Category: News & Musings

Wargaming.info Relaunch [April 2010]

Early Mycenaean (or Minoan) Spearmen.
Early Mycenaean (or Minoan) Spearmen.

Welcome to the completely revamped Wargaming.info – the new format is designed to hopefully make things a bit easier to find and to enable me to upload more content more easily and keep the site more up to date. By using a CMS (Content Management System) much of the process is now streamlined and virtually the entire site is CSS based (as well as being W3C & XHTML compliant). You will also find Feeds (RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0) on the main Home Page (which will show the half-dozen most recent items on the whole site), the Blog (which will show all blog entries), and each major section (e.g. Napoleonic’s, Colonials, World War II, showing the items under that category) – so if you are just interested in a specific era (e.g. Colonials) you can just subscribe to the Feed service for that section! I have not put a specific feed icon on any of the pages as your web-browser should display the icon by default for you to click on…

Anyway, I hope you find something of interest and I look forward to significantly increasing the quantity and frequency of updates from now…

Edward Woodward, Well Known Actor & Wargamer, dies

Veteran actor Edward Woodward has died aged 79, his agent has confirmed. Woodward was famous in wargaming circles (like Robin Williams also) for being a celebrity/high-profile actor who participated in the hobby… Read More at the BBC Website.

The FOG versus DBMM Debate

One of the big challenges facing the club today is the debate in Ancients Gaming between DBMM and FOG. As in many other clubs and wargaming groups around the world at present there is a split between gamers who prefer FOG and those who prefer DBMM – luckily the AWC at least has no odd Ostriches still sticking to DBM (of course there is nothing really wrong with that if its your thing, but its a position causing a 3 way rules-set split of gamers in some areas so doesn’t help unify the scene)!

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The new Wargaming.info

Perry Miniatures' Sudanese Infantry from my collection
Perry Miniatures' Sudanese Infantry from my collection

Today is the big day as I load the redesigned site into the live environment. Regrettably it is not fully 100% complete as some sections do not have all their material yet – but websites are always evolving creatures so as time permits I’ll get to those more obscure areas. If you are browsing the new site and find any odd links that don’t work or areas that don’t appear to display correctly, please let me know – the site has been designed with Opera and I have also tested it with Firefox & good ol’ sluggish I.E. – so it should display consistently & correctly in those browsers and any other W3C compliant ones. As always I appreciate any feedback, good or bad… I hope people enjoy and find something of interest?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Site Rebuild Complete

Frontier Miniatures 24th Foot from the Zulu War
Frontier Miniatures 24th Foot from the Zulu War

Frontier Miniatures 24th Foot from the Zulu WarWay back in February 2008 I started on an ambitious plan to revamp the entire site expecting it to take just 2-3 months. Now, in December 2008, I have just finished spending many months doing the full rewrite of the site using CSS to make it fully W3C compliant, and also to generally improve the design somewhat while keeping the original feel. Although I have not completed all parts of it I felt a need to publish the site to get it live on the web, and to show people it had not just gone dead for 10 months!

 

Wargaming Scales

Figure scales are expressed two ways, either as a simple measurement, e.g. 25mm, defining how high a figure of a normal man or woman stands or as a ratio, e.g. 1/48th, defining how big a model vehicle, vessel, aircraft, or construction is in relation to the real thing. The emphasis here is on the former classification with the latter provided where possible as an approximate comparison.

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Brief History Of Wargaming

The following is a brief history of modern wargaming told in quotes from various wargaming books & authors:

“It was in Europe that the early forms of wargaming gradually took on a more sophisticated appearance. During the Seventeenth Century several variations on the basic game of chess were introduced. During the Eighteenth Century a number of games were introduced into France which departed from the idea of pieces and which used series of cards designed to impart basic military knowledge to the players. Also, at about this time, silver model soldiers were being used at the French Court to instruct the future king, Louis XIV, in the art of war” – David Nash (Wargames – 1974).

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Wargaming Periods

Periods are the “Eras” or “Level of Technology” present for wargaming. Having a Greek Army of 300 BC facing a Russian Army of 1944 AD is obviously quite a mismatch and both armies need quite different sets of rules to control how they perform. Hence we have “Periods” in which armies all operated in similar ways, or with similar weapons, and can be ‘played’ using a common set of rules.

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To Win or Not To Win?

Or Why Ancients competitions are better for using win/draw/loss ranking systems.

Probably the 2nd loudest “discussion” at NatCon (held in Auckland, Easter 1997) was the ranking system used in the DBM competition. Some players had thought that ranking’s in the Swiss Chess draw would be determined by accumulated victory points, and were surprised to find that win/draw/loss was being used. Clearly the umpire and/or organisers stuffed up badly by not telling players exactly what variety of “Swiss Chess” was to be used, but why all the angst?? Isn’t one “Swiss Chess” system the same as any other? Not in this case!

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An Opinion on Wargame Draws

In a preceding article Ion Dowman clearly demonstrates the correct way to run a Swiss Draw tournament. One of the important factors in the Swiss system is the “Pairing” of opponents, and consequently how participants are ranked based on their results during the tournament. I would like to make some further observations and comments on this.

An issue that I personally consider significant is whether a Win is of greater value than two Draws? I believe it is, the reason being the artificial constraints imposed by the tournament environment which prevent all games from reaching their natural conclusions. This effectively means those players who are slow (whether intentionally, or unintentionally), who use the Fabian tactics Ion alluded to, or who compete without a reasonable knowledge of the rule set being used can often end up ranked in the middle of the field at the conclusion and having won perhaps only one game! While those who play to complete their games in the time allowed (and perhaps win two games in 6 rounds) are effectively penalised in comparison!

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Victory Conditions in Wargames

All to often we play games with little thought about victory conditions, usually just to shoot ’em up and she’ll be right! However with a little effort and time before each game it can be given much greater depth, and consequently be more challenging and interesting to the participants. I would like to suggest some ideas for how this can be done.

Many wargamers play their games in isolation with little “purpose” behind them, the recent suggestion that a gamer’s tactics would change if their opponent got to ‘hit’ each element they lost with a heavy hammer is all too true, and it is this ‘strategic’ purpose that is lacking (we would all be very cautious if playing with the above rule)! The ideal situation to impose this ‘purpose’ is the campaign, this always puts an all new perspective to things, the opponents in a battle may not have the same objective for instance. Unfortunately 99% of the time we do not have the luxury of participating in campaigns (which is a pity) and so we need some way of creating these constraints artificially, one system I have come across is in one of my many rulebooks; “Washington’s Wars”. These rules were designed for French & Indian war action and the American Revolution, disappointingly the rule mechanics and effects on the table did not match the impressive packaging! The rules did however include one good idea about victory conditions and it is a variation of this that I will present below.

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Compiling Draws for Wargame Competitions

Round Robin and knockout competitions have been found wanting in wargames competitions, perhaps the most popular draw has been that known as ‘Swiss Chess”. However, recent discussions with CWS members and observation of the smallish numbers of competitors in many competitions have persuaded me that;

  •  The “Swiss Chess” system is not well understood;
  •  That “Swiss Chess” is not always the best system to use, especially where competitors do not outnumber available rounds by many.

Explanation Of The Swiss System:

The basic idea of the Swiss System is to cater for large numbers of competitors in a tournament of few rounds, allowing all to play in every round, yet retaining the knockout idea of providing a dramatic finish by matching the best two performers in the final round. This is achieved by progressively pairing players on the same or nearly the same cumulative scores. So far, so good.

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