Blind Spot

 The other day I made an assertion here about the recent ratio of wargaming posts to those on other subjects which was so inaccurate that perhaps even the Mango Mussolini himself would have hesitated before saying it. In an effort to nudge reality nearer to speciousness this post is about wargaming.

Nothing much of note has happened in the annexe for quite a while, but in the background I have trying to work through a small issue with the Vauban siege rules. When we first played them a couple of years ago I dropped a couple of elements that I couldn't work out how to deal with while we wrestled with the big picture of how they hung together overall. One was the 'blind spot' at the point of bastion into which the guns of that bastion cannot fire. The guns of adjacent bastions or other elements of the fortress can, of course, target anyone entering that space - that being the raison d'être of the star design - but they will do so at longer range.

There were three elements to the issue: what the rules say, what my bastions actually look like and how to make some sort of measuring device that reflects where we end up after considering the first two. To help playability the rules treat a lot of the aspects of siege warfare in an abstract manner. When it comes to bastions this means that each bastion is deemed to be a unit of fortress guns, that can fire to either side, but not to both sides at once, with the number and position of models being simply for aesthetic purposes. That in turn means that arc of fire and dead ground need to be defined without looking at the toys. There is a large colour diagram in the rules which aims to do this, but whilst I can see what the author has done, I'm a bit unsure as to why he has done it.

Putting that to one side for the moment let's turn to the bastions which I designed using a CAD system, made with a laser cutter and which feature in my games. They're the wrong shape; or to be more precise they are a bit squished up. Had I made them to both reflect 18th century reality and also to fit in the necessary models (necessary for aesthetic purposes only - see above) then the fortress would have stretched most of the way across the table and there would be any room for the siege lines. So they are somewhat foreshortened with very different angles to both commercially produced bastions that others may have and indeed to the diagram in the rules. It's time for the application of wargamers common sense. The dead ground at the point of my bastions will be laid out in a way that looks all right to me; my table my rules.

But how to measure it out? You would not believe the lengthy discussions that have taken place around this essentially trivial topic.  Ideas have ranged from drilling holes in the bastions themselves and fitting lengths of piano wire, to marking the table edges, to amending the original CAD drawings and thereby 3D printing an angle wangler. In the end, and based largely on a conversation with a non-wargaming boardgaming friend of mine, I have gone seriously cheapskate and cut some shapes from foamboard and painted them green. The main advantage being that if the area of dead ground doesn't seem right after all when playtested then I can just cut some more and try again.

Now all I have to do is work out how to represent ricochet fire.

Burning, but not jumping

"... for it had unquestionably been one of the most successful ‘shows’ ever undertaken by the squadron." 

- Captain W.E. Johns

It is a sad reflection of the current state of this blog that this will be the fifth post out of the last six to deal with wargaming. However, the game in question, 'Jump or Burn', is a firm favourite of mine. These used to be commercially available, but they were published in 2003 and I'm not sure whether they've ever been either reprinted or made available digitally. Unusually for one of James's games - especially given their age - the version we play is quite close to the as printed version, with just a couple of changes made to speed up play. The photo below shows the end of the game with various cards, measuring sticks etc laid out as well. The thing in the very top left corner is for measuring the turns of banking aircraft.

As befits a game I'm so fond of, the evening was a triumph for your bloggist. That's my DH4 front and centre, having just crossed the British trenches diving for home after a successful bombing mission. Admittedly the co-pilot is dead and, although it's a bit hard to see, the plane is both on fire and has suffered serious damage to its struts. However the chasing German fighter failed to draw any machine gun cards in the current hand and therefore I shall soon be off the board and therefore live to fly another day.

Lard Workshop the Third

 And so to The Old Chemistry Theatre at Nottingham Trent University for the third August in a row. Had readers given it any thought I suspect that they might have imagined a lecture theatre, or possibly a laboratory of some sort. However it looks like this:

It reminds me of an orangery. You can see why it got so hot in the sweltering summer of 2022. It was bearable this year, although all those hard surfaces still made it difficult to hear anything. The keen-eyed among you may notice that amongst the expected crowd of fat, old blokes there are a couple of lady gamers. There were three altogether, out of a total of fifty-two participants, and I am pleased to say that I got to share a game with one of them; literally the first time I have ever wargamed with a female in more that fifty years in the hobby; a red letter day.

I had two excellent games of Sharp Practice, which I'd never played before. It's obviously similar enough to many of the other Two Fat Lardies games, but I think I preferred it. I can understand why I have heard those more committed to the cult of Lard say that it's their favourite. Being card driven the flow of action is by design somewhat arbitrary, but the flag cards do allow players to seize back an element of control, although at the risk of potentially forgoing better opportunities further down the line. That mix of randomness and choice hits the spot for me.

First up was a French and Indian War set game in which I found myself playing Pontiac, who is pretty much bang in the middle of the photo above although you'll need to zoom in quite a bit to see him. Sadly I didn't take any photos of his later successes, when he got tired of standing off and skirmishing and led two successive charges, routing enemy units each time. It goes without saying that they were units of irregulars, even I'm not foolhardy enough to charge British regulars in line. The game ended in an honourable draw, which is of course a euphemism for saying that we all fannied about for so long that we ran out of time. Excellent fun though, and many thanks to Ken Welsh for putting it on.

The afternoon game was set in the Sudan; I put my name down for this one because that period may be James's current project, but (lack of) progress to date has been such that I though I'd look elsewhere for a taste of the desert in case I don't last enough to play with his toys. I must remember to take more photos of these things because the one above shows the position before the hordes of natives arrive and therefore lacks a certain something. The background is that two of the Governor's staff - a Mrs Slocum and a Miss Brahms - have been captured and are being held hostage in the building at the back. I was on the British team and we had force marched to recue them and had to get them back off the opposite edge of the table. First though we get to get into the building, and we decided to shoot first; after all that's our advantage, modern firearms. Sadly our technology was having a bad day; if the Gatling gun jammed once it jammed half a dozen times and the rifles seemed better at obscuring everything with smoke than with hitting the target. The Mahdists, amped up with suitable religious fervour, swept down upon us in sufficient numbers that some were bound to get through. In the end we launched an assault on the house and captured it, but achieved no more than ensuring that the ladies didn't die alone. It was a fairly abject defeat, but really enjoyable while it lasted. Thanks to Chris Smith for putting it on.

I have not got much else to say about Britcon - of which the Lard Workshop is a subset - except that it was good value and the lunch was rather nice. I eschewed the opportunity to go and gawp at the Perry twins, and my only purchase was 'The War of the Three Sanchos', and that was on a whim. I can tell you nothing about it yet as it remains unopened.

Cerignola after all these years

 Our last visit to the Italian Wars for a while saw us revisit Cerignola. The first time we played it was over ten years ago, presumably shortly after James had painted sufficient of his (then) latest project to make it work. I have a vague memory that James and Peter put it on as their game for Triples in 2013, but I could be making that up. 

I've no doubt that version looked very different to the above, and it goes without saying that the rules have changed substantially. My main memory of the previous games is that the French really struggled to get over the ditch, but this time - presumably at least in part because I was commanding the defenders - they didn't have much problem.

The photo above shows the French gendarmes having just routed one tercio and prior to flanking a second as well as destroying a big chunk of the Spanish heavy cavalry. Whatever else one thinks of the current state of the rules, they ensure a tight game that, usefully, always seem to finish in one night.

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 13

 “The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.” - Theodore J. Kaczynski

Boardgaming April-July 2024

 The usual new and otherwise mentionable games:

Amun-Re: Excellent game, and another to add to the list of such which are set in Ancient Egypt. The two halves rather reminded me of one aspect that I didn't like about Brass (although if you follow that link you'll see that it's ranked the number one game of all time, so what do I know). Like all auction games it seems to me that no-one ever bids enough. 

Apiary: Bees in space, colonising other planets, but still making honey and wax. It makes no sense, but an enjoyable worker placement game nonetheless.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig: I knew it had been a long time since I had played this, and when I looked it up found it had been October 2015. Far too long for such a good game.

Century: Spice Road: This game has been around for a few years and won awards when it first came out, but for some reason I had never played it. And as soon as I did I bought a copy because I knew it would appeal to one of my occasional companions. The game we play the most together, because she likes it the most is Splendor. I have nothing against Splendor, but one needs a change every now and then, and Century: Spice Road hits the same spot and does it well.

Cradle to Grave: Didn't like this at all; don't bother.

Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis and Clark: Another good game which I hadn't played for ages. I found a cheap second hand copy and enjoyed revisiting it.

Faraway: A very good, but very frustrating small game in which one plays cards from left to right, but scores them from right to left. The first time I played it I smashed it and wondered why everyone else was complaining. On every subsequent occasion my score has decreased from the previous game played. Hubris.

K2: Lhotse: This was the first time I'd played this map, which I didn't think was as good as the base map (not tight enough probably), although still fun.

Poison: Pleasant, light, push-your-luck game about mixing potions in which the largest physical components are completely unnecessary.

Skymines: Not a bad game. It's a retheme of Mombasa without all the unpleasant colonialism and slavery.

Strike: To quote another reviewer: "A mindless dice game, but fun".

Trio: Another good but annoying small game. You are trying to collect sets, you soon learn what cards others have, and they're not only not allowed to rearrange their hands, but also have to play cards only from either end. And yet somehow it's still really hard to find the cards one wants.

Kemet: Blood and Sand: We has a couple of goes at playing this in teams two vs two. It's fun, but, to me at least, led to the game outstaying its welcome.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: We managed two more scenarios, taking us to the halfway point. I'd still strongly recommend the game, but we are having serious problems getting all five of us back in the same room at the same time.

Total Domination: This should have been right up my - and your - street. It's basically a different designer's riff on the theme and, in part, mechanisms of Quartermaster General which, importantly, only needs four players. But it went on and on and on and on, before we abandoned it about 80% of the way through. I think it's fair to say that there are nuances which we failed to master.

Troyes: Good game, as befits a bit of a classic.

Wandering Towers: I liked this. Thinky with tactile 3D components.

Wonder Bowling: Indirectly knock tenpins overs with a little hammer; that's all you need to know.

French vs Venetians Again

 So, we had another go: slightly different forces, slightly different unit ratings, slightly different rules. Pretty much the same result though, with both forces being essentially out of morale at the end of the evening. The way we are playing it - and James seems to be happy with the historical accuracy, so who am I to argue - the only formations that matter are the pike blocks and the role of everything else is to get on the flanks of the pike melee or, in most cases, not actually bother to do anything except add to the visual spectacle. 

Let's zoom in on the back of the pike block in the centre and examine all the detritus behind it:

The two stands of arquebusiers signify that the pike block has an intrinsic skirmish shot capability and have been moved to the back to allow the opposing pike blocks to get to close quarters. The cotton wool ball indicates that the skirmishers have fired and need to be reloaded when the correct card is turned. The little white bead with a number on tells us which command the unit belongs to. The two dice also in the tray are, in total, the strength of the pike block. The white one gets reduced first, but while it is still there it is easier for the unit to maintain its morale. The exact mechanism by which it does so remains somewhat of a mystery to me and I suspect also to James, but will eventually resolve itself into a coherent written form. The tuft shows that the unit is 'Disordered' for having fought a melee and not yet having rallied. There could possibly have been a 'Shaken' marker as well (it may be 'Vexed' rather than 'Shaken'; the two terms seem somewhat interchangeable), but there isn't one due to the white dice inspired voodoo referred to above. The coloured beads on the pin to the left may appear to tell us that it is Pride week in the Po valley, but in fact each has a meaning. Starting from the top blue means that the unit is above average for combat. Then green tells us that it is average for defence; I don't think there is such a thing as above average for defence, but there are certainly some units that are below average. The yellow bead means that the unit is 'Swift', so it occasionally gets to move around the battlefield a bit more quickly. The black bead means they are 'Fearsome', so they win melees when they would otherwise have drawn. The pink bead means they are 'Vengeful', so they don't lose as badly as they otherwise might if facing their mortal foes. The pike block's on the other side are indeed their mortal foes, but as they too are 'Fearsome' and 'Vengeful' it all ends up a bit 'as you were' and melees last for ever. Still, it looks good and is a fun way to pass an evening.