Hooptedoodle #4 - Let's Hear it for the Moonbeams

Looking over the postings to date in this blog, I keep finding traces of what have been constant themes for me in building up my armies - the frequent demise of my favourite figure manufacturers, and the frustration of dealing with firms which seemed to conduct their activities in a haphazard, apparently clueless manner which cannot be unrelated to this high rate of mortality.

I spent almost all my salaried life working as a professional in the finance industry - not a fashionable item on the CV these days - and I became very used to people doing what they said they were going to do, on the date they said they were going to do it. Further, I eventually took the planned, underwritten, regulated, audited, boring environment in which I existed as a behavioural norm. When I was not at work, my expectations of retail stores and other organisations with which I transacted was that they, also, would behave in a disciplined, predictable manner. Life is too busy to waste in chasing people who mess you around.

And then there were the wargame figure dealers. They were a world apart.

The underlying problem is the entirely predictable one that businesses run by enthusiasts often run into difficulties when the business grows beyond being just a hobby. On the other hand, if it wasn't for these enthusiasts there would be no suppliers. A true entrepreneur would not be impressed by the business case for marketing a wide range of specialised castings to a small number of guys who spend their weekends in lofts, painting - he would take one look at the hassle, the overheads, the health and safety problems and the likely return on making little soldiers for a small nerd market(!) and would do something else instead. If it wasn't for the dreamers and the freaks (which certainly includes me, after all) the hobby wouldn't exist, so bless 'em all.

Belatedly, and notwithstanding all previous grumblings, I offer a toast of gratitude to all the lovely people, moonbeams and headless chickens, living or not, who have made my hobby possible.

Falcata

If Minifigs have been the longest stayers in wargame miniatures manufacture, the Spanish firm, Falcata, must have been one of the shortest. Their white metal 1/72 figures are certainly attractive, and a bit different - they are what I would describe as diorama material - many variations in pose, some quite subtle, and many different details of dress. The French infantry set, for example, which I have found to be the most useful, has many men in marching positions, with all possible combinations of with/without shako covers and gaiters, different head and hand placements, some with bandaged heads, some waving - considerable variety, and I have put together some pleasingly scruffy units of French allies from them. The figures came in a box of 30-odd, with a plastic spacer inside, sealing them in. They were expensive (especially if you paid Guinea Hobbies' astonishing postal rates), there was no guarantee of exactly which figures you would get in a box and - like plastic figures - a proportion of the contents would not be useful for wargaming.


They produced two excellent Spanish infantry sets (one of 1808 line infantry, one of grenadiers of the same period), plus French infantry, British infantry in stovepipe hats (a set I found less useful because of the high proportion of battalion-company men in firing poses, which I don't use), a super set of of KGL heavy dragoons, and some very fine looking Spanish lancers, though I was not able to get hold of any of this last set. There were also plans to produce British Rifles, French light infantry and other sets, but they didn't appear.


The figures have chunky bases, and the sculpting ranges from some veritable works of art to a few very crude conversions, which suggests that there were several individuals producing the masters. There are also some minor mistakes in the uniforms - epaulettes and rank distinctions are often incorrect. Casting was a bit uneven, and the moulds were beginning to break up a little around the time the supply dried up. So, they were an odd mixture, but they are a very useful source of odd poses for command figures or for use in conversion jobs - my Cazadores de Castilla regiment, as per JM Bueno's book, are Falcata Frenchmen (for the double-breasted lapel jackets) with Higgins British Light Infantry heads (for the tapered LI shako).


I know very little about the Falcata firm - Mike Oliver, who was their UK importer for a while, has mentioned that their approach to business was rather on the relaxed side. Whatever, they disappeared fairly abruptly around 2008, though the occasional box of remainder stock can be found in on-line model shops. It would be unfair to try to guess what happened, but it is not unknown for these little cottage studios to be set up by enthusiasts who cannot cope with the routine demands of production and shipping when the business starts to become serious. Anybody know?



I think they differ from their Spanish compatriots, NapoleoN Miniatures (whom I shall look at next week), in the dioramic style and the fact that Falcata do not seem to have sold the figures direct. Also, I think I would regard them as a charming oddity rather than, potentially, a major wargames supplier - by contrast, as I am sure I will mention on a future occasion, I think we will come to realise how big a loss has been the demise of NapoleoN, which is a tale for another time.

The Grand Tactical Game - Ancestry

This started out as a reply to a comment from Pjotr, but there's enough in here to justify a separate entry, I think. This is just to try to explain what my kick-off point is, and what scope and limitations I wish to set myself. I find that if I think about something long enough then it becomes obvious to me what I'm talking about, and I find it surprising when everyone else just rolls their eyes - so maybe a brief scene-setting is a good idea!

The draft of my proposed "MEP" (grand tactical) rules is already pretty substantial, because I've been thinking about this for a while, but there are areas where the bits don't hang together too well yet. As a random example, it occurred to me just this morning that, since I am using alternate moves and the bounds are long (1 hour on the clock), I'd better have both sides firing artillery simultaneously at the end of each player's movement - similarly for skirmishers. This is different from my main Elan game, and comes about simply because, intuitively, an hour seems an awful long time for the non-moving side to sit without doing something hostile. That sort of thing keeps cropping up.

One big given is that, whatever I produce for MEP, it will have to fit with my existing Élan rules, and have to fit with them well enough to share army data on the computer and integrate with a single campaign system. This means that, to the guys who say to me, "Why are you messing around with your own rules? - you should just buy General de Brigade (or whatever)", I have to say that, in most cases, I have bought them. I buy rulesets regularly - mainly to borrow ideas. I haven't got enough time left to start all over again, and I am too old and sad to throw away the accumulated experience (and labour) of all those years. It doesn't mean these guys aren't right, of course!

I have read (though never played) the Polemos rules. Like most commercial sets, they are thorough - maybe too fiddly for me. The feeder games for my own rules are many and varied - I probably can't even remember where some bits come from! Most recent influences have been The Big Battalions (for combat mechanisms), Le Feu Sacre (mostly for the use of blinds and scouting), Grande Armee and it's Fast-Play offspring (for ideas on command rules and all sorts of things, but mainly for the realisation that rules don't have to be super-detailed to give sensible results) and, most recently, Howard Whitehouse's Old Trousers for general inspiration and for the elegant idea of having a single number associated with each unit which is used for everything. I have also, I must remember to mention, come up with the odd idea myself, but this collection and blending has been going on for so long that I now have difficulty sorting out where the ingredients came from.

It is possible that our favourite recipe for treacle scones is the one that Grandma got out of the Housewives' Friend in 1932, but it actually doesn't matter now - the recipe is just the one we use. This is too folksy to be one of Foy's formal laws, but it has the same sort of weary resonance!

In a week or so I'll start setting out some basic concepts and some of the mechanisms I have sketched out this far. I will - sincerely! - be very grateful for all views on them. If I can fathom how to use Google Docs without forcing everyone to have an account (or, alternatively, find some other file sharing service which will work reliably), I'll store the developing MEP draft in some form that you can download from the blog. As it shapes up, I hope it provides some interest and - at the very worst - it will give a collection of ideas that you might wish to avoid in your own games!

One final thought, before I forget - I am not a big fan of multiple morale tests, they can slow things down to a disastrous extent. I have a fond memory of my cousin (who, sadly, is no longer with us) one night at about 2am, after half a bottle of wine, slowly shaking a dice cup with a vacant grin on his face, trying vainly to remember which of the endless, bewildering stream of tests he had been about to carry out this time, and why. Having said this, I also must put in an apologetic reminder that the ultimate form of MEP is to be computerised, and the computer will happily slap a morale test on the end of any action you like, without any fatigue at all, though the players may get tired of being asked whether there is a general fighting with the unit, whether they are in cover, etc. The point is that sometimes a computerised game can handle stuff in the background which would be onerous otherwise.

The Grand Tactical Game - Preamble

The MEP Effect: a French brigade, with skirmishers, before and after Defence cuts.


I'm becoming conscious of the fact that this blog mostly consists of elderly reminiscences about how things were, or how I think they were, which is not necessarily the same thing. Since the subject matter is a hobby which I have been involved in for around 40 years, that is maybe understandable. However, I read many fine blogs which tell me what guys are thinking about this week, or doing at this actual moment (or, very commonly, not doing at this actual moment, and why). Intuitively, this seems more exciting - you know, reportage - I'm cutting the blue wire now - boom. Immediacy seems a natural state for a blog - sharing views, doing stuff. Right this minute.

Awesome.

Apart from oddities such as my fleeting views on bananas, there is not much of that in here. I feel that's a bit of a shortfall. I mean, it's not as if I'm not doing anything. So, if you can bear the excitement, I'd like to pull the wraps off something I'm working on at this very moment. Naturally I will be pleased to get advice and/or guidance - even abuse, if you must. I need to develop a decent grand-tactical variant of my in-house Napoleonic rules, to handle battles which are too big to work well with the current version. Then, once they are working and reliable, I need to get them (like the main game), programmed on to my computer, but the first step is to get them drafted out in a dice-&-paper version for play-testing.

That's it. If, at this point, you feel a little disappointed in my choice of exciting development, I can only say that it's the best I can do at the moment, and in any case I really do need these new rules, so there is an element of immediacy, if only by implication.

Foy's Fifth Law states:

If something bogs your battles down, then automate it or simplify it or get rid of it.

My rules are called Élan. They occasionally get a radical revision, but otherwise have been evolving for many years. The problem with Élan, the thing which gets me bogged down at present, is if the games get too big. This is a bit of a sore point, because the rules were specifically designed to work well with large battles. The use of the computer greatly eases the record keeping and keeps the turn sequence ticking along, and the game mechanisms have been tuned and rationalised to run quickly. There are two chief areas where the size problem shows up:

Firstly, and the less important one - the time taken to deploy and fight a unit may not be very much, but if there are a lot of units then it all adds up. You can have multiple players, which does help, but often my games are solo.

Far more seriously, on the current ground scale, unit frontages are correct, but the depths of the units are well out of scale. A battalion in column looks very nice, but it takes up far too much space, front-to-back. When the reserves come on, everything can grind to a halt because there is no room to manoeuvre.

As it is, Élan works fine up to maybe 20 battalions a side plus cavalry plus etc etc. At that point major traffic jams can set in, especially if the terrain is hilly. OK - easy - keep the battle smaller. Well, that's a bit of a heavy constraint. Particularly so since quite a lot of my games come from campaigns, and it seems unreasonable to outlaw battles over a certain size just because the rules and the available table can't cope. The Emperor wouldn’t care for that.

It would be possible to use a bigger table - I have a fantasy about putting a 30 foot x 8 foot table in a marquee in the garden, but at that point we are probably getting silly. I also have a rather worrying thought that the neighbours might catch glimpses of me fighting a solo action in such a setting. Hmmm. Another solution is needed.

No, I believe the answer is just to have an alternate set of rules which allows bigger actions. I have a preliminary sketch for a big-battle variant which is provisionally titled Élan MEP. Reluctantly, I have to admit that MEP comes from "moins est plus", which started life as a joke. As sketched out, MEP uses double the bound length (one hour of real time), double the ground scale (one hex becomes 500 paces, or a quarter of a mile) and FOUR times the figures scale (which means that a 750-man battalion will be a single 6-figure base rather than a formation of 4 such bases). The effect of this is that a brigade, instead of being a collection of battalions each of which occupies a hex on the battlefield, will occupy a single hex in total.

Much of the tactical deployment will be simplified, and thus some rules will have no place in the new game. For example, Élan’s fixation with unit formations will largely disappear. I have a feeling that it will still be necessary to be able to place an infantry brigade in square(s) for special occasions, but otherwise we should assume that the brigade commanders (who will no longer appear on the table) will look after battalion formations and all that. Once again, the game is getting more and more like a boardgame, but that is what happens as your helicopter-view gets higher and higher - the individual soldiers become less significant.

When I started thinking about this, I was quite excited to realise that I could, at last, do a re-fight of Salamanca if the big game works properly. Why on earth I would choose to do this, and what it would prove if I did, I haven't thought through yet. But the idea that I could if I wanted to was strangely appealing.

That's really all I want to say about this at present. I am hoping that the rules from Élan which deal with command, weather, concealment, army morale and a few other things will just drop into the new game with some minor tweaks in the arithmetic. Other bits will be trickier - my guess is that some of the nippier elements will be decisions about stuff to leave out. I have a strong fancy for borrowing some of the combat and morale mechanisms from Howard Whitehouse's Old Trousers game, which is elegant and, most importantly, simple. Anyway, you get the idea. More of this another time.

Hooptedoodle #3 - The Napoleon Podcast

Many of the readers of this blog will be familiar with TPN's Napoleon Podcast, and if you have heard it, or follow it, then you will have your own views on it.

For those who have not heard it, I must explain that it is an extended series of podcasts presented by (and produced by) an Australian, Cameron Reilly, and co-hosted by the American Napoleonic historian, J David Markham, author of Napoleon for Dummies. They have been doing these shows for some 3 or 4 years now, and the latest episode I am aware of is #57 in the series.

You can download all the shows, free, from their website - here. Shows last anything up to an hour and a half, so I hope your broadband download speed is rather better than mine..

I came across the TPN shows by accident, and, initially, I regret to say, was not impressed. I hasten to add that I have dramatically changed my opinion, but I'll get to that.

These podcasts are not the same as radio broadcasts - this is probably obvious to anyone else, but I had to get the hang of it. There is much more of a homespun quality, presentation style tends to be conversational, and you have to listen to them in an appropriate frame of mind. Of course, I ran the first show sitting in front of the computer as if I were watching BBC2, thinking "Right - impress me, then".

Wrong attitude. I was quickly turned off by the informal structure, by Reilly's grating inability to pronounce the name of any person or place which is not English, and by Markham's long-winded and rather rambling avuncularity. The pronunciation thing is of passing interest, by the way, since it reflects on me rather than anything else. I confess I come from a long line of petty intellectual snobs, and we have always rejoiced in the things which we knew better than others, glossing quickly (of course) over the much larger number of things about which we knew nothing at all. With more appropriate exposure to the podcasts, I have seen the error of my ways, and have very much warmed to the whole idea - I am suitably ashamed of my early prejudice and have become a big fan.

Reilly, in truth, is well informed on the subject, organises and threads together the podcasts skilfully (they are recorded live via a Skype link, with Reilly in Australia and his collaborator in the USA), while Markham is a treasure - an expert who is knowledgeable but also an extremely amusing speaker. The trick is to understand that a podcast is not a formal lecture, it is your friend, and should be regarded as such. I spend a good portion of a week in each month distributing a community magazine in a very rural area, and I walk miles in all sorts of weather. This is podcast territory - with my little Zen mp3 player I can pass the time quickly and pleasurably - and I have also learned a great deal recently.

If you have not heard TPN talking about Napoleonic history, I recommend that you check them out.

Minifigs

Miniature Figurines. As long as I’ve been involved in wargaming, they’ve been around. Trying to say anything about Miniature Figurines Ltd is a bit like trying to say something significant about the Ford Motor Co – mostly, it’s been said before. They have frequently been on the receiving end of criticism, their products are not usually regarded as shining examples of anything in particular, and they are generally an easy target for abuse.

The one thing they certainly do not get is a fair show of respect. MF have, in their unspectacular way, put miniatures wargaming within the grasp of anyone who became interested during the last 40-something years. Whatever your likes and dislikes, they are a major part of the history of the hobby. If you take a look at the current movement of wargame figures on eBay, you get a feel for how they have dominated the market for years. In the periods and scales which interest me, I reckon that some 75% of current eBay listings are for Minifigs, and more than half of those are from the current ranges of figures, which have survived pretty much unchanged for 30 years.

My start in the hobby was too late for the early 20mm figures; S-Range was what they were selling at that time. They were readily available in local model shops, the range was vast, the quality of the castings, somehow, was always pretty good, and - if you liked them - they represented good value for money. Unusually, in a hobby full of suppliers who were enthusiasts and well-intentioned dreamers, they were always commercially sound - good marketing, good supply to the retailers, and constantly aware (and supportive) of trends and fashions in wargaming.


I confess that I really cannot understand the early history of the marque - which figures were Alberken, which were the figures which got them into trouble with Hinton Hunt - all that stuff - too complicated for me. You can get good background from VINTAGE20MIL, from the Old Metal Detector and related blogs, and from Lazey-Limey - there are areas of debate, but that is where to look. I prefer to group them under the general heading of “20mm”. The earliest such figures appear to have been a bit crude , but they very quickly became very similar in style and quality to Hintons. I am especially taken by their OPC 20mm generals and personalities.





By the time I started wargaming, this was all in the past, and they had moved onto the famous S-Range. These are regarded with a deal of affection by collectors. They have a style of their own, deliberately different from HH. The proportions of the figures are distinctive – slightly-built men with rather short, slim legs, and a tendency for oversized hats, plumes, swords, bayonets. The French troops in particular have coal-scuttle sized shakos. The S-Range generals are nice figures - I have a few. I also have a good number of French infantry officers, eagle bearers and drummers, with Higgins heads grafted on. I even still have in my collection a throwback to the days when no-one made French Line Horse Artillery (well, HH did, but I'd given up on them some time earlier) - I made up a crew from MF French infantry officers, gave them Higgins heads and PMD artillery implements - you may shed a gentle tear at the thought of my cutting up PMD horse artillery figures to provide parts for MF hybrids... Whatever, I still have them - I'm fond of them, and have kept them long after I cleared out some of their contemporaries.


Recently, I developed a considerable appetite for Spanish infantry, SN1s – no-one else apart from Hinton Hunt (undersize) and Warrior (oversize) makes 1812-style Spaniards in British-type uniforms. I have a number of units of S-Range Spaniards now, but am always keeping a wary eye open for more.


After the S-Range came what I call “Intermediates”. Some of these are very nice – I have a number of British infantry units, and most of my British artillery are from this range. I still had a problem with the big hats on the French troops, so always avoided them or re-headed them. I also have a unit of British dragoons with saddles attached to the riders – they are still with me after all these years, ao I guess I must like them.


And then, as lamented elsewhere, in 1978 or so the figures became bigger, fatter, and mostly I lost interest. Still nicely manufactured, and they were always friendly and helpful people to deal with – I have no personal experience of the new owners, but have heard good reports of them, too, so that tradition appears to have been maintained.


The real parting of the ways occurred for me when I was putting together a Brunswick-Oels battalion in polrock coats, suitable for 1808-9. I had seen a very nice Minifigs unit of exactly the sort I was looking for, and ordered them up from my hobby shop. When they arrived, the officer and the drummer were lovely, but the rank and file had been remastered in the then new “chunky” style, and I was really very shaken by their appearance. These guys were as wide as they were high – nicely engineered and manufactured, but grotesque. Gnomes. If I had had a firm making miniature soldiers, and my master-maker had approached me with prototype figures like these, I think I would have asked him to go back and try again – and to drink less coffee.


Whatever, I choose not to use MF’s current ranges – they do not match my armies, which is really the only thing that matters. I know for a fact that there are huge numbers of wargamers out there whose armies consist entirely of exactly this range, and I’m certain they look marvellous, but for me you can’t mix them.

Respect, though. Fair enough.

The Big Battalions - still available!

Thanks very much for reassuring comments about the blog template - it seems to be OK, so I've removed the emergency posting. This is a small ad for the Big Battalions rule book - Jason Monaghan tells me that they still have stock left. I am not on commission (heaven forfend!), I am merely a fan, and I really do recommend these rules, as a thoroughly entertaining game and as an erudite and amusing discussion of Napoleonic warfare - a good read, and lots of great ideas.

I have no idea of price, but am certain it will be a fraction of the cost of some of the big glossies coming out now (come on - be honest - how do you feel when you are looking for melee factors in a hurry and all you can find are posed art shots of a battle you aren't fighting?). If you are interested, contact Guernsey Wargames Club. Tell them Foy sent you - that should keep them guessing.