Pre-Crisis Eve - but not in Antwerp

Over the last ten years on this Blog, I've posted many times about the excellent "Crisis" wargames show, held every year in the Belgian city of Antwerp. It's my favourite wargames show of the year, with a huge amount of that credit going to the tireless members of the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp wargaming club, who year after year stage a terrific event. 

Yet, this year - 2020 - on an evening when I should be in Antwerp, with friends, enjoying a glass of De Koninck along a fine steak, I'm at home.  No doubt like so many of you, Dear Readers, from Alaska to Aukland - and everywhere in between - I'm "locked down", and the Crisis show is cancelled.

But that's no reason to forget the wonderful times we've had in Antwerp at the Crisis show, and to look forward with confidence and anticipation to a time when we'll all be able to travel again to wargames shows in places such as the lovely city of Antwerp.

Crisis is more than just another wargaming convention. It’s a perfect venue for wargamers and hobbyists throughout Europe to meet up and share ideas, experiences, roll some dice, play some games and buy (yet more) figures, terrain, tools, books and just... well, "stuff".

And perhaps the biggest star of the Crisis show is the city of Antwerp itself. Welcoming and friendly, and with a stylish and elegant old town, Antwerp is a great destination for a long weekend of wargaming with friends.

So, until we can all travel again to shows like Crisis, stay safe, Dear Readers!  Enjoy your Crisis-Eve, and Crisis weekend, even if at home.  Normal posting (and nonsense) from seventeenth century Flanders will be back in the next Blog post, rest assured.

"Come and have a Go if You Think You're Lard Enough": Southampton, 23rd March 2019

Regular readers of this blog will know that the odd break of a couple of weeks is nothing new. However, looking back at the last post - urggghhhh, sorry, it really is from 2018 - I do feel an apology is in order. Although I managed a couple of posts in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge over the course of the winter, it was far 'below par' by contrast compared to what I managed in Challenge VIII. “Real Life”, as they say, got in the way with a couple of pretty intense work assignments. 

It was a great shame, especially as I had some fun things to paint. But, please don’t despair! In our time-honoured tradition at Roundwood’s World of never letting work distractions get us down, I hope to be making good on those missed Challenge IX projects here, on the Blog, during 2019, now that “Real Life” has become normalised again.

And, as a sign of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the return to lighter evenings, and as a way of re-starting the blog for 2019, I thought I’d kick off with an “On The Road” report of a couple of recent gaming events I’ve been to recently.

First up - “Come and Have a Go if You Think You’re Lard Enough!”. No, not a late night exclamation around our wargames club tables on a Tuesday evening, but a cracking day of gaming and camaraderie in Southampton, England, staged by friend-of-the-blog, and all-round wargaming superstar, Mark “Peaches” Backhouse. Setting up any hobby event from scratch takes a certain amount of vision, and insanity. Setting up a wargames event, for 50-odd gamers takes even more vision and insanity. But, on the 23rd March this year, that’s what was happening in Southampton with a great days wargaming in a local community centre featuring 11 games with the theme of the TooFatLardies rulesets being used throughout.

A fine event, faultlessly organised by Mr B, and even featuring a fair few wargaming celebrities including Henry Hyde, Guy Bowers, Rich and Nick (my co-hosts on the TooFatLardies “Oddcast’) and Neville Dickinson from Minifigs, back in the mists of wargaming history. Yes, dear readers, wargaming royalty and glitterati right there.

The event more than lived up to expectations. I had two wonderful games of Sharp Practice, the first set in the exotic world of Boshin War Japan, and the second set in the more familiar surroundings of the Shenandoah Valley, circa 1863. The iPhone photos don’t do either game justice, both of which were umpired to the highest standard by Colin and Bob.

Colin's Boshin War action was a pretty close run thing. Playing the Japanese, my first instinct was to think we didn’t have a chance. Facing British regulars and a Naval Detachment of jolly Jack Tars is not a pleasant early morning surprise when you’re commanding Japanese ashigaru only recently acquainted with a musket. However, being able to defend their own patch, using interior lines, and having the help from a (frankly terrifying) company of Japanese police armed with katanas meant that the action was a very close run thing. Our Japanese forces captured the fiendish British and European merchants (no doubt confiscating tea, high quality writing paper, fountain pens and other vital European weapon systems), and almost held out behind improvised barricades until the last moment. Deeply enjoyable, and my thanks to my fellow players!

After a good lunch, I ended up helping (or, as is so often the case, hindering) my fellow player on the Union side in the second of my games at the event, staged in the Shenandoah Valley in 1863. 

Tasked with removing a supply column from the clutches of Johnny Reb, things were not going too badly about half way through the game. We had successfully extracted our supply column from the table and were then poised to gracefully withdraw our fighting formations to the union side of the river, out of harms way. Meanwhile, Union engineers carefully prepared the bridge for demolition. 

What could go wrong? 

Well, there are two fateful words in the previous paragraph - “bridge” and ‘demolition”. The dice Gods had their entertainment making the Union roll uncharacteristically highly, accelerating the speed of the demolition preparations, right up to the point the the bridge prematurely exploded, with the Union forces on the wrong side. As tactical disasters go, this was up there with the best of them.

We managed a 'fighting retreat', but as swimming the rider was not something the union troops had prepared for, honours were deservedly taken by the Confederate side!

So, two fantastic games, both played in a fine spirit, and a wonderful event all round. A huge thank you from me to all the players, umpire, attendees and a big shout out to Mark for organising the event. And, since we were interviewing a few hardy souls for the TooFatLardies "Oddcast", a big shout-out to Charlie also, who very gamely agreed to be interviewed by yours truly.

Next up on the newly spruced-up blog, I'll take a look at Salute 2019, before cracking on with some details of what's been on my gaming and painting table recently. Hope you can join me for that!

The Siege of Portsmouth, 1642 - The Other Partizan, 2018

You might remember that a while back I staged a couple of refights of the battle of Lützen in the Thirty Years War, using 2mm scale figures. Although most of my wargaming since then has involved 28mm figures, the interest in 2mm scale battles and campaigning has never left me.

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of joining my good wargaming chum, Mark Backhouse, in helping run his wonderful 2mm Siege of Portsmouth, 1642 game at The Other Partizan show in Newark, England.

Mark’s game is really fantastic, and graced the pages of issue 90 of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy – including a full campaign guide and ruleset. I really enjoyed the article, and was very keen to play when he asked me if I’d like to join him at the show. It also gave me the chance to model and paint some of Rod Langton’s wonderful 1/1200th scale Anglo-Dutch ships – more of which in a follow-up blog post to this one.

I’ve included some photos of the game in this post, which played very smoothly in the morning and afternoon of the show. We had a fantastic group of players through the day – thank to everyone who took part, and indeed for everyone who dropped by to say hello.

So, what made this game fun to play, and interesting to take part in? I’ve tried to set out my thoughts below, in no order of priority.

(1) Different Possibilities: I’m often at pains to say to my friends that wargaming in 2mm scale does not make a “better” wargame than any other scale, but it does open up a number of possibilities which can be harder to realise in the larger scales of 10mm, 15mm and 25/28mm. The ease of painting figures (really, figure ‘blocks’) in 2mm make armies simple to prepare, build and paint. (For those new to the painting process regarding 2mm figures, I’ve uploaded a guide on painting 2mm figures in the sidebar of this blog.) That leaves more time for terrain making and rules design and play-testing.

  

Mark made the Portsmouth terrain a year or so back, but added a new board in the space of only a week before The Other Partizan. As with my terrain for Lützen, I think we’ve both being surprised how quickly you can make 2mm terrain look eye-catching and appealing to play on.

(2) Helping the Figures: Time saved in painting figures and making terrain means that you can have more time to research, think through rules and perhaps be inventive in other aspects of the 2mm wargaming process. I think 2mm as a scale works best where the figures, the terrain and the rules work together. Another way of looking at this, is to think that “the figures can’t do it by themselves”.

Lovingly painted 2mm figure blocks – like Mark’s – catch the eye, but maybe not for as long as lovingly painted 28mm figures might do. In a 2mm game, the wargame creator needs (in my view) to offer something more, to supplement the figures and terrain. This leads a wargame creator with the opportunity to fill that gap with hand-outs, cards, play aids and other material which complements and augments the game on the table. Of course, this is true with any wargame – but perhaps even more true with a 2mm game, and certainly one at a wargames show.

Knowing that the 2mm figures need a context, a world in which to retain the players' interest spurs you on even further to recreate that world.

 

(3) Think Strategically: The 2mm scale of figures creates opportunities hard to realise in other scales. Mark’s game featured a campaign for the siege of a sizeable town, with events depicted including foraging, supply provision, naval blockade, reconnaissance, construction of field fortifications, field battles, retreats, refugees and amphibious landings.  Pretty much the whole world of the 17th Century Captain General.  The smaller 2mm scale of the figures allows a greater range of actions to be depicted than often occur on a wargames table. Just as the scale of figures reduces, the tactical and strategic scale of the wargame expands commensurately. 

  

So, in the Siege of Portsmouth 1642 game, scouting and reconnaissance, foraging and engineering were essential components of victory in the time context of the game. What resulted was not, of itself, a "better" game, but it was a quite different game to that offered in scales where the combatants just face off over a battlefield. 

(4) Make Your Own Rules: As a scale, 2mm is perhaps never going to be the first choice for most (or, perhaps, any) wargamers. For that reason, it is possible that there may be fewer wargames rules written for the scale than for, say, brigade-level Napoleonics. I don’t see this as a bad thing. It really forces a wargamer interested in playing a 2mm game to think about the type of game they want to play, and create rules to match. Any slight frustration at not having a well-used and widely popular set of 2mm 17th Century wargames rules to use is more than offset by the reward of having to research and write the rules ourselves, to fit the game we would like to play in this scale.

I should add at the end of this list that 2mm games do not have to be huge, or on a grand scale. We’ve had fantastic 2mm games on a table 2’ x 2’. The grander tactical or strategic option for wargames I the 2mm scale is there, but it’s a choice for you to decide if you want to take it

We also ended up winning the Best Participation Game Award at The Other Partizan, which was enormously generous of the show’s hosts, Tricks and Lawrence. So, hopefully, we’re doing something right!

Next time, I’ll look at some of the 1/1200th ships we made for the game, and perhaps offer some entertaining comments on how hopeless my attempts were to emulate the wonderful images on Rod Langton's website.  Hope you can join me for that!