Change of collection emphasis (again!)

Regular readers of this blog will be used to seeing ‘a final’ stream-lining and re-organisation of hobby post and yes, here we are again! The boardgames get a slight tweak and the figures get a wake up call!

First the easy one - board games. The principle of reducing the collection to being based on ‘series’ rules, covering ancients right through to WWII has been embedded for several years, but every now and then, one series will fall out of favour, replaced by another. The recent tweaks pertain to American War of Independence, American Civil War, with Napoleonics  still under review.

My collection had an AWI gap and the problem here is that there are not many candidates to choose from, especially in the ‘series’ type of games. However, I have jumped (back in) to the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) games by GMT. I have been here before, but was not keen on the D10 Combat Table as D10 systems can tend to be a bit swingy - however, my view on this sort of thing has changed and I now see ‘swingy’ more as a mechanism to reduce the player having too much control of everything and instead leaving the local fight to the unseen colonels etc.

Anyway, I now have eight separate AWI battles on rather lovely maps - so I am looking forward to re-engaging with this.

For the American Civil War, I am returning to the Blind Swords series by Revolution games. Volume 12, First Day of Gettysburg, has just been released. The system does like its chaos and generally serves to reduce player control - something that I like. I did have the first four games in the series, but each had its own rulebook that was different in each set and that reduced my enjoyment, but now they have moved to a series based rule set for all of the games plus an exclusive rules book for each battle, which is much friendlier when playing across multiple titles.

I am starting with three new titles, The First Day at Gettysburg, Salem’s Church and 1st Bull Run. These games have replaced the ACW Battles series by Worthington Games, Rebel Fury by GMT and Great Battles of the American Civil War by GMT, which have all since been moved on.

Napoleonics have a slight log jam at the moment. I got rid of Hexasim’s Eagles of France series and dropped the Eylau series by Sound of Drums. I am left with two series, The Library of Napoleonic Battles by Operational Studies Group and Jours de Gloire by Vae Victis. I like both for different reasons, though both take longer to play than I really want, while the compact nature of JdG makes them easier to be left set up. The truth is, the Napoleonic series that I really want hasn’t been made yet. Regardless, to be true to having one series system per historical period, ideally one of these needs to go and one needs supporting, if for no other reason that then only one set of rules needs to remembered for good play.

I am still buying non-series games, but they need to work hard to justify the shelf space and wallet emptying.

Now the figures. Two factors recently gave me a ‘light on’ moment. Firstly, I have been collecting everything Epic (from Warlord Games) for a while. I had 7 of the large battle boxes covering 5 different periods, giving a total of 14,000 figures, with more Epic releases on the horizon and as a somewhat compulsive collector, they will be bought (the series mentality!) 

I was painting these furiously and not particularly making big inroads into that stash and it was clear that painting, something I don’t like anyway, was becoming the predominant part of my hobby time. I was in effect becoming hostage to more painting than I could likely do in my remaining years - a painting treadmill.

Secondly I recently read on a blog (sorry can’t remember which one) that the blogger felt that collecting in two periods was pretty sustainable, but that going beyond this becomes increasingly less so! This really clicked with me.

Looking at my stuff in that light, the two army pairings that I like the most are my 28mm Napoleonic French / Austrians and my 28mm Lancastrian / Yorkist Wars of the Roses figures. These collections give me a lot of pleasure and they are (to my eyes) friendlier to paint. Both these collections are still on the smaller side of things, but I like the idea of just adding the odd unit here or there as the fancy takes me without feeling like I am a painting machine.

I have just prepped some units (built and primed) while the weather still holds good for gluing and rattle can spraying outside, with enough now ready for winter painting … and no doubt beyond. With just a few units in this plastic / metal ‘pimple’ (as David from his excellent GHQ blog refers to his small stash - see link below), for the first time in ages, everything feels a lot more manageable and not at all overwhelming, so much so, I have switched off from painting figures over the past few weeks and have turned to building some nice terrain - very enjoyable.

The casualty here has had to be the reluctant selling off of my Epic collection and I must admit a slight ‘sellers regret pang’ when I saw a YouTube video of Warlord Games recent Open Day and they had an Epic Jacobite battle on the table that looked …. well like a Jacobite battle should, but then I looked at the new Napoleonic 28mm farmyard that I am building and calm was restored - as the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and your bun!

I am not decrying the Epic at all, I have really enjoyed gaming at that scale and it could have easily worked for me with the ‘rule’ of just two collections, say Napoleonic French / Prussian or ACW and Hannibal Punic, but my mindset is such that I see them as a collectable series and must have everything, my loss I know, but it is the way it is.

In the mix of sustainable gaming is the fact that my time is in any case already split 50/50 between servicing both board games and figure games, so there are always too many things to do next!

After a number of weeks of selling, the shelf clearance has been shockingly successful with all the smaller figures and associated terrain gone. Even as the 28mm terrain expands (only by a bit), I will still be left with controlled storage and more importantly to me …. a less busy mind.

Of course, there are still periods that I want, but today I am recognising ‘want’ as being distinctly different from ‘need’ and I will not be dipping my toe into anything new until I am satisfied that both the Napoleonic and WotR pairings are more properly developed.

A limit of two periods also means that the fewer rule books needed can hopefully become more second nature in use. It would be nice to think that I could eventually just get by on two rule sets!

For Napoleonic rules, I want to explore my recently bought ‘Soldiers of Napoleon’, which I hope will work for me going forward. If not I will revert back to Black Powder or even my own home brew rules.

For Wars of the Roses, I am going to have a go at ‘On Bloody Ground’, if I don’t get on with them, I have Hail Caesar, now supported by their excellent WotR supplement.

I should admit that somewhere amongst all of this is a yearning to get a plug-in’ to those joys of wargaming in my teenage years, when collecting and gaming just seemed a simpler experience and what you had was, well, what you had and greater familiarity with it gave a more enjoyable experience ….. though admittedly I did seem to have a lot more grey cells then and that may have had something to do with having a fuller and easier grasp of whole rule systems!

I’m sure that part of the attraction of Epic for me has been that nostalgic connection with opening boxes of Airfix figures as an excitable youngster. Ready to go plastic figures …… no multi build stuff, unless you were a WWII gamer and had to cope with such things as those wheels / tracks on the Airfix Churchill tank :-)

Anyway, there you are, an attempt at an easier life / hobby balance, for me anyway. The point being, I hope to game more and paint less ….. a lot less!

For those who have been long time readers and recognise this as just another probable seesaw moment of re-adjustment with justifications and are rolling your eyes right now, you may be right, but in any case thank you for your tolerance of all this navel gazing :-) …… though surely there is another like mind somewhere out there that might see at least some elements of this as recognisable, please let it be so! :-)

Thanks to everyone who visits these pages (and my Commanders site). I know I have my Comments turned off and this may change in time, but it suits me for now and I do appreciate every visit and the time that you give over to reading these posts. Norm. 

Resources;

David’s Tales from GHQ blog LINK

https://talesfromghq.blogspot.com

My other bit of web space …. COMMANDERS. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

The impacts of AI

The latest video from the Little Wars TV crew examples a scenario based around a napoleonic action near Talavera in which the scenario is entirely created by AI. They go through the design process (easy) and then play the scenario - a fascinating study in its own right.

However …. I say ‘created’ by AI, but here is the rub, the AI at this stage of progress only ‘creates’ by searching for data that already exists on the internet and mashes it out into whatever it is that we have asked for.

Being less polite, it plunders, blogs, books, works of art, opinion etc without regard for Intellectual Property or other permissions that up until now have at least had tacit recognition, in order to respond to the enquirer.

I decided to run a narrow test. I asked an AI program to build me a scenario for my imaginations campaign in the knowledge that my imaginations setting is unique to me - i.e. the AI would not really have many places to go to draw on material.

In this instance, it clearly visited my blog and drew directly on one of my scenario posts and pretty much reformatted it, but replicated it under the guise of its own creation!

It didn’t produce a map, but then I didn’t have one on the blog post for it to take. So I asked for one. Within seconds it had produced a map. It had placed the various commands in their proper places (left, centre, right), so this data had obviously (and cleverly) been lifted from my text, but when it came to terrain, it placed down a bizarre looking double hedge from one side of the table to the other - unrecognisable to anything that I have played.

The first thing I noticed was the remarkable speed at which this was done, it was lightning fast.

The text reformatting was good and generally accurate to my original, in fact probably a better summary.

But where there is no data to draw from (i.e. the map) and it is left to guess, then its weaknesses really showed up. The AI is not clever (the software is) or creative of itself, what it does is done with remarkable technology, but it lives off the back of others, a concern when the internet abounds with misinformation and other problematic content.

In one of my imagination story lines, Margaret of Anjou (a real person in history) visited one of my imagined towns and was forced to flee to an imagined priory 25 miles away when Yorkist soldiers entered the town to search. 

If a student etc was to ask AI a question for say, essay building, as to the life of Margaret of Anjou, would that essay end up including an incident of this Queen visiting a strange place in 1471 and having to flee to a priory and if that essay itself became data for other enquirers to draw upon, how long would it take for my little local story telling to become a widely told truth!

Anyway, until AI becomes more discerning and is able to actually create new ideas, we should be mindful that whatever is produced is essentially made on the back of another - everything has a price, including free internet! 

An old friend - Anzio

 After abandoning an old Operation Sealion game from a 1985 magazine that I mentioned in the previous post, which wasn’t working for me, I was pleased that in our latest face-to-face game, to get an opportunity to return to a game that I designed in 2011 covering the Anzio landings in 1944.

‘Anzio: The Bloodiest Beachhead’ was put out as a Desk Top Published kit in 2011 and soon after, a wargame company picked it up and started to arrange contacts.

Anyway, for a couple of reasons it didn't go ahead.

Last night's game saw a pleasing return to the game with both sides continually involved, looking for moments of gaining a manoeuvring or positional advantage or having to block off the enemy attempts at doing the same, on a map that is surprisingly nuanced, mainly because the road net is so important as mech units have a good chance of becoming bogged if they attempt to leave the road, due to the severe  rain / mud problems that plagued the campaign.

I had forgotten how aggressive the Combat Table is. It encourages attacks and the consequences reflect the grinding and attritional nature of the campaign.

Anyway, an enjoyable flash-back and I may start hawking this design around again, looking for a publisher.

Resources

I have another bit of webspace called Commanders. This is a bit more magaziney than here and gets update more frequently. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html