Books and a Film

I am not supposed to be buying any more books, I am running out of room and when a new one turns up another has to go, I also want to support my local Library van, they have sold off the land the original Library stood on and have cut the mobile unit down to one hour every fortnight. This too will disappear if no one uses it, but then who will use it between 1045 and 1145 every second Monday, not including holidays when it doesn’t arrive at all. Despite these good intentions I have bought several new books over the past couple of weeks. First up the one I am reading now; Snow and Steel.

 

 

This is a strange military history, the battle does not begin until at least halfway through the book and it seemed a bit disjointed to me, I did not get that sense of ‘shock and awe’ when the Germans did attack. And although there are maps, like many of the troops, I felt lost trying to work out where people were. Having said that, the analysis of why the Germans attacked at the end of 1944 and the state of their forces, along with the potted biographies of the commanders and main personalities, is superb. The author is a battlefield guide, and this comes through in the book as he goes off at a tangent and describes a helmet or bullet clip found on the battlefield, or gives you a potted history of an area. It is an interesting book and an easy read.

In the book locker is “Operation Sealion” a new interpretation of the possible invasion of Britain and what it meant for both us and the Germans.

 

Then another delve into the Dark Ages with “Ceawlin: The man who created England”, personally even with what little I know, I think this is pushing it a bit far, but I shall approach it with an open mind. So far my reading of the Dark Ages has left me, well, in the Dark.

 Up until several years ago I was an avid reader of the Sunday Times, the best part of which was the book reviews in ‘The Culture’, these inspired me to read a broad range of books but when they got Nancy Del Olio to write a column I thought this was a dumbing down too far for me. I have now taken out a subscription to ‘The Spectator’ and it has some very interesting book reviews, a small list of which I am gathering even as I type. The first try out is “Went the Day Well” about Waterloo, if this is a success I may have to find more room and more money.

Last is a recipe book, I do not watch much on television these days, but now and again to pass some time I find myself looking at “Diners, Drive In’s and Dives”, it is hosted by an over the top ‘celebrity’ chef. If you get past the ridiculous white hair and annoying patter, the food served in these American restaurants makes me want to catch the next flight out, something I might do next year if any of them are close to a Civil War battlefield.

Now for a movie, if you get a chance to watch Nightcrawler then put your prejudices aside and let it grow on you. Within the first ten minutes I was ready to switch off as I could not empathise with the main character and found him disturbing at best, certainly unlikeable. He doesn’t get any better but the movie is superb. Jake Gyllenhaal playes the odious Lou Bloom, a modern product who wants to become a successful video news person(?), someone who films accidents etc. on the streets at night and sells the end result to TV news stations. The story is such that I cannot say much about it without ruining your enjoyment, but I will say, do not miss this.

Muskets & Tomahawks

After a fraught day trying to do things on Blogger which it doesn't do, or not the way I wanted, I eventually escaped to the club. My friend Andy organised the game so all I had to do was turn up, which is nice as opposed to stuffing boxes in the car and then spending X amount of time setting up, that was all down to Andy. The game was Muskets and Tomahawks, something I had only played once before, I had to defend a small village against the Frenchies, with one third of my force off table. It turned out to be a very pleasant evenings gaming, a skirmish type game again, not a lot of forces but those on the table did look good and the game played easily enough, if I did not have so much on my plate I could definitely be persuaded to invest in this game. As it is, Andy and some others have more than enough troops and we should be playing again next week, albeit a multiplayer this time. A card activation game but one which allows everyone a move, unlike the CoC game on another table where a Sherman tank moved a total of perhaps eight inches in over two hours gaming.

The British make ready.

Those Indians are in for a shock.

The Frenchies about to give up.

Of the game itself Andy came up against a prepared defence along the fence and the 'men of the match,' my Indians, holding the edge of a small wood, these guys handed out great slaughter to their counterparts and the French regulars who were approaching along an open track. As casualties mounted it became obvious the French could not sustain their attack and they either ran away or withdrew. My pictures do not do the figures justice, the Indians especially were beautifully painted.

My thanks to the Legatus for his information concerning the Blog, I shall get around to trying it out at some point in the next few days.

Blog Help

OK, I have spent over an hour working on Pages, at the moment I want two, one for scenarios and the other for reviews of books and films I read or watch. I do not want the posts in either of those pages repeated on my Home page, so how do I stop that, while I am at it, how do I get rid of the white border on my pictures. You can almost picture me grating my teeth here.

You know those movies/shows where they break into someone's office or some secret establishment, find the PC turned on, pop in the password (when was the last time you did that without having to check on the secret page of A4 hidden in the second book from the left, along with all your internet banking details), and can go straight to the folder/file they want, then download it while the police/security are heading up the stairs, finishing with just enough nanoseconds left to leave and appear forty miles away. Well it's all rubbish! It has taken me almost an hour and a half to put two pages on Blogger, which work, but not the way I want.

I apologise if this has caused any inconvenience to anyone trying to read something this morning. If anyone does have a blog and can help then I would be grateful if you would enlighten me and save me going greyer than I am.

No, the white flag is up, perhaps I am wrong but the static pages are not meant to be updated or at least added to, and if they are it is far too complex for me, I even managed to wipe out the Tax Collector scenario, but that will be back soon (I hope).

Tax Collector AAR (Dux Britanniarum)

A quiet afternoon away from maps so what better than to play the Tax Collector and give all my troops a chance to get back on the horse so to speak, after being thrown to the floor. It gave me a chance to get most of my 28mm Dark Age terrain out, but now I see that I require at least one or two more trees, possibly some wattle fencing, that all elusive Roman Villa and a road. I looked at the very nice but expensive Roman road made by Grand Manner but I have settled on one by Terrain Mat which is flexible and nice and simple, you can even get it with cart tracks on it, by settled I mean I am looking at it, not quite buying it though, not yet.

You can get the gist of the game from the Scenario page.

 Our man sets up his stall, his friends in attendance and even a representative of the church to make sure things are handled correctly, or more likely to see that God's share is not short.

A quiet pastoral scene, a slight delay perhaps as they work out the password and username for the new fangled abacus.

And now it happens, Ceolwulf a notorious raider has arrived with almost his entire band of warriors, lacking only some missile troops.

Tribune Atticus appears at almost the same time, but with only his bodyguard, however he boldly steps forth.

 

 "We're outta here" the fat cat's try and catch their wagon, leaving behind their collected goods, as the driver is more interested in putting space between himself and the Saxons.

 Ceolwulf closes on the prize, while the rest of the British turn up and sprint for the village making excellent time. But not quick enough, Ceolwulf holds the line while his companion Eadbald makes off at an astounding rate for home. Osfrid the remaining Saxon noble throws his men into Atticus' bodyguard with a superb hand of attack cards and .... blows it! One slight wound on the British commander, 16+ dice and one hit.

 

 Just as the British warriors under Magnus form shield wall and look like having a chance at an overwhelming attack on Ceolwulf and his hearthguard, the wily Saxon takes the lead and legs it.

Despite having to leave one group to their fate, the rest of the Saxons literally sprint off the table leaving a bitter Atticus, but a surprisingly cheerful tax man. Ceolwulf on the other hand was beside himself having lost six warriors to cart off an empty chest!

Nothing is certain in Dux Britanniarum, you have to play the cards you are dealt and also go along with the activation process, the Gods certainly favoured the Saxons in this game, they got all their men on first, and made more than decent movement rolls, especially when fleeing. The British on the other hand brought one group on for the first round, then, just as Magnus had an opportunity to charge in Shieldwall, Ceolwulf played a Step Forth and legged it. Despite 'winning' the game, the Saxons lost the only combat of the day, some really dire die rolls on their side, and found the chest empty on their return to their ships.

Definitely one to play again, but maybe next time I will have that road and some more trees.

My Romano-British are more Roman than British, they started off less uniform, but I could not resist the pull of Late Romans and the Little Big Man Studio transfers, I have since corrected this with my much larger War & Conquest Romano-British army which is a lot rougher around the edges and with which I am pretty chuffed.

Kill Tojo! An X-Wing AAR

Several people at the club have been given or bought X-Wing over Christmas, which is great for me as I don't have to wait until my son visits to play the game or futilely try and persuade my missus that it would be great fun to take a night off the iPad and play a real game. What is it with women and iPads? Anyway, although we had arranged a 1 vs 1 for last night, almost at the last minute it turned into a 2 vs 3. We could have played a scenario involving the Transport but as we had new players and I haven't really played the Transport we settled on a simple dogfight. The Transport you see has special rules. So I came up with the following; A particularly odious and vicious Imperial general was on his way to take up a new post on LV-426, and as the last part of his journey was by his personal shuttle the Rebels saw an opportunity to kill him and send a message to the Empire that no one was safe. The good thing about this scenario and the fact it was cobbled together in a couple of hours using the online Squad Builder, is that it gave us a chance to fly ships that normally never see the light of day and that the Squadrons were completely mixed up, well mostly.


The forces involved were one Imperial Shuttle with the General, along with two escort groups (100 points each), the Rebels turned up with three squadrons (80 points each), the Rebels aim was to shoot down the shuttle.

 The general arrives with Group 1 (mine) in close support, Group 2 being tardy in the rear.

 Group 2 in a dogfight with a Rebel squadron out on the left, while I was having success, and flying extremely frosty for me, against the right hand Rebels who came on piecemeal, the rest of the Rebels are lining up to the front of the Shuttle. The general quietly told his ADC to ready his escape pod at this point.

 Just as we thought the shuttle was going to take some concentrated fire, Luke Skywalker's flight decided to follow their Walmart Satnav's and point anywhere but at the shuttle.

 

Just as time was running out the Rebels lost several ships and the remainder were heavily damaged and would not make it home, apart from the X-Wings of course who had barely had their paint scratched and whose Lasers would not need cleaning when they did get home.

The game proved great fun and we had a hilarious time with some bantha, no, banter, throwing slurs at the cowardly general, our lack of flying ability, Luke's satnav and the poor rebel captive slammed up against the shuttle window as a human shield. Oh, and if anyone is worried that the general survived, I am sure LV-426 will put an end to him.

Terrain

One thing I did notice at Vapnartak and from following blogs and lurking on forums is how important terrain has now become and how spoiled we are for choice. Once it was a social faux pas to present an army on the table which was primed only, or had bases obviously cut from beer mats, as a quick look urged you to buy a pint of Newton and Ridley Pale Ale, or different periods were mixed together as that was as near to the Teutonic Knights of 1300AD as you could get back then. Now the eyes go up if you put a piece of sculpted foam, sprayed green and stepped, on your flank and declare it a large hill. I also do not doubt that that guy who ignores all the efforts put into a display and zeroes in on the fact that the sergeant, fourth from the back of the sixty man unit, has the wrong colour of buttons, will soon be able to point out that that style of architecture did not come in until after the Napoleonic Wars. Wargamers have at last learned to put as much effort into their layouts as the Railway Children and the suppliers of laser cut MDF are to be commended for the breadth and sheer genius of their products.

Helping this along I believe is the popularity of the skirmish type game where you only require a small amount of figures and can therefore go to town on the ambience of your background, and of course this has a more than pleasant fallout effect on the larger games.

I have a large collection of Geo-Hex for my ACW games, one of which you can see in the blog header and I am slowly improving my ‘throw down’ collection of 28mm hills, villages, marshes, woods etc. so that eventually I hope they will all go seamlessly together while remaining mobile. I have a collection of wonderful, painted MDF buildings for my foray into Western Gunfights.

Henry House Hill, First Bull Run.

 I was given an interview by the local paper last year, and received a phone call that the photographer was coming around in an hour and could I ‘throw something together’, no I couldn’t was my retort, didn’t they know that putting a decent table on required planning on the scale of D-Day. I got 24 hours and even then chickened out and put up my cowboy town (Carefree Arizona, where the only thing that flies is bullets! ©) You can see the result below, I was then asked to grin sheepishly and crouch as though I had left my legs in the house.

Words fail me.

Hopefully a better picture.

The mat has since been worked on and does not look as clean, nor is it a nice neat rectangle, see what I mean about improving things.

Vapnartak, York

The weather was kind and it was a lovely day, a bit grim when we first got to Yorkshire, but the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful, fresh day, so much so that once I was inside the main stand all I wanted to do was divest myself of my outer garments as it was one giant glasshouse. Not quite as much as the gentleman last year, who stood at a nearby hotel window in the full bloom of nature and made me miss my left turn. Anyway, as much as the image haunts me I must forge ahead. It is a large show with many traders and games, some superb games into which had gone a lot of effort, much better than last year. I had turned up with what, for a Scotsman, was a small fortune, yes, more than a fiver, expecting to return without change. Sadly, Gripping Beast concentrated on Jugula and Saga, I am sure if I had asked before hand they would have brought the Welsh warband I was after, but I didn't, but never fear, due to the wonders of technology I expect them around Tuesday. I did pick up a couple of terrain pieces from the excellent Last Valley, magnetic paper and tape from Magnetic Displays and some casualty markers from Warbases. With time running out I desperately wanted to treat myself but found that no one had the new X-Wing ships and those that were on offer were far too expensive, I don't mind paying extra at a show to get something there and then, but these prices were taking the mick.

Wings of War (Glory)

A Lace Wars type of game, beautiful figures and terrain.

Curtey's Miniatures Dux Britanniarum tour de force.

Rorkes Drift.

One of several large, beautiful ships.

John Paul Jones and the Frenchies attack Leith, wonderful.

My meagre but necessary haul.

 I had a happy reunion with Curtey's Miniatures Michael and Simon, and their helper John, who I first met at the War and Conquest tournament last November, their Dark Age participation game was a treat to behold. I also met some other guys from my neck of the woods and coming up at some point during the year should be an X-Wing tourney, a Dead Man's Hand introduction game and a refight of Dogger Bank 1915. I have no doubt they will happen if we can keep the enthusiasm up.
Oh, and did I mention I got in for free, being over sixty does indeed have its advantages, I was slightly miffed at not having to prove it however and almost insisted I pay, but then my roots kicked in, the four quid was better in my pocket, och aye.