2022 Christmas reflections on a year of wargaming.

Good Morning Dear Reader and Best Wishes on this Christmas Day. Now that you have opened your gift of socks (again) and eaten enough chocolate before breakfast to feel sick! perhaps a visit to Piggy Longton will cheer, regardless of whether you are ‘doing Christmas’ or not this year, here is just ten minutes of wargaming ramble as we move amongst the buildings in Piggy Longton to look back on 12 months of general wargame hobbying.

Our first stop is the Tavern. Excuse the bodies of locals sprawled across tables, still in their slumber from the excessive celebrations last night, after a ‘lock-in’ of hospitality at the expense of Landlord James Ackley and his son Osmund. 

Following the Midnight Blessing conducted by Friar Evian, Lord Darcy reflected on what a tumultuous year 1471 had been and suggested Evian’s ‘flock’ call in at the Tavern for sober reflection. Anyway, twenty minutes later, everyone had moved on from sober reflection to hard drinking of Smoggy Ale and now six hours later a certain predictable quietness has fallen across the hamlet.

Above - For the ongoing Wars of the Roses ImagiNations saga, 1471 was certainly a year of stories for the folk of Piggy Longton to regale to their children and for generations to follow. It all started in January when King Henry VI stayed briefly at the hamlet on his return journey to London. Yorkists, supporting Edward, did their level best to capture Henry, who had to flee the hamlet and go into hiding at St. Crispin Priory, some distance away.

On the west wall of the Tavern, a local artist has painted a mural, celebrating the opening battle of the year - the battle of Longton Fields. 

In smaller captions on the same wall, the story of Spy Master Jack, trying to discover the whereabouts of Henry, together with the first and second battles of Coron Tor (Crown Hill) and the two national battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury are each told in pictorial form.

Spy Master Jack - in disguise to blend in!

With Henry narrowly avoiding losing the crown in 1471, it is inevitable that 1472 will be an equal year of uncertainty as Yorkist and Lancastrian factions continue their struggle. Each of the actions from 1471 can be examined more closely by selecting the ‘Piggy Longton’ label from the list in the right hand margin of this blog (also in the resource section below).

Moving on to the Chancery (above) - amongst the parish records, we find a parchment that lists the games played through the year, a satisfactory number I feel. 38 boardgames and 28 figure games, with roughly a quarter of all the games played face-to-face. What has been notable is the benefit falling out from the repeat playings of the same game systems / rules, so the goal of reducing the number of different rulebooks that have to be read before getting a game to the table is continuing to take effect.

This is less true for our face-to-face gaming which tends to see fresh game designs hosted, though even here, some games, such as Bulge 1944 from Worthington Publishing have seen repeat plays, so perhaps a group of ‘favourite playables’ will start to become dominant next year. 

The Bulge 1944 map

The three most played boardgame systems over the year have been Jours de Gloire, Old School Tactical and the stand alone game, Plancenoit: Crisis on the Right.

Jours de Gloire (Napoleonic battles), is the most notable, as not only has it been the most played, but as a series, it was only bought into in June, so just six month of play has elevated it to pole position. I now have quite a few of their titles, so this should be a top system for 2023 as well.

Old School Tactical, by Flying pig Games, for a WWII tactical system is relatively straight forward and the components are very nice, so no surprise that it comes out so often. Last year I wrote a campaign system for it, so perhaps that will get revisited next year. 

Old School Tactical - Ghost Front module (Bulge)

The new module, Red Blitz, has just been released in the States, which gives an order of battle for east front 1943 / 44. The module uses the ‘pocket’ sized maps, so the blog will be showing a bit of that in the first quarter.

Plancenoit: Crisis on the Right (by white Dog Games) has been particularly productive. It has just 4 pages of rules and covers an action often overlooked in the examination of the 1815 Waterloo campaign. The Prussian army is pushing down on the French right flank, with an escalation of the fighting occurring at the town of Plancenoit, represented by a block of 12 building hexes on the small map.  This was also a successful cross-over game, as an interesting situation in the boardgame made it to also being played out on the figures table.

The three most played figure rule sets have been Sword & Spear, Valour & Fortitude  and my own Two Flags - One Nation.

There is no real surprise that Sword & Spear made the top slot as I have been using it for my Wars of the Roses games at the fictitious parish of Piggy Longton - though it may not hold the top slot for too long. 

I am feeling that it is a little too mechanically convoluted and so am looking for alternatives. The recent Historical Kings of War game worked, but felt a little too brutal for this period as there is a lot of longbow, which are very effective in the rules. I am just looking at Never Mind the Billhooks Deluxe. I have used the first version with success, so we shall see. I am sensing a trial game is very close :-). 

A gaming highlight for the year has in fact been the survivability of the Piggy Longton Chronicles for my wars of the Roses figure collection and the diversity that the narrative has been able to take in its wanderings, including to linking in with a couple of boardgames, covering the historical battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. 

It all started in late 2019 with a 1066 game (in 12mm) called ‘Not Hastings’. The battlefield had ‘Little Bump Hill’ with boggy ground at either end, plus some silly names to set the scene and two characters, Ivor Bigbut, local commander of the West Rottingham array  and Walter the Tight Wad, an Anglo-Saxon thegn from Piggy Longton in Dungborough. Though intended as a single game, the spoof setting grew some legs and here we are with a full cast of the living and stories of the fighting during the Wars of the Roses.

That Piggy Longton ImagiNation has survived 1471 and is now about to move into 1472 is a complete, but nice surprise for me.

Valour & Fortitude are a set of free napoleonic rules written by Jervis Johnson (of Black Powder fame) and available as a free download from the Perry Miniatures site.

I say napoleonic, but this is just the first use of the rules as V&F is essentially a game engine and it is the army lists that add the period / army flavour. The author feels the rules will be good for anything up to, but not including mechanised warfare, so much to look forwards to.

Two Flags - One Nation are my own ACW rules. Initially written for a hex based table and now being converted for the open tabletop.

These have been fairly solid for a while and seem to be performing well. They give an evenings game with 2 - 3 brigades per side, so divisional actions are being covered here.

The most disappointing aspect of the gaming calendar has been the failure to get my Midway Play By E-mail game off the ground, which surprised me as the previous Brandywine PBeM game had seemed to work out okay. It needed 10 players to get involved and I thought it would be over-subscribed, but no such luck. I managed to get 5 takers (thank you) and so this was kicked into the long grass - on the plus side, it did liberate my time to allow other things to become ‘pressing’ :-). 

A goodly amount of work had gone into prepping it up and I am sure that individuals locked into their ‘fog of war’ roles would have had a good experience, so perhaps, this may, like a Phoenix, rise from the ashes for another attempt at some future point.

Moving on to the Blacksmiths, above - we find a small collection of tools and artefacts  celebrating the history of technology. There is the usual stuff you would expect to find, sticks and tinder to produce fire, the versatility of the wheel and of course that most peaceful of discoveries for civil engineering  - gunpowder! 

There is no sign of 3D printing yet, something that obviously has not tickled the fancy of either Lord Darcy or Lord Trebian. I think their view is that they would just rather recruit their troops in the traditional ways.

In a dark recess are two great dusty books, one called Battlefields & Warriors, the other Commanders.

On opening these heavy leather bound tomes, we see that Battlefields & Warriors has been going for 9 years and this year celebrated it’s millionth reader - though granted many of those were bots, probably sent by Lords Trebian of West Rottingham and Darcy of Piggy Longton! There have been several times when the useful life of this great book looked like it might come to an end, but each time, a flagging pen has been re-invigorated as there has always seemed to be something to write about.

Between March and May, I closed the blog down to take a break, whilst deciding whether to continue or not, but despite that, one way or another, there have been over 50 posts made this year, most quite substantial and with some interesting systems and games looked at.

At the moment, there are 398 followers (thank you) and roughly 10,000+ visits per month (a drop of around 2000 on last year), so hopefully this is an indication that content still remains mostly relevant and that the book should perhaps be allowed to grow a little more. 

Thanks to everyone who has given visible support to the blog whether as a follower or by way of adding a comment, it is appreciated.

The second book ‘Commanders’ is my own bit of paid for web space. It is more ‘bitty’ than the article driven B&W blog, keeping current with projects, games played and whatever is dropping into the mail box. It is a bit more of a magazine read, the sort of thing you could browse through while sitting in hospital waiting rooms! I have no idea how well attended it is as I don’t follow the stats, but it is paid up for another 18 months and I quite like just dumping mini posts there, so there we are!

Moving on to the Merchant’s House, above - we find a room dedicated to the collections of a wargamer. On one wall are an array of boardgames, on another wall, figures, on another terrain and on the fourth wall - books and rule books, sitting on a shelf that buckles and strains with the weight of too much paper. 

There is perhaps another six to eight feet of shelf space saved, by a military collection that now sits on my Kindle device, which of course of itself is some sort of Harry Potter type wizardry. What will that clever Leonardo da Vinci think of next?

The boardgame collection remains fairly static at around 70 titles of various types. Buying this year has fallen on two main system groups. 1) The Jours de Gloire napoleonic series and 2) a re-purchase of GMT’s Panzer series.

JdG is a very cost effective way of getting small footprint games to the table. Amongst the titles bought, I now have the four main Waterloo battles, plus Aspern-Essling (above), Austerlitz and Marengo, plus a few other smaller scenarios. So far these have given thoroughly excellent games and there is plenty of play scheduled for 2023.

Panzer (above) is a very detailed game of WWII tactical warfare. It nicely complements the Old School Tactical system in terms of scale and detail, but of course also competes with it for the time and space needed to get to the table to be played. 

A section of map from Panzer

What I most like is that vehicle engagements get a chance to happen at the 750 - 1500 metre range for platoon / company action, rather than everything always fighting at the 300 - 600 metre Squad-Leaderesque type ranges. Of course, the latter is more satisfying at the infantry level game.

I would hope to see more of Panzer on the table in 2023, especially with infantry and artillery given a bit more focus as I get to grips with those parts of the rules. The next module due out soon, covers the desert, not a main area of interest for me, but from a completist point of view, a likely buy.

For a ‘non-series’ game, I have spent a bit of time this year with Plancenoit - Crisis on the Right. This has given some solo boardgames, a face-to-face game and also generated a scenario that moved to the table to be played out as a successful figures game.

This is one of several games that I now hold that work with just 4 - 8 pages of rules - very handy for easily getting games to the table, reducing the hurdle of pre-game rule reading.

 

Turning to the wall that houses the figure collection, it has morphed back slightly to multi-scales after the ruthless culling of 2021. The year began with a good rate of painting and building productivity, but by mid summer this had significantly tailed off. Some of that was no doubt due to the heatwave, but once over, the painting didn’t recover much - so who knows!

Epic!

Recently brought into the collection has been a bigger emphasis on Warlord Games Epic figures (above), together with an associated growth in smaller scale terrain, especially 10mm buildings to get Epic to the table. 

This is actually a Crusader command stand, but I will use it
for 1066 Normans.

There has also been a building up of boxes of 28mm 1066 forces in plastic, a little pointless really as they are well down the painting queue, but you know how it is. 

One of the kids bought me some command figures (below) for the Anglo-Saxons, so of course, these were obliged jumped the painting queue.

The 28mm ACW collection has had a couple of units added, as have the Wars of the Roses forces and for that, they have both become more established ‘Pocket Army’ forces, with their scenario versatility increased, but more are still needed. 

Behind them, 20mm WWII AB figures wait patiently to reach the sort of numbers that can make a first appearance with a respectable force on a 4’ x 3’ table and there are already a couple of scenarios in mind.

The forces that elude me for yet another year are the 28mm Napoleonic French / Austrian armies. I have them on the sprue, ready to get going, but this delay is the one that exasperates me the most and has not been helped by the distraction with 13.5mm Epic Napoleonic forces.

I have a bit of a problem with plastic cement type glues and effective alternatives are thin on the ground. The two products that I am trying at the moment are Rocket Plastic Glue and Bostik Power Repair. The Rocket is very good, less ‘fumey’ though slower to dry than previous mainstream plastic weld glues that I have used. The Bostik Power Repair is good, but the bond is not always good enough …. but then one should be more careful and not drop figures! :-). I have been using ‘no more nails’ for gluing to MDF bases (not plastic).

The best solution is to glue the plastic figures up outdoors in the summer to get enough stock ready for the winter painting. One joy of the smaller stuff is that they are pretty much single casts, so no gluing!

The wall with the figure rule books steadfastly refuses to give up its treasure. This part of the collection needs properly slimming down, but each time I go through the stash, the ‘get rid of’ pile ends up being either one volume or none! The 2023 promise, just like the 2022 one was, is to get on top of this, but it is an uphill struggle ….. say hello to the new edition of the Never Mind the Billhooks rules - Doh!

Ideally, I would like to have no more than one, perhaps two at a real push, ‘go-to’ rule sets for each favoured period. However, with modern superb printing outlets and options, I am seriously considering further developing my own rules and just relying upon them as a sort of Old School approach to wargaming, but having them printed into a snazzy looking, personalised booklet, adorned with pictures of my own figures and table etc and being properly bound - a bit self indulgent (vanity printing), but perhaps a fix to the problem of over collecting rule sets - and there will not be any codex! :-)

This is certainly not a case of thinking I can do ‘better’ rules than currently available, but more about doing stuff that is designed to meet my wants for fast play and being easier to retain to memory.

Each visit to the book wall has had the new edition of ‘Programmed Wargame Scenarios’ by Charles S. Grant, winking at me. I enjoy Grant’s works and this looked a great ‘wargamers’ resource. 

I was determined to get this started in 2022, but it became another goal that seemed like it might fail, but by chance, December brought an opportunity to use it in a game. This was recently covered here in a post and it was excellent, so there will definitely be more of that in 2023, including I hope, the visiting of one of the two campaigns covered - perhaps for ACW, as there is a ‘valley’ type affair. There is a definite resurgence recently amongst blogs increasing their interest in Grant’s scenario books.

The terrain wall is also looking like it needs some attention. After having had a massive terrain clear-out to get down to one scale (1/72 ish), the shelves creak again with these plus an infiltration of 10 / 15mm items and in particular, some lovely resin pieces from Battlescale. Time for another purge one way or another, but it is all just too nice!

Moving on to the bakery, above - which has had the sign vandalised to say ‘Fakery’ - grrrr, the youth of today! They wouldn’t have dared do that when I was a kid in the 1430’s! 

I don’t think 2022 saw any ‘Fake News’ posts or other injected humour and so there is some relief to discover as I walk through the door that such a thing as the jokey post can still make it to the screen, as suggested by this poster taking pride of place above the hearth.

It is not alone, there is a second poster, giving us a rather aggressive looking hussar, cast in the role of the ‘must win - take that!’ wargamer!

Perhaps some fake news as to what our intrepid man in the field, Monty Bartholomew ‘slackjaw’ Smythe, is up to these days might make a return in 2023, but I know he is very busy at the moment with Tommy Twoface, Madam Divine, Heartbreak Harry and Doctor Danny Dry-Brush, hatching a scheme to get Rusty Rowlocks involved in getting enough Stalingrad style city buildings together to do a city fight campaign - so who knows!

Moving to the home of the Wise Woman, above. With some trepidation I tap lightly on the door. I am invited in by a kindly looking soul, who for the princely sum of 3 pennies and a pickled egg, offers to read my tea leaves, which I agree to and I am told three things;

1. Always play for the fun and history of the game and not just to win.

2) Embrace every die roll, good or bad, it is just helping tell part of the story.

3) Never eat yellow snow!

I thank the giver of wisdom and take my leave, disappointed perhaps that she did not predict a fully painted napoleonic army in 2023 or at last getting the Cobra boardgame to the table - why does that simple thing continue to elude?

 

Moving to the Grotto, above - Mrs. Miggins’ Pie shop has given a small room to the Guild for this years Christmas Grotto and there next to a Yule Log, I see three gifts left for me by the kindly Mrs. Wargamer. How nice, let’s have a look at them. None of them are shaped like socks, so that is a good start.

First up is a book that the title cover alone makes me weak at the knees …. Essling - Napoleon’s First Defeat? By Giles Boué and published by Histoire & Collections. It is the first book of their Men & Battles series and I am immediately smitten. This could quite easily become a favourite book - I won’t even open it in case I ever so slightly crease the spine!

I wish that next year could give some focus to the 1809 campaign and this book, full of illustration and detail might push me a little harder to try. As well as the text covering the battle, there are a shed load of coloured uniform plates - marvellous stuff. If you are looking to treat yourself, look this one up. It looks like an Osprey book on multi-vits!

The next package reveals ‘Battle of Poltava’, a small footprint boardgame that certainly looks to be a players game. Oh, a little surprise - the map is printed onto a canvas sheet! I like its rustic nature.

Published by The Historical Game Company (new to me), they have several titles that follow the same format. This has 4 pages of rules, 48 counters, none of which are game markers and a pack of 20 cards. The cards support rather than drive the game. Each player has their own draw deck. One card is drawn at the start of the player turn and it determines how many units can move, how many can attack and will include a special rule such as ‘all units can rally this turn’.

This is of particular interest to me because many moons ago, I had a go at designing a Poltava boardgame and struggled to get anything meaningful from the low number of formations involved - even longer ago, I had the old Peter the Great game in the now defunct ‘Wargamer’ magazine, covering Poltava, so it will be nice to see a modern take on it.

I am trying to bring a few more small footprint, fast play games into the collection so that on our face-to-face sessions, we can definitely get to a proper game conclusion by the end of play. This one suggests 90 minutes to play (there are 24 turns!), so by the time you chat etc, this should work for us.

Finally, another parcel that adds to the fast play game theme. This one is Blitzkrieg to Moscow 2, covering Operation Barbarossa 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

The game is presented as a supplement to Special Ops number 10, which is a house magazine for Multi-Man Publishing (MMP). Designed by Yasushi Nakaguro, this game was originally a Japanese publication from Bonsai Games. Included are 60 large 1” counters, 12 strategic cards and a really nice spacious map that has large hexes for those very big counters.

The rules are contained in 8 pages and look pretty straight forward. The Combat Result Table is interesting, at first glance it only causes damage on a defender …. not attacker, so it will be interesting to see how that works and how or if the attacker degrades during the campaign. Anyway it looks like another potential hit for our face-to-face sessions. 

So thank you, the giver of kind and thoughtful gifts.

Oh wait … what’s that? It’s badly gift wrapped, slightly open and addressed to Lord Darcy from Lord Darcy himself - how strange. 

Pulling back the paper slightly, I can see that it is the new edition of Never Mind the Billhooks (medieval rules) - just the sort of thing that His Lordship will find useful next year - and the cheeky chappie appears to have been taking the gift wrap off for a sneaky pre-read. Whatever next! I hope he lends it to me for my next game :-)

Moving to Osric’s Chapel, above - this is a place of reflection and I see scrolls of the names of the brave souls from Piggy Longton that have perished in the name of the greater good. It is most fortunate that the casualties we create through our blundering, miscalculations and poor dice are no more than plastic and lead … reality though leaves us with a mixed bag of such things;

Wellington, a victor on the field of battle at Waterloo said “Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained”. My main reading over the past couple of months has been Tim Clayton’s ‘Waterloo’ and the accounts that deal with the pain of individuals on the battlefield, underpin that thought provoking, reflective and somewhat sadly insightful quote - real war and all its misery is just awful.

Blücher, the other victor of the same campaign, said “Raise high the black flags, my children, no prisoners. No Pity. I will shoot any man I see with pity in him”. A most unpleasant thought for a Christmas Day, though honest and true to that man’s hatred of his enemy and of that moment in time - sad really!

On the Quatre Bras battlefield, ‘Higonet’s men (sic French) were favourably impressed to discover a wounded corporal of their grenadiers lying, bandaged by the British with food and drink beside him’ [ page 208 Tim Clayton’s Waterloo].

I take my place on a pew in this place of contemplation and offer up two minutes of silent thought for all those poor souls around the world touched by war.

And finally, taking a stroll down the lane, I call at Beacan Farm, say Good Morning to the pigs and enter the barn. There isn’t much room inside as it’s full of winter feed for the animals. 

Pinned to the wall is the Wargamer’s Calendar and as I check through the dates for next year, I recall shows enjoyed this year, but also a couple of shows missed that I must catch up on next time around.

This year I did Hammerhead, Phalanx and the First Partizan and enjoyed all three, each seeming to have bigger numbers than pre-pandemic, suggesting a good bounce back, though the show scene now faces a new adversary … the cost of living crisis, we can only hope that the show circuit remains in good enough health to stay viable.

I have never put on a game at a show, a gap in my gaming experience that perhaps needs to be filled, but what and where, I don’t know. It would likely be something on a 4’ x 3’, intending to support the part of the hobby that games at home in that sort of space and which of course links in with the ethos of the blog.

Hill terrain with Victrix 12mm WWII figures

My two best show buys were hill terrain (above) and fields (below) from The Tree Fellers (Hammerhead and Partizan) and the Waterloo / Quatre Bras boardgame from The Little Corporal (Phalanx). 

I had to do a little work on the hills, as they had a lot of cliff edges and I wanted gentle slopes, but I like the undulating result. The Little Corporal was a new trader to me. He does all of the Vae Victis stuff and the purchase of the Waterloo module re-introduced me to the Jours de Gloire napoleonic system, which I have further bought into and as noted above, it has since been my most played boardgame system this year.

The Tree Fellers fields and PSC 1/72 StuG’s 

 

I also spy with my little eye that the WMMS Alumwell Show is back on next March, a nice surprise. I have always liked that show, being a regular visitor, but for a while now, it has looked like it was not going to return post Covid, so supporting a come-back is a definite one for the list. 

I shall trick Mrs. Wargamer into going, by telling her that I have booked a romantic weekend away for us - I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that!

Together with Phalanx (St. Helens) and one of the Partizan’s (Nottingham), that will make three for the diary, so looking for a fourth, perhaps it is time to do Carronade (Falkirk) as part of a holiday break, which I keep promising myself to do, while getting an opportunity to explore a bit of Scotland and taking some time photograph the Kelpies (huge statue structures of horses heads). 

A selfie of me, the one on the right, the cargo is all my party clothes!

So there we are, after our whirlwind tour of Piggy Longton we must now leave the Lancastrian stronghold, having been well looked after guests of Lord Darcy. 

Grabbing a ride on an oxen (above) pulled carriage with an unusual smell of goat and spilled ale pervading our garments, we move slowly over the ruts of Trotter Lane and start to plan our New Years Eve celebrations as guests of Lord Trebian at West Rottington, the Yorkist neighbour of Lord Darcy …… I wonder whether we will learn of any Yorkist plans concerning the ongoing saga of dispute between the Yorkist and Lancastrian neighbours, as 1472 opens a new chapter in dynastic rivalry - New Year Day will likely reveal all, perhaps you might check in and see what that day brings!

As always, thanks to everyone who has got this far.

New Year Resolutions are not a thing I give much thought to, but I will be exploring taking this blog into the territory of briefer posts. I was given some feedback earlier in the year by a visitor who had clicked onto the blog and then backed out … somewhat over-faced by the posts content. In an internet world that is very content rich while the consumer is mostly time-poor, it may be time to take that point seriously, as much for me as everyone else.

I shall be trying to keep the relevant / interesting parts in and the waffle out - we shall see …... it has been attempted before and this post doesn’t set the best example by topping out at over 5000 words!

Anyway, kind regards and best seasonal wishes to everyone, from all over the world, who reads my stuff - regardless. Norm.

Resource Section.

Further stories from Piggy Longton. Link

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/search/label/Piggy%20Longton

Posts concerning the napoleonic boardgame - Jours de Gloire. LINK

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/search/label/Jours%20de%20Gloire

Last years mega Christmas post. LINK

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-2021-christmas-wargame-gazette-45.html

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’ is being re-configured to showcase various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current ongoing projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com