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Whirlwind
ParticipantA bit hit-and-miss. Gaming has been in a bit of a trough lately – partly too busy/tired from work, partly RL stuff keeps getting in the way, partly because I am not sure what is grabbing me at the moment: everything I can easily play I am not in the mood for, everything I really want to play I would have to do a bit of pre-work for. This catch-22 situation may of course be my own sub-conscious making sure I don’t play! Still, hope springs eternal. My bairns have decided they want us to schedule in a specific role-playing night to make sure we get a game in every week, instead of our previous impromptu games – looking forward to this. I have been somewhat busier on the modelling front, mainly building up previously unmade box sets (Napoleonic British Light Dragoons, Fireforge Peasant Horde, Warlord Spartans, Roman Legionaries, Victrix Gauls, GW Beastmen, plus some random other sprues – about half of these are mine, half my younger son’s). I wanted to get all of that building done, so I can now concentrate on painting for the next few months. I think I am down to the last few sprues now.
ParticipantHas it really been 10 years? wow.
ParticipantI had a look to see if you could actually buy them, but it seems that Warlord Games doesn’t sell them any more (unless I am missing something…)
ParticipantMany thanks both.
ParticipantThanks Howard. Yes, certainly worth a look.
ParticipantThanks, will have a look!
ParticipantThanks Guy, had a watch, interesting.
ParticipantI think a little, yes; but as others have alluded to, that romanticism is widespread throughout society, both past and present in its conceptions of war – and its omni-presence suggests to me that it is an inherent part of the whole thing. I might even consider that if you haven’t felt at least a tremor of the romance, then you might not have fully understood the period itself.
My wargame battles reflect their nostalgia for their youthful exploits – and mine for a time when Britons were not encouraged to feel embarrassment and apologise for defeating their enemies…
Although we live in a time that does question the political projects that (some of) these battles took place in, and more British people have antecedents on different sides of some of these conflicts, I haven’t personally felt much indication that the military victories themselves were something to be embarrassed about or apologize for.
ParticipantGoing off on a slight geeky tangent, I wonder how much imagi-nations have to do with gaming as opposed to the meta-gaming aspects of collecting, painting, scenario design, ‘world-building’ and so on? The actual games I see usually look like any other C18 game (or very occasionally C20, C19 or ancients’ game).
ParticipantThanks very much both for the interesting comments.
Mike, I suppose now you put your finger on it, I am probably more generous in terms of proxying than that…for this project, the visual appearance per se does not matter, it is more the troop type. I am perfectly happy to make do with Pathan mounted infantry representing Boer mounted infantry, but I wouldn’t use Turkish Spahis. Mahdist spearmen would do fine instead of Zulu spearmen, but Egyptian riflemen wouldn’t. And so on. So I am edging towards one of the ‘bigger’ colonial oppositions: Indians, Sudanese, Songhai, Chinese – maybe the Ottomans have enough variety in their troops, dunno.
ParticipantApologies OotKust, what exactly are you after that isn’t in the wiki?
I could have a look and see which regiments Oliver & Partridge have for the Prussians at Eylau:
Infantry Regts (2, 11, 14 (Grenadiers))
Fusiler Bns (3rd, 6th, 11th, 23rd, 24th)
Dragoons (6th, 7th, 8th, 13th)
Hussars (5th, 9th (Towarczys))
ParticipantI wonder if the description is messed up and they meant 1700s but put 17th C by mistake.
I wondered this too. I think I have seen more imagi-nations stuff for C18 than every other century put together.
ParticipantI think it is simply the step to create those new nations, even if the only difference is a new name. So renaming Spain ‘Hispania’ or ‘Estalia’ or ‘Castilonia’, fighting against ‘Albion’ or ‘the United Kingdom (of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Wales and Strathclyde)’ for control of ‘Tortuga’ fits the bill, in order to create that one-level of difference between ‘real world historical’ refights. The imagi-nations in ‘The Wargame’ and ‘Charge’ were pretty much no different from Prussia, Austria, France and the Imperial Army.
ParticipantLots of things on the painting desk at the moment, as there are lots of things in the lead mountain!
At the moment, 6mm WSS has the priority for painting:
But I am also making a determined effort to get the repair pile down:
ParticipantThat is very sad news. I went back and checked – he posted over 5000 times on this forum over the last 10 years, and as far as I can recall always enthusiastic, always encouraging. Loved this one, the idea of him and his wife playing Twilight 2000.
ParticipantHa! Well, if it is any comfort, I have made the same mistake: the lines “to get the second rear support bonus…” and “to get the third rear support bonus…” made me think of these as cumulative (i.e. you could get a second and third bonus), with those also applying a -1 penalty to the opposition. And in my games it has made a difference, both sides working out what the biggest column they can get away with is! (I am telling myself that since both sides were at it, it has probably evened out over time…)
ParticipantThanks Guy, much appreciated. And there is definitely a case for Lutzen, for sure.
I have put in a longer reply to your comment on the blog, but essentially it boils down to whether a unit with two units directly behind it (i.e. half of both the rear units’ frontage touching or close to the rear edge of the lead unit) can both claim +1 (which makes it powerful) or only one can claim +1 (which makes the Imperialists’ formation rubbish). I think a very literal interpretation of RAW tends to the first, the examples tend to the second.
(and yes, solo; strangely enough, the deep deployments in many of these TYW battles means the workload for a playing solo doesn’t increase linearly with more units in this game).
ParticipantI’m not sure I can quite remember which published rules I played first. WRG 1925-50, WRG 1685-1845, Tactical Commander and the Bruce Quarrie Napoleonic rules are all contenders…I still play the first of these.
ParticipantI intend to do fewer and fewer projects the older I get. Not zero, but each one is intended to be smaller and shorter than the ones before. I am hoping to finish the bulk of all the armies that I want for big projects before I am 50.
ParticipantI can’t think of one I woudn’t play again.
ParticipantInteresting post, but feels like there are two distinct concepts being tied together: 1 – why play big battles at all and 2 – why make the necessary game design decisions to play big battles on a moderate size table with a moderate time overhead, the second being entirely contained within the first, but the first not being entirely contained within the second. Of course, for many gamers, practically the first will usually mean the second too, but not always.
ParticipantLikewise. One for one, I much prefer books to e-books and pdfs (unless I need to quote more than a couple of times from them), but not needing the storage space is even more important.
ParticipantIt is a fair point. I tend to read colourful stuff like that on the Kindle App on my computer rather than on the Kindle itself, although IIRC that one worked reasonably well. Some are more of a struggle – from wargaming, Quarrie’s Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature wasn’t that good on the Kindle itself due to how the embedded tables work. Again, works fine on Kindle App though.
ParticipantNeil Shuck (he of Meeples & Miniatures fame) has posted some nice pics of some of the ‘live’ games on his site here.
ParticipantAround two hours. Can’t remember the exact number of turns…I think maybe 12 or so? At least 10, anyway.
ParticipantMany thanks for the hints and tips.
ParticipantI still want to know exactly what people want these conceptualized command and control rules to do. Is what is wanted sets of rules with the following features:
1 – formations or units take actions not intended by the player-commander, which aren’t a result of morale failure
2 – these uncommanded actions are not limited to remaining stationary
Is there anything else?
ParticipantAh okay, thanks Mick. That is an interesting POV, will think about that.
ParticipantIt is far too easy to isolate oneself nowadays. Friends need cultivation. I may come off as overly judging but the intent is gentle and humor was intended. Pardon me, but i am now jogging off to the pub.
It is a reasonable point. David Heading (the author of the book) explains that for him when starting out, although he had plenty of friends, he just didn’t have any friends interested in wargaming. So although I agree that cultivating friendship is important, and wargaming can very much be part of that, it doesn’t have to be. It might be a substitution for watching TV rather than a substitution for socializing, including gaming. However, I think I recognize some truth of your comment in my own situation: having been for some years in a situation of play solo, or not at all, I haven’t adapted to my present situation where, actually, I could play more social games. But I would always think of that as a complementary activity, I think there are some forms of gaming which are better done solo in their own right.
ParticipantDon’t know if I will buy it – I want to support efforts like this but I’m not sure it’s telling me anything I don’t know. On the other hand it sounds as if he has collected a lot of ideas and methods together in one place which may be useful for my poor brain.
I think it is a fair point. If you are an experienced gamer, in particular an experienced solo gamer who plays a variety of periods, scales and sizes of game and campaign, you are going to have seen many of the ideas, or something like them, before. Conversely, I think most gamers, no matter how experienced, would find at least a few new insights. So there is a trade-off about money spent buying it and time spent reading it versus how many strictly new things you are going to get out of it, and whether that is really worth it to you. I think something similar applies to Henry Hyde’s books too, for much the same reasons, for instance.
ParticipantThe Germans are noted for using guns on the offense, but then we have to think the tanks are distracted by the enemy tanks – the British seem not to have noticed guns for a long time in the desert attacks, and claimed superiority of German tanks even while their own testing of captured examples disproved it!
We have discussed this previously IIRC, but the conclusion in regards to armour seems only to apply to some of the early PzIIIs with homogenous armour plate, and not at all to armament. Here is a summary.
ParticipantIn Sebag-Monefiore’s Dunkirk, there are definitely instances in the fighting in 1940 when British sections split up, either to attack from two directions or for one half to give covering fire to another.
ParticipantNone of them have what I would call command & control rules. Some of them have friction rules where sometimes my troops stand around or I can only activate a certain number (a trick I’ve used myself in my own games). But they still do exactly what I want when they do activate.
If this is the absolute extent of the issue, then probably the reaction tests in old WRG or Quarrie or somesuch rules would solve most of it. But I still don’t think I am quite getting what Ivan thinks should happen.
ParticipantWhat do you envisage command and control rules doing that you can’t achieve now? I can’t quite tell. Is it that you:
1- …try to do something…(and standing doing nothing is an action which can fail like anything else)
2 – That can fail, and if it fails then something else happens?
3 – And that something else can’t just be one thing (e.g. not moving) but has to be one of various possibilities?
ParticipantI suspect at Jena, Lannes troops still had supports in column, close support artillery etc. It depends what you mean by “skirmishers “. An entire Corps fighting with its first infantry line in open order is very different to a couple of flank companies popping away.
Entirely agreed on all points here: Lannes definitely had artillery support, as did the French in most of the Quatre Bras instances above.
It is quite hard to think of a perfect example which satisifes all the initial condition and has no possible confounders, but I will have a further think.
ParticipantMaybe, yes but there seem to be a few different concepts bundled up in the OP.
From the Waterloo campaign, there were occasions when formed attacking infantry seem to have been stopped by skirmisher fire, and then retired – but this does not neessarily include a ‘prolonged’ firefight. Ensign Standen of 3 Foot Guards reports something like this happening in the Waterloo Letters, just outside of Hougoumont. I feel sure I have read something similar happening to some of Picton’s infantry at one point at Quatre Bras, and also to some of the Prussian Infantry at Ligny (Wagnele).
There were occasions when defending infantry were forced back by skirmishing fire, although in the the occasions I am aware of, there was always another factor – as Guy mentioned above, flanking units threatening seems the main one. There is an account of Frasnes by Field mentioning this, with dismounted Guard Lancers(!) driving back Nassauer infantry. At Quatre Bras this seems to have been on the brink of happening to 27 Jager and 5 Militia, when the Dutch 7th Line arrived to stabilize the situation.
I could probably find some more specific examples if you need them.
The most often cited example might be the fight of Lannes’ infantry and Grawert’s infantry at Jena, where the French prevailed after a very long period, with some authors claiming that the Prussians stood in line for two hours and lost the firefight against Lannes’ troops in open order around Vierzehnheilige. However, I have some concerns about the accounts of this and it isn’t clear to me whether the retreat was caused by the casualties or by the flanks giving way as the French extended their line.
ParticipantWhat you doing, how is it going?
Painting?
Collecting?
Playing?
Other?
A Combination?For painting, I am doing some “finish-y off” things for 6mm WSS: a few more line troops, plus some Cuirassiers, Hussars, siege guns, stuff like that. After that, probably another batch of 6mm WW2.
For collecting, I am doing some planning to try and work out how best to align all my 6mm WW2 stuff. I am trying to avoid starting anything really new at the moment, partly because I am really busy with work and family things at the moment, partly because my lead mountain & plastic pile is a little larger at the moment than I’d like. So purchases will be focused on filling out and extending existing armies at the moment. We will see if I stick to it!
For playing, it is a combination of Thirty Years’ War battles with Twilight of Divine Right in 6mm and some games of Five Leagues… in 28mm. I have some more Poland ’39 games to play in 6mm too and some more Jacobite Rebellions’ stuff. And as much Shadowrun as I can fit in with the bairns.
For planning, I am looking at some more Napoleonic battles, another PBEM campaign, and a full TYW campaign.
Participant.
What does the typical gaming table come out to in 6mm? 3-400 meters across?
Yes, about that. I use either 1cm = 2m or 3m, or 4cm = 10m as all in the ‘more-or-less’ true scale. For my typical small board games (on a 2’x2′ or 3’x2′), that works out as up to 270m x 180m. Double that for a ‘typical’ medium-sized board.
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