A Passion for History, Miniatures, & Gaming
A friend of mine recently sent me some pics of some of his WW2 Wargaming terrain – we used to wargame together in the 1980’s and early 1990’s and his stuff has been mainly in storage for the last 15 years – but he’s been cracking it out recently as well as starting to work on some new pieces.
For those who may not be aware I co-authored with Alex Macris the Modern Spearhead Rules that were published in 2000 – these were a development of Arty Conliffe’s highly successful WW2 “Spearhead” rules originally published in 1994. In the last year or so these rules have gone out of print and been difficult to obtain. We are pleased to say that there is now a reprint in progress and they should be available from July, and will be able to be purchased at Historicon 2011.
For full details see the announcement at ModernSpearhead.net.
From the Modern Spearhead website: “Modern Spearhead is an operational level game that is designed to recreate the view and challenges from a Brigade, Divisional or even Army Corps level – The player’s major issues are when to attack or defend, when to issue order changes to formations, and when to commit reserves, rather than focussing on what individual elements (tanks and soldiers) are doing.“
One of my enduring memories of wargaming as a teenager was getting my copy of Military Modelling and looking to see if there was a new “Table Top Teaser” by C. S. Grant (Charles Stewart Grant, the son of the author of “Battle – Practical Wargaming” and the single most inspiring wargaming book ever “The War Game”; Charles Grant); these ‘Teasers’ were a highlight of each issue (when present), and I used to imagine all sorts of ways to play them with the limited troops and resources I had at the time. It was especially trying waiting for the following issue with Part 2 of each Teaser, where the scenario was played out and an After Action Report (AAR) provided! While they only appeared over the five-year period 1978-1982 (there were 17 in total) they seemed to go on forever and always provided inspiration and a catalyst for ideas for future games. I had always planned to drag my old Military Modelling and Battle magazines out and scan these all into PDF or similar electronic format for my personal use, so I could more easily go through them when looking for inspiration or planning a new game.
Today we played a Lasalle ‘Big Battle’ with over a Division of troops a side and had a very successful game – our first true large game with Lasalle. The scenario was based on “The Crossroads” from C. S. Grant’s “Programmed Wargames Scenarios” (Wargames Research Group Publications 1983 – Pages 79-81) modified to suit Lasalle (most especially the game turn limit and our forces). Both Cam and I did the mad panic thing during the preceding week getting extra troops and such either painted and/or based for our ‘big bash’ which allowed us to field 31 Infantry Battalions (14 French & 17 Allied) supported by 4 Batteries (2 each) and 5 Cavalry Regiments (3 small Allied and 2 large French – we had more cavalry available but did not deploy them to avoid a too ‘cavalry heavy’ game.
Having taken rather a beating the last two days, Picton’s division had spent the day retiring North towards Brussels and collecting stragglers, looking to join up with the balance of the Anglo-Dutch-Belgian-Brunswick-Nassau forces heading South and East towards them. Picton had received instructions from Wellington to ensure he delayed the French sufficiently to allow such a concentration of forces – and to that end Picton deployed on the fourth day to again offer battle to the pursuing 6th French Division of General de Division Prince Jérôme Bonaparte.
Continue reading “Picton Holds On The Chaussée de Charleroi”
Got pointed to the Country Gate (the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway in 009 scale) site today – or rather specifically the Making Buildings From Foamboard page featuring some absolutely fantastic model buildings and a great tutorial by Emmanuel Nouaillier; it’s all part of the site’s general tutorial on Realistic Model Buildings. There’s some great stuff here and well worth a look!
(County Gate is a narrow gauge model in 009 of a fictitious extension of the 2 foot narrow gauge Lynton and Barnstable Railway through the East Lyn Valley to Minehead in the UK).
John Lander’s group once again put on an impressive 1/35th scale Crossfire game in the UK – The Oosterbeek Cauldron (1st British Airborne Division in Market Garden, September 1944) – and you can see more photos at the Wargames Society Forum (scroll down to images 314 to 317). John’s Crossfire demo games & his models are fairly well known in the UK, and have previously been featured in Wargames Illustrated Magazine (issues 221 & 222 from March & April 2006) with Operation Goodwood.
Once again it arrived promptly and quickly, and the Classic Wargamer’s Journal is a refreshing read, bringing back a simplicity and fun element of a bygone era. This issue includes a reprint of a Tony Bath Mini-Ancient Campaign & Battle (the forerunner of his famous Hyboria), from the WGD, Book II, Volume 1 dated March 1958. There are several succinct AARs (After Action Reports) of games utilising scenarios from the 3 previous CWJ issues; several discussions of of old-school style gaming and/or imagi-nation projects (The Great Northern War in 40mm Prinz August’s, Indian Mutiny with 45mm Deutsche Homage’s, 1890’s Germany & Russia in the Baltic with 28mm Hinterland’s); and a particularly unusual and relatively extensive (for the CWJ) AAR of a Napoleonic game. Ray Caddy concludes his very interesting 2-part series on the Catalan War of 1713-1714; and there is an especially excellent F&IW (French & Indian War) piece with Scenario & AAR and inspired by Charles Wesencraft’s “Practical Wargaming” (a contemporary of, and under-appreciated author equal to, Grant, Featherstone, Young, Bath, Wise, and co…).
Continue reading “Classic Wargamer’s Journal: Vol. I Issue 3”
“That theer’s a town ‘in a half yer varmmits!” And there is nothing more I need to say – just check it out yourself at Roly’s Dressing The Lines blog. Continue reading “Joe Town – A Wild West Inspiration!”
As previously posted (A Not So Small Migration) I have migrated Wargaming.info to WordPress, and as such have needed to reconfigure or redesign some facets – such as Image Galleries – so there are currently parts of the site missing data. Right now I have finally started to upload the image galleries for those posts that had large numbers of photos, having now got all the necessary components working to display the images properly. As of tonight I have completed everything back as far as late September 2010, older posts which had large galleries will still be missing their images (there’s about 16 of them in total), but I will gradually get 1 or 2 of these a day done I hope over the next 2 weeks or so to have the site back to 100%.
I have also started retagging many of the posts, again working in reverse chronological order, so the tag cloud will gradually become more complete and accurate over the next couple of weeks or so, but in the meantime only about 22% are done (the most recent ones).
It had been a tough 2 days – having taken a heavy knock from the advanced elements of Napoleon’s invasion force (Lasalle in the Hundred Days), the elements of Picton’s Division involved had withdrawn, thankful for their temporary superiority in light cavalry, and gradually collected the stragglers and remnants of their regiments to be reconstituted as fair fighting forces again, albeit in reduced numbers… The 42nd Royal Highlanders had been detached to rejoin 9th Brigade on flank guard duty, but the latter had sent the 3/1st Royal Scots in their place – Picton was glad for the fresh, as yet uncommitted battalion. The Duke had sent word of his intent to now try and rally the Anglo-Dutch forces at a position to Picton’s rear, but that Picton must hold his position for a day to allow them time to assemble – so Picton found himself staring at what must be the most desolate part of the Southern Netherlands (i.e. Belgium), scanning the horizon for sign of the French…
I previously posted accounts of the 3 TSATF Colonial Games with images that we played at Auckland’s BattleCry 2011 Convention – As mentioned Gerry & Carolyn Webb of Castaway Arts were there and they also took photos of the games – so here’s an additional gallery of a selection of their photos of the games… Continue reading “Still More TSATF At BattleCry 2011”
