Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Friday 19 March 2021

Featherstonia: Wargames Terrain [part 2]

 As promised, here is the remainder of the Wargamer's Newsletter booklet on terrain. I certainly hope you will be attempting sloping battlefields sometime soon. And you know you always wanted a sandtable, though they always remind me of my kids' sand-pit in the garden when I was with my first family - whoever lives in that house now must still be getting ancient Matchbox Toys rising mysteriously out of the depths. Would you really put your lovely soldiers in a sandtable? - really? Well, you're a brave chap.

Once again, many thanks to Albannach and his private museum.

























15 comments:

  1. I wouldn't be brave enough to attempt a wargame in the open air either! If it didn't pour down and reduce your sandbox to a soupbox you'd risk finding giant wasps floating perilously about your marching columns.

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    1. The wasps would just love those yellow Spanish dragoons...

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  2. More great stuff Tony - I never had a sand table but do remember building an elaborate trench system in a school friends back garden populated with a mixture of Airfix ACW and WW2 Russians, happy days.

    I always loved Lionel Tarr's Stalingrad terrain complete with Stukas hanging from cotton threads!

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    1. Hi Ian - I can't remember which of Don's books the photos of Tarr's Stalingrad appeared, but I rememeber being deeply impressed with at as an example of extreme dedication and effort. Now I think about it, some of the projects I have attempted have probably been a little OTT as well, but Tarr was definitely a hero.

      Chris Duffy's "Fire & Stone" has photos of a siege game at Sandhurst, played out on a sand table - take your bucket and spade to that one!

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  3. I do always want a sand table. Sadly, the structural engineers tell me I’d need extra load bearing braces to prevent the ceiling collapsing. So instead, I juggle with the perennial question; hills on top or hills below the cloth?

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    1. Always a tricky one, that. The only sand table I ever saw in real life, I think, was in the conference room at the Territorials Club in Edinburgh - the conference room, incidentally, was mostly used for playing snooker. The sand table had a lid - it was always kept locked, "for hygiene reasons" - I believe that they had problems with mould - I never saw it open, but it smelled dodgy. No idea what they used it for - maybe they did training lectures once upon a time.

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  4. This is splendid stuff Tony...
    As a young lad I would have read this kind of thing over and over again...

    I think I may have another read later... with a nice glass of wine.😁

    All the best. Aly

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    1. It is good, but Don had a knack of assembling other people's ideas into a sort of scrapbook presentation - nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's an identifiable style.

      Glass of wine - now you're talking...

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  5. I guess two other things come up when re-reading this splendid stuff. Firstly, the scale match evident in the Bill Holmes and Lionel Tarr set ups. I can’t be the only gamer these days to use 15mm (or even 10mm) buildings with my 28mm figures... because of ground scale. Not so much then, apparently. The other is DL’s fondness for pointing out that gamers were military men, or vets. So it’s not simply a game - it’s endorsed! Thank you so much for sharing these gems.

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    1. Sorry, that should be DF, not DL. Must remember not to look at your blog at work!

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    2. I must be careful what I say here, since there are snipers on the rooftops - there is a legend (allegedly) that there was a slight schism between the wargaming chaps from Don's Southampton group and the Peter Young/Charles Grant crowd, because the latter had been officers in the services, and these things mattered.

      The reference to a possible extra credibility attaching to military men may just be an extension of that eternal yawn about not playing with toy soldiers, but there's a funny side to it as well. During a brief and rather unpleasant exchange of mail I had with Featherstone, circa 1978, back in the day when I was involved with the Napoleonic Association, Don declared that he was sick and tired of people without history qualifications writing books about warfare, in which he almost certainly had a point, though he was on very shaky ground himself if he persisted in such an argument. How many wargamers' histories did Don write? Did his service in tanks necessarily qualify him to do this? Naturally, I would not have an opinion, but pots calling kettles black does come to mind...

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  6. Well, five degrees of Kevin Bacon.You spoke to Featherstone? You must have been much younger, and he, maybe more cantankerous? But yes, these days we seem happy to say ‘it’s a game, with historical context’. Then, it seemed more important to say ‘it’s a simulation, and can guide history’.

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    1. Ivan - I believe that is spot on - that may be the background to the convention of dressing smartly - this was a serious business for gentlemen, brandy and cigars notwithstanding!

      Cantankerous - and some!

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  7. We once put a demo game at Sheffield Triples using a sandtable. There is a post about it on my blog.

    https://ilkleyoldschool.blogspot.com/2015/05/plancenoit.html?m=1

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    1. Hi Mark - it looks good - I think of sandtables as being like grand pianos, but that looks like a handy arrangement.

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