Achtung Panzer!

 Today it was back to Chain of Command and our Abbeville campaign, this is the second phase and now the Germans are attacking. This scenario was to be 'Blitzkrieg' as per the 1940's Handbook, Matt had twelve support points against my eight, at first this looked pretty good for my put upon BEF but it was not to be. The British support could not be brought on the field until they had gathered two Chain of Command dice, twelve rolls of five, this restriction severely curtailed what I could use against the enemy and was frankly really bad news. Matt as usual had a cunning plan and he turned up with a PzIV and a Pz35(t) against my Boys anti-tank rifle so I would at least cause them to repaint the scratches if I hit.

Matt could have simply ran his tanks along the road and off the table, but he preferred to make a game of it in true gentlemanly fashion. He brought a couple of squads on in the large wood which covered most of one side of the battlefield and I met him with two of mine, I played aggressively despite hearing the clank of tank tracks and shot up one of his squads and brought down a Senior Leader. The Panzer IV turned up to support the Jerry infantry and I tried a couple of times to catch it on the flank but missed each time, but no matter it was not dealing out a lot of hurt and my infantry continued to pick on the second enemy squad who had advanced while the other withdrew. My shooting was much better than Matt's and his morale fell.

The second panzer now turned up and tried to motor down the road but again luck was not with Matt and the driver was having trouble getting the best from his engine. A good volley now hit the remaining squad and I captured a Jump Off Point so German morale fell to three, despite having a double move Matt could do nothing to change the fortunes of war and he called his attack off.

I had got off very lightly in this combat having fought it with only two squads while the third remained off table and my support had no chance of turning up until about midnight. Matt played like a gent and suffered for it as his attack just couldn't get off the ground. We talked afterwards and with the likely hood of three German tanks or four armoured cars turning up in the next game there was no chance of the British stopping a run for the table edge, so we decided Matt would win the next game and we will move on to the next table. Another difficult one for the poor British but with its own problems for the Jerries. This Abbeville has at least given us better games than the previous one.

I finished my American support troops a day or so ago, one more squad to go.

Tomorrow I will be heading north of The Wall to Leith as I volunteered to help Yarkshire Gamer Ken Reilly out with his award winning Italian Wars game of the siege of Forli at Claymore on Saturday. I have to be there by 08 double oh so it will be a long day for yours truly. A couple of my Grognard friends are making an effort to pop by. I don't expect to buy much but if I can find some stuff for my Yanks then I might get rid of that fiver I always take to shows

Mate Robert has been viewing my blog rants over the past years while continuing to recuperate from his recent knee surgery and to help him sleep, He has chuckled at View From The Window and given me stick for not putting a label on my wargaming journey through life so that he can find them easier, if you have missed these they are now under Why Wargaming, I am hoping to update this series with number 9 at some point soon.

I suspect the next post will be all about the Italian Wars. 

Horrible Year

 It has been just over a year now since the plague hit and we are still suffering from the effects of it and others who have their fingers in the Covid pie for good or ill. 

When the club shut down I hit the ground running, wargaming being not only a hobby but a passion which has sustained me for around fifty years. I at first turned to solo gaming, I then got others involved in choosing army lists, deploying troops or giving orders, this worked quite well and kept me in touch with mates. We also had a 'club' Zoom meeting courtesy of one of the members and his business account, where about half a dozen of us turned up and painted and chatted for an hour and a half, an excellent time as we showed off our latest projects, troops on the waiting list or simply talked wargaming. I also kicked off several Too Fat Lardies Chain of Command mini campaigns, again involving friends, the campaign theme continued with two WWI naval campaigns based on the Goeben and Breslau incident at the beginning of the war as the two ships made their way to Turkey. I seemed to be getting more wargaming done during Lockdown than I did before.

I also threw myself into adding to my WWII collection and went East and added the Russians, this fired me up and before I knew it I planned to build Berlin, well a shadow of the city, OK a couple of streets. Somewhere along the line I also added a British Airborne force for Arnhem after once again watching A Bridge Too Far. After about six months I began to slow down, what was it all about Alfie I asked, face to face gaming was still out as my little part of rural Lancashire was lumped in with the dangerous part and we found ourselves at Defcon 5 or Tear 10 or whatever. As my troop numbers grew and there was still no light at the end of the tunnel I did wonder why was I bothering.

We had to stop the Zoom calls and despite efforts to sustain the meetings they never again happened, I also noticed that our Facebook page had almost died a death as well, blog numbers were also down, a malaise had descended heading into the ninth month of hell. I gave myself a kick in the pants and along with the Berlin project I ran several online games over email using my mapping skills, I took part and I ran a couple for others. Once again these died off and I have to admit a couple of times I did think maybe it was time to give up, I bought an expensive game to play on the PC which took in the Russian front from Barbarossa to Berlin but have yet to really dive in, it did not scratch the itch.

In the doldrums after Christmas Warlord brought out their new ACW Epic range and this seemed to electrify people, I had 5,000+ troops sitting waiting for an outing, so revitalised I once again dived into a campaign and managed to get two players who allowed me to lose myself in one of my favourite wargame periods and allowed me to fight three excellent, nail-biting battles.

After this the dark cloud moved in again, a third Lockdown was taxing me somewhat. Another new project, Early War on the Ostfront, I also with some help and encouragement from other bloggers turned to trying battles using cameras, why not I thought, face to face is still a way off. These turned out to be very good, not as good as having someone across the table, nothing will beat that, but I played against some mates whom I would otherwise never have played and to my surprise I manged to host them fairly easily and everyone enjoyed them, I also played in a couple hosted by Phil Robinson and they again were excellent.

I continue with this blog as I enjoy writing and use it as a kind of wargaming diary and it has helped during the present unpleasantness. I am also involved in a WWII naval campaign which Rob Martin is running and I have a remote Dark Ages game on Saturday against Rob Broom. The 17th May and a small amount of real freedom is beckoning but I don't think we will be out of the wood this year, a dour prediction but I cannot shake it. I will never give up wargaming and will simply have to b****r on.

To end on a happier note, I went ahead and got the last of my vehicles, a StuG D, 250/1 halftrack and a SU-100 are on the way, and that really is it for battles in the East. Oh, and I get my second jab tomorrow, pity I cannot call FREEDOM!

Why Wargaming 8

It has been nearly five years since I looked at my journey through life from a wargaming perspective, I used the fatal words of 'almost perfect' when I signed off last time, have things lived up to that, we will see.

I had found War and Conquest and dipped my foot into traveling twice a year for games with new people and different armies, the rules reminded me of years of happily playing WRG 4th, 5th and 6th editions before 7th basically killed the community. The latter were seen as a move forward in wargaming mechanics and bringing the genre up to date, what it did of course was ruin what probably thousands of people worldwide saw as good fun just to be different, that trend continues. I digress, back in 2015 I was talking about maybe building another two armies, I built another three. I got three good years out of the WAC weekends before they folded, they did so for quite a few reasons, politics and personalities being first and foremost, a real shame, I did make some good friends out of it and we keep up through Social Meedja on a regular basis.

War and Conquest took up a good few years of my time, weekends away and as I said the building of three new armies. I made an effort to continue the weekends here at Casa Anderson as I have the room and could easily place four and at a stretch five 6'x4' tables in a 'closed for the weekend' Post Office, but that was a failure. I did however manage one small WAC weekend last year and also a Bolt Action weekend and both were a delight, I also managed some solo visits by friends which also were a joy, these along with my son have kept the home front going.

The club continues to scratch my wargaming itch and I can immerse myself with like minded individuals who know just how important the hobby is to we few, we happy few, this will continue as long as the club meets up on a Tuesday, no matter which games are being played.

With regular WAC games gone and no need to add more armies I looked around for something else to do and if you remember I was going to jump into Muskets and Tomahawks, for some reason this became completely skewed and I went for the Seven Years War about which I knew and still know very little. As I normally do I jumped in with two feet without thinking, I got rules and troops, I always need both sides and chose British and French, I painted up two small forces to try out Honours of War and then .... everything stopped for tea. I wondered what was I doing building up a large horse and musket force when I had between 4-5000 15mm ACW figures which hardly saw the light of day, how many times would I get the SYW boys on the table. I got an attack of commonsense and called a halt, for now at least.

This of course did not stop me adding more wargame figures to my collection, I then spent much of 2019 adding to my WWII terrain for Normandy, I now went a bit crazy and added more troops and vehicles, a lot of vehicles, especially German. Because I have been drawing maps and reading quite a bit on the Eastern Front I jumped for a Russian force, I tried to fight this urge and convinced myself it would be my 2020 project, but as 2019 waned my Russians were ready. I don't get a lot of WWII gaming in so why, why not came the reply, the same voice is telling me to get Volksgrenadiers next and up my Waffen SS squads into a full platoon, I do have plenty of British and Russians in case you call me out for lack of diversity.

My collection taking over the Post Office, more in the house.

 So the club is going well, home games not so much, I never seem to get enough, and it is the latter which is causing me to pause and take stock, I can still concentrate on terrain, especially for WWII for this year at least, but I do have to ask myself should I spend more money on forces which might only get used once in a blue moon. The money I have no problem throwing at suppliers due to the Legendary Map Fortune, it is the actual gaming side which has yet to catch up with the logistics or will I just never get enough, the latter might be truer.

Why Wargaming 7

Having put the wine bottles in the proper recycle bin I decided I had to get somewhere local or localish, I looked online for clubs in the area, anything I found was at least an hours drive away and driving around the Lake District is not easy of a winters evening especially not in the Batmobile which I am sure has skates and not wheels for three months of the year.

Then of course the penny dropped or the light bulb above my head came on, you get the idea, Lancaster! I checked them up online to ensure they were still operating and found out they were and HQ was still Lancaster Grammar School. I phoned and found out that they played Dux Britanniarum and was also informed someone else played X-Wing, so that was a good start, I was also invited to come along and see for myself, which I decided I would.

Like someone going on a first date I showed up, was welcomed and slotted into a game of Sails of Glory, during game play I quizzed the players and generally managed to enjoy a few hours with people who talked my language; history, soldiers, rules, games etc. I had also arrived just at the time a Dux B campaign was about to start, my troops were given land in Northern Britain and prepared to hold it to the last drop of their blood. All in all an excellent new beginning.

However, being human I still felt something was missing, the club tends to play multiplayer games and no one is left behind but I still wanted to fight big battles and looked at my now almost complete War & Conquest Dark Age armies and wondered if they would ever get out of the boxes. I noticed on the Scarab forum that a tournament was being organised at Wargame Foundry and for other reasons as well as wanting to play I decided that I would go for it, launch myself into the unknown, never having actually played the game being a minor problem. I was told the list was full, too bleedin' late.

I don't know what happened but a slot was found, perhaps due to my enthusiasm on the forums I don't know, but I was grateful, booked my hotel and impatiently awaited the big day.

I turned up at the hotel early as I met an old Navy buddy for lunch, I fretted away in the room until I thought it was the right time to go and look for a bunch of wargamers in the bar, I took a suitably military book with me for identification purposes and sat where anyone who looked would obviously see me as an old hand. I think what they saw was an old guy pretending to read a book making furtive glances around the place looking for a like minded soul, it was a mercy I was not told to move on. Then an opening, someone shouted 'Reece' at a guy at the bar, one of the players was a Reece, how many Reece's could there be in a pub in Newark on the night before the tournament. I gathered my courage, tucked my book under my arm, grabbed my by now lukewarm pint and trotted over to 'Reece', the blank looks on their faces said it all, there apparently were two Reece's here and this wasn't the one I expected. Mumbling wargames stuff, apologies and something about mistaken identity I retreated to my room, feeling the stares at my back.

The next morning I hesitantly approached breakfast, again looking for wargamers when I was confronted by a chap seemingly organising some other guys at the buffet and due to the miracle of the internet I did recognise from forum pictures "Phil Turner I presume?" The rest as they say is history.

Well there you have it my journey so far through a life of wargaming. I have now reached an almost perfect stage where I have a thriving local club and outside that I have had the good fortune to be involved in the War and Conquest world of a great bunch of people. We all know that wargaming never stops and plans for the future concern possibly two more W&C armies, a Muskets and Tomahawks force and I still feel a pull from WWII due in the main to the lovely figures and vehicles available, also when the PO does close I have a huge area to turn into my wargame room/study. Thanks for listening.

Why Wargaming 6

I had taken the monumental decision to leave the North Sea behind after twenty years of providing fuel for the country, after nearly twelve defending it, to live out the rest of my days serving the community...screeeeech. This is that bit in the movies where the dream sequence abruptly comes to an end.

Having arrived in England and somewhat settled into the Post Office and shop it was time to look around for some wargaming, as well as a choice of clubs I was expecting myriad wargame shows on my doorstep, most things that happen in the UK normally happen south of the border, little did I realise that that 'border' went as far south as the outskirts of London. The only club within shooting distance was nearby Lancaster and that was held on a Tuesday night in an old house on the edge of a nice park but next to what you and I would term 'bandit country', the kind of estate that you enter with your car and exit with nothing but a steering wheel. Anyway I went along for a few weeks before, guess what, the council shut it down, the club was then moved to Lancaster Grammar School as one of the founders was a teacher there and used his influence. I only managed a couple of nights as the strain of earning a crust running my own business and getting up at 0500 hrs in the morning to get newspapers ready was not conducive to happy wargaming. I was also used to having up to eight hours gaming at a leisurely pace complete with wine/beer/sandwiches and then a trip to the pub, not get there at seven, start at eight, finish for ten, I therefore left to concentrate on building my financial empire.

After a few years I felt confident enough to advertise for locals who might be interested in wargames, I put up some beautiful posters in the shop and waited, and waited, and waited. I eventually managed to get two people to try wargaming, it just didn't suit them and quickly I was on my own again. At this time I found Wings of War a WWI aerial combat game and something completely new to me, a card driven game which was immense fun and for which you could buy little airplanes, I bought 50+ (and re-painted every one of them) when the most you could handle in a game was about four, I was falling into a dangerous habit.

 I did manage to get my hands on a load of Wars of the Roses figures cheaply and decided to build up an army for the period, my son got interested and said he would do the Lancastrians, I of course am a Richard III fan and took the Yorkists. Real life intervened and Stewart had to give up, but he had painted about six contingents which I added to my troops to give a very large army or two smaller ones. The only gaming I was getting at this time depended on a visit from Billy in Scotland or my son coming over from Darlington once in a blue moon.

I went on all sorts of forums and wargaming sites to see if I could entice someone to come and play and generally had no success at all, there must have been wargamers in the surrounding area and I began to wonder if I should be less needy in my posts and maybe I should not put a picture in them. I eventually found Glynn from Southport who was asking for a game of Wars of the Roses and I offered to put on a trial game for him, he duly made the almost two hour journey and thankfully he was not a wierdo, enjoyed the game and after that we tried to meet at least once a month.

On one occasion he brought along some Dark Age troops and they looked so good I thought I need some of them. Wargaming had come a long way since I started and painting styles along with the figures and games available had dragged the hobby into the 20th C and we were spoiled for choice. I wanted to get up to date, and right at that moment along came Dux Britanniarum a Dark Age skirmish game, I jumped in with two feet, I was beginning to do this with frighting regularity. I changed my painting style, I tarted up my bases bought terrain and got a new table. I was still almost managing a game a month as Glynn had rebased some of his Saga Saxons for Dux B, then in a passing conversation I mentioned the new Old West skirmish game Dead Man's Hand. I was off again, figures, terrain, mats and a full Wild West town with around twenty buildings when in actual fact you only need about six, I called it Carefree, Arizona, where the only thing that flies is bullets! Come on, that's pretty good. I think Glynn and I only ever had one game.

Sometime later while at my sons we went to a show in Middlesborough, he decided to buy X-Wing and again I saw the cute little starships and despite being the worst pilot in the galaxy bought a shed full of stuff for the game, I have at last managed to go cold turkey with this game, although I still feel the need for a fix every time a new 'wave' appears.

So, almost no opponents and I start four new periods, I had sold all my medieval armies but still hankered after my first love of big games so I decided to expand my Dux B forces into armies, I looked at several new rules and settled on War & Conquest and began to once again buy hundreds of new troops as I needed two armies. My games were now down to one every three months or so if I was lucky.

Things were now getting desperate, I bought Zombicide as you could play the game solo and was surprised at how good it was and duly impressed with the quality of the playing pieces. I decided to try once more to get someone local interested, with Glynn I arranged that we would put on a display of the battle of Bosworth as Richard III was flavour of the month due to the finding of his body in a car park. I put up posters saying we were re-fighting the battle in the Post Office on Saturday the whatever at 1400 hrs. I duly set up the terrain and put as many figures as I had out only to get a text that Glynn could not make it, in an emergency I phoned Stewart but he couldn't come through at short notice, I couldn't cancel as I was expecting crowds at the door. I opened up at two and no crowd, not even a passer by, I thought of playing the game solo but gave up on that so I settled down and waited, no one would want to be first I thought, two hours later I shut the door having seen not one living soul, my wife comforted me with her kind words "I told you no one would come and to close hours ago."

I teetered on the brink of putting the white flag up and finishing with the hobby which had been a huge part of my life as I slumped alone in my favourite chair in the dark, empty wine bottles rattling at my feet.

Why Wargaming 5

Once again I made a leap in the dark and set off to Airdrie to meet up with another bunch of guys on my lonesome, you might by now be thinking, doesn't this guy have any mates, what's wrong with him, well nothing apart from playing with wee sojers while 99.99% of the rest of the community, friends or family do not. Is it not a terrible burden being in the .01% who are perfect, we wargamers have a heavy cross to bear, oh and if the arithmetic doesn't work out, keep it to yourself it's early.

I learned at my first visit to the club that that was the last night of the club and they were 'celebrating' with a huge Vietnam game, what, you are closing! The local politicians in their wisdom decided the community didn't need community centres and were closing them down at an alarming rate, but the club could relocate if it wished, and of course they wished.

My second visit to the new venue was much happier, I happened along at Airdrie at just the right moment as at least four of the regulars were building 15mm ACW armies with the intent to use Johnny Reb, and they were all veteran wargamers, my spirits soared. I had been playing the game longer than them and they all jumped at the chance when I offered some extra gaming at my place. I am one of those wargamers who like to have everything as perfect and trouble free as possible, attention to detail I like to call it rather than the modern medical term ACDC or whatever. I duly set up a beautiful looking table with my imported Geo-Hex, run off orders of battle and organised the troops in the brigades required for the game, for me this was half the fun of the game and I could spend hours at it. The lads turned up, struggled up the rickety loft ladder, enjoyed themselves and thus began what was in essence a small ACW club which met once a month when I was at home, and occassionaly twice if I had garnered enough brownie points with the missus. There was an added impetus to this as the council had by now shut the second venue and that left nowhere at a reasonable price available for a club.

I was still pretty much sticking to my one game at a time and exclusively played Johnny Reb with only one distraction when I built up some naval forces for the same war, these we played with only a few times, despite it being a good game. The others had a more open mind than me, Billy and Robert had huge, beautiful Napoleonic armies along with WWII, SYW among others, Robert's ACW collection was larger than mine, but was almost all Union, he didn't like to play the 'baddies', Davy had his own centrifugal moulding press(?) in his garage and had troops for everything, he also ran a club in Motherwell out of an old school or college. See, I do have some mates.

I popped down to Motherwell a couple of times before I settled on the guys at Airdrie, one of my first games was WWI, I was leading a bunch of German Stormtroopers to take the British trenches, it was a multiplayer game and someone else was the German supremo. My first WWI game and true to my expectations my troops were getting sliced and diced before ever coming withing spitting distance of the British, I quietly thought what's the point as all along the line the Germans were getting laid out in neat rows. At the end of the game while I was complaining ever so politely that the 'game' had been pointless, Davy asked our Kaiser why he had not used his artillery contingent to blast the trenches or lay smoke, as I left the building I heard in the background "we had artillery?"

I went a bit crazy with the American Civil War, I had been to re-enactments, visited loads of battlefields large and small, had thousands of troops, I had music cassettes, flags, a large library including the history of every Union military unit of the war from its enlistment to disbandment. I also had the Official Records of both sides on CD and could pull up reports from any action at any point in the war no matter how trivial. While writing a small article on the battle of Belmont I became completely confused by the official reports as although I knew all these regiments and commanders had been there, according to the written word they were all at a different battle, I couldn't make head nor tale of what happened.
 

128 volumes in this, now that is a good use of technology.

I decided to try an experiment, I got six players together for a large battle, I chose Drewry's Bluff in 1864 and I asked them all to write a report at the end of it and send it to me. Sure enough, it was hard to relate what I had saw as the battle unfolded to what was written on the reports, and as you would expect each general and his men had performed brilliantly, it was the others!

It was me who ended this happy state of affairs this time as I decided I had had enough of life offshore, my two sons had gone and it wasn't much fun for either me or the missus on our own for three weeks out of six, I was also sick of wondering each time I turned up to work how long my job would last in these now techno savvy days. I had been extraordinarily lucky working for Chevron UK for sixteen years but as they had sold the field and I was now a contractor life was not as good, I gave it another four and made my decision to leave.

However I did need to keep up my extravagant lifestyle so that meant working for myself, I bought a Post Office and village shop and moved south to live amongst the 'auld enemy' in Lancashire. My wargaming was about to come to a shuddering halt.

Why Wargaming 4

Just as things were cooling down at the club and games were becoming harder to get as WRG 7th edition did not go down well the hobby as a whole was expanding and some of the other members to my horror turned to Star Fleet Battles and the growing Games Workshop hobby. Also some of my long time opponents were leaving the nest to make their way in life and wargaming was a poor second to girls, money and booze, but I was a stick in the mud and found myself floundering, it had to be big armies and big battles for me, I refused to go boldly into space at warp factor five.

7th Edition ended ten years of medieval gaming.

My saviour turned out to be my cousin from London, you remember him from Part 1, well John had not been put off by my shenanigans with the wagons and had built himself up a couple of 25mm brigades of American Civil War figures. I played a couple of games on his bedroom floor while visiting from Portsmouth back in the days when you needed to be Alan Turing to work out when you fired a musket if you had actually hit anything, as you seemed to factor everything in from the wind direction to what the soldier had for his breakfast. John had moved to nearby Kilmarnock for a time and invited me through for a game now that I was a real wargamer, I duly went and we played a game in his garage, he had more troops but they were still 25mm, however the rules were a revelation to me, they were American and were perfectly written, no ambiguities and loads of examples of how to do this or that and they did not give me a headache or had me reaching for one of the new fangled pocket calculators which I had although I hadn't been to school in twenty years.

I immediately bought a set and jumped into the American Civil War with both feet, albeit I would do it in 15mm, little did I know it would be the death knell of my medieval armies and to all intents and purposes for them 'the war is over.' You really have to say that in a leering faux German accent for it to work.

The Battle of Newmarket with a fraction of my troops, and one of my best scenarios.

 Only one guy at the club wanted to play ACW and he gave up when he fell out with me after we had a shouting match over something or nothing, he was no loss as he once turned up to fight a campaign battle with 33 men, half unpainted, crammed in a margarine tub against a fully harnessed Imperial German army, I got the win by default. I then made the decision to bid adieu to the club which had introduced me to real wargaming and which had given me ten years of battles and enjoyment, but like the Navy it was no longer the place I had first joined.

I had just moved house and the new one had a huge floored loft area, I built an eight by five foot table, it had all the room I needed to store my large collection of terrain and my growing collection of ACW armies and everything else. I made it comfortable with flags and posters around makeshift cardboard walls, putting anything else up would have involved DIY skills and I do not possess them although my table lasted well. We sweated in summer and froze in the winter, but it was marvellous. I still had one regular opponent who was happy to play so although every Saturday was now out I always managed one while onshore from the rigs.

I needed to find out the colour of Union or Confederate guns and limbers so I put out a question in an ACW magazine, I got two replies and I am still in touch with both of these men after twenty seven years, however one in particular had a huge impact on my wargaming. Ryan Toews (pronounced Taves) a Canadian is an expert in all things ACW and if there is something he doesn't know he will find out, as well as tactics and uniforms his knowledge of ACW flags is second to none, he can look at one and tell you which depot made it. The colour is an olive green and the top of limbers should be copper by the way.

Ryan invited me to take part in an ACW re-enactment at Perryville in Kentucky, the uniform etc. would be provided and I would be enlisting in the 17th Mississippi Infantry Regiment. Having never met any of these guys I turned up at my American friends house and he put on an excellent game for me with his mates and looked after me. I then made my way to Chicago and met up with the Canadians outside "The Emperor's Headquarters," a legendary wargame shop the likes of which I had never seen before. The story was that the owner had made millions on property deals and started this shop as a tax loss or some kind of scam and that therefore he wasn't bothered whether it made money or not, I am wiser now and don't think this was the case. I duly met the Canadians and from the first moment they treated me as one of their own, we trotted into the shop and spent time and money over an hour or so. I picked up my first pack of Old Glory 15mm, probably one of the first ever to be brought back to the UK.

My third re-enactment as a Yankee, Ryan is in the middle to my left.

 The re-enactment was a fantastic experience, we were cheered through Perryville by the locals as we took on the dastardly Yankees and were offered jugs of iced lemon water as we lay about on their lawns. I saw a van covered in Scottish flags and heard bagpipes later that evening, I moseyed over to the said gentlemen who was in a kilt and a Confederate jacket, I spoke to him with an over the top Scots accent only to be answered in a southern drawl with "Gee, you're Scattish too!" I beat a hasty retreat. That was the first of three re-enactments I took part in.

As I buried myself in the American Civil War I had an idea that I could write just as good scenarios as those which came with the Johnny Reb rules, Ryan provided maps for the locations and information on numbers and weapons, I did my bit on this as well, drew the maps and wrote the introductions. I then took the finished product to a small printer and had him run off five hundred copies, that one book grew into a series and we sold several thousands over time and it was very lucrative, I am biased of course and still think they are the best on the market for the price.

As for wargaming the ACW my armies grew apace as I took literally thousands of figures offshore to paint during my two week tour and I could turn out a brigade in that time. I met some guys at a show and found that they had a club about half an hour from Carluke in Airdrie and they were just beginning to show an interest in the Civil War with Johnny Reb rules, I decided to go along and was very grateful I did.

Ninian Central, my painting platform geddit?

Why Wargaming 3

(This little series seems to be popular and now could possibly have been entitled something more esoteric like "Wargaming: My Journey", but no mind, I will forge ahead)

After eleven and a half years before the mast I handed in my ID Card and walked through the main gate of HMS Cochrane and realised if I wanted to go back in I would have to explain myself and have someone vouch for me then be quizzed about why I wanted to go into the base before I could walk through, a minute ago all it would have took was a flash of ID card. No handshakes, no flags, no bands, no enthusiastic crowds, and no thanks, I went in with nothing and I left with nothing, OK a superior attitude to everyone else on the planet, but basically off you go mate, go on, move along you can’t stand there, bloody civvy.

I was lucky to start almost straight away offshore in the North Sea as a Radio Operator. Now that the fear of providing for my growing family had left me I returned to the more important thing in life, wargaming. It was my mother who came to the rescue, she pointed out that there was an ad in the local paper where some bunch of guys ‘played with wee sojers’ just like me and were asking for like minded people. I immediately phoned the number and to my great joy found that they played a lot of WRG Ancients and met every Saturday in the local Community Centre, I was even offered a game. This was my moment to shine, although I had Scots and English armies they were not as complete as my French, so I would take them, I poured over the rules until the last minute and came up with several different compositions before arriving at the Centre on the Saturday, my first real game.

The club members were fairly young, at 27 I was almost the ‘old man’ of the bunch, everyone had an army of some kind, all 25mm of course, but they did lean towards medieval which of course suited me. I found I had been drawn against a Seleucid army commanded by a certain Jimmy Douglas, a big imposing kind of guy with a hearty laugh and a kind of wild highland look about him, he was the only one older than me. He said he knew me which was a surprise to me, later my mother on hearing his name informed me that he used to watch me in the bath! Before you gather up a lynch mob and leap to defend me it was not in a Jimmy Saville way, Jimmy was a neighbour and we played about as kids seemingly and he was always at our house and the bath of course was a tin bath in front of the fire. Anyway I spent some time deploying my army in a fairly usual way, cavalry on the flanks and infantry in the centre, and then off we went, within a short time I had been taught some very valuable lessons and my army humiliated without Jimmy breaking a sweat. His army contained ‘skirmishers’ and he handled these guys so well I was taking javelins from all sides without seemingly being able to do anything about it, his pike phalanx seemed to be recruited from ballerinas, tough ballerinas of course, as they seemed to be able to swing the big poles and form up on a sixpence every time I thought I had flanked them. And then there were a gamut of other specialist troop types against which I was also at a loss. I obviously had some catching up to do.

I turned up every Saturday I could after that and I fought the others and continued to learn, I don’t know why but maybe it was just the time but we almost exclusively fought WRG Ancients going through several editions, more medieval armies turned up and we always had at least four tables set up. Jimmy remained the man to beat, he didn’t appear every Saturday and eventually drifted away but no one except me ever beat him, he gave me a bit of a rep for arguing but in truth I was the only one who ever questioned anything while playing him and it was only on rule interpretations which, if you ever played WRG seriously, you knew would come up at least once or twice in every battle. 

I did get my revenge after weeks or months of wondering how to win, when I deployed my French with the infantry on the wings and my cavalry all in the centre, a huge line of nobles chomping at the bit and looking pretty frail to a Seleucid phalanx. On came the pikes while my infantry at last managed to sort out the skirmishers and others on the flanks being in much larger units than those opposite them, still the cavalry had not moved, still Jimmy did not see the trap. “Dismount” or whatever the equivalent is in French rang out as the phalanx was approaching charge distance, my vulnerable mounted knights now became dismounted robo-warriors and went forward in fanatical charges all along the line led by their king and his officers, the phalanx never knew what hit them and were soon fleeing for the rear, take that Jimmy Douglas! I was carried aloft by my victorious troops, no I wasn’t but in my head I was, Jimmy remained the best man and one of the finest gamers I ever fought but I felt the years of waiting had now all been worthwhile.

I even felt confident enough to try the tournament circuit and put my name down for the WRG 6^th Medieval tourney or something like that one year. The first army I fought was an early Spanish force, I was using Scots and I have to be honest how this mish mash of a force was going to take on the amount of spearmen I had was beyond me, I duly walked home to victory, my opponent was a decent guy and the visit to another club was fine. My second fight involved a guy who had went out on a limb and brought an Albanian Highland Sheep Herders army, and I can’t remember whether it was the early, mid or late Sheep Herders but I did know that even if they could handle sheep they couldn’t handle my Scots in a month of Sundays, again however a nice outing and my opponent wasn’t too surprised he lost. Then came my third combat, the semi-finals, this involved a young whippersnapper with attitude, I could tell right away as the atmosphere was as frosty as the white bases of his Viking super army. He had a plan from the outset and it involved hitting me with fanatical wedges of berserkers, in they came and knocked back my schiltroms, my boys fought like Trojans and I saw the surprise in his face as they halted the enemy. What I didn’t see and the absent umpire spot, was that because I had held his men I should have lost a -2 combat penalty and gone back to normal and massacred them, my poor boys eventually lost out having given their all. Another piece of wargaming baggage to carry around for all time. I don’t think I even got a handshake at the end, the lad just trundled off and left me to pack up my bravehearts, no more competitions for me.

I had also taken to writing for money to help with my growing collection of soldiers, books and paraphernalia, I turned out articles on many battles and periods I became interested in, at least two or three a year, not a huge amount by any means but they seemed to be well received and I am vane enough to enjoy seeing my name on the byline.

While at the club over the years I sold and renewed my Scots, sold my French, something which also haunts me to this day, built Normans and then quickly sold them as they did not like me and I didn’t like them, I still hate Normans, I also built Swiss and Late German, one to get a pike army and the other to get an Emperor. And out of them all my favourite, once the French had gone, became my Edward I English, a great army as ferocious for me as they were in their day. After almost ten years at Carluke Wargames Club WRG fell by the wayside and it became harder and harder to get someone to play a game of the latest edition, I was stuck in a rut, I had had years of battles and looked on myself as a competent player but it was time to move on to something else and maybe even somewhere else or I might find myself back in that wilderness again.

Why Wargaming 2

What I forgot to mention in part one was that apart from knocking down or blowing up soldiers and models the only other interests I had were comics, especially anything by Marvel or DC and Commando, no sport at all of any kind.

Having signed my young life away at the tender age of 15 to serve Queen and country there was no time at all for hobbies apart from drinking huge quantities of alcohol while visiting numerous bars from Vera Cruz to Singapore. I did however meet two guys who did play real wargames, I saw them peering over maps one evening on watch at a secret location outside Rosyth and knew right away that looked good. Back at camp one even showed me his large locker full of Napoleonic troops and I was astounded and dropped numerous hints that I too was a wargamer, which I wasn't really but I knew about it, these fell on deaf ears and I have had an aversion to Napoleonics ever since. It did show me a new world of figures made for fighting battles and not made of rubbish plastic, but metal of all things.

A lot of things change when you get married but one of the biggest changes for me was that I now had time to paint and a place to actually store wargame figures not only that more and more manufacturers were concentrating on providing said figures and rules, clubs too were beginning to start appearing. I continued off and on with my WWII interests but I had turned a corner and began to think of leading the Scots against the dastardly English. I heard about acrylic water based paint around this time and took a special trip into the dark outer reaches of Glasgow to find some, all that was available looked pretty fluorescent to me so this was knocked on the head and I continued like everyone else with Humbrol enamels. I also found a shop called the Dragon and George which sold wargame figures, the problem was the proprietor only opened when he felt like it and if you wanted twenty of something he had fourteen or if you came back in a couple of weeks he might have eighteen and he wouldn't stock such and such a range as they were rubbish, which translated as he couldn't be bothered. I have no idea what kind of business plan he worked to it certainly wasn't one which was supposed to make money. The bloke was a nice guy, maybe he just liked the idea of having a wargame/games shop but he was certainly of no use to me, despite this I regularly made the journey just to see the shop window.

Despite still having no opponents I built up Scottish and English armies and started gathering rule books, which of course in the old days were photocopies in A5 and cost no more than a couple of quid. I eventually settled on WRG 3000BC-1485AD I can't remember the edition number but these went everywhere with me, I was still involved in holding back the Red Menace and Yellow Peril on the high seas remember. I also had passed that point where I had 'come out' as a person who played battles with toy soldiers and suffered the slings and arrows etc. of barbed wit when I attempted to get someone else interested.

I had success in this endeavour at last when I joined the 'Sheraton' I actually took figures onboard to paint while at sea, we had a lot more personal space on a minehunter than a frigate, and I had started collecting some ships for a set of coastal actions, I can't remember the scale but some of the lads showed an interest. Two actually bought ships of their own and we had German, British, American and Japanese fleets, in between our normal duties we played games on the chartroom table and a couple of times on the bridge roof and foc'sle. I was still fighting medieval battles on my own on the floor of the married quarter as there was a limit to what these guys deemed a game, ships yes, toy soldiers no.

I think by now I had joined the Society of Ancients and also started my writing career with a three part history of Robert the Bruce along with thoughts on Scottish and English armies of the period, I still had not fought against another wargamer. I had bought a book on heraldry and there was a beautiful pull out of French coats of arms for the early 14th C so I began a French army, this was to be my most professional yet. Block painting, enamels, flags and banners done by hand and no washes or inks in them days but it still looked good. Figure manufacturers were beginning to put more effort into soldiers which were not Napoleonics and the WRG Ian Heath books had a large effect on this, there were some dreadful attempts at medieval troops back then, the best were Ral Partha which I think became Citadel. My Scots contained a lot of these with their hands drilled out for spears, a drill for heaven's sake, I had to get a mate to do that for me it was so specialised, I never dreamed of doing it myself.

I was so proud of my French that I took a mounted knight unit along to one of the first wargame shows I ever attended at the MacLellan Galleries in Glasgow, a unit should have been no more than 30 figures, one prat laid out an entire Ottoman Turkish army against which my poor knights looked pathetic. To make matters worse I later overheard the judges say that up until the Ottomans turned up my knights were going to be first, I slunk back to Helensburgh gutted.

So, as I approached demob having done my bit with the Iron Curtain teetering and the Navy not being what it was when I joined up I had three armies and no opponents but yet still a burning desire to be a proper wargamer.