Anniversary

I really wanted a nice picture of a birthday candle app for iPhone, but will make do with a humble little celebration at Versailles

I just realised it's a year since I began this blog. When I started, I had very little idea what I was going to do with it - a situation which has changed very little since then. I have to say I've enjoyed my blogging very much, and I've gained some very real benefits from it. Firstly, I've learned a lot from the comments people have been kind enough to leave and - rather more difficult to explain - I find it invaluable to try to write down my thoughts on a particular topic, since it forces me to address areas of doubt (or at least identify them), and to put my porridge-like ideas into a more linear, coherent form.

I used to have a boss who reckoned that if someone couldn't describe his job to you clearly, then he probably didn't understand it. That's the same sort of idea, I think - when I read the final version of what I think, I'm often surprised!

The institutions of the Hooptedoodles and Foy's preposterous laws almost seem to make sense now - good grief. To all those who have read any part of this outpouring of self-indulgent banality during the last 12 months, I offer my thanks and best wishes. I propose to have a small glass of Armagnac, maybe the '65 De Montal, and I'll drink to your health and happiness. May your varnish dry without bubbles. May your saving throws all be high.

Gentlemen - I thank you.

Hex Cells - Round & Round We Go

There are occasions when I find that I am somewhere I've been before. Sometimes, the number of footprints makes it clear that an awful lot of people have been there, but it doesn't make it any more likely that the path leads anywhere.

Prompted by comments to the previous post, I reckon it is time for one of my periodic visits to the subject of hex cells on the wargames table - specifically, what size they should be. Since the mid 1970s, I have had 7" hexes on my table, and only occasionally have I wished they were a different size. They are seven inches (across the flats) because that looks OK and fits my unit sizes nicely. Six inches would be a possible alternative, anything smaller would not be viable, given that I have no wish to allow hex sizes to drive a complete re-engineering of my armies, rules and figures-to-men ratios, nor to initiate an extensive re-basing programme. Since no-one made commercial hexagonal bits in the 1970s (as far as I know), there was no option but to manufacture my own hills, so the odd size did not make things any worse than they would otherwise have been. If someone had made pre-formed hills and rivers for 6" hexes when I started, I would probably have gone for 6".

In recent years I looked at various mats and tile systems. The most basic was a printed tablecloth made by a Spanish concern that was promoted by NapoleoN Miniatures. I can't remember the name of the firm - Microgames? - something like that. I corresponded with them for a little while, and they sent me a couple of samples. They did a range of off-the-shelf cloths, including a decent-looking Peninsular War job with 100mm hexes, but they were more than happy to discuss bespoke products. They were prepared to print anything I wanted on the cloth (it didn't warrant the description "mat"), and make it any size I wanted, which sounds ideal. The cloth, sadly, was very flimsy - you could see light through the weave, it would certainly stretch and wrinkle and move about in action. A friend said that you couldn't even dry dishes with it, which is an interesting criterion. So I dropped that idea - not without difficulty, since the manufacturer seemed very excited by my interest, and looked forward to meeting me at a wargames convention in Dublin (which is obviously just down the road from here) to finalise my order. I have seen impressive examples of heavier, textured mats, which look good (though the hex grids come in a small number of unsuitable sizes), but I worry about storing them without damage, and I have a weird dread of covering my home with bits of shed flock and resin flakes.

Tile systems are invariably impressive - sometimes spectacularly so. The old Geo-Hex tile system (which I have never actually seen) appears to have used large hexes, but it's long OOP. I have heard mention of TSS making hex tiles, and their website shows some interesting pictures, but it makes no mention of sizes. I emailed them, and they came back very quickly and politely and said they no longer make the hex tiles, since they had trouble with manufacture and accuracy of the finished pieces. They did, however, recommend their excellent square terrain tiles, and they do look very good.

One of the familiar aspects of following a hopeless path is that frequently people will fix you with a slightly pitying gaze (especially in email) and imply that they are surprised that you are still doing whatever it is you are doing, and that the rest of the world has moved on from that - all the cool guys are now buying our latest product, and here's some pictures and a price list.

Hexon - state of the art?

At four inches it's a breeze. Kallistra make what appears to be the standard-setting product, Hexon II. Looks terrific. It probably looks awesome, though I am not an expert in awe. 4" tiles in a bewilderingly huge range - you can build the most convincing looking countryside in all sorts of regional shades. I am really very impressed, but it wouldn't do for me. The hexes are too small for my armies, and the whole approach of using a wall-to-wall set of tiles involves costs and storage issues which put me off. No - I am not decrying any of this, it really is wonderful - if I was starting from scratch now I would do Napoleonics in 15mm, with small unit sizes, and I would buy the Kallistra system. The snag, of course, is that I am not.

My wargames have never been scenically realistic. There is no whiff of diorama about my set up. Plain boards, unflocked bases, simple, representative villages and woods - that's how I've always done it. I've found it practical and pleasing, and I like the traditional look. I also like the look of more exotic approaches, I hasten to add, but they are not for me. A plain table with some blocks on it for hills is fine. If the hills look half-decent and troops can stand on them, and if I can store them easily without damaging them, so much the better.

As Mr Kinch has correctly pointed out, the real reason for choosing to move to smaller hexes is because that is how you want the game to be. It is possible that I could use 6" hexes, and it is possible that there would be advantages for the game size, but it does not (yet, at least) strike me as a must-do. Cutting out hills is a royal pain in the ass, to quote Mr Salinger, and no mistake. If someone makes suitable 6" hexagonal hill blocks which could be used, singly or in multiples, without leaving raw edges, and without requiring me to cover the whole world in the things, that would be a small push toward making a switch.

I have read interesting forum threads about casting tiles in plaster, papier maché or secret-formula gloop, and all kinds of mine-is-bigger-than-yours discussions of tile systems past, present and mythical. I am, I think, not much the wiser. It looks like a choice between staying where I am or some DIY-based change. The more I think about this, the less I fancy a change. I must Google "hex terrain" and look yet again at those TMP exchanges from 2006, and count the footprints.

By the way - what happened to Hexon I?

Battleboards

Since I got on to a DIY thread with the previous post, it seemed appropriate to talk a bit about another hot topic for me - boards, or what I have always called battleboards.

Now there are four of them

I have only had one set of boards since I started wargaming. Around 1971 I bought two 4' x 5' pieces of half-inch chipboard - placed side by side they made an 8' x 5' tabletop. They have been various shades of green over the years, and since about 1975 they have had 7" hexagons applied to one side, but otherwise they are the originals. They are leaning against the wall here in my office, and it is sobering to think what long-redundant armies have marched on them, and how many visiting generals have played on them - quite a few of those players are no longer with us, I am reminded.

Same boards. A shot of a Romans v Celts battle in Feb 2001 - this picture intrigues me, since it is taken in the old dining room of our cottage, a room which is now the downstairs bathroom. This is as near as I have got to fighting battles in the toilet

Chipboard is not ideal - it tends to crumble around the edges, especially the corners, and the half-inch stuff, though light and easy to handle, tends to droop a bit if any unsupported overhang exceeds a foot or so. The boards are getting a bit battered now, and they smell strange, since for a while they were stored in the garage wrapped in tarpaulin. They have been placed on all sorts of supporting surfaces over the years - wallpaper pasting tables, various dining tables, and - surprisingly successfully - for a while I used a child's playpen, with lengths of Dexion angle-bars lashed on. This was good because the tabletop was much lower than standard and (whatever it says in the books about the advantages of high tables) this gives a terrific view and puts the middle of the table in easy reach. Gives a glimpse of what gaming on the floor would be like, I guess. Might not be too clever for the spine, but I was immune to such problems in those days.

Anyway, I'm now back up to standard dining-table height, which is fine. Our current dining table is a big fellow (2.5 metres long), which meant that I was able to cut the battleboards in half, so that I now have four 2' x 5' sections, which are much easier to store and to lug around.

My ancient hexes run in the wrong direction for CCN, so I have been working out how to remedy this. I reckon that I can keep my 7" hexes and still fit the official CCN playing surface on an 8 x 5 table. My original plan was to paint the new hex grid on the reverse side of the present boards but they are not in a good enough state - it would be a lot of work, and I would be disappointed with the result. OK then - new boards. Some swimming of the brain here - what sort of materials, how big? Yes, how big? Could I fit a 9' x 6' board in the dining room? - hmmm. In fact, commonsense prevails - I'll stick with 8 x 5 - it fits the CCN layout and gives a little room for a blank surround, and I can paint the reverse plain green, or maybe apply felt. Anything bigger, though tempting, would be difficult to walk around. For material, I fancy 20mm MDF. It should be structurally robust enough, and a sealed-and-painted MDF surface is smooth but tough. I've also given some thought to having four 8-foot battens to place on the dining table, and site the battleboards on top of these - that would enable me to have the table as eight 1' x 5' panels instead of four 2' x 5', which would store in a wardrobe or similar without drama. Interesting.

I don't think I'm going to start on this until the Winter. I am strangely reluctant to abandon my old boards, but they've been in use for 40 years, so they do not owe me anything, and it's time to smarten up.

The Cupboard

I've referred to The Cupboard before - I think I once mentioned that I might do a post on it.

It has come to mind again lately because it is getting to be a bit of a squeeze in there. It was all planned so carefully - I even got rid of my unwanted Ancient armies to make more space for the Napoleonics - but my recent acquisition of an unexpected Pommeranian contingent has messed up the space planning. It's only a matter of time before I start having to employ supplementary Box Files, or maybe Cupboard II...

Once upon a time, it was a glazed bookcase. An elderly neighbour of mine (in a former life) had a huge personal library, and he had a number of suitably serious bookcases. After he died, I was told that his widow would like me to have one of them, which (apparently) I had once admired. I couldn't remember ever commenting on it, but I was delighted to get it. It's a nice, sturdy item, probably 1920s or so, and has solid shelves, 0.5" thick and 12.5" apart - three of them.

When I first got it I knew at once what I wanted to do with it. I worked out that I could fit 2 glass shelves between each pair of wooden ones, giving enough height for standard bearers and chaps on horses (and those delicate games of leapfrog which are always needed to get the right units for the evening's battle), so I got some heavy quality quarter-inch armoured glass shelves made up, polished all round, and fitted them - it was a lot easier than I expected. I was also delighted to find that my unit sabots, which are 110mm deep, fit very nicely on the shelves, two deep.

It has gradually filled up over recent years - the soldiers now occupy almost all of the shelves, though the floor of the cabinet currently holds my Peninsular War buildings (which do not normally do well in boxes). Next step will be some Box Files (no idea why this should warrant capital letters - maybe it just feels appropriate for a back-up for The Cupboard, which has always had capitals). I may put some of the buildings in box files, with magnetic arrangements to stop them rattling around. Bell towers and fortress gates will not go in a box file, but this would still free up enough space to get the planned limbers and so forth a home on the bottom.

Though the dining room of our house is a fairly dark room (this being where the battles take place), some perverse accident of astronomy means that the early morning sun in the Summer falls right on The Cupboard, so - to protect the red paint and the flags - I arranged for my wife to very kindly fit black blinds inside the glass doors. This may seem a bit overprotective, and it certainly means that my soldiers live in a glazed display cabinet which does not display them, which has occasionally struck visitors as odd. I may change my mind about this some time, but at present the troops live in the dark.

The Cupboard has a significance beyond mere storage - only units which are complete and finished may go in there, so "being ready for The Cupboard" means ready for action, and no mistake. It is a standing joke here that the end objective for all my collecting, painting, basing and organising activity is to get units ready to go into The Cupboard, where they cannot be seen! All witticisms about closet wargamers to Chateau Foy, please, on used 5-pound notes.

Changing a Light Bulb

Recent email exchanges with a couple of friends got on to the topic of a variation on everyone's favourite racist/sexist/occupationist joke, viz "how many miniatures wargamers does it take to change a light bulb?".

To be honest, we were so disappointed by the poor quality of our own efforts that we thought it might be a nice idea to invite suggestions on this blog. To give an idea of how humble a standard you have to match up to, the best we could manage were:

Crick: However many it says in Charge!

De Vries: 1 to prepare the lightbulb to collector standard, 2 to write the scenario for changing it, 6 to test it out (of which 1 writes it up in TMP) and 114 to suggest ways in which the procedure might have been improved.

My own offering, now I re-read it, is suppressed for reasons of embarrassment.

Any suggestions welcome. I haven't thought of what prize is on offer, or even if there will be one...

Hooptedoodle #33 – OMG, Austria's just the same

Preamble: Even I am beginning to realize that yet another rant on the subject of smart phones is getting preciously close to boring. What follows is primarily intended to be humorous, and – naturally – I hope that any readers will take it in good spirit. A few preliminary notes may help set the context here.

(1) However it may appear, I am not opposed to Apple, or their very impressive products, nor the people who buy and use them. I am, in truth, something of a technology fan myself. If you have an iPhone and find it useful for making telephone calls, sending messages, taking pictures and entertaining yourself then that is excellent. My problem is the addictive, life-smothering hold which the device has over the susceptible young.

(2) My concerns are real and well-intentioned; friends and former associates of mine, seeking to recruit good quality school leavers in Britain, have growing concerns about the ability of supposedly bright kids to spell, write a sentence, actually (like) speak to people, even to form relationships in the shadow of the uncontrollable growth of communication technology.

(3) Doctors, social workers and educators are confronted by new kinds of nervous and mental disorders in the young which may be attributed to excessive exposure to the Internet, video games and the smart phone.

(4) At a personal level, I am a bit saddened, spending my vacation in an unfamiliar country, to observe that the situation looks to be similar here.

(5) I have difficulty imagining someone writing in to claim that he/she is obsessed with a shiny electronic device which they carry around in their pocket, and thus that they are wounded by my perceived hostility. Since I am clearly a madman, given to spasms of ridiculous intemperance, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to be sufficiently bothered by my views to take offence (though, of course, there may be some helpful souls who just cannot help themselves from putting me straight).

Enough with the preamble, already – let’s get on with the rant.

On my train journey back from Innsbruck the other day, a young man sat opposite me for about 8 minutes or so, as the train took him from one suburban station to the next. From his clothing, I guess he was a plasterer, possibly a bricklayer - a working man, anyway, and he was going home from work. Good for him. During the 8 minutes (no, I was not staring) he listened to music on his iPhone, and looked - every 15 seconds or so, I would estimate - to see if he had any messages on this same device. Then he was gone, and I was left to wonder idly at the extent to which the iPhone and its close equivalents have altered the lives of a complete generation across all nations. Pavlov's dogs had nothing on this.

Yesterday I was in the town of Landeck for a few hours. At the bus station, there was a group of completely decent teenage girls, chatting, emitting forced laughter, like teenage girls throughout Europe, chewing gum and - inescapably - constantly checking their iPhones for incoming text.

Apple is now the biggest company on the planet. A vast, sad, worldwide cohort of young people who believe themselves to be some kind of technology-enabled quantum leap for Evolution spend a depressing amount of their time on non-communication. I realise that it is a stupid generalisation to dismiss all messages passed on smart phones as dross, but I strongly suspect that the meaningful stuff is completely swamped by the amount of subtransactional excrement about what Tracy said Fiona said about Emma's boyfriend, and what a bitch she is anyway. Technology my backside.

My good, if profane, friend Mr Crick tells me that recently he read with surprise that some magazine or other had conducted a survey of iPhone users to learn what was their favourite position for sex. He says he deliberately did not check the results, since it might have damaged his (totally unreasonable) belief that, in general, iPhone users prefer their sex unaccompanied. [Anyone who is offended by this should have read Mr Crick’s original version.]

Apple now owns all our souls because advertising and mass idiocy have convinced vast numbers of kids that they are compelled to belong to something trendy. I have no doubt that in a year or so I too will have such a device, and probably I shall depend upon it. If it happens, it will be because it is no longer possible to park your car, use internet banking or book cinema tickets if you don't have one. I am also confident that my spelling, word power and imagination will have declined dramatically, along with everyone else's.

I wonder what the next big leap will be? What invention will make iPhone dwellers realise that they no longer have total control of the Universe, that they really need to move on to the Next Big Thing? Somehow, I find this article strangely comforting - though the source is the dreaded Daily Wail, a newspaper whose ideological alignment is usually some way from my own.

Maybe it isn't just me, then, though I have to admit that if it's just me and the Daily Wail then I may consider suicide more seriously.

Bergisel 1809 - the Panorama

I'm presently on holiday in Austria, and yesterday I made a solo self-indulgence trip to Innsbruck, to visit my new chum Andreas Hofer. I've been to Innsbruck years ago, and, as before, I found it to be a hard-working, mostly modern-looking city, not especially inspiring depite its setting amid the Alps and its history.

What I did not see on my previous visit was the recently-restored panoramic painting of the Battle of Bergisel, which is absolutely wonderful. Presented very cleverly, the enormous painting is done in a trompe-d'oeuil style which is very 3-dimensional anyway, but the lighting effects and the use of solid objects and landscaping in the foreground set it off brilliantly and make it very difficult in places to distinguish which bits are just painted on the walls. The Tirolean forces under Hofer (who is depicted looking for all the world like General Longstreet in the Gettysburg movie) are seen, in remarkable detail, defeating the Bavarians in May 1809. I must check out my Nafziger OOBs when I get home - I would have expected to see at least some of Archduke John's white-uniformed Austrian regulars there.

My snapshots (no flash, please) cannot hope to do any justice at all to the wondrous subject matter, but I hope they reinforce my recommendation that the place is well worth a visit. The neighbouring Kaiserjaegers' Museum is also a fascinating place, and featured a remarkable film about the restoration of the panorama.

Late edit added: Hofer is in my 5th picture (the one with the white building in the left middle - he is in large hat and beard, just to the right of two guys in pale clothing. Far better than my photos, there's a pretty good view of the Panorama available on YouTube, complete with stirring music - you'll find it here.

Anyone interested in a 1/72 Tyrolean army for 1809 should check out the only known figures here.