Showing posts with label wargaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wargaming. Show all posts
6:23 PM
A very sad New Years this has turned out to be. A good friend passed tonight, in a one in a million accident that claimed his life. I met Father Mike Kelly at Saint Ambrose in Annandale, VA, and we became fast friends. Sure, I know we all say that after someone has passed away-- but in my case, it's more than a sanctimonious statement. Father Mike Kelly was a true kindred spirit, a self-professed history 'geek', a reenactor, and yes, a wargamer. I had Father Mike over to the house many times to play miniature skirmish games in my basement. He was an ardent player and passionate about history-- we jokingly dubbed him the 'minister of war'.
It's easy to like a guy like Father Mike. He had (still has) a big heart, was friendly to all and unrelenting about matters of the spirit. In the midst of my own spiritual crisis, I sought his advice once, about grief and pain, and he revealed to me how he got his calling.. not with trumpets and sudden revelation, but with the subtle whisper of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never gave up on Mike Kelly, and he taught me it had never abandoned me in the darkest times.
I had lost touch with Father Mike when he moved out to Front Royal, and from there to St. Francis de Sales in Purcellville. I wish we had stayed in contact, but he was always a very busy man.
Go with God, Mike Kelly. May you sit at the right hand of the Lord forever, you made a difference with your life. You certainly did for me.
2:45 PM
Battle of Honey Springs
From LPD Games
Lawrence Duffield (the one man in the one man band that is LPD Games) has offered up a rather nice looking free game on his webserver, LPD Games: http://www.lpdgames.com/index.html The new company has yet to release any commercial products, but at least four of them will be available in July of this year: Gettysburg, Across the Wide Missouri, Grant's Early Battles, and The Battle of Honey Springs (Deluxe Version).
The graphics and presentation of the material is top notch; I could follow the rules (from a quick glance online), rather easily. The graphics and use of color would rival any commercial product now being published, and has a certain "Clash of Arms" look to it. I find the finished games (available in July) to be a bit out of my personal price range at 56 dollars (prepurchase price), but the quality is certainly there to justify the sticker price.
Best of all, the regular (non-deluxe) version of Honey Springs is available for free download, here: http://www.lpdgames.com/gamehsbacw.html. The game is presented as a PDF download and will require some construction. A Cyberboard gamebox is also available for PBEM.
I love free downloadable wargames (duh), but one of this quality is a rare bird. I suggest you snap it up.
2:26 PM
Red Actions! Interventionist Scenario,
Setup and Turns 1-3
Last night we converged on La Casa Markley to setup a new RED ACTIONS! scenario, a rather speculative one based upon Red Russians and Poles versus Interventionist French and Americans. It made no sense historically, but it certainly was fun to play. Alas, with all the setup (and emergency mounting of my new Chekha units), we were late getting started, and could only play until 10PM. We made some progress. This is not a proper battle report, as we didn't get more than somewhere into turn 3 or so. On the other hand, we did test extensively the new revisions to RED ACTIONS! that (mostly) the Markley brothers have been working on. We managed to implment Leaders, Mob Rules, and refined elements of the combat sequence. When we finish up in two weeks or so, I will post a proper battle report.Initial Setup:
Looking South towards the Alliance (Reds and Poles)
(Americans, left. French right and in Trench lines. Militia in farmhouses up forward, left and right)
The Red Russians (my command). 2 units, conscripts. 1 unit, Regulars. 1 unit, Chekhists, 1 Gun, 1 MG, 2 units Cav (one Cossack, one Konarmiya). I gave the Konarmiya to John to balance out the turn better.
The Poles arrive. A mix of Conscripts, 1 Cav to start, 1 Gun, 1 MG, 1 Haller unit.
The French await the Poles and Russians in their trenches, beyond barbed wire. The conscripts in the farm houses are merely speed bumps to break up the attack of the Reds and Poles.
We didn't get far enough to report on much. We shelled the conscripts in the forward positions, somewhat ineffectively, thought we did manage to put on a few TERROR markers. They shot long range with an Infantry gun and Artillery pieces. My Chekists retired back into the woods, then streamed out and let out a devastating stream of gunfire on the conscripts in the farm houses. That extra firepower modifier comes in handy when you have six stands at start (one of the few times I've rolled on the 25+ table!). The conscripts lost a platoon. Then a cavalry close in infantry attack caused the to fall back, then fall back again. On the right, I was a bit crowded with the Reds so I advanced the Regulars up the right to try to flank the Conscripts in the blue jackets. They took such a hit from cannon fire and long ranged potshots that they retired away from me pretty onstantly. I moved my conscripts up, using the new MOB movement rules. They shot at stuff, not very well. The Chekists hardly had to do much but form a large fire group in the woods and blaze away (that's the closest thing to elite I have!). The Cossacks positioned themselves for a charge on the blue-coated conscripts (on the right) and caused them to retire in the face of fire. And that's about where it was by turn 3, where we had to put it on hold for the night. More on this battle when it gets completed, but for now I will leave you with this slideshow.
 | Cool Slideshows |
By the end of the evening... the conscripts had been pushed back dramatically without grevious losses, and were falling back on the American position on the Russian right, while the other conscript back was hanging out in the air after being charged by cavalary and shot up.
A most satisfying evening, I look forward to completing this one.11:33 AM
Another doom and gloom story!
The Cleveland Plains Dealer published a rather extensive survey article on wargaming recently, by Leila Atassi. It arrives at the same conclusions many articles of its ilk arrive at; aging gamers, competition from other media outlets, a changing audience, the glory days were in the 1970s, and yadda yadda.The full text is HERE
(you will have to give them some demographic info to see beyond page 1).
Certainly the hobby is not what it was, it certainly IS a smaller place than when I was a kid. On the other hand, I've never seen such an amazing choice of figures in my life as we have available to us now. Name a historical period (for that matter, name most fantasy or SF themes in print) and you will see a wargaming line devoted to it. Or multiple lines.
If this is the twilight of the hobby, it certainly is an easier, far more accessible hobby than it was in the beginning, when I was playing with Airfix figures (the only thing I could get my hands on in those bygone days).
3:57 PM
We're not quite this bad...
Close, perhaps. Brian Barling's cartoon on the geek today was a knee-slapper..
Click to Enlarge.
Copyright, 2007 Brian Barling. All Rights reserved.
12:52 AM
The hobby of a gentleman of leisure...
Check out William Terra's 1/20 scale model (with engines!) of the German Graf Spee battleship.
Suddenly, vast vistas of naval wargaming are opening up in my mind..
Jutland, at this scale, would need one of the great lakes...?
Yes, it's even powered...
This model shows some amazing detail...
Check out the original site..a>
1:44 AM
I'm good for a year!
Right about this time of the year, every year since I started reviewing games, I get a big "unload" from Games Magazine after they are done photographing their games of the year section. Invariably, it arrives right on my birthday or within a day of it.
So I call this my wargaming birthday present.
HERE I STAND: Ed Beach's area movement, card driven design on the Wars of the Reformation. Every game I've played in has been a blast.
ROAD TO BERLIN: from Avalanche. Another one of the Panzer Grenadier units, set in the final year of World War II on the Eastern Front. Lots of pieces, lots of scenarios.
SILENT WAR by Compass Games. I already had this-- this was my copy I lent to the magazine to take pictures of. A great solitaire design of the Pacific War.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT by Phalanx. Looks like another Euro. It reminde me of NERO quite a bit.
COMMAND AND COLORS: ANCIENTS I've played it several times but never bought it because it basically sold out everywhere. Lots of cubes and stickers to process!
TWILIGHT STRUGGLE Another game I've been very impressed with but lost out on the chance to buy because of a low print run. I'm looking forward to playing this one.
BISMARK: COMMERCE RAIDING IN THE ATLANTIC my first game of the Second World War at Sea series. I'm very impressed with this one... it's probably ten times more hypothetical than history but that's okay, I don't mind what if games.
11:51 AM
Otto's Paper Blog
In the post last night, I received a letter from my pal Otto. Inside was a legal sized stapled newsletter of about four pages doublesided. It was called WARS AMONG FRIENDS. It was a new project from Otto where he will send out game after action reports in some written fashion. It appears complimentary to the Society of the Daisy newlsetter I get occassionally. The first one recounted a game sessions at Otto's place where due to extensive remodeling they weren't able to lay out gaming figures.. instead, they played JUNTA from West End Games. You could hardly ask for a better alternative for a group of seven guys. Well, COSMIC ENOUNTER, maybe, or DUNE. In any event, I loved the idea of this pub a;nd it occurred to me that Otto is really publishing HIS version of what I'm doing here, with a lot less filler material. Perhaps I will call it Otto's paper wargame blog?
Keep up the good work, sir, it's an enjoyable read so far.
4:26 PM
Allan Varney checks in at the ESCAPIST
Varney, the designer of GLOBBO and Illuminati: Mind Freeze (aka Illuminati expansion set 3) wrote a nice general survey article about the problem of the lack of human players in your home town and how the internet is providing technology to counter the problems of physical separation.
Most of the article is a survey of available PBEM utilities and programs (such as Cyberboard, ADC2, and Vassal), most of which I already knew about. I thought it was a pretty good article but incredibly pessimistic about paper based wargaming, which I absolutely disagree with Mr. Varney on. I'm a little ticked about the "Elite" attitude demonstrated by console and PC programmers towards our hobby. check this out:
It would take a miracle to pull the wargame community back from imminent oblivion. But you know, military history is full of unlikely last-ditch victories. Wargamers should try for one of their own.
With all due respect to Allan V., whose work I enjoy (especially Paranoia).. maybe he should have done some homework (over on CONSIMWORLD) before letting fly like this broadside. The very hobby he is issuing a postmortem for in this article has been greatly reinvigorated by the advent of the Internet technologies described in detail therein. It's certainly true that we aren't enjoying a cornucopia of new releases these days, but respectable companies such as GMT and Avalanche are pulling of 2 or 3 products a quarter, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
I remember the days of SPI and AH (naturally), and people seem to forget that with all the gems being made in those days, there were PLENTY of turkeys...
