ECW - Rules Tweak Scaled Right Back

I've had a most interesting few days' correspondence with Peter B, Prof de Vries, Martin S and, most especially, the Jolly Broom Man. As a result of all this enlightenment (and, by Jove, these chaps know their stuff), I've decided not to make the ambitious changes to my ECW rules, as sketched out in my previous post.

It all comes back to the issue of how the regiments arranged their musket fire back in the 17th Century. I was concerned that if (to put it in layman's terms) everyone fired at once (BANG) then subsequently they would be conspicuously unloaded, and, since the idea that they might manage to reload while rushing about seemed unlikely, they would arrive unable to fire if they attacked someone without having stopped somewhere on the way. This kind of thinking owed a lot to my exposure to the Victory without Quarter rules, which make a feature of loading as a necessary activity.

Well, as everyone in the world knows very well - apart from me - it all comes down to the way they conducted the firing. Because the matchlock was a cumbersome thing to load, the approved method was to arrange the musketeers in a lot of ranks - 6 or 8 was OK - and then fire by rolling the ranks:

(1) Intraduction, by which the firing line advanced, required the rear (loaded) rank to move round in front of the rank which had just fired - the sergeant, with his partizan or his half-pike, would show the newly loaded chaps where to line up and fire. Thus the rate of advance would be up to the sergeant, and the firing line would move forward.

(2) Extraduction, by which the firing line fell back, required the front rank, after they had fired, to nip round the rear (the sergeant would show them where) and get on with reloading. In time they would once again become the front rank, and it would be their turn to fire once more. Thus the firing line would gradually be moving back.

I apologise for the kindergarten explanation - it is necessary for me to envisage things in simple terms. Anyway, this means that the firing would not go BANG, as discussed, it would go bang--bang--bang--etc, and it also means that the Foot would never all be unloaded at the same time, which means that they would be able to produce some amount of fire while on the move. If, like me, you imagine that advancing or retreating by means of the rolling intra/extraduction system would slow down the attack to a pitiful shuffle then I am assured that this is correct - this is why the rules reduce the movement rate for Foot when close to the enemy, but I am also informed by the JBM that this was not a critical-path issue, since the unit closing up and the pikemen sorting themselves out was just as big a problem prior to a clash. [The Broom Man, by the way, apart from a life of monastic research, also has personal experience of re-enactment; never disagree with a man who knows how to handle a pike - especially one who may have been at the Siege of Bristle.]

I sense a lot of unrest - people with their hands in the air, protesting, "...but, Miss, Miss, Miss...". Well you are quite right, there was also the process known as fire by salvee, which was introduced by Gustavus Adolphus for his Swedish army, and which did, indeed, have everybody firing at once and thus being unloaded immediately thereafter. I am assured that this was beyond the capabilities of just about everyone apart from the Swedes during this period - thus it is not relevant for the ECW, and Peter B reckons that it would be used even by the Swedes in the 30YW as a short-range device, such that it should be considered as part of melee combat in rules of this type.

Gustavus Adolphus

Thus, after this long ramble, I am merely going to switch my CC_ECW rules back to allowing Foot to move 1 hex and fire at reduced effect, which is where I started a few years ago, in a manner similar to what Commands & Colors does for Napoleonic warfare. Peter B made the interesting point that this kind of reduced fire while moving actually makes more sense in an ECW context than it does for Napleonic warfare, which is a suitable topic for debate in the pub, but gets me off the hook anyway.

I am somewhat sorry that I didn't get to play with the cotton-wool smoke markers, as discussed last time, but no matter. Simple is good.

One other change I shall introduce in the revised rules is that Stand of Pikes formation will not be permitted in woods - in fact units armed with pikes will not be allowed to fight in woods at all. That was a stupid oversight on my part - the JBM assures me that big boys with pikes in the woods are going to get into bother, and someone will get hurt, for sure, so we can't have that. The upgraded rules will be downloadable in a week or two, once I've rehashed the QRS chart (which is the trickiest bit of the editorial process).

My thanks to everyone who contributed. There is talk of an ECW battle in these parts sometime in the nearish future, so a quick review of the rules was - how do you say? - opportune - yes, that's it. 

ECW - Possible Rule Tweak

My in-house ECW rules, which I call CC_ECW, are derived from the Commands & Colors: Napoleonics rules. They are currently sitting at Version 2.67 (dated 24th March 2017 - they are downloadable from a link on this blog, somewhere over on the top right), and I was quite pleased that - thanks to some welcome logic-checking and proofing kindly supplied by the Jolly Broom Man - I had at last got all the various bits (meaning the QRS and main booklet, really) consistent as well as up to date.

Having reached that situation, it's actually a bit of a disincentive to make further change, but I feel there is a change coming along.

Following some recent correspondence with Peter Brekelmans, whose 30YW rules (which are also downloadable here, from somewhere around the same place) are more sophisticated and more complete than my own effort, I came back to the rather mundane, though important, matter of whether ECW musketeers should be able to move and fire in the same turn. This may not sound like complex stuff, but it does make quite a difference to the game.

I know they had some pretty complicated ways of arranging for musketeers to advance or retreat while firing, either by working the loaded chaps forward or by working the chaps who had just fired to the rear, to reload, but this was not really when they were going somewhere - it was more like a gradual adjustment of their position. To keep the essential simplicity in the game, I originally allowed musketeers to fire at half effect if they had moved in the same turn. Intuitively, I didn't like this. It might be justifiable in a Napoleonic context, but not for the ponderous, nightmare ritual of reloading a matchlock.

So I changed my mind. Version 2.67 currently says of Foot that

"they may stand still and carry out Melee or Ranged Combat, may move 1 hex and carry out Melee Combat, or – provided the move does not bring them into contact with the enemy – they may move 2 hexes but may not carry out any Combat."

That seemed more historically pleasing - and the option to get a bit of a shift on when not close to the enemy is very useful for bringing up reserves and other strategic matters.

Only problem now is that attacking has become a pretty thankless proposition. Approaching enemy Foot who are in line means being subjected to heavy fire while being unable to reply. Why, one wonders, would anyone bother?

Now I'm sure that this is handled well and correctly by most of the established ECW rule sets you can think of. The tricky bit is doing something about it without damaging the intrinsic (tick tock) simplicity of the C&C mechanisms. During the period when I tried to educate myself to like Victory without Quarter, I got the hang of a rule whereby a unit which wasn't doing anything else could be assumed to reload - all by themselves - without a specific order to do so from the Earl of Essex (or whoever). In execution it was a little fiddly for my taste, but the idea was nice.

So I've been thinking about it, and I think I have come up with a minimum-effort adaptation to go in Version 2.68.

How about this?

When a unit of Foot fires or takes part in a melee, it is immediately handed a black counter (or a little puff of cotton-wool smoke would be rather cute) to indicate that it will have to reload before it can fire again. At the beginning of the owning General's next move, when the Orders are being handed out (activation from Command Cards - and I give the ordered units markers to keep track of where I'm up to) - once all the Orders have been allocated, any unit of Foot which has not been given an Order, and which is currently unloaded, may hand back their unloaded marker (or puff) - it is assumed that they will, all by themselves, as trained, reload, since they are not doing anything else this turn. If they are unable to reload (because - that's right - they are busy carrying out an Order to do something else) then they must stay unloaded, and they cannot fire until they have had a chance to do something about that.

It will, of course, be worded rather more concisely, but you get the general idea. My original idea was that this should only apply to units which fired, or carried out Ranged Combat, as they say in C&C. But a lot of melee action must obviously have involved firing muskets, or at least bashing the daylights out of them, so I felt it would be appropriate to assume that any kind of Combat would require a reload. Which then leads to another thought: should unloaded units be at a disadvantage if they are involved in a melee? Well, maybe they should. I might consider deducting a die in melee for an unloaded unit of Foot, or - more simply - just gloss over it and allow them to melee as normal.

Still thinking about that one. It also occurs to me that a unit which is already in a melee shouldn't be able to reload while standing next to the enemy, even if they haven't been given an Order to fight this turn - I can't see them doing a very good job of it.

OK - that's shaping up - I need to try it out, and I need to identify all the places where the rules need to be changed, so that Version 2.68 is as shiny as it's predecessor.

And then I thought - what about dragoons? And I said to myself, ignore them - they can already move and fire, and in any case they do not have much of an effect.

Hooptedoodle #279 - Jock and the Lottery

I received word recently that my old friend Jock had died - in fact I hadn't had any contact with him for nearly 20 years, but that just means that the version of Jock I have lost is forever a younger, healthier version.

Jock was a very amusing man - a natural extrovert, without the grating excesses which are common to such people. I admired him a lot. He had a hideous-sounding job - he worked as a general trouble-shooter with the social work department of the local authority in Edinburgh. His patch was the roughest, nastiest council tenement block in the city - a place whose name was well-known for the amount of crime and drug addiction. Jock spent his working day - and many of his nights - helping some of the most wretched people in the city, making sure they got their benefit money, met their parole officers, ate some actual food - he worked tremendously hard, he loved his job, and he did work which really made a difference. And, of course, he didn't get paid very much himself. He admired me, I think, because I had some knowledge of science and mathematics - things that fascinated him, though his level of understanding was roughly what you might get from the Daily Express or the backs of cereal packets. He used to watch a lot of science programmes on TV, though he admitted he mostly didn't make much of the detail.

One evening, long ago, over a beer in the Canny Man's in Morningside, Jock and I were discussing the National Lottery, in which he was a big investor - he was constantly on the lookout for some magical "mathematical" system which would land him a jackpot. I was a big disappointment to him; I had no systems, I didn't even have any belief. I told him that I didn't gamble, especially on no-hope projects like the Lottery. I related to him the tale of some of the actuarial students at my work, who had calculated that a man aged 30, a British citizen in average health, who buys a Lottery ticket on a Monday has more chance of being dead by the Saturday than he has of winning a big prize.

Jock was very impressed by this - and he asked me a few more questions about it, and he even (I think) wrote a few notes in his Filofax (remember them?).

I didn't see him for a while afterwards. Eventually I bumped into his wife in the local supermarket. We exchanged greetings, and I asked after her husband. She told me he was well, but very busy, and then she asked me what had I said to him about the Lottery? I had no idea what she was talking about, but then remembered, and said that I'd simply mentioned how small the chances of winning were. She told me that Jock had been very thoughtful about this, though he had admitted that he didn't really understand it, but since then he had started buying his weekly ticket late on a Friday - just to be on the safe side.

I still treasure that - a worthy memorial for my old friend, I think.

Hooptedoodle #278 - None of My Business

It's nothing to do with me, of course, but it does seem that that nice Mr Trump hasn't had a lot of luck since he became the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. Not a lot of good breaks, really.

I was interested to see how he would get through his official reaction to the terrible devastation caused by recent hurricanes without any reference to climate change. He seems to have managed OK, which is a decent effort, I would say. [Does he have an official reaction, by the way, or does his incontinence on Twitter serve in its place?]   

Trump as Charlton Heston
($30m of his campaign funds provided by NRA)

Mr T's comments following the terrorist shootings in Paris included his opinion that more liberal gun laws in France might have helped to reduce the loss of life. The implication, I gather, was that citizens on a night out would have drawn their weapons and had a shoot-out with the terrorists in the street.

Now he has to react to this latest abhorrence in Las Vegas. It would appear that the suspect (who had 23 weapons checked into his hotel room) was not a terrorist, nor any kind of oppressed minority representative, merely a nut job. You cannot legislate for nut jobs, but we should recall that Mr T has already shelved Obama's initiative to restrict sales of weapons to people with mental health issues. No - that's right - there's no point being wise after the event, and, as I mentioned, it is nothing to do with me.

So, beyond my shock and revulsion, and my sympathy for the Vegas victims, I now wait to see how he will manage to circumlocute the delicate matter of gun control.

It is worth bearing in mind that it takes a very significant terrorist event indeed to exceed the death toll of the average weekend in Los Angeles' ganglands. Of course, as we are told all the time, those guns are already out there, so we have to ensure a steady flow of weapons to the supposedly innocent citizens, so they can keep their end up. One of those citizens seems to have accumulated an arsenal of astonishing size, and to have taken half of it on holiday with him to Las Vegas. Just a bad break. No one yet has suggested that it might have helped if the concert audience the suspect used for target practice could have fired back with their pocket pistols.

None of my business, of course. I did not vote for the chap, I don't have to live in his country. On the other hand, if his crazy exchange of football hooligan diplomacy with Mr Kim is going to get us all fried, I feel I might just be entitled to an opinion.

Quite how the US can have a president who would be banned from most UK pubs and golf clubs for the way he conducts himself is a puzzle for me. If I get just one brainless reference to the Second Amendment in response to this post then I'll simply pull it - it's nothing to do with me anyway.

Of Young & Fogg, and Aromatherapy, and Other Things

Topic 1: Young & Fogg.

Here are a couple of well-known - nay, historic - wargaming photos from the days when the whole world was still black and white. What common element is in both these pictures?

Yes - well done at the back, there - the buildings are from a fondly remembered range marketed by Triang, which was most famous because they were made of rubber.

Clive, the celebrated Old Metal Detector himself, has a collection of these splendid little buildings, and there are some fine pictures on his blog [click here].

So who were Young & Fogg? Well, they were a firm specialising in the manufacture of rubber items, who were taken over by the Triang company in the late 1950s. The first result of this acquisition was a range of rubber buildings to suit Triang's Spot On range of 1/42 scale diecast vehicles (the range is attractively described here, on a link provided, once again, by Clive); shortly afterwards, the more famous, HO model-railway-sized Countryside Range appeared, which lent itself more comfortably to gaming scales.

I remember these very clearly - my model railway days were over when they appeared, but I was very taken with them - especially the church. I never had any. The most pleasing thing about them was that they didn't look like other model buildings - model buildings mostly had very straight corners and bright colours, and didn't really resemble proper houses. The Triang rubber houses had cheerfully quirky designs - Cotswolds meet the Brothers Grimm - and had a nicely distressed, rounded appearance. The one feature which was a problem in the long term, of course, was the material of which they were made. Rubber grows old and perishes. The reason you see so few of these on eBay is because they have mostly rotted and been throw away.

I acquired one of the churches last year, or maybe it was the year before, as a makeweight in a job lot purchase from eBay. It wasn't an important element in the purchase, and I was expecting it to be a wreck. It pretty much was a wreck, too.

The rubber had dried out and cracked and twisted - never mind - I stuck it at the back of a shelf somewhere and vaguely thought I might have another look at it some time.

Now this week, I came across the Donald Featherstone picture at the top of this post, and I thought, righto - let's have another look at that rubber church.

Well, it's pretty awful. It should probably just go in the dustbin. However, since I am a madman I did some online research, and it seems that rubber can be softened by immersion in various brews, and the strategic ingredient in these concoctions is Oil of Wintergreen. Hmmm.

Thinks (this should be read in Bluebottle's voice, from the Goon Shows):

(1) I could purchase some Oil of Wintergreen and maybe a few other cheap constituents, and I could stew my church in this for a while.

(2) It would lose it's paint, but when it was softened I could pack it with bits of wood and whatever else was needed to train it back into a church shape.

(3) Leave it to cure and then refinish.

(4) Be the envy of my chums (if I had any).

I'm not fired up into any state of fevered excitement. The first snag is that Oil of Wintergreen is not available in bath-sized containers, as far as I can see. It is prized in the purple world of aromatherapy [ah yes, quite so], and thus it retails in poncey little 10ml bottles, with an eyedropper and an art nouveau label. The prices are not amusing, either.

Which brings us up to date. Has any devoted collector of these rubber buildings ever attempted a makeover of this type? Any views or war narratives which might help?

All advice will be most welcome. In my heart I fear my little rubber church is, to use a technical term, knackered.

Topic 2: Who's this then?

Here are two Napoleonic-period British light infantry officers. Like me, you may feel that you have seen this pair appearing as a comedy act at a seaside theatre. The one on the left is clearly from Les Higgins, and he is there simply to provide a scale comparison. What is the one on the right? He is obviously one of André Maurois' Filifers. This casting is of a very gangly officer - one of his feet is interestingly strengthened by placing it in a clump of grass. I have some ideas about his origins, but would welcome some better informed views.

Any ideas?

Topic 3: Luddites' Cup - Inverted snobbery in the world of Tech.

Here at Chateau Foy we attempt to strike a balance between our love of the venerable traditions of our stately home and of our uncomplicated, rural life and the heady excitement of the rush of modern technology advance.

Overall, we probably tend to be just a little reactionary - I am subjected to much scorn from my son, for example, simply because I cannot see any point in being able to take photographs with my razor, nor watch movies on the tumble dryer. Some element of versatility in my assembled gadgetry is welcome, but I find too many examples of solutions in search of a problem to solve.

Now the Contesse has a Kindle Fire, which she uses to - any guesses? - yes, that's right - she uses it to read e-books. Good. It would, of course, be possible to distract herself while she was reading e-books, by also using it to check continually if she has any email - this is always a good way to avoid coming face to face with the exact dimensions of one's attention span. But she does not normally do this; however, the other night she decided to make use of the Fire's internet capability, and check her social media accounts. She received the warning screen shown below, with which we are delighted. This must get us straight through into the group stages of the European Luddites' Cup, surely?

What a fine achievement. Our son may be too ashamed ever to speak to us again, which is not an unattractive idea.

Talavera - (2) - The Game

Today Baron Stryker, Count Goya and I fought the Battle of Talavera, as promised in my last two posts. Of course it wasn't really the Battle of Talavera, it was just a game which had certain similarities. The set-up was mostly derived from a Commands & Colors user website scenario. I'm always a bit dubious about published scenarios - not that there is necessarily anything especially wrong with them. It's simply that, typically, they are designed to give both sides a fair chance of victory. In my experience, one of the risks then is that a closely balanced fight can develop into a slugfest, and little of interest happens until attrition has worn down one side or the other to a point where something decisive might become possible.

Definite signs of visiting generals - first session before lunch.

Looking along the field from the Allied left flank, at the outset. Spanish
battalion in the farm in the foreground.

Allied right, with the Spaniards defending Talavera

However, fear not - today we had an absolutely cracking game - it had everything. History was overturned yet again - the French won - just about. I was the unfortunate Cuesta, commander of the Spanish force, whom history has not remembered kindly. Typecasting again, I know. Stryker was an impressively dynamic Marshal Victor, Goya was Wellesley, with most of the work to do on the Allied side (since, historically, he had restricted the Spanish army to a defensive role, on the flanks) and with the constant frustration of not being able to bring enough force to bear where he needed it (as a direct consequence, so it serves him right!). We had a tweak in the rules: this was a battle of three armies - the British and Spanish could collaborate on the card play, but, since they had separate turns, could not co-ordinate any action directly. This worked out pretty well - by the time the battle was lost, The Spaniards still had more than enough troops to help turn the day, if they could only have been employed more usefully.

If this sounds like a gruelling session of frustration and frayed tempers, nothing could be further from the fact. The game had lots of movement - feint attacks, very exciting cavalry fights, astonishing, show-stopping volleys and even more astonishing complete misses - all conducted in a splendid spirit of enthusiasm and good humour.

The battle involved over 60 units - around 1100 castings - on a table of ten-and-a-half feet by five. We got properly started around 11:30am, and the game came to a clear conclusion at about 16:30 - and that included a sit-down lunch break of about an hour and a half, which is not bad going at all. The armies were tied on 12 Victory Points each near the end, but at the last Victor forced enough units onto the British-held ridge at the Cerro de Medellin to gain the necessary 3 bonus VPs, and it was a 15-12 win for the French. Very, very close - it really could have gone either way.

My thanks and sincere appreciation, as ever, go to my worthy collaborators. It was such a lot of fun that I didn't even mind about those deplorably streaky French dice rolls.

Well, maybe just a bit.

On the Allied right, Cuesta sees the German troops opposite starting a general
advance through the woods - this caused much alarm, but turned out to be a feint attack. 

In the centre, the key defensive point was the ridge at Cerro de Medellin - here three
companies of the 5/60th Rifles splash their way across the stream in front of
the ridge. They had a difficult day.

The French set about forming an attack here, but initially made slow progress.

Oops - a battalion of the Regimiento Ordenes Militares had the job of defending the
farm on the Allied left flank, but took fright with little real provocation, and
evacuated the place - these double retreats for the Spanish army really have the
boys running around! 

They were replaced by the Voltigeurs of King Joseph's Guard, who made a
much better job of things, and held the place for the rest of the day.

Credit where credit is due - the stand-out performance of the day came from
the French 15e Chasseurs à Cheval, who fought off all-comers on the French
right. They were still on the field at the end - battered but glorious. Special
mention in dispatches.

The French are still making little progress in the centre, as Wellesley brings
up the Coldstream Guards.

By this time, the Confederation troops opposite Cuesta have quietened down a
bit, so the Allied right flank has not very much going on.

But what's this? - Victor turns up some very heavy cards, and things start to happen.

Sudden, very rapid advance in the centre by the troops of Sebastiani and Lapisse.

Yes, this is looking serious.

To make sure their photo is in the report, the 15e Chasseurs pop up again,
this time on the end of the ridge, in order to (briefly) claim one of the bonus
VPs available. It didn't last, but the point was made.

The French suffer a few reverses in the centre, and the British defence of the
ridge looks secure for the moment, though losses are creeping up.

Suddenly, there is a rush of cavalry on the French right, near the farm. This is the
area where the British light cavalry fell down a ravine in the real battle, but
we didn't have anything like that.

What we did have was a sizeable clash of cavalry. All sorts of celebrity units - Vistula
lancers, KGL Hussars, even a unit of British Dragoon Guards. Very exciting.

The British cavalry was very successful initially, until they came up against
the dreaded 15e Chasseurs again, and everything stopped dead.

Over on the Allied right, Cuesta's infantry made a demonstration against the
Confederation boys in the woods. It didn't necessarily start off as a demonstration,
but it didn't go very well, so it became a demonstration quite quickly.

Victor appears to be calling down a thunderbolt on to Wellesley.

French now splashing through the stream, trying to get some purchase on the
ridge, and suddenly a few of the British defenders were dislodged. 12-12 in
VPs at this point - if the French can get 3 units on the ridge they've won the day.

Lots of desperate action from the Brits, while their Spanish allies are doing
very little on the flanks.

Here they come - the French are on the ridge, including - most impressively -
their astonishing charging foot artillery.

It no longer matters, but Cuesta is still disputing the woods on the right.

Heroically, but to no avail, Wellesley brings up the 16th Light Dragoons, his final throw.

But the French retain their foothold, and the battle is decided. Observe, if you will,
that two of the British generals are still on the border, and have never entered
the battlefield. Fane is in the foreground, Henry Campbell further away. The
French had two generals killed during the day; the British had two generals
who didn't turn up. Hmmm.

Over on the right, Cuesta's Spanish troops have kept the town of Talavera
safe and secure, which is exactly what they were ordered to do.

Opposite Cuesta the French forces look solid enough - Milhaud's heavy cavalry in
reserve and everything.

This photo to go to the Daily Mail, I think - and maybe Horse Guards -
Henry Campbell wondering if this was the right address - the game is over.