Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
kevin halloranParticipant
Mike, cheers. I will move on. I seem already to be a disruptive influence so shall withdraw. Funny though that you object to people bashing what they don’t like when surely that’s what happened here to me. Anyway, good luck but I’m not really interested in having to be one of the boys.
kevin halloranParticipantBy the way, when I appear critical of wargame designers I don’t exempt myself. I was the designer of the first ever wargames programme on UK TV, Channel 4’s Game of War, which was presented by Angela Rippon and fronted by my old friend Paddy Griffith and Ian Dickie. It was short lived and I knew we were doomed when the producer – a very nice lady whose name escapes me – said to me; “It’s very masculine, Kevin; are there not any wars where the generals were women?”
kevin halloranParticipantI’ll keep it short then: not really our target audience…
The idea that one should be an audience, indeed a target audience, has no appeal to me. Sorry, but there you go. I’m interested in war, I’m interested in history, I’m interested in the history of war but sadly I’m not particularly interested in the egotistical ramblings of wargame designers or opinions of anyone. Opinions are invariably wrong and they carry weight not on their intrinsic merit but on the popularity of those who hold them.
kevin halloranParticipantI have never read a wargaming magazine. I am not interested one jot in anyone’s opinions including my own. I do a little work on an obscure area of history and repeatedly ask that people send me their evidence and keep their opinions to themselves. I only ever read the first couple of sentences of any email or forum post. Rules are a chore and designers should in my view be limited to six or seven pages; a plethora of badly written rules is the main reason why I’m more a collector than a player these days. On another forum there are regular interviews with “Games Designer of the Month” or some such. I have never read them as I have no interest in how some guy’s boyhood in Milwaukee or wherever fueled a lifelong interest in hex and counter.
kevin halloranParticipantLooking for something on The Wars of the Roses yesterday I stumbled across a YouTube video of a Timeline production I watched a few years ago. It’s called The Bloodiest Battle Ever Fought in Britain: The Battle of Towton 1461. I will watch it again but as I remember it the battle scenes were terrific.
kevin halloranParticipantMike, do you have any links to actual layouts of a 6mm castle? I’m pretty hopeless at visualising these things and am sure to either order too many or too few of a component.
kevin halloranParticipantThe OE Poem, The Battle of Maldon, portrays an encounter between the Saxon fyrd and a Viking force which was fought in 991. It gives an insight into a variety of things, the relationships of lords to retainers, the potential use of ransom to buy off invaders, the use of horses in battle and how weapons, bows, spears, swords and shields were used.
kevin halloranParticipantMike, thanks for the link. Excellent and prices are very reasonable. Much obliged.
kevin halloranParticipantThat’s very impressive, Ken. I saw on your blog that you quite fancy the bleached stone and intruding vegetation look of the KdeC but they derive from centuries of neglect; in its Crusader heyday the stonework probably looked much more like yours. Just my view, of course. A thing of beauty, indeed and I shall search for something similar in 6mm!
kevin halloranParticipantMy wife is trying to get me to restrict my wargames to one room never mind one box. I used to take 28mm ancients armies up to a friend in the village and it took three of those big boxes – 45 litre? – per 3500 point army. I’m not sure of the exact size but it did my back in. For 6mm I have A4 boxes but I can’t envisage needing fewer than five or six for any game I’d want to play. Luckily I live in a ramshackle old place where space is about the only thing in abundance and as I now game only solo this is no longer an issue
kevin halloranParticipantFair points on Chris Pine, Mike. I think it’s Kirk I find annoying rather than Pine and as I said I will have to watch Outlaw King again. As to the films I mentioned I don’t think they are sanitised and only the last two are perhaps a little jingoistic! The Small Back Room, for example, has a lead character who is a self-pitying alcoholic and it portrays the War Ministry and wider government in a poor light. A Hill in Korea is decidedly downbeat and Pork Chop Hill to me is primarily about the utter pointlessness of the mission.
kevin halloranParticipantJeffers, interesting you mention The Dam Busters as I have watched it several times in recent weeks. The 1950s were for me a golden decade for war movies. My lockdown watching has included The Small Back Room (OK, 1949!), A Hill in Korea, The Steel Helmet, Pork Chop Hill, Sea of Sand, Ice Cold in Alex, The Sea Shall Not Have Them and The Yangtse Incident. I can watch any or all over and over along with numerous others unmentioned.
kevin halloranParticipantMy painting imploded, though selectively. I have hundreds of 28mm ancients painted and based but for the last two years have had 32 unpainted Successor phalangites and 12 Cretan archers staring at me and I simply cannot start on them. I am almost finished on my 6mm Blenheim armies but my output has slowed right down and the last few dozen figures are taking an age. I have large WW2 fleets in 1/4800 for Britain, France, Germany and Italy but cannot bring myself to start on my USN and IJN ships. I have my last few dozen Afrika Korps and 8th Army 6mm infantry figures to paint but keep putting off starting. And yet, I really enjoy painting 6mm AFVs and 1/600 WW2 aircraft. Odd but there it is.
kevin halloranParticipantIt’s an odd thing, Mike, that while the name “Dungeons & Dragons” is very familiar to me I have never played it and until your post I hadn’t realised there was a film franchise. I remain unsure about Chris Pine. I find his character in Star Trek annoying but suspect he’s meant to be, his character, Bernie Webber in Finest Hours irritating and I wasn’t as impressed as some people with his Robert Bruce in Outlaw King. This last I shall have to watch again as I may be being unfair.
kevin halloranParticipantThanks, Ruarigh. A source I didn’t mention because I’m not sure of availability is the series of 13 essays published by Oxford University in 1989 under the title Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. S.C.Hawkes. There is lots of good stuff in this and it should be available from a decent library.
kevin halloranParticipantA very belated reply to Cameronian. I watched the theatrical release and couldn’t at all understand the behaviour of the Eva Green character Sibylla. Then I watched the Director’s Cut and realised a whole major subplot involving Sibylla’s son and leprosy had been cut from the released version. Madness as the film makes little sense with the omission.
kevin halloranParticipantI would also check out a number of online blogs. Jonathan Jarrett’s A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe is highly regarded and has links to many other sites such as Tim Clarkson’s Senchus which specialises in early medieval Scotland and north Britain. Not reading but don’t overlook the TV series, The Vikings and The Last Kingdom; both employ respected historians as advisers.
kevin halloranParticipantFor the Anglo-Saxon v Vikings, the three volumes of High Flying Dice Games on Alfred The Great, published between 2014 and 2017, may be worth a look. For 1066 I have Norm Smith’s Invasion 1066: The Battle of Hastings (2014) and 1066: Hastings, Stamford Bridge, Fulford (2017) by Taktyka i Strategia. My copy was cheap (around 20 euros, I think), p&p from Poland was very reasonable and English rules were available.
-
AuthorPosts