It's looking as if there might not be any wargaming for the rest of the month. "What on earth," I hear you ask "will you write about?", which is a question both pertinent and fair; this blog does not willingly stray from its narrow remit of toy soldier related doings. But I am a bloggist, and a bloggist blogs, so I will just have to scratch around to see what else I can find to entertain you with.
Let's start, perhaps controversially, with some wargaming. We had a Crusades game last week, which I have to say probably won't live long in the memory. It did produce an entertaining enough evening's play, despite turning out to be somewhat one-sided. As I've said before the Piquet family of games are chaotic (in the mathematical sense) and ensure widely differing games from the same starting point because of the way the cards and the initiative interact. On this occasion the Franks didn't move very quickly but the Saracens did, and that made all the difference; the Frankish knights didn't manage to charge home, but the horse archers easily got into shooting range. The narrative - as so often - made perfect sense: a small group of crusaders sets off in great heart across the desert, but the going proves slower than they expected, they are overwhelmed by swarms of tribal cavalry who can never quite be brought to hand to hand combat, they are forced to stop moving and make a stand as they are surrounded, and - their morale gone - they accept their inevitable fate.
Unusually, but consistent with the above, the game ended in a clear victory despite the fact that all units were still on the table, none from either side having been destroyed or routed off.
Epictetus - Discourses on Wargaming
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