View From The Window

Well I am up fairly early this morning, nothing is stirring and it looks kind of light grey, I can't see Ingleborough through the gap but at least it is dry. I think the interest in Washington House has evaporated it is still up for sale and I have not seen the interested party around for a while. We are approaching that time of year of course when houses just do not shift, we had quite a few new people arrive during the summer, and I use the term loosely, they pop in to the PO just to be nosy then they might just as well fall off the edge of the world as we never see them again.

I read this week that some boffins in Sweden I believe have discovered that peas have something in them that fight cancer, but I wouldn't go running off to Aldi to stock up on peas if I were you, this is where I would normally say take it with a pinch of salt, but of course that is a no no. Remember when the scientists decided that red wine, butter, steaks, lard and a huge amount of other things which you enjoyed were all bad for you, then slowly all these things have been brought back into the fold but tagged with the usual get out clause 'in moderation' just in case you have a lawyer on tap. No sooner does someone tell you something than another person just as qualified tells you the opposite.

These absurdities are everywhere, if you want out of the EU we sell more to it then we buy, if you are for staying in you shout we could not survive without their imports, if you are an Eco warrior you can say we are all going to drown in rising seas, if not you can point out that the planet stopped warming up nineteen years ago at half past eleven on 14th March and both sides have data to 'prove' their argument. An environmental group in the Netherlands sued their own government over some emission thing or other, why would you do that to your own country, how can a minority fringe cult sue the government to the detriment of the majority and get away with it, madness.

I am going under the knife again tomorrow morning, I asked a doctor three years ago about a spot on my cheek and was told it was nothing, I asked again about three months ago to be told it is a skin cancer, no wonder I am a cynic. I had waited eleven weeks so far to get an appointment which I was told is normally sixteen weeks, I got a cancellation on Friday, I trotted off to the appointment with my usual large book to while away the hours before the doctor would actually see me. Well, blow me down with a feather, I was taken within five minutes and I had turned up early, the Doc agreed that it was a cancer, also that if I was ever going to get cancer that was the one to get and it was also growing in the right direction so the scar would be minimal when they cut it out, lucky me I said. I was escorted out and given an appointment for the surgery by the receptionist, wait a minute, this is for this Monday, a mere two days hence, something must be wrong, no all is in order said the overweight girl with shrapnel hanging from her ears. Despite being in shock I gave her a polite smile thanked her profusely and said I'll see her again on Monday.

On the subject of health I take pills for diabetes, which I personally am not convinced I have, but of course you never know (see above), so if I am not careful I might lose my sight or my legs, I probably won't but just in case that lawyer is around it is on the information leaflet. I have a blood disorder, this can attack my liver or heart, again I have had it for sixty odd years and as far as I know after all the tests both organs are functioning as they would when sixty years old. I got leg cramps a few nights back and as I have been given yet another type of pill I checked it, the only side effect it doesn't have is turning you into a dog at the full moon, the worst of the effects would kill me within three days, obviously one from the kill or cure school. Another, which I threw in the bin would have given me ankles like tree trunks and worst of all, the one we all fear, right there at the top "NO ALCOHOL". AAAaaaaagh! Naturally I googled this and was reassured by the same answer on a multitude of forums, it was healthspeak for 'in moderation'.

I may as well stick with health, what about the buy who bought the drug company and then raised the price of a drug sold for something like $5 to $750! The hue and cry has of course now died down and he has been forgotten by the majority of us who move on to the next knee jerk headline while he runs off to the bank and the poor people who need the drug agonise over where the money will come from.

The village is waking up now, a couple of lady joggers have run past, the traffic is building up and a half naked male jogger has just raced past, put a shirt on mate believe me you are no ..... eh...... muscley guy, so there.

Roman Generals

I have managed despite the upheaval to complete my leaders for the Romans along with the rally point which is needed for War & Conquest, although the latter can be anything most people go overboard a bit and enjoy themselves with little vignettes applicable to their chosen armies. The Medicus from Warlord Games is my first effort, I still need something better than tents for the Romano-British and Saxons, the next time I get to a show I shall keep my eyes open for inspiration.

Marcus Aurelius, Emperor.

Giaus Avidius Cassius, Consul

Medicus and as usual someone waiting attention.

Our man under the knife, the gag is a nice touch.

Tribunes or Centurions as required.

And there you go, next up some casualty markers, a couple of hours at the most then it will either be the Praetorians or an Auxiliary cavalry unit. I can easily field a 2000 point army at the moment but I would like a cheaper choice of cavalry than having to take the cataphracts, but we will see I still have a day or so to make my mind up.

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.

Balloon Busting

Clubbing last night after my lapse last week. There were three of us playing so I set up a balloon busting scenario, one defender and two attackers, the defender had three planes and a few machine guns on the ground while the attackers had two planes each. For the allies there was a Spad XIII and two Nieuport 17's while the Boche had two Pfalz DIII's and two Albatros DVa's, overall superior to the French  but the AA machine guns I hoped would even things up. I was the defender in the first game and off we went, it looked like a good start as I had my two N17's closing on a lone Albatros while the Spad went hairing through the two Pfalz's, it is very fast but needs almost the whole of Northern France to turn. As I threw my planes into Immelman's for get behind the Germans there was a catastrophic explosion and then no balloon, turn two game over.

Up goes the balloon.

 We swapped around and Simon took the French this time, I had the nice blue Jasta 15 Pfalz's, much good it did me. I concentrated on hitting the balloon, hoping it would catch fire, so to my peril I ignored the two Nieuport's which managed to get on my tail and commenced giving me jip. Meanwhile Andy was getting shot up by ground fire, and only managed one or two shots before breaking off, with one Albatross in flames. I kept to my plan but the dirigible refused to light up,  Andy had the incendiary bullets, one of my planes hit the deck while the other suffered from rudder jams and smoke coming from the engine, having had enough he limped off the table as did the remaining badly damaged Albatros. Dire stuff from the Luftstreitkrafte.

Vorwarts!

 

The flames edge towards the incendiary bullets.

Discretion is the better part of valour as I head for home.

We still had time for one more game, so it was a three way fight, winner take all. Simon and I had Fokker DVII's and Andy a Fokker DVIII. After much manouvering I got the bead on Andy and sent him spiralling to the floor but I had taken quite a bit of damage doing it, I was hindered in closing with Simon as my rudder jammed at a most inopportune time, my engine was also causing me problems. As we made a head on pass I took enough shots to send me earthwards.

And that was it, three games and some fun, elsewhere we had Saga with the large units, a Spear and Sword game but I am unsure of the armies, not a lot seems to happen in that game, some action on the flanks while the rest of the armies sit in a line staring at each other, but that is from the sidelines. There was also a large Frostgrave game under way and the boardgame this week was the English Civil War.

Winter is closing in as this was the first Tuesday that it was dark when I arrived at the club.

It's Not All Reminiscing

Well the stinking weather is back so now we have to look forward to next summer before we get some heat. I was hoping to show you my Roman generals but the house is in turmoil with builders and visitors so my painting station is now in the study parked on the side of the PC right next to the window and it is not the best place to relax and paint. Therefore I have only completed my Emperor who will be Marcus Aurelius and his second in command Giaus Avidius Cassius, I was thinking of having Cassius as the top man as he fought in the East and even made his own grab for the Imperial throne but I am a sucker for Emperor's. Both these guys have others on the base to show how important they are so I haven't just painted two figures in the last week or more, five actually.

Marcus.

I will be back at the club tomorrow night and want to take my Wings of War stuff as I don't play enough of it and it will give me something else to write about.

A previous large balloon busting game at home.

 I only have one map project at the moment and this is not required until early next year, however I have been in touch with the author and I am going to draw them now anyway, it is a book about tanks on the Somme battlefield, they author follows individual British tanks as the battle progresses.

View from the Window

It is grey and murky this morning unlike the last beautiful ten days or so, what a treat we have had, I even went walking twice, not an expedition you understand simply an hour or so up the road to the next village and back again, stopping to talk to other people with not a lot to do except enjoy a lovely day. It is late but still nothing much is stirring, the odd car and one mad jogger. There are large damp patches in front of the shop and my gate as I had chores to do this morning before settling down for the day, that one involved scrubbing the pavement and path as the work on the new wood burning stove and fireplace is now complete. Now as much as John and his wife (they live about four doors up) cleaned the place on completion there were still a few jobs for yours truly, there always is.

John has done a splendid job however I won't show you a picture just yet as we still have several other jobs to be completed before we can at last settle down, poor but warm in our new living room and kitchen.

I can't remember what I was looking at yesterday but I ended up reading an article on larders and cupboards and how wonderful they were and how you could store so much in them when I had a thought, all that stuff in a new kitchen is in its own pantries and larders, albeit they are smaller and hang on the wall or are under the worktop, so why are people getting so worked up about some shelves which hold jars? We have just over a week to go before committing ourselves to the new kitchen.

I have already mentioned my son is returning to the UK with his family, his wife and daughter are already here, my son has been married to his Tanzanian wife now for I think at least five years, I can just here the missus now, it's six years man, six! Whatever it is she is married to a British citizen and her daughter is British, but Joyce can only have a visitors visa for six months, she wants to get a job here so she needs a more permanent visa, well just apply I hear you say. No, that's fine if you come here under a lorry or throw your passport away on touching British soil, or claim you are on an ISIS/IS/ISA/Al Quada (delete where applicable) hit list, if you are legally married to a British person and are resident in the UK, you have to go back to Tanzania and apply through an outsourced department of bureaucratic robots and wait perhaps anywhere from four to eight weeks before you get one, if indeed you get one. My son cannot obviously put his life on hold while this is done, so it would seem some long range babysitting is looming for Granny and Papa.

It would seem that John Lennon, St. John of Liverpool, has been outed in a new book as not being  perhaps the nicest person you would want to invite over for dinner, now if people had listened to me all those years ago we could have been spared this. I never liked him and I am not keen on St. Paul either, although I have it on good authority that he does do an awfully good concert, anyone who got up to the stupid, ridiculous stunts he and the Japanese imp got up to deserved to be locked up not looked up to. Why does no one ever burst these peoples bubble and simply tell them they are thick, how can anyone drink cocktails with a man dressed as Little Bo Peep without telling him what a prat he looks and walking away rather sharpish. It is never a surprise to me when the media claim with faux astonishment that such and such a celeb is not what they seem, and it shouldn't be to them, the Gallaghers, Naomi Campbell, Elton John to name but a few, euch!

Protesting from a five star hotel.

Come on, really, this is acceptable behaviour?

Talking about s*^t people, my brother has just been made redundant from the rigs after working on them for forty years, eleven of the past years for the same firm, what made matters worse was that he was graded fourth of four radio operators on that particular rig by the manager, who, believe it or not is rumoured to be having relations with the radio operator who came number one. Number one is a woman who has a yachting radio licence which you too can get if you spend two days at a college doing the course, she should by law have at least a GMDSS General Operators Certificate, which both my brother and I have as do all competent operators men and women who are not sleeping with their bosses. Why am I bitter about this, because it almost happened to me when I was offshore, between him and I we have handled communications during fires, gas leaks, suicides, men overboard and controlled searches by numerous vessels and helicopters and in his case organised the abandonment of the entire platform, I may also add the Royal Navy were happy with our performances as well. I hope with all my heart something comes back to bite that bossman in the arse for not only destroying someone's life but kicking him while he was down as well.

I have a little list of all the things I want to bring up in the View, but as I look down it they will have to wait until next week, I think I have depressed you enough so I will leave you with a bit of a laugh, no wait.

Barak Obama, not a big fan, but then I am ignorant of US politics, I watched his speech after the Oregon shooting and I was impressed, it was one of the most dignified pieces by a politician I have ever heard, well done sir.

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.

Auxiliary II

No club last night so no AAR today, real life caught me up and I had to stay home. I did manage to put the finishing touches to my latest Roman unit and base them up this morning.

Now these are not Aventine figures as I have said and they are old moulds and in a close up photograph do not look fantastic, however, from where I am looking at the moment they will blend in on a battlefield pretty good. I have also put them on a movement tray when in fact they will mostly operate in a skirmish role, if they had been meant to be close order troops I would have had them sorted so that the throwing guys would have been in the front line, but by the time I realised it would be a good idea to put them on a tray they were already glued to their bases. There are a few whose faces do not bear close scrutiny as they look like they have been in a boxing match with whoever is the champion boxer these days, last I knew it was Cassius Clay.

Next up are my officers, 50% casualty markers and rally point, I counted up what I have at the moment and I can easily field a 2000 point WAC army, two cohorts and two cavalry units to go and I am still teetering on adding another auxiliary cohort. The artillery of course is a separate matter all together and doesn't count.

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.