Walls Wonderman

I am once again going to write about wargaming in order to avoid dwelling on the fact that my boiler has chosen mid-November as the appropriate time to break down.We finished the battle of Campo Veja last night, and it ended in a victory for not me. Things swung backwards and forwards - always the sign of a fun game - and there were several occasions when I was literally just on the verge of winning, and yet I didn't. Peter managed to save a number of match points and then served out for the win. If James writes it up then you'll get more detail; if not then you won't. We are getting to understand the tactics to employ with the rules as they stand and will presumably either break them at some point or decide that they'll do as they are.

I took my piece of laser cut wall to show the chaps and despite managing to snap a bit of it off en route the resultant conversations were most helpful. Having thought it over I am going to make a couple of changes to facilitate assembly. First I shall increase the depth of the side pieces and line up construction from the back edge rather than the front. Secondly I shall make the crenellations symmetrical along sections (at least on those of length 10 cm and multiples) to avoid the risk of unwanted chirality occurring if I don't pay proper attention when gluing the things together. I have also clarified the scope a bit in my mind following some discussion about the appropriate height of the wall sections. I think I have always intended, but not necessarily articulated, that these are town walls. What I need to do is also make walls for a citadel/castle, which would obviously be somewhat taller.

Just for completeness I will mention that there has been a fair amount of figure painting. As well as a somewhat random unit of Prussian Napoleonic infantry I have finished a number of early imperial Romans (24 eastern archers, 6 Spanish slingers) and two Celtic chariots. Next up are some auxiliary infantry. With the exception of the Roman light infantry these are more aimed at having bigger units to fill the squares when playing To the Strongest! than they are at fielding more units. The problem, which you have no doubt already thought of, is that is that bigger Roman units will inevitably require larger Celtic warbands. It's a treadmill.