Not dead, just busy...

The Connaught Rangers turning to enfilade a mistimed charge by the Hussars of Conflans.

Official War Artist - Donogh O'McCarthy RA

What with settling in to the new posting, starting house hunting, mortgage application and organising a new bike, things have been rather busy of late. This has been complicated by a recent bereavement so time has been in rather sort supply.

I managed to make it to most of Leprecon which was great fun as always, despite Mrs. Kinch doing her back in a rather spectacular manner that involved night time ambulance rides and other assorted silliness. We played several games of En Avant which went very well.

The first game we played was Advance Guard from Steve's rather excellant site here.

The game was played on a four by six table with two battalions of foot, one of horse and one gun a side, the general idea being that both players are playing the advance guards of forces advancing to contact who discover that their inteligence about the situation is not all it could be. I will not go on further for risk of spoiling of the scenario, but it's cracking good fun and an excellant starter scenario for any ruleset. Highly recommended and my thanks to the Brigadier for writing it and Steve for republishing it.

The rules used were En Avant by Jim Wallman and can be found here. They're a diceless setthat rely heavily on an Umpire, but I rather enjoy umpiring so this is no burden.

The game played in about an hour and a jolly time was had by all, especially an old friend of mine, who isn't really a wargamer, but who managed to lead the British to victory.

Post Match Analyis

- inexperienced and gung ho players tend to use cavalry as shock troops, rather than allowing the infantry and artillery to pave the way for a devastating cavalry attack. This usually results in players "pushing the big red button" early on and frittering their cavalry away at the start of the battle.

- the idea of En Avant! as a Napoleonic roleplaying game is a good one and new players tend to find it easier to understand the mechanics of the situation when it is presented in this manner.

- for new players learning to manage the traffic jam of troops in a confined space is key.

Probably the key moment of the game happened rather early on when the French cavalry "balaklava'ed" and rashly charged the British guns. The British guns took to their heels, but the cavalry took a volley from the Connaught Rangers for their pains and lost the French General de Brigade to a stray round. This paralysed the French for a few key turns and probably cost them the game.

Our second game was "Hold the Pass" from Charles Stuart Grants "Scenarios for Wargames". This was a very tightly contested game and ended in a narrow British win after playing out the full twenty four turns.

Bizarrely enough the key moment of the battle occured when a British column crashed into a French line and routed it. Poor old Charlie Oman would have been horrified.

The day was also brightened by a very thoughtful birthday gift from Donogh of a copy of Phil Olley and the Brigadiers latest work - The Annexation of Chiraz.

The day that is in it, so it is...

Back from work, exhausted, but happy. Too tired to blog properly, but here's some content stolen from elsewhere.

Feel free to pass this list on and to steal the idea for yourself.

Stolen from Donogh's "Land War in Asia"

...who in turn stole it from "Victoria's Boys in Red".

"The basic idea is that instead of giving something in return to someone who helps you out, you give something in return to someone else in need. We've all received bits from our fellow gamers where we don't want to go to the expense of making a full order just for minor piece of a pack. And I'm sure that most gamers have bits lying around in boxes that they'll probably never use."

1/35 Dragon British Commonwealth Troops (NW Europe 1944)
1/35 Tamiya British Eight Army Infantry (Desert Rat)
1/35 Italeri US Marines M4 Sherman
1/35 British Universal Carrier Mk. II (European Campaign) x 2
1/32 Italeri PAK 40 AT Gun with servants


I'm adding a tabbed page to the blog so that people can see what I'm giving away* - all I'm going to ask is that people pay the postage (these are all pretty light, so even internationally it won't add up to too much). I'll weigh and price them over the next while for some likely destinations.

Obviously whether you want to do likewise is completely up to you and I won't put any preconditions on my sending these to you, but I think it would be exceedingly cool if this snowballs across the blogosphere!
If any of the items above catches your eye, leave a comment with your e-mail (I won't publish it) and I'll contact you directly."


*I didn't do this as I am a technological buffoon.

Review: Donald Featherstone's War Games: Battles and manoeuvres with model soldiers.

THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE—CHARGE OF THE 5th LANCERS.*

Drawn by R. Caton Woodville

This review refers to the John Curry Events reprint, which is available here.

The Duke of Wellington once said, when asked how he had beaten the French, said that the two military machines were like teams of horses all pulling towards a common goal. The differance he said was that the French made their plans out of harness and therefore were helpless when the harness holding any particular horse broke. He on the other hand, made his plans out of rope, so that when a part of the team broke loose, he could simply tie the two ends of the rope together and carry on.

This is a book contains a great deal of rope from which any wargamer worth his salt will be able to fashion any amount of harness.

Physically, what you get for your money is a slim perfect bound paperback of 156 pages, with a glossy colour cover and illustrated within with black and white. The print quality is about standard for a print on demand publisher like Lulu, so that while the text is perfectly readable, some of the black and white photographs are a little muddy.

In these 150 odd pages, the author offers a short description of the history of wargaming, a discussion of model soldiers and where to get them, including some advice on how to cast your own using plumbing lead, organising a campaigan, creating terrain and three sets of wargames rules covering ancient warfare, the horse and musket era and moderns (in this context the Second World War).

All this will be very old hat to the experienced wargamer, but the beginner looking for a book to start off with, this is an embarrassment of riches.

Take the Horse and Musket section for example, compromise only eight pages and are very simple. There are no complicated command rules here and the sections on melee combat and morale simply refer back to the Ancients set of rules decscribed in the previous chapter. They are however, surprisingly playable and accompanied by "Action in the Plattville Valley", a blow by blow account of a small engagement as played through by the author. The account has worked examples of several key parts of the rules, morale, fire and melee combat.

I often wonder when I read accounts of war game battles, whether the game described actually occurred, not so with "Action in the Plattville Valley". It is neither neat or simple and there is a definate ring of truth about it. The same goes for the rest of the book, which is full of sentences like this; "Wargamers Warwick Hale and Peter Pringle of Chatham have worked out a simple, but highly effective means of reproducing hidden troop movements..." or "It must be confessed that the question of how to fight a successful action with natives against disciplined troops has yet to be completely solved by the writer." All the suggestions, the advice and the rules in this volume are the result of years of experience on model battlefields, straight forward and firmly grounded in what is possible.

This is all good and useful stuff, but what really distinguishes "Wargames" from other books of the sort and which makes it attractive to the elder gamer who knows his way around campaigns and terrain construction and all the rest of it, is the sheer breathless enthusiasm of the piece. I challenge any gamer to read Donald Featherstone's description of Lionel Tarr's Second World War game, his musings on table sizes or his thoughts on the fun of campaigning without feeling the itch to get back into the game.

"Wargames" is a book of suggestions, advice and inspiration. There are three workable sets of rules in it, but as the author says in his introduction there are about as many rule sets as there are wargamers and the only person you have to please is yourself. I really don't think Donald Featherstone cares if you play Ancients or Moderns or Napoleonics or what ruleset you play, so long as you enjoy your game and it's that healthy and inspiring attitude to the hobby that struck me again and again. Featherstone's love for war gaming oozes from every page.

This post was cobbled together out of an old book review and guilt at not posting to my blog more regularly. Normal service will resume once I'm home again.

*This image actually has no connection to Donald Featherstone, but I feel it is representative of his love of colonial wargaming. I am also very fond of R.. Caton Woodville.

Back to hearth & home.

Back to hearth & home.

It's been a long road, but I've finally got my posting and while I can't discuss specifics here I am very happy. I am going back to Dublin.

Mrs. Kinch had a house viewing organised within six hours of my getting a station, though I really can't begrudge her; she's had the patience of the better class of Saint over the last year.

As for gaming, I haven't done a tap.

Edit: I really wish they'd turn on the heating here...

That sweet enemy.

The 8ieme Ligne march through an occupied village, somewhere in Spain, sometime before the 15-3-1811.

I am two and a half weeks away from my goal at present. It's been a long road and I'm desperately looking forward to going home. The exams are in full swing at present and are going relatively well, touch wood.

I had a spare hour before I travelled back to the Puzzle Palace on Sunday, so I pulled out a few figures and took some shots. It was excellent entertainment, but did lead me to believe that I should I plan next time I intend to do so, either that or invest in some decent lamps so that I can get better depth of field.

Above you'll see the 8ieme Ligne arrayed in column of route. The battalion organisation is as per Charge!, though the figures are based pieces of card for Jim Wallman's diceless Napoleonic's game En Avant.

I really rather like En Avant, which is a sort of diceless free Kriegspiel with miniatures, mainly because it gives me a lot of freedom as an umpire to improvise and adapt the situation to the players. Concerns like whether the senior regiment is on the right of the line become far more important to them when they don't have dice to worry about.

Obviously, the 8ieme deployed in line takes up rather a lot of room, a foot and half in fact, which is rather larger than the six inch squares on my playmat. En Avant lends itself to being played on large tables, rather larger than I have at my disposal normally, so I'm thinking of breaking the larger battalions up into smaller units for more manageable games.

Why the 8ieme, the 45ieme and the Legione Irlandaise?

Well, when I started to collect named units, I found that I really enjoyed collecting the British units, I'm very fond of The King's Royal Halberdiers, the Fighting Fourth and the Royal Americans. I found it very hard to stir the same affection in my breast for their Gallic adversaries, Brigadier Gerard being the honourable exception. I considered trying to fill a historical orbat, but I reckoned I would never be able to remember the different names so I came up with another method.

I like a little theatre in my wargaming - I enjoy funny accents, the aspect of roleplaying and the wearing of appropriate headgear.

The French are the bad guys in my games, unashamedly so, I always want to see them beaten. It's only really when you reach the Second Empire that I start shouting for the home of Dumas and Rostand.

With that in mind, I came up with a theme for my French battalions and which makes sure that each unit has a story that I can call to mind; I only field French battalions that lost their Eagles.

Enough rambling, I have exams in the morning and must go to my bed.

Blue Peter Special - Hill Tutorial for Jeff

Jeff posted in the comments section that a tutorial in making foam hills might be of use. I'm not sure how informative this is likely to be, but it is a very simple procedure and allows you to bang out hills at a ferocious rate. No sticky backed plastic is required, but it can be introduced at any point during the process without ill effects.

Are we all sitting comfortably? Then lets begin.

To start with, you will need.

Some foam - I used 2 inch upholsterers foam which I bought for €6. I'd already hacked bits off it to make some other hills.

A Sharpie or other marker to mark out the shape of your hill.

A scissors - any sort will do. You can use a knife or a special tool to cut your foam, but I find a scissors offers more control and is just as good.

Spray paint - I used Army Painter Green undercoat as it was what I had to hand. This can cost me €12 in my local games shop. I much prefer paying the extra few shillings for GW/Army Builder products than using car body spray. GW/Army Builder products are a lot more pigment heavy and are a known quantity, while I can't always guarantee that I'll be able to get the same brand of car body spray. Tastes differ however.

One thing that does irk me about Army Builder sprays is that they don't label the cans, which means that you can have problems if caps get swapped or mislaid. I always mark my cans with a sticky label to prevent embarrassing accidents.

And lastly, a template. I wanted to make hills to fit my new mat and therefore used a piece of corduroy that I cut to represent a ploughed field as template. This is only really an issue if you want your hill to be a certain size or shape.

I've marked out my foam using my template. My play mat is marked off in six inch squares, so I've decided to make two hills, one single square hill and one double square hill. There's no need to be punctilious about this really as you'll be hacking the foam about anyway.

I've cut out the first hill using my scissors. As I did not have a grown up present to help me, several innocent bystanders were horribly maimed during the process.

A wargamers life is one of constant interruptions and distractions from the task at hand.

I somehow managed to soldier on.

I cut out the second hill. Due to my improved scissor handling skills, only one member of the public was slightly maimed in the making of this hill.

Shaping the foam. This is pretty simple. I want to keep as much of a flat surface as possible for figures to sit on, while making a slope. Simply cut along the edge of the foam with your scissors or if the Sun is over the yardarm and you're already on your third gin and tonic, you can use your fingers and tear bits off.

I usually tear bits off and then neaten things up with the scissors afterwards.

Keen eyed readers will notice some French sneaking on to the field.

However on closer inspection it appears that they are not Frenchmen at all, but the green clad lackeys of Bonaparte's Legion Irelandaise - vile canting dogs of Mayo men to a man (boo! hiss!).

After doing the basic shape of the slope with fingers, I've started shaping the right hand side with scissors. I wanted to keep as much of a flat surface as possible, so the slope is rather steeper than I would like. I think next time I'll get thinner one inch foam.

Another interruption - one of Mrs. Kinch's odder relatives calls to check if Mrs. Kinch Snr has a print of Prime Minister Thiers. I scurry upstairs to confirm it, pausing only to snap a picture of the death mask of the Corsican Ogre on the way down.

With both hills shaped, I march outside while it's still light to spray them. Jeff was concerned that the propellant in the paint would dissolve the foam. I can't speak for car body spray, but GW and Army Builder sprays certainly don't do anything untoward, except to the pocket book.

Start spraying - hold one end of the hill and spray at a distance of about twelve inches. You will not get an even coat and the result is a mottled effect that I think looks rather well.

The hills are near completion; let the paint dry (this typically takes about five minutes) and finish off the unpainted part.

This is by sheer coincidence the amount of time it takes to mix a gin and tonic.

The Connaught Rangers and the King's Royal Halberdiers confront the Legione Irlandaise and the 8ieme Ligne somewhere in Chez Kinch. Note the very fetching hills in the background.

And there you have it.

Two serviceable hills in forty minutes including interruptions to fortify the inner man with bacon and cheese sandwiches, answer the telephone and mix a gin and tonic. Neither feature is ever likely to win any wargaming beauty pageants, but they are cheap, quick, practical and easy to store.

If you'd like the Blue Peter fact sheet that accompanies this tutorial, please leave your name, address and credit card details in the comments box below.

New Play Mat

A French Colour Party ambles past a farm house on my new play mat.

(Figures - Mounted officers by Italeri, Pioneer by SHQ, Eagle bearer & Officer on foot by Newline Designs and Vivandiere by Emke Art, House by Zvezda and ploughed field by Conrad Kinch's trousers. All figures painted by Mark Bevis of Micromark)

I'm looking forward to playing the forth coming Command & Colours: Napoleonics by Richard Borg. Donogh has a large collection of 6mm Napoleonics and we'll certainly get great mileage out of them. However, I've really taken to 20mm as a scale, cheap enough to allow me to field large units while big enough to give a sense of playing with toy soldiers.

I've also been playing Worthington Games Honour and Glory, which is a War of 1812 version of their Clash for a Continent game. It's Horse and Musket on a 13 by 9 hex board and has a lot in common with the Command & Colours franchise, though it is not in my opinion as good. I've adapted it to suit my own tastes and we've played a few table top teasers with it, but it's a stop gap until C&C Napoleonics arrives.

The problem is however, how to play both these games using my very pretty miniatures. With 6mm or 2mm figures, there was no issue; they fit rather well on the board that came with the game. 20mm figures require rather more elbow room if they are to be deployed in the sort of numbers that I like to see. Hence the new game mat.

Milton looks on, while I put the finishing touches to my new playmat.

I picked a green felt on a whim, as I thought it would be the most versatile option, though I may invest in another mat for campaigning in the Mediterranean. A flat green seemed a safe bet for a test of concept. Just over two yards of material came to twenty two euro at my local fabric shop. I agonised over how to draw hexes, when Mrs. Kinch, ever the practical one, pointed out that offset squares would do just as well. There may be issues with determining lines of sight, but after nearly six years of playing Memoir '44, I think we've encountered every situation you can encounter and if we come across a new one, we will come to some sort of arrangement.

Six inch squares were the largest I could could get away with, so I set to with ruler and pastels to mark in the square in a light green. Rather than mark out each square in its entirety, I indicated the corners of each, which I think is enough. These are clear for the purposes of play without being overwhelming.