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...

The end of an affair

Or how I still can't not walk in to a Games Workshop.

Previous readers will know my first GW purchase was a copy of Advanced Heroquest. My first store purchase however was a few years later, a Necromunda gang. Sold to me on the promise that I would just need that one small gang of models, one simple purchase that wouldnt break the bank and I could play this awesome new game.

Not a perfect rule system, Necromunda however was awesome for its time. I of course later bought the box set, all that multi level terrain and the multitude of models in the core box set was a perfect example of how Games Workshop earned its reputation as the "Gateway" to wargaming.

All except I think one of my fellow wargamers started with painting Citadel miniatures. I was drawn in to this community and found my people. I could tell you minutae detail of the stories behind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, I went to Games Day, I even applied for a part time job at my local store (I didnt get the job, but I am now kinda glad I didnt. Painting to deadline? Not for me, see my previous post!)

As I have become a grumpy old gamer I have fallen out of love with Games Workshop though. I don't want to start an anti-GW rant, there are plenty of those all over the internet, believe me. I just genuinely believe they have lost some of us older gamers. Maybe this has always been the case, there are teenagers now going to their local store every Saturday without fail just like I did, maybe I am the problem, maybe I don't "believe" anymore. Have they really become "over priced and share holder led", or were they always that way and I didnt know any better? Of course they have to gear their product towards selling you new models every week, they have staff to pay and shops to rent.  Maybe I have just matured in my tastes, or maybe I just miss the old days?

My favourite days of the year are day trips to wargame shows. It doesnt surprise me that some of favourite companies have ex GW staff running them. Warlord Games started by John Stallard and Paul Sawyer (affectionally known to us oldhammer players as the non politically correct "Fat Bloke") has a very familiar GW feel to its business model, I am particularly fond of their alternative history WW2 game Konflict 47. Alan and Michael Perry of Perry Miniatures are the Rock Stars of wargaming in my eyes, I love their Napoleonic range but my favourite model I have is a Salute special of an American Civil War general.

Hasslefree Miniatures gets a special mention as the nicest family in Wargaming. They are always my first visit at Salute each year and I love everything Kev White sculpts, I would even go out on a limb and call him the best sculpter out there right now. If I remember correctly, Kev used to sculpt for GW, he is so prolific at sculpting that following him on Facebook is a must to witness his talent.

The Trenchcoat wearing "Harby" has been given horns by yours truly with some clumsily added green stuff.

My wife has an excellent way of describing my relationship with GW. They are like a terrible ex partner. I tell everyone I am over them, that I want nothing to do with them, but every now and then we bump into each other and I only remember the good times. I know they are bad for me, I know there are better products out there, I know their game systems can sometimes seem unbalanced and possibly even geared towards selling more products than making a fair game. Yet I will still pop in and say hello and have a peruse. The staff are always lovely, they are conveniently just round the corner if I need some Goblin Green, if it is still called that? (I miss the old paints, where's Brazen Brass gone?!) and if there were no Games Workshop this hobby may not be in the renaissance it is now.

I said I didnt want to do an anti-GW rant and I hope I haven't. I'm still keeping my stack of Warhammer rulebooks and I will still buy every new Dan Abnett novel when it comes out. (I could write another whole post about my love of the Gaunts Ghosts saga.) When my boys are older if they want to wargame I'm not going to refuse them a trip to Games Workshop, I shall just have to start saving now for it.

Maybe I should hope they want to take up sports instead.

Why did I decide to paint kilts?

How I learnt to love painting redcoats.

My Grandfather, a veteran of WW2, didn't really talk about his experiences during the war, something I really don't blame him for. The one story I do remember him telling me was of when a bomber returned from a sorty with it's hatch not fully closed, the offending obstruction being an unexploded bomb. A very long piece of rope tied to the release mechanism and lots of fingers crossed and the crew and the plane survived to tell the tale.

 

Why I am telling you this? Well, although he really didn't want to remember his wartime experiences, my Grandfather did introduce me to historical wargaming. I learnt to play chess against my Grandfather, an excellent teacher, he got the exact balance of being a challenging opponent, but not putting me off the game. I still have the copies of Stratego and Campaign that we played and I was entrusted to take home with me. (I wonder now if he already had them or bought them with the intention of gifting them to me after our game.)

We built an airfix Hurricane kit together (I later discovered he had been a mechanic of the real thing.) and then one Sunday afternoon out came a box of humbrol paints and the Battle of Waterloo in 1/72 scale. My Grandfather had painted some of them already, and he showed me how to very carefully paint more. (Including leaving them on the sprue for ease of handling, a habit I still to this day know is the right thing to do, but yet still get over excited and unclip and glue before painting on many an occasion.)

So, I was dispatched home that night with the box of paints and soldiers with the promise that I would finish them under parental supervision.

  

Fast forward 20 odd years and I'm perusing the wares at a wargame show. My wargaming colleague is buying some French 28mm Napoleonics from Front Rank miniatures. This reminded me of the promise I made to my Grandfather and so my first purchase of this period is made. I may not have finished the 1/72 models, but I would paint a Napoleonic army of some sort. This very slowly done task has taken me at least ten years. (I am a very slow painter and get distracted by new shinies all the time.) My final task was painting Highlanders in their finest Black Watch tartan. It has become a bit of a running joke in my wargamers group and my long suffering wife rolls her eyes at the mention of them, but finally I have finished them. 

My Dad has since found the original airfix set for me, although even I admit I might struggle to get them done (as my father in law admits, an increase in age correlates with an acceptance to give up on trying to paint smaller and smaller scales.) but I would like to think that if my Grandfather were still with us, he would appreciate the achievement and accept that I had at least performed the promise in spirit. I won't pretend to be anywhere near expert level at painting, but I like to think en masse they look impressive enough.

 The models are a mix of Front Rank, Perry and Vitrix miniatures. The Front Rank models being metal have that great feel of weight and durability. I could not however have afforded this entire army without buying some of it in plastic. My wargaming gang have yet to decide on a rule system, I would say this is the era I have the most rulebooks for and yet we still may end up writing our own.

(Now, no-one tell my wife about the unpainted Prussian army in my to do pile.)

One Hour Wargames

I'm sure I'm not the only wargamer who has found his available time for dice rolling and painting shrunk a bit for a few years following the arrival children. For this reason I gratefully received a gift for Fathers day of the above title, One-Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas from Pen & Sword books. My wife is one of the few people that listen to my ramblings about the needs of a wargamer and so also knew that I struggle to find something I can play on the limited size of our dining table that unfolds from a three foot square to a staggering three by six foot rectangle.  The two selling points of this book then, play a game in an hour on a three foot square, jumped out at my wife as perfectly suited for me.

From Ancient and Dark Age, right through to the Machine Age and Second World War, this book presents a simple ruleset that is tweaked for each period to enable the player to play a simple wargame for a desired moment in history. Each chapter starts with a brief explanation of how the fighting styles of the period are represented in the rules and how the unit types are simplified into between two and four types. Obviously we are looking at finishing a game in an hour, so this is a very simplified system, the rules for a unit size just stating the size of the frontage, it is up to the player to decide what scale models they use and how many they squeeze into the unit. All units have the same capacity of damage of 15 hits.

After the rules there are 30 different scenarios, some based on real battles. This is the section of the book I will find the most useful, not just for this rule set, but I can imagine they will be extremely transferrable to Warhammer, Kings of War, Rapid Fire, in fact any gaming system.  Nobody wants to repeatedly just play "pitched battle" over an empty battlefield all the time. The author takes great care to mention where his inspiration for each scenario came from, a real encounter or another author. (The Godfathers of wargaming Charles Grant and Donald Featherstone receive a couple of name checks.)

Of final note, my youngest offspring has already begun to have a keen interest in Daddy's wargaming (He has already begun "Thundercoating" and painting his own toy soldiers) so I have started to think about how to introduce gaming to the boys. This book is the perfect tool. The simplicity of the rules are perfect for them, I don't want to be constantly referring to tables and rulebooks (I myself am terrible at remembering rules and always find wargaming easier when a "third player" is on hand with a rulebook.) small minds wander easily as we know.

There is also that one last use for this book. You know sometimes you just want to get your entire collection for a period on a table, just for the shere magnificience of it. Your club want to demonstrate a massive Napoleonic war game with everyone's models on the table and you havent got a week to play it in. This system I am sure will easily scale up for this purpose. This book is going to get well thumbed.

Researching Grenadier

I love a good charity shop/car boot find.

That feeling when you find a box of second hand toy soldiers is a joy for us all. I once was at a carboot and spied the ugliest cardboard box I have ever seen. Covered in kittens, (my wife made me dispose of the box as soon as possible, it was creepy, seriously creepy.) something about the box made me open the lid. Inside it was jammed full of warhammer dwarves and orcs. I didnt even delve, just bought the lot for a couple of quid and had the joy of going through it all at home.

I also love researching and identifying items I find.  My latest bagfull I will admit wasn't found by myself but by a friend, then passed on as they had no use for it. So, challenge accepted, let the research begin!

Most of the models I discovered were from Grenadier (the capital G on the slotta on some was my first clue.) These first ones are Troopers with Heavy Weapons, from 2015, I'm keeping these and painting them up for Rogue Stars.

A pair of Cyberpunk Nomads from 1995. That bike has difficult to base written all over it. I do like the design though, somebody was watching Akira when they sculpted that.

Orcs with Field crossbow, more Grenadier from 1987, sadly one of the Orcs has some knife damage. I have seen this set for sale from Campaign Game Miniatures, I'm guessing they have bought the molds.

An assortment of adventurers from Grenadier in the 90's. These will be painted up for Heroquest or Pathfinder.

Not sure on the first of these two, some kind of Ogre or Troll, maybe? Both are a good 40 to 45mm tall, the one on the right is the Lord of Death from Grenadiers Fantasy Lords range.

These chaps are interesting and I have yet to properly identify them. They are Grenadier, coded underneath from A653 to A657. They seem to be dressed in fantasy/medieval gear and are armed with what look like one shot black powder weapons or fireworks? Any help identifying these would be gratefully received.

A motley crew of I am guessing post apocalyptic survivers. I know nothing about these other than they are Grenadier, no date, no identifying codes.

 Finally, the only non-Grenadier models, two oldhammer Games Workshop models. On the left,  Lord of Battle in Unicorn Helm and then Stro Knor MaceKiller, from 1987.  For some reason people lap up old school Warhammer, so I might have to part with these.

I must admit, at first glance I thought a lot of this was going to the Father in Law to melt down for re-casting, but actually there are a couple of nice models here. More to add to the to do pile then!

Achtung!

Regular readers of the blog (all six of you.) will know I favour a more Hollywood approach to my wargaming. However, one of my esteemed wargaming friends, the Illustrious Opponent is a fan of the more accurate methods of gaming WW2, Rapid Fire! As I regularly subject him to my crazy homebrew rules, I should also sometimes humour his tastes.

A nifty little set of rules, I don't pretend to be particularly knowledgeable of them, more relying on the method of asking my opponent what I need to roll. (There are lots of tables.) Nonetheless, I do enjoy how they play. The need to "spot" your opponent before opening fire on them across the crowded table is more accurate than my usual experience of gaming like a general who has a super manoeuvrable helicopter and a powerful set of binoculars.

As it was D Day, we played a scenario based on the Battle of Perrier Ridge. I took command of the Germans, my opponent, the British. Having most of my force squeeze onto the table at the point where the road enters the table, somewhat limited my deployment. Having constraints on setup can sometimes help though as you really don't get the chance to think too hard about deployment.

My opponent wanted to make it clear that we weren't being perfectly historically accurate, mainly due to the limitations of his collection. This meant both forces were reduced slightly. As we were playing in an evening of limited time it wasn't a bad thing.

My reinforcements being due to arrive on turn six, all I had to do was hold my own against the dug in British forces until my extra six Stug 3's arrived and then I would surely roll over the opposition.

Of course I rolled terribly for spotting any of the British infantry holed up in the buildings of the town and having my force bottle-necked in the open road approach meant they were pretty much stuck there for the game.

One infantry platoon were convinced a building was occupied bit just couldn't spot anyone, so had to come out of cover and charge the building. Taking heavy casualties from the inevitable machine gun fire, they did manage to set fire to the building with their flamethrower and chase out the inevitable occupants.

My armour suffered drastically as the game went on, nothing but luck kept them alive for the first couple of turns, but eventually being a stationary target in the open road will lead to your downfall.

Turn five and supporting fire from the Allied navy wiped out an entire Platoon of my infantry in one fell swoop, a careful advance through the cover of woods may help against infantry, but some luckily accurate shelling from a battleship can't be defended against. This in turn meant my CO immediately surrendered to the nearest British Officer he could find, putting an end to my German counter attack.