Post war general elections

Tin-soldiering Tony wonders whether when the dust has settled on all this we shall see a repeat of the 1945 election where, despite leading the country to success in the war, Winston Churchill was thrown out to be replaced by the 20th century's greatest prime minister, Clement Attlee. Historical parallels are of course very difficult to draw even in hindsight, let alone as one lives through them. Clearly Johnson sees himself as Churchill, cometh the hour cometh the man and all that, but equally clearly an awful lot of us see him as Neville Chamberlain, someone who has left the country unprepared despite all the warning signs being there.

Lloyd George is unhappy at being compared to Boris Johnson

I would suggest that another possible parallel to consider is the 1918 election. In this case the Great War wouldn't represent the pandemic, rather it would represent leaving the EU. The pandemic occurring immediately afterwards would be represented by the pandemic occurring immediately afterwards, if you follow me. So, we have a 'victory' delivered by a charismatic Prime Minister, who has managed to oust his dull predecessor mostly by dint of being more flamboyant and has succeeded to the top job despite being a known liar, womaniser and father of a string of illegitimate children. He wins the subsequent election with a large majority on the basis of 'Britain for the Britons' (one of Lloyd George's actual slogans). Does that sound familiar?

So, how did it play out? Sadly, having won he finds that the great 'victory' has left the country financially prostrate and after a few years, in which not much is achieved domestically and there are disastrous negotiations involving, among others, the French, Germans and Americans, he is deposed by his party which then loses the next election so badly that it never takes office again.

We shall see.

Lloyd George's boys go from bad to worse

We had another game of Square Bashing last night, which ended up posing more questions than it answered. I'm afraid that the British, defending this time, got creamed again. The overall impression one has of the Western Front is that it favoured the defender, but these rules seem to do the opposite. In particular, once a unit starts winning assaults it seems very hard to stop them. In that sense it reminds me of "For, Lords, Tomorrow is a Busy Day", although from memory archery fire in those rules is more effective than machine guns appear to be here.

Traditionalists will be pleased to learn that the units taking to the table top for the first time - the German flamethrowers - achieved nothing and were destroyed as soon as they came into contact with the enemy. In fact (realistically?) an awful lot of things were destroyed. I was a bit concerned that the game was taking a long time, but I suspect that had we carried on then the remaining moves would have been quicker simply because there was nothing left to move or shoot with.

I rashly promised that we would have a British attack using tanks next time, but have changed my mind already. I have ordered some more tanks, so will leave things until I have built them and we can field a worthwhile number. Instead the next game will be pretty much a repeat of last night's, but this time the British will be defending trenches.

Lloyd George, your boys took one hell of a beating

The first game of the year in the annexe was our first try at Peter Pig's 'Square Bashing', and I'd count it as a success; as opposed to the British attack which was not, in any sense, a success. As usual with a first try of new rules there were important lessons to be learned as to what tactics to employ, for example not to call in artillery barrages too close to one's own troops.

I had read beforehand some of the reviews posted on TMP at the time that the second edition of SB was released a few years ago. There was much chuntering about the turn sequence being unclear and, in particular, how difficult it was to understand the difference between hits (for the purpose of permanent damage recording) and casualties (for the purpose of morale testing). All I can say is that we didn't have any problem at all, and for a debut run through I thought we got very few rules wrong. One other complaint people had was it all took too long, whereas we didn't find that, and it would seem to meet my requirement for a game that one can play in an evening.

That may still exclude the set up process - which in typical Peter Pig fashion seems to be very complicated and take for ever - but would certainly include calculating the result. I deferred that to a subsequent day on the basis it would be long-winded, but in fact it looks more complex than it is and I did it in five minutes. One thing I wasn't especially keen on is the fact that the value of objectives and units killed relies on the roll of dice after the game ends, but I think it would have made little difference to the outcome on this occasion. What might have made a difference is if I had told James in his role as attacker that he could get victory points for occupying squares in the defender's second and third rows as well as for capturing the objectives. In my defence I can't remember reading that bit before at all. Anyway, at the point we finished the Germans had 82 VP to the British 30. Had the British captured the farm it might have reduced that difference by about 25 even if casualties on both sides had been equal while they did it.

I mentioned in my report of last week's refight of Novara that Peter had started the New Year in his usual dice rolling form. It certainly wasn't true for this game; he was on fire, saving everything and hitting everything. It won't last.