Silla

 And so to the opera. In a rare crossover between the ultimate art form and wargaming I have been to see Handel's 'Silla'. The 'Infamy, Infamy' game which I played in Nottingham a couple of weeks ago took place in the Social War of 91-87 BCE, and the Lucius Cornelius Sulla who was involved in those as a military commander becomes Silla in Rossi's libretto. The setting is (sort of - it's not terribly historically accurate) the civil wars of a few years later, through winning which Sulla/Silla becomes dictator. It is, as the programme tells us, about a womanising populist leader who rises to power, but is brought down by those closest to him when he loses his appeal to the populace. It had a contemporary setting (*), presumably so that the audience could more easily read into it whatever parallels they could find.

It was all very good, although the music seemed vaguely familiar. Some subsequent research tells me that the dramma per musica was written for a specific time and place, only performed once and the music was simply used again in 'Amadigi de Gaula' which, of course, I saw last autumn. Among what is by now the traditional trouser-role same-sex relationships and gender-swapping, this production of 'Silla' did contain a couple things I'd never seen before at the opera. At one point Mars, god of war, encouraged the audience to clap along, which did nothing so much as prove that classical music audiences are as incapable of keeping rhythm as any other sort. Then, a bit later on, some members of the orchestra joined in the singing. If you live long enough then you will see most things eventually.

 * I can't help thinking they missed a trick by not setting it in 1960s Liverpool and giving a key role to the cloakroom attendant at the Cavern, all of which would undoubtably have been a lorra lorra laughs. 

Lard Workshop

 The lack of postings here, and the fact that medieval cattle raid hasn't been played yet, are of course due to scorchio. Indeed the only reason I am writing this now, is that the cumulative effect has all been too much and I have retreated indoors. This is not to say that there has been no wargaming. We completed our second game of 'Soldiers of Napoleon', about which rules I have nothing to add to what I have said previously. We shall have a go next week with move distances tweaked to match the specific size of table and bases, and I shall report back. It was fairly sweaty in the legendary wargames room on Wednesday, but nothing to compare with the sauna that was the Old Chemistry Theatre at Nottingham Trent University on Saturday for the inaugural Lard Workshop (*).

The Workshop, which took place alongside the BHGS Britcon show, was organised by Don, my old (very old) school friend and bandmate, despite which it was a great success. I for one thoroughly enjoyed it, and had a blast. And no one could say that it wasn't excellent value for money. For £15 one got a £5 voucher to spend with the traders, a free sandwich lunch (which was rather good I thought) and to play two games; what's not to like? The one thing wrong with it was the heat, plus it was very noisy. So the only two things wrong with it were the heat, the noise and the fact that the toilets were a long walk given that middle aged men need to visit fairly often. Having said that, there were a couple of gamers involved who clearly didn't have prostates, which was the first time I've seen so many female wargamers since, well, since forever; another good thing.

I was travelling light and didn't bring a decent camera, which I regret because the eighteen games on offer were all worth photographing. There was a Far East set game of Chain of Command (possibly run by Richard Clarke himself; I wish I'd taken some notes as well as some pictures) which had more terrain crammed on to one table than I can remember ever seeing before. Very sadly I only took one photo of David Hunter's game of 'Infamy, Infamy', which I played in the afternoon, and that is very far from doing the table justice.

I'm playing the chap at the front left, tasked with getting my men along the road to a camp manned only by some unreliable slaves. The game was set in the civil wars of the early first century BC and, while I didn't get anywhere near the camp my Gallic ally and I had killed enough Italian rebels en route to win the game. I had played Infamy once, pre-publication and pre-pandemic, and despite reading through them again was feeling a bit lost at the start. However, as the game progressed I found it all began to make sense (**). Maybe I should get the chariots out before I forget it all again. 

You've got to love a measuring stick

I took more - and more useful - photos of the game I had played in the morning, Sidney Roundwood's 'Flashing Blades'. It wasn't hard to get a larger amount of the action into the picture because everything happened in a 2ft x 2ft square. It's not obvious from the above, but it's mounted on a Lazy Susan (£14 from Amazon according to Sidney) and players seated around the table can easily turn it to allow them to move their musketeer. Because the Mousquetaires du Roi, opposed inevitably by the Cardinal's Red Guards, are what this cracking little game is all about. The rules are not yet published (***), but they are in a pretty polished state already. The rules have quite a lot of the boardgame about them - and I mean that in a good way - and produce a result that, at least in our game, was a positively cinematic narrative arc. I loved the game, almost, but not quite, with the same passion that James has for SoN. And that was only a little bit helped by it being one of my characters, Monseigneur d'Eclair, who rescued the Comtesse de Chablis from the scaffold and spirited her away.

D'Eclair leads la Comtesse away through a crowd of Parisians

Interestingly, in the afternoon Sidney ran a Samurai scenario using the same mechanics. As for what I spent my £5 on: a copy of the second edition of Lion Rampant, of which more when I have read it. To conclude, thanks to David, Sidney, my various teammates and opponents, Richard Clarke and, in particular, to Don for a most enjoyable, albeit hot, day of wargaming.

* If you are going to Google that, then I would try to be precise in your search terms unless you genuinely wish to find out the best way to render lard, which is a very different thing and quite possibly smells even worse that a hot room full of wargamers.

** Except perhaps the close combat rules, which are, shall we say, convoluted.

*** Next year possibly, depending on the rest of TFL's publishing schedule.

Soldiers of Napoleon again

 “Remember, there are more people in the world than yourself. Be modest! You have not yet invented nor thought anything which others have not thought or invented before. And should you really have done so, consider it a gift of heaven which you are to share with others.” - Robert Schumann

James has given a big thumbs up to Soldiers of Napoleon, as you may already have seen. We've now played three times (i.e. one and a half games) and I still get the impression I'm the least enthusiastic of the four of us. You can't read too much into that; apart from anything else it's an inescapable fact that someone will have be in that position. The context is important as well: we're clearly still not playing them as written; it has become obvious that the text does not adequately reflect what the author and his play testers actually did in practice; and even when one has the rules correct - whatever that means - one still has to get one's head around the best way to play. Picking up on that last point, I'm fairly sure we've been playing the skirmisher rule correctly from the beginning, but it was only last week that I suddenly had an epiphany as to how one used it in practice (*).

I agree with James that the way skirmishers are handled is elegant and makes sense. We had tried something a bit similar with Piquet, but for whatever reason didn't quite arrive at the same rule. On the other hand I think the event cards could very easily get a bit samey each game, because there aren't that many different ones. If one is lucky enough to get the ones that target the other side's artillery or commanders early on, when the situation is less sensitive to what card you play, then they will always get used; later on in the game they probably won't. As for the Big Battle rules as written (**) they are even more pants than the 'How Goes The Day' mechanism. 

One of the issues we had, and which led to the sort of calm, rational, evidence-based discussion so often seen in the legendary wargames room, related to infantry attacking buildings. A lesser man than your bloggist would point out that the answer received back from Warwick Kinrade - namely that units must adopt a special 'attacking buildings formation' - was precisely what I have been saying about the same situation in Piquet. But, as I hope you all realise, I am better than that.

* Apparently you put them out at the front of units and they shoot at things.

** Or to be precise, as James says they are written; I don't own a copy and haven't read them.

Road to Trojan

 Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the independence of Jamaica, and I went along to a celebration. It was rather a large gathering because there a fair number of people with Jamaican heritage in Leeds, including a 96 year old who sailed on the Windrush. I was left a bit unclear as to whether he was actually present last night, it seemed to all depend on whom one spoke to. I hope he enjoyed himself, wherever he was.

First up were the Jamaica Jazz All Stars featuring Brinsley Forde as guest vocalist, very good and very tight. They reminded my of a sort of Jools Holland Big Band with reggae replacing the boogie-woogie. The headliners were Dennis Alcapone, whose birthday it also was, but who was undoubtably a fair bit older than the country, and Freddie McGregor who I had assumed was old, but worryingly turned out to be younger than me.  Anyway, they were both every bit as good as I hoped and I'm glad I've seen them.

The band backing Mr Alcapone in the above clip is the Cimarons, who have previously been mentioned in this blog.

Let Loose The Cows Of War

 "Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are two sides of the same coin" - Mahatma Gandhi

On the second turn the besiegers start to construct some siege equipment, mainly because the original purpose of this whole thing was to get mine out on the table. However, they were obviously too close to the walls because on their turn the defenders were able to destroy it with missile fire. On the next turn the attackers started over again with the sawing and nailing, this time a bit further away. The defenders, who are apparently a feisty bunch, decided to 'Sally Forth'. After a bit more dice rolling their target was revealed as the besiegers' food supply, more specifically their herd of cattle. If they can kill or drive off sufficient of them the besiegers' ability to sustain an extended siege will, not for the first time, be impeded.

The friendly foresters, who have made a remarkable recovery after being ridden down by their social superiors during the previous fracas, are leading a couple of parties of soldiers through secret paths in the woods known only to them. The tiles at the bottom will be turned over when the relevant group is sighted: 1 means it's the group with the leader attached (although he has rolled up as Insipid, so probably not a great deal to be expected from him), 2 will be the other group, and 0 is a blind. The target is the pen in the middle of the table. 

Unfortunately for the raiders, a few of the besiegers' leaders are having an early morning boar hunt, and their dogs, smelling something strange (perhaps the town is already running short of water for washing), have given the alarm. The boar himself seems quite unperturbed by it all. That chap who looks a bit like the messenger in the previous scenario (note to self: get some more medieval civilian horsemen) is their leader, and rolled up as a Braveheart. The hunters will have an activation penalty and be restricted to moving within the wood for the first couple of turns while they work out what's going on. There is half a unit of crossbowmen standing guard over the cattle and they will joined by others from the camp as they respond to all the noise.

Freedom Road

 I've been overdoing the wargaming blog posts recently. Let's have some music from back in the day:

Help is sent for

 "You that way, we this way." - Shakespeare

Lion Rampant has an activation mechanism which poses a similar dilemma to, for example, To The Strongest!. Does one try to move the most useful unit if it is more difficult to do so than activating something which will be of less value? Of course one does, silly question. And so the besieger's Men-at-Arms failed to activate on the first turn, and the defenders' messenger quickly moved twice to the pursuers once.

I diced to see which way that the MAA went, but in any case I think logic says that after failing to move and with the light cavalry screening the other route then what they did was appropriate. A Rash leader attached to unit which already has the Wild Charge attribute means that they must charge at anything in reach. However, I decided that they couldn't see the foresters lying in ambush and so didn't have to.

Elsewhere the besieger's infantry had moved to block the route of the cavalry hoping to delay them until their own heavy cavalry turned up. That unit, right at the top of the next photo, was about to be fired on by the foresters.

The ambush caused no casualties, but now the MAA were aware of the bowmen  they were forced to charge them.

Unsurprisingly they caused many casualties and the foresters fell back Battered (*). They carried on falling back and getting weaker for the rest of the game. One LR rule which I rather like is that Battered units get an automatic chance to rally each turn, but if they fail they retreat further and take another casualty, which in turn makes it less likely they will rally next time.

On the other side of the stream from the watermill there were a couple of cavalry versus infantry melees. The unit with the messenger attached got thrown back, but despite the leader's Vulnerability (which made it three times more likely that he would be a casualty) he survived, as did the messenger. The infantry themselves failed their courage test and fell back Battered. The light cavalry had similarly pushed back and Battered the other infantry unit.

The same light cavalry then destroyed the Battered infantry blocking the way to the exit point allowing through the unit with the messenger. I called the game at that point because the Rash leader will be forced to charge the cavalry behind them (no facings in this game) and the messenger will get three attempts at least to move off table. 

So, the siege game is underway with a victory for the defenders which makes it more likely - but not certain - that the besiegers will have to storm the town before making as many preparations as they would wish. It took an hour or so and passed the time quite nicely. If I was going to do it again I would make the stream a more significant barrier than the basic rules suggest.

* I know that term just means the same in context as Shaken, Broken or Disordered, but it really is a ridiculous word to have chosen.

Send for Help!

 Having listed the flaws I'd previously come across in Lion Rampant, I have now been reminded of the good bits: they are really simple and really quick to play. Inevitably they (and we're still talking about the first edition; second edition out imminently) are a bit too simple in some ways.

Our siege starts with the defenders sending out a messenger to request reinforcements. That's him at the back of those troops in the bottom left, who are his bodyguard. If he can get off the board in the top right between the wood and the stream then the siege may possibly be shortened by the arrival of a relief force. This is where the over-simplification starts to affect things. There are no rules for light cavalry without them being missile armed, but that doesn't fit my conception of the admittedly vague period in which the game is set. So the two flanking units are Mounted Yeomen without bows, and the middle one is Mounted Sergeants, being assumed to be a mix of the leader - a knightly sort of chap presumably - and some more light cavalry. I've also given them a small unit of local foresters (Bidowers in LR terms) who, having found out by some unspecified means of the impending breakout, have gathered in the wood in the centre to assist if they can. These are the only troops on the board who have any ranged fire capability.

The besiegers, having been alerted to the messenger's mission have chased after him with a unit of Mounted Men-at-Arms. That's them in the bottom right corner of the first photo. They would appear to have used the tactic beloved by sheriffs and their posses in Hollywood westerns of trying to 'head him off at the pass' by taking a shorter route, despite in this case the messenger being the one with local knowledge. We must suspend disbelief. Their forces are rounded out by some infantry who have been foraging in the surrounding countryside. Because of this they are considered not to be fully armed and armoured and are rated as Foot Yeomen.

The defender's leader has rolled up as Vulnerable, and the besieger's as Rash. This latter attribute will prove to be decisive in the skirmish.

Roar!

 There's an article in this week's Economist about the big cats which roam Britain killing sheep while at the same time evading capture either physically or in an irrefutable photograph. Apparently these sightings first started to be reported during the Industrial Revolution, a phenomenon ascribed to new city dwellers yearning for the rural lifestyle they had left behind. After finishing the article I still wasn't entirely sure why this nostalgia took the form of imagining animals which had been extinct in this country since the last ice age and which none of those involved would ever have seen. Even the Eurasian lynx had disappeared over a thousand years before that. Not, of course, that a lynx is a big cat, the difference being that big cats roar while the others merely purr. Here's a picture of a lion on a rampart, as out of focus as it should be: