoleonic British. 

I have lots of dice for another reason, dice hogs. Yep, you know who you are  people. Somehow every time these players need to roll a dice, they reach for the furthest dice they can find on the table. (no matter how large the table) The result of which means all the dice gravitate towards them as the day goes on. My own personal solution to this problem is just more dice. If there are enough dice on the table, then there is always suitable dice within reach.

So, I can confidently say my collection of dice has a practical reason, but I can wholely understand why some people just like to collect them. The tactile nature of them, just holding a handful of dice before rolling them is fun. Its no coincidence that people use Gem dice when playing D&D, its almost a physical representation of the treasure their characters are on a quest to retrieve. Some people take it further and collect dice purely as a hobby. I briefly joined a Facebook group of these people out of curiosity and I can confidently say I love their enthusiasm. Like stamp or coin collecting, any new design (or a rare miscast) is desired for their collection. One wonderful soul has even designed a categorisation system that I applaud for its wonderful attention to detail. (visit his amazing website here ) I eventually only left the group in a fit of self preservation as I slowly began to find myself more and more tempted to start buying dice by the pound. (That is not an exaggeration, you can buy by the pound.)

(I don't apologise for use of the meme, it was too good to not include. Credit: Dungeons and Dragons Memes page on Fbook.)

There are the players who claim to always roll badly (my Pathfinder character regularly rolls at least three 1's a session.) I've seen players throw dice across the room in disgust at the number of failed rolls they've made, I've seen youtube videos of dice being "punished" with hammers for somehow being responsible for the death of a beloved D&D character, I've seen players swap out their dice to try and restore some luck. The truth of the matter is, we all roll badly, we all roll well. I'm not going to suggest all dice are perfectly balanced, (there are ways to test that involving saltwater) but don't blame the die, blame the GM.

I don't have the space where I live to have a massive gaming table, once a year I have a cull of my models to clear space for the inevitable new purchases but I can never have too many dice.  Although remind me of this post when you catch me swimming in dice Scrooge McDuck style...