A Quick Visit to the 21st Century, plus a [Qualified] Give-Away

I try to keep an eye on what the 3D-Printing world is up to. I'm already very interested in the scenery possibilities, but figures, at least in scales which are relevant to me, have tended to be a bit lumpen thus far.

I've actually ordered some Napoleonic sample figures from JJG Print 3D - I understand that they have made my figures already, and have posted them - I even have a tracking number, though I have no idea who is the courier, so tracking is difficult. The figures themselves are not expensive, though for a small order the postage is fairly eye-watering - the manufacturer is based in Walcourt, Belgium - close to Charleroi... ["...that man does war honour..."] - very businesslike and polite thus far.

They produce Napoleonics in 10mm, 15mm, 18mm, 22mm and 28mm. I've ordered some 22mm, since that seems the best guess, and since it might just be that 22mm is what the size of figures I collect is called nowadays . We'll see. The figures come without bases - the plates on the website look like computer renderings rather than photos. I am not building up wild hopes here, but it's sensible to have a look at the market every now and then.

The extent of the range is a bit unclear - they have Spanish and French figures illustrated, but there are painted examples which I couldn't find in the pose listing. The sculpture is a little quirky - the drums are about half-size in scale, and the French light infantry gaiters look a bit weird. Anyway, all very interesting.

Topic 2 - Giveaway

I'm trying to cut down the amount of my various collections - not least to make room for my siege scenery, which is beginning to take on a life of its own. One thing that I would be happy to give away is the Second Edition of Piquet's Field of Battle - I am offering the rule book, which has been read (though played very little) but is in pristine condition, plus two packs of the official custom cards, imported from the US at considerable expense. I am getting rid of this lot because I have now bought the 3rd Edition. The existence of a later edition will probably cut down on demand for the one I'm aiming to pass on, but it may as well go to a good home. The 2nd Edition was largely boosted (by its fans) as the best game of its type, so it can hardly have become crap just because there is now an update. If you are interested, send me a comment (which I shall not publish) explaining why you want it and deserve it - I'm looking for a wholehearted effort here, chaps - I seek entertainment, amusement. I am not interested in the fact that your cat has died etc, or you've finished your join-the-dots puzzle book. Some Terms & Conditions:

* I'll keep this open until the start of Saturday 28th November - I shall judge applications in my usual subjective and totally unreasonable manner

* The successful applicant can have the rules and cards free of charge, of course, but, if you are outside the UK, I will probably require you to pay the postage (at cost).

* I'll only accept entries from people who follow my blog regularly, including those who do so by email.

I really can't be bothered trying to sell this on eBay. If you have never tried FoB, or if you have a fancy for a look at a Piquet game, it's an excellent rule set, and worth a go. It's especially good for solo gaming, in case that is an extra attraction. If you like what you see, and are interested in the upgrade, you can now purchase the 3rd Edition from Lancashire Games in the UK. At the time I bought this 2nd Edition, it came from Piquet in the US, and it was an expensive exercise - the postage was astounding.

Them was the days.

Wargaming Infrastructure - Dodgy Antique

I've been keeping an eye open for some good, easily visible means of keeping score in war games - Victory Banners, or Field of Battle's "Army Morale Points", or much more of the same. Hand-written notes on a whiteboard are OK but lacking in elegance, and prone to errors or accidental erasure; cunning schemes of keeping track with miniature playing cards, chips and so on are - again - OK, but easily forgotten about if you are under fire; scribbled pencil notes on the margin of the rules QRS are just dreadful. And so on - easier to identify things I don't like than things I like.

So, I thought to myself, what games traditionally have a formal, easy-to-use-and-understand arrangement for keeping score? I considered cribbage boards (a bit small, and a bit fiddly), portable table-tennis scoreboards (big and clunky, and the numbers are likely to wear out) and various other cunning devices.

Finally came up with this, which has a certain Gonzo charm all of its own. It arrived yesterday.

Just how badly did you want to know the score...?

It is, as you see, a billiards/snooker scoreboard of a rather unusual design, mahogany and brass - date uncertain, probably 1930s-50s - it's in nice, lived-in condition. Partially restored, but a couple of dents and missing bits - it works. I like the thing, actually, just as an old object. For knackered read possessing a convincing patina, and you're getting close.

It's a little over 86cm wide. The numbers are on brass rollers, so each of the two score rows can be switched to 1-20, 21-40, 41-60. 61-80 or 81-100. Yes, it's a bit worn, but it's old, right? The black panel on the left is a small blackboard - I had a fleeting idea of converting it to a (black) magnetised mini-noteboard, but then realised what an outrage that might represent - so blackboard it shall remain. [No writing in blue chalk, though.]

One thing for sure, in future I may have no idea how my games are going, but I will be in no doubt about the score.

If anyone is expert in this area, I suspect that it was made by EJ Riley Ltd, of Accrington, Lancs, as a special order, but have no proof - the fellow who sold it to me doesn't know the background. I'd be interested to know a little more about its pedigree if you have any ideas. 

Handicrafts Dept - Sow's Ear Research Project

My recent introduction to Picquet's "Field of Battle" rules has got me thinking of all sorts of issues beyond merely playing the game. I've grown very used to Commands & Colors type games, where the presentation of units and the associated information is very simple - I've developed a big stock of sabots, on which the units are fixed magnetically. Since the game is simple (by design), it is possible to get away with placing a few coloured counters on the sabots to denote losses - it doesn't add greatly to the visual delights, but it's not a big problem.

FoB is a bit different - the units change formation, so sabots are out, and a fair amount of information needs to be associated with each unit. I really can't be doing with roster sheets - personally, given the state of my eyesight, I find them very hard work - constantly focusing and re-focusing between the sheet and the action on the table is fatiguing, as is constantly howking the specs off and on (and losing the beggars behind The Ridge). It is easy to add a few extra colours of counters with defined meanings, but the fundamental principles of OWL (the OCD Wargamers' League,  of which I am a founder member) argue strongly against running the risk of reducing the game to a pigs' breakfast.

I've been thinking up some way of making a neat and tidy job of keeping everything I need to know about each unit, right on the tabletop.

Yesterday I had a lot of fun with a bag of MDF strips and some laser-cut dice frames, suitable for 5mm dice. I think I have developed a working design. Still a couple of things to think about, and then it should just be a question of making about 100 of these things.

Dice frames from Supreme Littleness Designs, suitable for 5mm minidice, a pile
of 50mm x 10mm MDF bases from East Riding Minatures, and a pack of 200
5mm mini-dice from The Dice Shop - that's my starter

Sticky PVA glue the bits into position, a coat of baseboard paint...

...and I have a roll of 10mm wide self-adhesive magnetic compound strip, plus
some experimental sheets of plain (non-adhesive) magnetic sheet

My units are on MDF subunit bases, which have magnetic sheet stuck underneath, and
they sit on sabots which are topped with steel paper (or whatever the modern
replacement for steel paper is called).

My subunit bases are 50mm wide x 45mm deep; I add a loose underlay of plain mag
sheet underneath one of the subunits - this underlay is 50mm wide x 55mm deep,
which will allow me to attach a 10mm deep info tray behind the troops. 

Attach the magnetic adhesive tape underneath the info tray, trim with scissors to
smarten it up a bit - you can see where it will attach behind the subunit base...

...and here is the modified set-up on the sabot - no actual information on the tray
yet. Note that this is all completely temporary - I can remove the info tray and the
underlay and everything is back as it was.

In a FoB context, here's the same unit deployed into line - the underlay is still under the left hand subunit, 
and the magnetised info tray will hold in place (reasonably well, anyway) for movement around the battlefield. 
Here the tray is equipped with a minidice (to record loss of what FoB calls "Unit Integrity"), with a laminated
label showing the fighting and defensive dice sizes applicable to this unit, and a coloured cube to indicate which
Combat Group (= brigade) this battalion belongs to. My 8mm wooden cubes, which seemed pleasingly small
and neat, now seem maybe a tad big and clumsy - I might replace them, but this gets me operational for the
moment.

The big experiment in this lot was to see whether the existing magnetised bases, sitting on the magnetic underlay, sitting on the steel paper on the sabots, would attach as firmly as the original rig without the underlay. The answer is "not quite", but it's good enough for tabletop use - probably not secure enough for transporting them in the car. The underlays and info trays can travel separately from the troops!

Righto - it works. Fire up the factory, and get a stack of them made up, painted, labelled and stored away for forthcoming battles. OWL in action.

A Battling Weekend in Ireland

Got back today from a splendid trip to Northern Ireland to take part in some games, and gain experience of Field of Battle as played by people who know what they are doing.

The events are far better covered on the blogs of Sgt Steiner and Le Duc de Gobin, so this post is mostly to commemorate the fact that I wuz there, chaps, and to thank these gentlemen - and also the celebrated (and formidable) Stephen the Dice Demon - for their enthusiasm and energy and their ability to explain what was going on. Thanks also to my hosts and their families for the food and the crack and for a really great couple of days.

On Saturday there was a big Napoleonic fight at Steiner's - the Prussian attack at Lützen (1813) - played to FoB rules - something like 70 units of 15mm on the table. A true spectacle, for which you'll have to visit the host's blog (I managed to forget my camera for this session - duh). I enjoyed the game immensely; my head was spinning a bit by the end, but I was definitely understanding a lot more.

On Saturday evening I had a brief exposure to Maurice - just as a taster, since I've never tried it before. We played a game based on Germantown, from the AWI - we didn't get very far, and it wasn't awfully serious, but it served well to demonstrate how the game works. Interesting.

On Sunday there was another big FoB game - this time Neerwinden (1693) at Castle Gobin. Again, there were about 70 units on the table, but this time the figures were 28mm and the ground scale was much bigger, resulting in a game which had more rapid movement [bigger moves, like...]. I was appropriately employed as a subordinate commander to the Dice Demon, who kept things cracking along on our side. I had responsibility for the Allies' left flank - lots of blood and thunder, and one memorable feature was that my troops were driven out of the village of Rumsdorp, took it back again and then were kicked out more decisively. The French were just getting their very impressive cavalry properly into action when they failed an Army Morale test and it was all over. The game lasted less than two hours - it was pretty intense, but it really moved along. It is much easier to get the hang of an unfamiliar game in the presence of experienced players, and these three gentlemen did a terrific job to keep up the excitement and the action. The French suffered a remarkable number of casualties among the celebrity generals - this is described more colourfully on the other blogs.

Overview of Neerwinden at the start, Allies on the right of the picture

The cavalry battle that never quite developed

French dragoons chuck my lads out of Rumsdorp for the second time

I also enjoyed a visit to Carrickfergus Castle, which is a blast, and in the evening had a quick introductory game of Memoir 44, which was more familiar because of my C&C experience. Good game, I must say - especially for someone like me whose understanding of WW2 is mostly based on John Mills movies.

King John enthroned in Carrickfergus Castle, pondering
the marvels of the electric light

We thought this chap wasn't up to the job at all - in Field
of Battle terms, he's no better than D6 quality

Got home late this afternoon, still buzzing from the battles.

In passing, anyone know what, and where, this is? Something I saw on my
travels - emergency iPhone photo not great. In fact I do know what it is, but 
if you know something about it please give me a shout.

Field of Battle - Rules Try-Out

Today, Count Goya - having a rare day off-duty from running his mysterious empire - kindly visited Chateau Foy to help with a first attempt at playing with my new Piquet Field of Battle rules.

It all went pretty well, really - I have to say I've been doing a lot of homework in preparation. These days I find new rules quite daunting - especially a game as unusual in style and philosophy as FoB. We had a small trial action - about a dozen units a side on a very simple terrain.

Trying out rules requires a bit of mental adjustment - you have to forget about playing a game - and never mind at all about winning the thing - the trick is to try all sorts of suicidal cavalry charges against infantry lines and all that - to see what happens. That is the point of the exercise.

With hindsight, I'd have been better to follow Mark D's advice and start with a game where all the leaders and units were straight vanilla - as it was, I decided to follow the randomiser rules and create forces with units of varying quality, just to see how it went. This places a lot of reliance on the little stickers bearing the information for each unit, so it might have been a good idea also if I had made the labels big enough to read more easily(!), but no matter - it's all a learning process.

Simple, minimalist terrain featuring low-kudos cork table-mat hills. Small field (boards
plain side up - they really are hex-free on the reverse, you see).

1809 Spaniards vs French - usual stuff. The Spanish army was officially classified
as Abysmal, with Leadership ratings and Sequence Card deck to suit.

Smoke markers indicate units which cannot fire again until a Firepower card turns up

FoB Quick Reference Sheet - my edited version - with (optional) Ninky Nonk attached

A gizmo, but a useful one - an electric shuffling machine, which makes short (though
noisy) work of the task of shuffling the (sleeved) cards to the standard necessary to keep
the game working. As an aside, I note that this machine causes interference on
DAB radio - maybe we should have bought a more expensive one?

The game, it goes without saying, is intriguing, well thought out and, I believe, worthy of study. We were slow and halting today, as we had to discuss how the rules worked, and double-check just about everything (the rules manual is big and thorough, but it is not always easy to find the bit you are looking for among the numerous examples), so it was quite hard work, but we certainly knew a lot more about the game when we had finished. Familiarity will make it a lot more slick and straightforward, I am sure; my main problems today were to do with lack of facility in identifying and selecting the correct poly-dice (and stopping the damned things hiding in odd corners of the table), and with the fact that I'm really not used to a free-form (non-gridded) game these days - certainly not without a knowledgeable umpire to hold my hand. However you look at it, measuring everything is a bit of a pain in the wassname, and so much of the action today seemed to take place in odd angles between units, where the lack of space and the alignments never quite fitted comfortably with my limited understanding of how the rules work. Entirely my own problem, I appreciate. I would be very shame-faced to be starting thinking already about how the game might benefit from being placed on a gridded board, but it is hard not to!

I shall persevere, and I'm sure it will all seem more natural and feel smoother next time. We used a very basic terrain, so there's not a lot to look at here - the photos are really just to prove we got it on the table, and came out undismayed! I'm looking forward to trying again soon, but an early priority for me is to get a look at some more experienced players doing it properly, and I'm working on that, hoping to set something up.

My thanks to Goya for his company and help, and most especially to Darren for his commendable patience and sound guidance over the last few weeks.

Separate Topic - Nothing to do with anything: when I was checking out the Marston Moor battlefield a few months ago, it occurred to me that it would be rather droll to have the battlefield monument appearing on the tabletop for the miniature game. Doesn't seem so amusing now, I guess, but I was impressed enough with the idea to order a suitable specimen from a model railway supplier. In fact the item was out of stock, and the matter dragged on for long enough for me to become unsure whether I'd actually cancelled the order. Eventually I decided I had, and thought no more about it. Marston Moor came and went - twice, in fact, if you count the postponed attempt when we were snowed off. Long after everything was finished and put away and written up, I received an email this week to say that my monument was now in stock and had been posted, and it duly arrived this afternoon. It's quite a handsome item, I guess - it will have to appear in a battle somewhere or other soon, but in the meantime here is a picture, simply to commemorate the passing of a half-baked idea and the uncertainty of medium-term memory. Regard it as a memorial to all those good intentions that don't quite work out. I think it is probably generic enough to serve in a number of contexts and centuries, so no doubt we'll see it around.

Memorial to an unexceptional idea

Field of Battle - Nibbling Away

Things are a bit disrupted around here at present - as far as hobby stuff goes, the problem is time. It's not that I don't have any spare time, it's just that it's a bit unpredictable, and tends to become available in small amounts.

Thus for some weeks I haven't been doing any major painting work - it's all been short bursts of refurb work (which can produce finished figures quite quickly, if I do it right), poking at test figures for big batches to come, and reading in odd quiet moments.

I'm working away at getting up to speed on Field of Battle, the Piquet-produced game which has me quite excited at the moment. As with all new games, there is a lot to learn - philosophically as much as anything else - this game is unlike most of my previous wargaming experience. It has some similarities to the full Piquet rules - though it is not simply a "lite" version of Piquet.

I've been reading and studying the rules, and I now have a scenario book, which is very interesting indeed; I've invested in a couple of decks of the official cards, and I have finally sourced some sets of dice. Like Piquet (I think), Field of Battle requires the rolling of small numbers of dice - usually they are rolled singly or in twos - but they may be selected from a set (for each side) of one each of D4, D6, D8, D10, D12 and D20. Interesting challenge to get a completely satisfactory matched set - I had some problems finding D10s which were numbered 1-10 instead of 0-9. Managed it without too much hassle, so I'm all ready to get on with some trials now.

The intro to the rules recommends that the new reader should not be overcome by the length of the booklet, nor damage his health trying to memorise reams of tables. The recommended approach is to set up a smallish game (I'll make this a solo effort - about 10 units a side), and have a bash, taking note of how the cards work. The set-up requires a fair amount of work - it's necessary to determine the quality of the army, and of its leaders and units, make up an appropriate pack of cards for each army, and work out what "size" of die (D6, D8 etc) is to be used by each unit for combat and for defence.

This is not the place to attempt any kind of summary of how the game works, nor attempt any kind of critique - suffice to say that I am happily working away at getting up to speed, and I hope to play a solo trial game sometime in the next however-many weeks. This is not a blistering rate of progress, admittedly, but I am enjoying it. My thanks to Darren, for his kind help and guidance, and also to Brent Oman, the author and originator of the game, for his help and generosity in getting me off the ground.

In a perfect world, the next logical thing for me to do would be to attend someone else's game (as a spectator) to see how it swings and feels. I guess that is unlikely, but I'm open to invitations if anyone fancies it - especially in a warm country with liberal drink laws...

Rules - Field of Battle

Since 1970 or thereabouts I guess I've read many hundreds of sets of wargames rules - the number expands rapidly if I include boardgames. The proportion of these which I've actually played is really so small that often I wonder why I've wasted so much time on my researches - what is it I've been looking for? Typically I don't finish a first reading - my initial interest will suddenly be frozen out by my dislike of the morale rules, or the activation rules, or the potential requirement to rebase everything - or something. My hit rate for eventual buy-in is pathetic. For a while, a couple of years ago, I thought I was going to really go for Lasalle, but I managed to find enough areas of discomfort to avoid making a commitment. [Phew - that was a close call...]

At present I am supposed to be working on an update to my (slowly developing) ECW siege game (Leaguer - yes, all right, all right...) and the development of a hex-gridded game for my Napoleonics which allows for more tactical manoeuvre than the Commands & Colors games which have become the house standard. Over both of these I am feeling rather guilty, since I have had a splendid amount of help from Mark and Jay, respectively, and I am keen not to leave everything hanging - it seems, at best, a bit impolite. Problem with the siege game has been that the discussion (which has been excellent, by the way) has turned up a few more questions than answers of late, so some heavyweight re-thinking is needed. Problem with the detailed hex Napoleonic game (for smaller actions, you understand) is that my original idea of simply sticking extra activities into C&C just produced a mess of a game - the tactical additions were compromised by the join with C&C, and the beauties (and they are considerable) of C&C were wrecked by the fiddly additions. Thus I started again - the new game has a proportion of Neil Thomas in it, but develops some of Neil's ideas quite a bit. I'd reached the point with this where the next thing to do was some serious playtesting, to enable me to produce a good, robust, working draft. So that's where I am: playtesting to be arranged as soon as is practicable.

There's a lot going on, and it doesn't seem too helpful if I find myself reading yet more rules which are not on the plan, but that's what I've been doing. I have suddenly become very interested in Field of Battle, from Brent Oman's Piquet product family. I have been very interested in Piquet for years - I have the base rules and the Grognards supplement, and have read them numerous times. Always with the same result - I really like a lot of the ideas in there, but there are a good few things which are - well - too fussy for my taste. I am unlikely to become a regular user.

Field of Battle is a relative of Piquet, involves some of the same principles and philosophies, but is a more straightforward game - or at least it seems so to me. My interest was sparked by the blogged activities of Le Duc de Gobin and Sgt Steiner - excellent fellows both. I am grateful to M Le Duc for explaining the nature of the game (left to myself, I find Piquet's product range, and the overlaps within it, bewildering), and for guiding me through some of the basic ideas. I have now read the booklet twice, and will start a third reading next week. I have found nothing that turns me off. The game is card driven, and lends itself very well to solo play (a big plus for me), the unit basing is almost identical to the way my armies have been set up since 1972 [If you build it, they will come - though it might take a while...], it all makes the most excellent sense. It looks very like what I thought Lasalle might offer, when I had the hots for that. It also offers a tweakable base set of rules which will lend themselves to a wide range of horse-&-musket wars. I have now gone so far as to invest in a proper set of the cards from the publisher - the US postal rates make this more of a serious investment than I had anticipated - and I hope to receive these shortly when new stocks come in.

As interruptions go, this promises to be a worthwhile one. I am gently enthusiastic about this - not to replace my existing rule systems, but to provide a rewarding alternative. Let's see how it goes.

If it all turns to rat droppings, you may hear no more about it, but I'm not approaching it with that expectation.