Flourish. Enter King Edward...

 ... in triumph; with Gloucester, Clarence and the rest.

"Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course

And we are graced with wreaths of victory"

And so it proved in our refight of Barnet. Sadly for Hastings 'the rest' didn't include him as he had perished upon the roll of a natural one in melee. But Gloucester, obviously stung by my previous observation that he never seemed to make it through any of our games, played a blinder. I didn't take many photos and no good ones at all, but include this shot to illustrate Dickon in action.

This was the largest of the games we've played using Test of Resolve - indeed I'm pretty sure it was the biggest WotR game I've ever put on - and thus wasn't over quite as quickly as the others. It played out rather well I thought. The 'stand off distance' mechanism in ToR lends itself nicely to the scenario specific rules required to mimic the fog which was a big influence at Barnet historically. The clinching factor in our game was that Oxford's battle wasn't able to manoeuvre as quickly when it realised there was nothing in front of it as Gloucester's did in the same position.

I think we'll have one more WotR game before I set up a different period and no, it won't be Mortimer's Cross. No paint has yet touched kern, and I'm now off to Wales for a couple of days of birthday celebrations in the inevitable rain. One thing that does need sorting out is a better way of marking casualties and troop types. The existing system was designed for gridded games and just doesn't work properly in a non-gridded game. Also required is a method of distinguishing battles one from another given that most troops look the same. Neither of those will be done by next week.

Iechyd da.

Kern I Get A Witness

 What joy, there would appear to be a multitude of 'kern' puns out there. I think I vaguely promised to talk about the RedBox and Tumbling Dice kern figures that I had bought, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

Or it would be if it was lit better. I'll take another one when they've been undercoated. They are compatible in size and look fairly similar apart from the haircuts, as in the chap on the right has had one and the chap on the left hasn't. In fact the Tumbling Dice figure (that's the metal one) rather reminds me of a good friend of mine from university days back in the 1970s; one just needs to imagine that instead of throwing a javelin he is energetically playing pinball and is just about to bring that right hand down for some mean flipper action. So, where are the javelins, or darts as the Test of Resolve authors would have it? Those supplied are soft metal so I shall be replacing them with stiff wire. Prepare yourselves for details of how difficult it is to do that. I think my modelling skills are reasonable; they are certainly better than my painting skills, I'll say that before anyone else does. However, I have have a blind spot when it comes to superglue, so there could be problems ahead.

And yes that is the Financial Times protecting the table.

Cattivo consiglio

 And so to the opera. The number of views this blog gets have decreased even faster than the number of posts that I have made, but if anything should whack them right back up again it's reviews of two rarely performed operas. 

Rossini's 'Il viaggio a Reims' was written to celebrate the coronation of a King Charles, meaning that ETO's current production is perhaps more timely than one of those they performed last year. On the other hand the king in question was Charles X of France, who was crowned in 1825 and deposed in the July revolution of 1830; will the Windsors go the way of the Bourbons? Reviews have been mixed, but I'm with those who say that it's an enjoyable romp. I'm also with those who say 'lose the third act'. 

Musically stronger - Rossini wrote his piece to be performed just the once, and recycled the best bits into other operas - was Donizetti's 'Lucrezia Borgia'. I'm not sure it was dramatically stronger because, well, it made no sense at all. Nor does it appear to have much to do with history. It was however beautifully sung and blackly comic. Lucrezia is much given to reminding the Duke of Ferrara that he is her fourth husband, with the implication as to what happened to the first three being fairly clear. The work also contains what must be the worst advice in all of opera when Orsini (on the left above) tells the not terribly bright Gennaro (that's him on the right) that they should go that night's feast given by notorious poisoner Lucrezia Borgia, as there will be plenty of time to leave town tomorrow. It doesn't end well for either of them, or for pretty much everyone else in the cast come to that.

Three Battle Scenario - at last

 Firstly, a public service announcement: avoid this Covid thingy if at all possible. I was getting better, and then I wasn't. It is, to an extent anyway, my own fault. I had important reasons to take a day trip to London, but it rather set me back, not helped by all the inevitable train delays and cancellations. But, I had recovered sufficiently by Wednesday last for there to be a game in the annexe.

I'm not sure what's happened to the colour in that photo. It's the three battle scenario from the Test of Resolve rulebook, with a small change. The scenario has one battle with a mounted contingent, but given that the first thing that would happen is that they would dismount, I pre-empted that and made them fight on foot from the start. Instead I gave each side a small unit of mounted household reinforcements, so that we still got to see how the mounted rules work.

As you will note if you look carefully at the picture above, one of the things we were able to test is what happens if mounted men-at-arms charge into the rear of a unit which is running away. Funnily enough, it didn't end well for the foot unit. (I'm afraid that's Richard of Gloucester meeting an early death in one of our games, and not for the first time; he's jinxed) If Somerset and his boys had stopped there we would perhaps have come to the conclusion that cavalry could be dominant on the battlefield. However, rather than retiring and regrouping they charged on and quickly demonstrated why that wasn't what happened during the Wars of the Roses.

It was, once again, all over rather quickly. These rules really don't mess about. I, on the other hand, do mess about and there has been no progress at all on painting all the kern I bought at such great expense.

Thought for (Match of) the Day

 "The unrestricted person, who has in hand what they will in all events, is free. But anyone who can be restricted, coerced or pushed into something against what they will is a slave." 

- Epictetus

It Had To Happen Eventually

 "A disease known is half cured." - Irish proverb

I have had Covid. I wasn't particularly acutely ill, but it's left me very washed out, and with a sort of persistent brain fog. So no gaming - board or war - and not much of anything else really. My recent purchases of Irish kern have arrived, but haven't got any further than a heap on the dining table. Also in the pile are various flags which I ordered in to help fill the strange gaps in my complement of Wars of the Roses commanders. Of course, if I have the strength to write a blog post can painting and modelling be far behind?

Illness requires lighter reading material than my normal diet of Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Proust so I picked up 'Winter Pilgrims', which had been passed on to me by Peter. I think the appropriate word for the main plot line is 'implausible', but the descriptive set pieces of various battles are both entertaining and give food for thought. As I have often observed here, no one knows what happened which means that fictional imaginings are as valid as anything else really. I thought that the passage about the attack on Sandwich was the strongest, perhaps because of the relatively small scale of the affair. By the time of Towton, the author had rather lost me; too many tea breaks in his interpretation for my taste.

The book covers Mortimer's Cross, so the kern put in a brief appearance. I trust that, once painted, my figures will put up a better show.