PotCVIpouri

 “I have not the least sympathy for these useless and destructive pastimes, football and politics.” 

- César Aira

I shall temporarily make an exception for the first of those.

Premier League table 2021/22

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	GD	Pts
1	Brentford	1	1	0	0	2	3
2	Aston Villa	0	0	0	0	0	0
3	Brighton	0	0	0	0	0	0
4	Burnley	0	0	0	0	0	0
5	Chelsea	0	0	0	0	0	0
6	Crystal Palace	0	0	0	0	0	0
7	Everton	0	0	0	0	0	0
8	Leeds United	0	0	0	0	0	0
9	Leicester City	0	0	0	0	0	0
10	Liverpool	0	0	0	0	0	0
11	Man City	0	0	0	0	0	0
12	Manchester United	0	0	0	0	0	0
13	Newcastle	0	0	0	0	0	0
14	Norwich City	0	0	0	0	0	0
15	Southampton	0	0	0	0	0	0
16	Tottenham	0	0	0	0	0	0
17	Watford	0	0	0	0	0	0
18	West Ham	0	0	0	0	0	0
19	Wolves	0	0	0	0	0	0
20	Arsenal	1	0	0	1	-2	0

Gaming resumed this week with added Mark. He not only took some photos, but he has also posted them here. Very cleverly he has set it out as quiz, in which you have to guess the order in which they were taken. As a help, let me tell you that the second photo shows the final position on the first evening around the farm in the centre, which has turned out to be the focus of the action, and was taken from more or less where I was standing. The main question in my mind at the moment is how to resolve the standoff between the two units facing each other across the road on the right. Winning some initiative would be a good start.

Facing The Horse's Tail

 The book which I reviewed yesterday outlines several ways in which those who broke the laws of war might be punished. Some of these aimed to humiliate those who had brought disgrace to chivalry: they might be stripped of their spurs, their shield could be hung upside down or they could be paraded through the streets on horseback while facing the horses tail. Now I know that a lot of regular readers have an encyclopaedic knowledge of this blog, so no doubt there are many of you out there saying to yourselves: "Hang a trout, what about that thing you posted on 25th March 2014 about Sir Giles Mompesson? Are you now telling us that never happened?". Well, indeed I am.

Personally I put the blame squarely on those dilettante, liberal, London-based journalists at the Guardian, who one must assume saw the words 'facing the horse's tail' and let their fevered imaginations do the rest. Having now done my own fact-checking I can confirm that Mompesson was almost certainly merely riding backwards. It is hard to be entirely sure though; according to the Dictionary of National Biography the corrupt MP was sentenced both to life imprisonment and to permanent exile, which seems an unlikely combination. He clearly never served either punishment anyway.

In any event that posting from all those years ago isn't a complete write off. I still think a picture of a dog that looks like Hitler has comic validity.

The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages

 Fate decreed that there would not after all be a game last week. But the upside is that I am free to bring you another review of a book which you will never read. Today we feature 'The Laws of War in the Middle Ages' by Maurice Keen, first published in 1965.

The first thing to point out is that this is a rigorously academic book, whose footnotes are both copious and also often in either Latin or medieval French. I've pulled that trick myself on this blog from time to time, but it must be noted that while it's funny when I do it, it isn't funny at all when others do. Notwithstanding that, it's a very interesting read. Keen describes a world (OK, half a continent - this is entirely about Western Europe) in which there can be overarching 'laws' without any supranational organisation to draw them up, let alone police and enforce them; indeed for much of the time there aren't any nations either in the sense that we would understand them. The context is that all the relevant people (i.e. the warrior caste) consider themselves bound by the rules of chivalry, and it is their sense of honour alone that ensures that fair play is observed even if it is only amongst themselves for some of the time. Because Keen also demonstrates fairly effectively that everyone else - with the possible exception of the church - are protected by no laws at all, and that even those supposedly bound by their code quite often ignore it when it suits them.

I don't think there is much direct read across to the wargaming table, although chapter VIII on sieges is required reading for anyone interested in that aspect of medieval warfare. There is a quite a lot on the role of heralds, and it filled in some of the gaps that I felt were missing from the book I recently read on that subject. There was also an unexpected overlap with another book I have been reading: 'Debt: The First 5000 Years' by anthropologist David Graeber. One small part of that book considers the differences and similarities between 'a debt of honour' and 'honouring a debt', a nuance which turns out to be very pertinent to the medieval practice of ransoming noble prisoners captured in battle.

A Little Afternoon Music

 Not only have postings been sparse recently, but they have all been about wargaming; and how dull is that? Cultural opportunities at this time of year are always a bit thin on the ground, and this is not, needless to say, the best of times. I have however been to a couple of pieces of musical theatre. 

Or have I? Not long ago I saw a conversation with Stephen Sondheim's biographer in which he said that the composer's view was that if productions were put on by an opera company then his output were operas, but if they were done on Broadway or the West End then they were musical theatre. 'A Little Night Music' was put on by Opera North so, ergo, it's an opera. Either way both I and my companion for the the afternoon thoroughly enjoyed it. I wouldn't be the first reviewer to point out the irony of songs - 'Send in the Clowns' being probably the best known example - which had been specifically written for actors who couldn't sing a note, being sung beautifully by opera singers who could probably have done them without drawing breathe if they had felt like it. The one in the photo above is the illustrious Dame Josephine Barstow.

Equally tuneful were the cast of 'Piaf', an excellent play with songs about the Little Sparrow from Belleville, and that's despite the fact that one of the actors has represented the UK twice in the Eurovision Song Contest. Rather effectively Edith (*) and her associate Toin were portrayed as Cockneys rather than having cod French accents of the 'Allo 'Allo variety. The rest of the actors spoke in what I assume were their natural accents (apart from briefly when the Bosche occupied Paris) and that also mostly worked. The exception was when Charles Aznavour was revealed as being Welsh. Even worse he was facially the spitting image of the chap who used to advertise Curly Wurly.

'Sheeeee may be the beauty, or the beeeeeast'

For the record, Aznavour in real life actually looked a bit like Roberto Mancini. And as even more of a digression, Terry Scott of course played Cardinal Wolsey in the previously-covered-in-this-blog 'Carry on Henry'. Back to la Piaf: she lived a life, as they say, but she regretted nothing. Rien de rien.

* Named after Edith Cavell - today's pub quiz fact.

I Côa, I Saw, I Conquered

 Another game has been and gone and would be lost to posterity unless I wrote about it. James called it Coa Constrictor, but I wasn't paying attention so I can't tell you with any confidence why. Presumably it's to do with the river and with the British deployment area being a bit, well, constricted. The table looked nothing much like this:

As you will have gathered from the heading, I won this time, when I just managed to achieve my secret victory condition before the wheels fell off. I had had a guess - a wrong guess - at Peter's victory condition and was doing a lot of unnecessary defending. I would never have worked the correct objective out in a month of Sundays because, when revealed, it turned out to be ambitious to the point of impossibility; sensibly enough he was instead trying to win by biffing my forces until they gave up, which they very nearly did.

Even by our standards there was a huge rule change in the middle. Had we played the first night with the rules of the second the French would have won. Had we played the second night with the rules of the first the British would have won by a country mile. I'm not entirely sure we've got it right yet. Anyway, slight gear change and next week will see some siege action in the annexe. 

I came, I sawmill, I didn't conquer

 Hot weather normally sees your bloggist too busy frolicking in the sunshine to post here, but in common with many others I am finding the current spell all a bit much, and have retreated indoors. That gives me a chance to say a few words about the conclusion of the game I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. I didn't take any photos; James didn't take any photos; in fact no one took any photos, so I have stolen the one below from his original post about the scenario.

The only action worth speaking of took place on the hill in the bottom right corner. As I had won all the initiative I was able to occupy it with three units of infantry in line and a gun. The French approached from the general area of the bridge with four units in column of attack, one behind the other. Everything was set up for me to deal with them in piecemeal fashion. I fired the gun: nothing. I fired all the infantry: nothing. I fired all the infantry again: nothing. I fired all the infantry again: well you get the picture. The French kept coming, marched straight through the British line and the game was over.

One can't draw any conclusions about the rules from all this; it was simply a sequence of appalling dice rolls. The consensus was that it must have rained and made the powder wet. Although the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain, on this occasion we can assume it fell on the hill instead. So, we shall have another go this week and try to put into action any conclusions we have drawn from our couple of (or in my case one and a half) games. Back in late 2019 when we first started using Piquet family rules for the Peninsular I wrote that they seemed rather unfair on the French, who always got blown away before making contact with British infantry in line formation. I'd say that the current version leans slightly towards the French. If I understand it all correctly - by no means a given - a French column of attack down to one quarter strength counts the same in melee as a British line with no losses; indeed if it initiates the melee by charging then it has the advantage. 

The other question you are no doubt asking yourself is why the battle was over after just one small element of it was resolved? This has to do with James' period specific adjustment to the morale rules. I've never been a fan of the Piquet morale rules, partly because they are not thematic (they are a mishmash of various unrelated things lumped together in a mechanism to determine both when the game ends and who wins), and partly because I could never see why the process for assigning amounts of morale would necessarily deliver the 'correct' result to make the game work well. James' tweak is certainly thematic (although still perched on top of what I regard as a rackety base), but simply means that the question of 'correct' morale levels now applies four or five times as often as it did before.

Heat

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,

rend it to tatters. 

Fruit cannot drop

through this thick air - 

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts 

the points of pears 

and rounds the grapes. 

Cut the heat - plough through it, 

turning it on either side 

of your path.

   - Hilda Doolittle

The Herald In Late Medieval Europe

 I mentioned recently the idea of blogging niches. I seem to be slipping into one by default, namely reviewing obscure books about the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which no one else either has any interest in or will ever read. This is today's:

First published in 2009, this is another which I would certainly not have bought at the initial price demanded. Its contents are nine academic papers by various authors discussing the identity and roles of officers of arms in a range of European regions. I read it under a slight misapprehension in that I thought that it would include some discussion about what heralds did whilst on the battlefield, or at least on campaign. However, apart from a few Scots heralds in the service of various Scandinavian kings who apparently joined in the fighting whenever they could, it doesn't. There is plenty of interesting stuff about tournaments and diplomacy, but I'd be hard pushed to recommend it specifically to wargamers. I was personally quite surprised by a number of things contained in the book: just how late in the middle ages it was before the whole business of heraldry was formalised, the extent and depth of diplomacy between countries which seem to me to be a long way apart (e.g. Denmark and Portugal), and the degree to which Paul Bettany's act as Geoffrey Chaucer really does reflect the role that the heralds performed at the joust.

I'm embarrassed to say that I also didn't previously know that a sister of Henry V became Queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Pueblo Aserradero

The lack of regular posting here has been due to lack of external stimulus to provide the inspiration. Ironically my original blogging niche was as a wargamer who didn't wargame, but that space seems to have become very crowded of late. I assumed that the restarting of gaming would in itself be sufficient to rectify things, but sod's law meant that, after waiting fifteen months, I missed the second evening. It seems that I lost in absentia, which was not surprising and was at least an efficient way to do it. However, I did turn up for week three and the start of a new game, details of the set up of which can be found here. It had been very pleasant to find that all was reassuringly familiar after the long gap - except for James' moustache obviously - and that situation carried on. In fact there was an unexpected return to something which had first been the subject of heated debate at least eight years ago: the rotation of the earth on its axis, the orbiting of the earth around the sun, and their combined effect on the length of the day at different longitudes and in different seasons. Thankfully, where once there had been discord, there is now harmony. The solar system, being unaware of, and uninterested in, the debate seems to have carried on regardless in the meantime. La causerie scientifique then moved on to quantum mechanics and once again there was unanimity; we all agreed that it was very, very complicated (*) and also that gluon was an amusing name for a particle. 

But, what of the game I hear you ask. Well, I'm the British, I got all the initiative, I currently have possession of the target village, and the Connaught Rangers were an Irish regiment. I am sure that James will fill in the gaps in that summary on his blog in due course.

* As an illustration of this, last week's New Scientist says that we now know that at high enough energy levels a Higgs boson decays into itself. Come again?

Rockit

 Matt Hancock may have been a lousy Health Secretary, but his dad is a top jazz pianist.

I saw him in 1983 or 1984 at the Hammersmith Odeon and my main memory of that night is of the legs from the video above dancing across the stage. 

And Lo, There Was Wargaming

"Horror is the removal of masks" - Robert Bloch 

After a not-so-short break, three suitably masked men gathered last night to push some toy soldiers around a table.

We played Peninsular Napoleonics, using - it goes without saying - a completely rewritten set of rules. I like the way movement works, I'm not sure that I have yet got my head round the way morale will pan out in practice, and the great skirmish dilemma seems to have been resolved by essentially ignoring it whilst still incorporating the aesthetics.

A good time was had by all.

PotCVIpouri

It's the fifteen hundredth post of the blog. I did consider doing something special to celebrate this milestone, but after 1,499 resolutely unspecial posts there didn't seem much point. Having said that, one post in particular seems to have caught someone's imagination. For the last couple of weeks this report from four years ago featuring nothing but photos of farm animals and, oh yes, some ladies tug-of-war has been getting a dozen or so views every day. There are some strange people out there.  

In common with the great majority of those previous editions, I have no wargaming related activity on which to report. The excuse this time is that the Casa Epictetus has been undergoing some roofing work. 

Colourful, but somehow still tasteful

I am very pleased, however, to be able to report that I have been to the opera, and indoors to boot. Opera North returned to live performance after more than a year with a special production of Fidelio, chosen because it is, of course, about freedom, and so would suitably mark the end of restrictions. 

Obviously they had more faith in the government than I did. Be that as it may, it was excellent. And if opera is back, can wargaming be far behind?

North Cape 1943

The dull roots of face-to-face wargaming could soon be stirred by the spring rain of antibodies in the bloodstream; or, equally possibly, June may turn out to be the cruellest month. While we wait, the warm weather has meant that there has been nothing happening in the annexe. The newly expanded and manned fort still awaits the attacking force to form up outside it. I have however read another book.

The Imperial War Museum recently posted a short video on their YouTube channel about the sinking of the Scharnhorst, which understandably enough focussed on the role played by HMS Belfast. I didn't previously know much (anything at all really) about the action and a quick search showed that Osprey had published a book written by Angus Konstam on the subject late last year. The standard Osprey format actually suits WWII naval battles rather well: there are a limited number of participants doing a finite number of things over a short period, and the reader doesn't end up feeling that important information has had to be omitted for the sake of space.

I found it a good read and can recommend it should anyone else find themselves suddenly struck by this fairly niche interest. It is lavishly illustrated, as you would expect, with illustrations, photographs and maps. Regarding the last, I suffered my usual confusion when studying them, but strongly suspect that is due to my well-known problems with spatial awareness rather than any inherent fault in the book. The usual proof-reading problems that plague books on military history are present, but in a fairly small way. The Royal Navy divided the ships involved in the operation into two groups, rather imaginatively designated Force 1 and Force 2. On a number of occasions the text reads Force 1 when from the context it is quite clearly referring to Force 2; so clearly in fact that it doesn't present any real problems. And you would have thought that someone involved in the book's production would have known the difference between a baron and a baronet.

A Slightly Larger Fort

 It's been a thin time hobby-wise recently, but there has been a low level of background activity going on, most of which can be seen in the photo below.

I've added two extra bastions on the table edge, originally to ensure that all the walls were flanked by two sets of fortress guns. In the last run-through I found that I had to restrict the besiegers to attacking the front two walls in order to avoid them having an entirely artificial advantage. Increasing the number of bastions may also make the game go more quickly, due to the way that the forces are built up in the rules. I shall return to this shortly, or if not shortly then at least eventually.

The other new additions are the ravelins now shielding the walls. I have taken quite a liberty with historical accuracy with these, in the interests of fitting everything in to the space available. They should be at a much sharper angle, but to reflect that, and to also allow them to contain my existing artillery bases, would mean their footprint, and therefore that of the covered way, extending way out; which in turn would push the first parallel back off the table. Near enough is good enough. 

Let's have a song on that theme from the aptly named 'Dodgy':

Bloodied Banners

 It's time for another book review. It makes a pleasant change to be able to say that this one gets an unequivocal thumbs up. The book in question - "Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield" by Robert W. Jones - isn't new, having first been published in 2010. I was keen to read it at the time, but was quite a lot less keen on the £50 price tag of the hardback. I have now managed to pick up the paperback for a fraction of that price.

Dr Jones is a historian, for those who set great store by these things, and the book contains footnotes galore referring us to primary and secondary sources, including the full version of translated text in the original language in case anyone wants to challenge his grasp of Norman French. He still manages a lightness of touch though; one of the quotations he uses to introduce each chapter comes from Terry Pratchett. The author covers a pretty full range of visual display: arms and armour are considered alongside heraldry, banners, badges and religious images. He also includes a chapter on aural display: drums, trumpets and the like. I found his approach both comprehensive in scope and nuanced in conclusion. Whilst he is big on psychology and symbolism, he doesn't lose sight of the implications for what warriors of the time actually did in practice. And he doesn't stop there; there are several comments as to where the lingering effects of medieval practice can be seen in the seventeenth century and later.

He begins and ends with the sad tale of Sir John Chandos at Lussac in 1369. Apparently he dismounted and strode alone towards the French proclaiming "I am John Chandos: look at me well and, if God please, we will now put to proof your great deeds of arms which are so renowned". Unfortunately for him he then tripped over his surcoat - on which were emblazoned his coat of arms so that everyone would know it was him who was performing great deeds - and a Frenchman struck him with his lance while he was lying on the ground and killed him. God, presumably, did not so please. 

 

I say chaps, well played

 

Lying Liars And The Lies That They Tell

 "One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation." 

- Claude Levi-Strauss

PotCVpouri

 The Yarkshire Gamer has announced the end of the golden age of wargames blogs, although I can't help noticing that he did so via a wargames blog. Rest assured that this blog will continue its proud record of publishing top-notch, wargame-related stuff every single day and often even more frequently. And that, dear readers, is an aspiration rather than a promise.

So, I haven't been here for a while; what's been happening in my life? Not wargaming, that's for sure. I think I mentioned that I had bought a pressure washer. I have been dodging the showers and trying it out. I had never done any jet/pressure/power washing before and was interested to discover that it is a metaphor for life itself: everything is a complete mess and at the end you stand back and ask yourself "Is that all I've achieved?". 

On a brighter note, cultural activities have resumed. In my capacity as a man-about-town I was invited to a reception to mark the reopening of the Tetley Gallery in Leeds city centre, a very pleasant Art Deco building which was formerly the offices for the brewery. The current exhibition is by Mel Brimfield and is entitled "From This World, To That Which Is To Come", a quote from "The Pilgrim's Progress". The artist gave a talk, but as she did so whilst wearing a mask I am unable to tell you what she said. The piece above was singing to me whilst I was taking the photo (N.B. this is very different to the idea of it 'speaking to me', which it most certainly did not) and is, I believe, about the concept that our mental and emotional health would be better if we would only all help one another; amen to that. The best piece was a cartoon which suggested that the Adventures of Tintin were the delusions of a psychiatric in-patient, that Professor Calculus was his doctor, and that Snowy was in fact his pillow rather than his dog. All of which makes more sense than the books. 

I have also been to my first gig in over a year, the great Martin Simpson. I have of course seen him many times before, which I think helped to bridge that gap and make it seem like just another concert. Not so for him, I think. It was his first appearance in a long time and he said that it was impossible for him to express what it meant for him to be on stage again, "reminding myself of who I am" as he put it. He played the usual mix of originals, traditional songs and covers, including songs by: John Prine - sadly lost to Covid last year; Dylan - eighty in a couple of days; and this one from Robb Johnson - my old comrade from days gone by.

Test of Resolve - the unboxing

 Even in a world where one can't actually play any games, one can't own too many rule sets. In my case that goes double for Wars of the Roses rules. I have therefore acquired the newly published 'Test of Resolve' and given them the once over. Should I ever get to try them out I shall publish a more considered review, but they are currently fourth in the queue, and I'm an old man, so who knows.

They are perfect bound with 92 annoyingly sized pages plus covers, of which the rules proper take up some fifty or so, including three pages defined as optional. Half a dozen of the pages are the cards which drive the game and which need to be cut out or copied. Alternatively they offer a playing card style deck and I bought those. They are print-on-demand, which is fine, and done by Amazon, which I'm less keen on. They look well laid out; in particular they are replete with foot notes which provide cross-references for where terms are used in a different place to where they are defined. There are a couple of colour photos of figures, but nothing excessive. The diagrams illustrating how units are move, melee etc are clear enough. They look a bit like the units are represented by different coloured and sized Lego blocks, which is an interesting thought. I don't know the authors, but recognise Tim Couper's name from various Piquet forums and the influence of that set is apparent, primarily of course in being card-driven. The cards here form a single deck, but half red and half white; broadly speaking the Lancastrians act on the former and the Yorkists on the latter. It's a bit more sophisticated than that, but you get the gist. They claim to only require one D12 per side, so bucket-of-dice they ain't. I'd need to play them through to tell you how that works in practice.

I suggest that we can split the problems with gaming the Wars of the Roses into two parts: the macro and the micro. By macro, I mean all the politics, family feuds, revenge, treachery, misunderstanding etc. For those who like that sort of thing, there are rules for unreliable commanders and potential unexpected events, including the splendidly named 'Mind the Gap' event. By micro, I mean that no one (N.B. I mean no one at all) actually knows how the forces were structured on the day or what tactics they used. One of the things I always look for in a new set of WotR rules is how they have addressed the concept of mixed bill and bow units. The authors make a bold claim: "Archer behaviour in this period is quite well understood". Their interpretation of this 'understanding' appears to tally with that of Dr Lewis, whose book I reviewed recently, although they don't seem to share any of his other theories. (For those who haven't read enough poor reviews of the book in question, there is another in the current issue of Miniature Wargames.) They do however appear to share one view held by another dubious 'expert' i.e. me. I'm not speaking of the idea that the soldiers were all drunk, because why else would they put themselves through it - although I stand by that one - but rather the one about the big men seeking each other out on the battlefield. I've always thought - be warned that I offer no evidence whatsoever in support of this theory - that, given that the wars were kill or be killed for those at the top, then what I would have done if I were Edward IV for example is to gather all my heavily armed and armoured, professionally trained men-at-arms around me and go looking for the Earl of Warwick, and visa versa. As far as I can see, the rules encourage, indeed in certain circumstances force, you to to do that. Kudos.

To be continued, peradventure...

Turdus merula merula

 This blog has experienced a not unusual pre-election hiatus, followed by a not unusual election result. A more self-aware chap than your bloggist might conclude that his input wasn't adding a great deal of value. I must also take the blame for the terrible weather. Two weeks ago I bought a pressure washer and it has rained every day since. 

"Won't you take these sunken eyes and learn to see"

However, spring is here, rain or no rain. The young blackbird above flew headlong into the glass of my study window and then sat on the windowsill glaring at me as if it was my fault. Eventually his mother lured him back to the nest with a beakful of meal worms. Given that I had provided the food in the first place, I rather think the youngster could have looked less resentful.

Bicarbonate of Soda

 As an alternative to the unobtainable textured stone effect spray paint, I have turned to a common household chemical.

My companion for the weekend mentioned that one of her work colleagues had recommended mixing bicarbonate of soda with water based paint as a way of producing textured ceramic style surfaces on cheap vases. I have no idea why that piece of information was shared with me, which I suppose is an indication that I wasn't paying much attention. But, my subconscious was obviously stirred regardless and I made a mental note.

I mixed a suitable shade of grey from some cheap black and white tubes of acrylic and whopped in some bicarb until it looked a bit grainy. Once dry it does indeed produced a textured surface exactly as claimed. I'm not sure that my efforts would produce a very satisfactory item of home decor, but for what I wanted it worked well enough. I won't include a photo, because the ones that I took don't really demonstrate the textured effect. They do show that my carefully mixed paint dried quite a lot darker than it was when I applied it. Still, what's done is done; we shall just have to imagine that half the castle is in the shade.

I wish I had known this a year ago; it would have saved me a lot of money.

Round that corner

 I've had a few days off from wargames related activity because the weather has been rather good. "Surely," I hear you say, "good weather is spraying weather?". Indeed you would think so, but no. While my back was turned the can of paint has dried up, clogged up and generally given up. But the really annoying part is that there appear to be no replacement cans to be had in the UK for love nor money. I don't know what to make of this: it could be related to leaving the EU; it could be something to do with ships stuck in canals; or the colour could have been discontinued for ever (*). For the time being I shall brood on it without doing anything, and hope that something turns up.

On a more positive note I have produced some more Square Bashing tokens, and this time I have manage to produce rounded corners. This might seem trivial, but every time I have made a gaming aid on the laser cutter so far I have intended the corners to be rounded, but they never are. It's easy to design it that way in the CAD package, but until now impossible to port across into the machine code. I am still not entirely clear how I managed it this time - Ungrouping and Breaking Apart may or may not have been involved, whilst Changing Objects to Paths almost certainly was - but I'll take the win.

You may recall that I had even less success in trying to use heat to bend some German model railway scenic material. I can report that it cuts much more easily, and takes glue without any problem. What was I thinking? I shall give more details of what it is when I have finished it.

* Anyone else pissed off about Listerine Original?

Frangas, Non Flectes

 Well, the heat gun didn't either maim me or burn the workshop down. Instead it was the material which defeated me. The arc to which I wished to bend it was too tight to do so without it snapping. So back to the drawing board.

To fill the time I made some tokens for Square Bashing from laminated acrylic. I bought a set from Warbases quite a while ago, which are solid, tactile, perfect in every way except that once they are on the table you can't read them. In Warbases' defence the ones that I have made are too expensive to make commercial sense; or possibly any sense for me to make them either.

Here's some YouTube advice on reforming rigid foam using heat, which I would have done well to have watched before I started:

PotCIVpouri

 I had intended to carry on writing in yesterday's post, after the gratuitous smutty limerick, answering some questions that no one has yet asked. But the force was weak with me; perhaps because I am prostrated with grief. Which I suppose leads to the first question: what did you really think of HRH The People's Racist? I shall simply say that I respect and honour all those who fought against fascism, and leave it at that.

What I was going to write about yesterday was the other question not on anybody's lips: what's happening with the siege games? Well, I have been mulling it over and have decided that the way to make the game quicker is to put more forces on the table. There is some serious logic behind this counter-intuitive conclusion and will share it with you, dear readers, as soon as I set a new game up.

In the meantime, I have been making some more siege and fortress guns. These require more crew and this time I have gone for Kennington Miniatures (sold by SHQ of course), just by way of a change. 

It being April 12th I once again have access to the workshop in which I do much of all this stuff. That's the laser cutter shrouded in the orange cloth at the back. The red sheet in the foreground is some laminated acrylic, on which there will be more to report in due course I hope. Today's task is to use the heat gun to mould some Sturktur-Hartschaum. These are a tool and a material new to me, so either I shall return in triumph with photographs of a magnificent new addition to my Vauban fortress, or I shall burn my hands so badly that I shall never be able to type again.

Valete.

PotCIIIPouri

 Well, here we are, April 11th, and there's a blizzard outside. On top of which the radio appears to have been hijacked by North Korea and is paying non-stop tribute to Kim Jong Phil, who has apparently left us at a tragically young age. 

Young people undertaking their Gold Award expedition

When I was last here it was for a book review. Trebian, over at Wargaming for Grown-ups, has now reviewed the same book, and it seems to have not gone down terribly well. I think our overall conclusions aren't that different - read the book, but make sure that it's someone else's copy - but for once I have been outintemperated (*). A suspiciously large part of his beef with the book seems to be that Dr Lewis hadn't read his (Graham Evans' aka Trebian's) book on Edgecote/Edgcote. I have read it and can confirm that it is a lot better than Dr Lewis' book, but if anyone genuinely thinks that 'Medieval Combat' is the worst book they've ever read then I can only suggest that they are not reading enough books.

According to obituaries that I have seen - not one of which, by the way, mentions the fact that he arranged the murder of Princess Diana - Baron Greenwich didn't have that problem, and in fact owned 11,000 books including many of poetry; so props to him. I am proud to say that this blog can exclusively reveal his favourite poem from among that large collection, one that befits both an old salt like him and this poignant moment in our nation's history:

There was a young sailor from Brighton

Who said to his girl "That's a tight one"

She exclaimed "Bless my soul

You're in the wrong hole

But there's plenty of room in the right one."

* This is definitely a word.

Medieval Military Combat

 I have been reading 'Medieval Military Combat' written by Tom Lewis and recently published by Casemate. In case you don't want to read any further, I'm going to give it 3 stars: not bad, worth a read, borrow rather than buy if you can.

The recently published military history that I have read all seems to have been lacking a proof reader. By way of a change, Dr Lewis could have done with an editor; someone to mould his arguments into a better structure and chop out all the repetition. He also needed someone to point out the weakness in claiming to be setting right widely held misconceptions about a quite niche subject, namely that a lot of those interested and motivated enough to read the book won't actually have those misconceptions in the first place. So, he comes to the conclusion that there weren't as many combatants or casualties at Towton as the chroniclers of the time said. Indeed. And he reveals that a fully harnessed man at arms could probably only have fought for about ten or fifteen minutes at a time because it was such hard work. Quite so.

Anyway, that aside, he is quite clear on the direction from which he approaches things. Although an  academic he is not a historian, but rather had a career in the Australian armed forces (he finds room to tell us on several occasions that he served in Iraq), has lots of experience of relevant(ish) fighting techniques such as fencing and riding, and has observed and interviewed re-enactors at length on the physical aspects of what they do. He has mashed all this together, read the secondary sources extensively - the bibliography is good - and with an added dash of Inherent Military Probability has laid down how he thinks it worked. It might be right, it might not, but it makes one think.

Despite the title, and subtitle come to that, this is mainly a book about the man at arms wearing plate armour and fighting on foot, and is none the worse for that. He believes it likely that they would have operated in a less formal version of the triplex acies used by the Romans during the Punic Wars, relieving each other in the front line turn and turn about, thus allowing them to fight for longer periods. It's certainly plausible, but he doesn't have anything specific to support it beyond the fact that it seems logical to him and, as he points out, the commanders would all have studied Vegetius. 

As I said at the top, it's worth a read.

The Souls of Old Men

I awoke this morning to find that, despite waiting patiently for all these years, I still have neither a bus pass nor a pension. But let's forget all the negatives and instead look forward to the good things that are yet to come:

Inside their worn, tattered bodies 

sit the souls of old men.
How unhappy the poor things are
and how bored by the pathetic life they live.
How they tremble for fear of losing that life, and how much
they love it, those befuddled and contradictory souls,
sitting - half comic and half tragic -
inside their old, threadbare skins.

                     - Constantine P. Cavafy

Miss Lockharte's Letters

Book reviews on this blog are normally related to military history in some way; indeed as it happens there will be another Wars of the Roses related post along shortly. However, today I shall venture into a different genre and address this book, which is a Regency romance:

Now, I am very fond of Jane Austen, and can remember, when laid up with glandular fever many years ago, being grateful for my mother's Georgette Heyer collection to pass the time. But other than that, it's not exactly the sort of book that I would go for. I'm more of a hard-boiled, noir sort of chap. All the same, when this was recommended to me, with the insistence that I in particular needed to read it, I thought that I might as well give it a go.

The reason for the recommendation becomes obvious half way through chapter four. In the first three chapters we are introduced to our Heroine, the eponymous Miss Lockharte. In what I thought was a creative and amusing exposition it is explained why she has, through the ill luck and misfortune that so often seems to have befallen young ladies at that time, found herself in difficult circumstances; the very type of circumstances that cry out for her to be recued by a Hero. We meet this chap - it goes without saying that he is an aloof, saturnine, single, wealthy, peer of the realm - in chapter four, where it also becomes apparent that he has, perhaps inadvertently, played a part in bringing about our heroine's despair. He is rather unhappy when we first come across him, being under the cosh from the women in his life:  his mother, who wants him to marry, settle down and produce an heir; those debutantes having their 'come out' season and trying to trap him into marriage; his sister, who resents his refusal to accept her chosen beau; the mistress he is trying to get rid of. In fact he could literally have been any one of us in our youth, or, just possibly, some among us in the not too distant past. This similarity is something that becomes even more obvious when the author tells us:

"And all he wanted to do was play with his toy soldiers."

So, does all come right for our protagonists in the end? I think we all know the answer to that, but the journey to get there is entertaining enough. Are the toy soldiers pertinent to the plot? Astonishingly, they are.  I won't expand further on what happens, but there is one development that will strike a chill into many hearts: someone breaks in and steals some of his soldiers. I know, how evil is that?

You Know The World Is In An Uproar

 Back before I got side tracked in to writing about wargaming and military history all the time, this blog was renowned as the home of female-fronted seventies blues-rock bands. Let's get back to basics with some Stone the Crows featuring, of course, Maggie Bell; this one's a Percy Mayfield song which sixty-odd years after being written somehow captures the zeitgeist:

Agincourt Diorama

I've mentioned the Royal Armouries talks a few times, including yesterday in fact now I come to think about it. They continue to be (mostly) excellent; my own favourite over recent months was the one on firearms forensic science. Anyway, this is not part of their normal lecture series, but next Thursday, the 25th March, at 17:00 GMT the Royal Armouries will be hosting an online discussion about the building of their splendid Agincourt diorama. The discussion will feature, amongst others, the Perry twins, whose figures those are. Booking details are here.

Because, under normal circumstances obviously, I visit the Royal Armouries several times a year I have perhaps become a tad blasé about the model, but it is very good. I do sometimes find myself standing there wishing it would move. It's a bit like one of those demonstration games at a show that manufacturers set up, but never actually play.

The Castle in the War of the Roses

 In his - highly recommended - one volume history of the Wars of the Roses, John Gillingham writes "In the Wars of the Roses there were few sieges and only one of any consequence". Despite titling his book "The Castle in the Wars of the Roses", it is sieges with which Dan Spencer is primarily concerned. And, as seems to be the custom among academics, Dr Spencer does not agree with Professor Gillingham. According to him, he "demonstrates the significant role of siege warfare during the Wars of the Roses". So, which is it? For me, Spencer more than adequately shows that there were actually quite a lot of sieges; he names 36, and makes a persuasive case that there would have been others unrecorded by history. However, it's hard to believe that any of them really made a difference; indeed very few of them lasted beyond a few days. As will all writers on the period the author can only go on what records remain, so the book focuses on what we know about rather than what was necessarily important at the time. I would also suggest that there isn't quite enough material to make a full length book, and that there has been a certain amount of padding out with the general military and political background. Still, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to those with a particular interest in the subject, perhaps not so much to the general reader. 

Dr Spencer gave one of the talks in this winter's online lecture series from the Royal Armouries, on 'The Development of Gunpowder Weapons in Medieval England", which at the time of writing is still available on the Armouries' YouTube channel. (As an aside, if you do watch any of those lectures you need to know that nothing happens until fifteen minutes or so into the video; I have no idea why they don't edit them properly.) The things that stuck in my mind from the lecture - and which has great relevance to my ongoing siege gaming - is him saying that in the 15th century bombards would have to be placed no further than 40 paces from a wall to have a chance of creating a breach.

I can't finish without revisiting the Spofforth solecism. As reported previously, in chapter 1 this castle was incorrectly reported as being in Northumberland. However, in chapter 2 we find the Duke of Exeter and Lord Egremont raising forces in Yorkshire at a place called Spofford; Egremont of course being another of those hot-headed chaps in whom the Percy family specialised. He doesn't make it to chapter 3 - spoiler alert - having been killed at the battle of Northampton. However, he does variously feature in the text as both Egremont and Egremond. Do I detect an homage to Hergé from Dr Spencer?

"If my name's Egremont we won't get to chapter 3." "To be precise, we won't get to chapter 3 if my name's Egremond."

The Bombardment of London

 I am still reading, and enjoying, 'The Castle in the Wars of the Roses'. I shall do a full (or cursory - delete as appropriate) review in due course; watch out for more Spofforth related nit-picking. However in Chapter 5 we have reached the bombardment of London by the Bastard of Fauconberg.

A mere eight years ago I mentioned that I had been involved in a debate within the Richard III Society about which side the garrison of Calais had been during this event. It is often said that such discussions are all the more heated because there is so little at stake. I rather wish that had remained the case in the Society which has been riven by factionalism over the last year or so, leading to rather tragic events just before Christmas. Anyway, back to the book and to 1471; enter Dr Spencer with a different take on things. According to him, the Calais garrison - whom you will recall were the closest thing that England had to a standing army at that time - were with the Bastard. However, he also says that Richard Haute, appointed as Lieutenant of the Tower of London by Edward IV whilst he was in the city following his victory at Barnet, had recruited one hundred soldiers who had formerly served in the garrison. So, very neatly, they turn out to have served on both sides. If only all disputes could be resolved by compromise.

 

And six years ago, I declared my intention to create a scenario based on the bombardment. Perhaps now that I have a suitable amount of city walls, a castle and some siege rules which could be (heavily) adapted I should get on with it. I think part of the attraction is the surreal moment where Thomas Neville demands that the city opens its gates in the names of Prince Edward and the Earl of Warwick, the city fathers point out that those two are both dead now, and the Bastard in effect says "Don't bother me with details, just open the gates.".

Interestingly the next chapter in the book covers the siege of St Michael's Mount, another one I have always fancied doing. Maybe the blue table top in the annexe will see the light of day after all this time.

Roll Muddy River

 I'm sure I'll be back to sieges soon enough, but in the meantime here's Norma Waterson covering the Grateful Dead. 

It Suffices

 I have been asked for my thoughts so far on 'Vauban's Wars'. Well, I don't like to sit on the fence, and so I am going to come right out and say that they seem "perfectly acceptable".

I shall certainly be exploring the rules further and am currently considering what I might make or paint next to facilitate this: a couple more siege guns for sure and, assuming that access to the laser cutter won't be long in resuming, some ravelines. Because, apart from anything else, I am grateful to these rules for keeping me occupied during lockdown and providing a route for me to try out resin casting. That context has undoubtedly provided a halo effect and made me feel warmer about them; on top of which, even if I say so myself, it all looked pretty good.

Nobody games sieges because...well, because they go on a long time and nothing much happens. So it is to the great credit of Eric Burgess that he has managed to develop a set of rules which extract the action from the tedium and, by moving things along fairly quickly, make it playable. Every turn represents a few days and the results of each are effectively a summation of all the digging, firing, moving about etc done during those days. Issues such as supplies of food and powder, weather, desertion, disease etc are dealt with, but at a level of abstraction that doesn't overwhelm everything else. It's a bit like a campaign fought out on a tabletop, a concept I'd never really thought about before; although if someone were to tell me that Donald Featherstone had written a book on the subject I wouldn't be that surprised.

 I enjoyed my solo run through, in which the balance between garrison and besieger tipped a few times backwards and forwards. The caveats mentioned in previous posts still apply, in particular this is all my interpretation of what is meant and how it should work. I believe that the author runs a Facebook group on the rules, but I don't have a Facebook account so that hasn't been of any help to me.

I do have one or two observations that I would be looking to confirm or otherwise in subsequent games:

• The defender's role seems a bit reactive.
• Many of the swings in fortune mentioned above stemmed from things other than the actions of either side; I like a random event as much as the next man, but you don't want the entire game determined by them.
• The rules for sorties and assaults are limited and, while we never had either in my try out, my wargamer's common sense (shut up!) tells me they wouldn't work very well.
• Some of the points and strengths ascribed to unit types - Coehorn mortars for example - look a bit odd. 

So, to sum up: passed the time perfectly pleasantly, and would seem likely to provide a sound base for the tweaks and house rules which will inevitably emerge in due course.

The Siege Is Lifted

 Those considerate chaps in Ahmedabad have once again gone out of their way to clear some space in my diary and so I have been able to bring the siege game to a conclusion. Turn 8 initially went the way of the besiegers, who won a long run of initiative, caused further damage to the wall and, to my surprise because I hadn't read the rules properly, set fire to the town. It was put out before it could either spread or do any damage.

It was never going to be enough in any event, and once the garrison got the chance to fire their artillery they quickly reduced their opponent's morale to zero and the latter were left with no choice but to withdraw.

You can just see in the photo above that the wall section being attacked had been reduced to level 5, which is still quite a long way from creating a breach. I shall be pondering the lessons learned from all this - apart obviously from "make sure that you thoroughly acquaint yourself with the rules before you start" - but my initial thought is that the besiegers should have spent more time on counterbattery fire from the second parallel before pressing further forwards. I have no suggestions as to how the defenders would best have reacted to that.

Spofforth Castle

 I've started reading 'The Castle in the Wars of the Roses' by Dan Spencer which was published a few months ago. It's been well reviewed, and I shall no doubt bore you with my own opinions in due course. However, I was rather taken aback by an egregious geographical error in the very first chapter. Referring to the Percy Earls of Northumberland, he states that they owned a number of important castles in that county including Alnwick, Warkworth and Spofforth. Surely some mistake?

In fact, Spofforth Castle is, as any fule kno', situated between Harrogate and Wetherby in what in the 15th Century would have been the West Riding of Yorkshire. Indeed it may well be the nearest castle to where your bloggist sits typing this (*). It is of course very closely connected with the Percies, having been the seat of the family from the time that William de Percy came over with the Conqueror until the fourteenth century, when their power grew and they switched their attentions more to Northumberland and the Scottish Marches. 

Its importance to the family is indicated by the fact that Harry Hotspur, the famously impulsive Shakespearean character, was born there; unless he was born at either Alnwick or Warkworth, no one seems to know. It is also possible that Magna Carta was drafted there; but then perhaps it wasn't, once again no one really knows. The one thing I will say with absolute certainty though, is that Spofforth is not, and never has been, in the county of Northumberland (**).

* As readers will have realised long ago, this blog does not run to a team of fact checkers, and I can't be arsed to do it myself, so we shall never know. It is self-evidently nearer than Knaresborough, and intuitively closer than Skipton so I'm going to assume that it is. For the purposes of this exercise the Roman fort in Ilkley doesn't count, and nor, for obvious reasons, does Cliffe Castle. Ripley Castle would, but even as the crow flies that must be further away.

** Before the mid tenth century it would have been in the Kingdom of Northumbria, but that's different.

Six then seven

 "And the seventh sorrow is the slow good-bye..." - Ted Hughes

Turn 6 ended before it started, with a tied dice roll. It cost the garrison one food supply, although I don't think that will come into play; feel free to throw that back in my face at some later stage. On the plus side, I found the missing card at that point. Overall turn 7 hasn't gone well for the besiegers, against whom the tide would appear to have turned.

While they were occupied repairing the sections of sap flooded by the torrential rain during Turn 5, they were driven off completely from the third parallel. Sensing an opportunity the garrison started to dig out from the covered way, aiming to seize and destroy the gun emplacements.

Before they could do so the besiegers managed to move up a couple of siege guns, surviving the opportunity fire as they did so, and, for the first time, bombarded the wall. It is, I suspect, too little too late.

The die next to the wall shows the cumulative hits against that section. When it reaches ten the section will drop from level six to level five. As you might guess it needs to reach level zero before there is a breach. It's not going to happen. The other die is showing the cumulative hits from the mortars which have been shelling the town. Once again, this isn't going to amount to anything worth talking about very soon.

Ignore what it says - it's really Turn 7

And this is why: the attackers have very little morale left. To add insult to injury one of their commanders has died of disease, meaning that they weren't able to rally any units this turn.

I've mentioned before that I'm not confident about my grasp of either rules or tactics - and that definitely still stands - but I have had a bit of an epiphany regarding the role of infantry in the game, which is progress of a sort.

Severe Rain

"Shortly afterwards it started raining, very innocently at first, but the sky was packed tight with cloud and gradually the drops grew bigger and heavier, until it was autumn’s dismal rain that was falling—rain that seemed to fill the entire world with its leaden beat..." - Haldor Laxness

Turn five was bookended by disaster. The first happened in real life when I knocked a whole load of stuff on to the floor. Anyone who has seen the wargaming annexe and the solidity of the table in it will be as baffled as I am as to how I managed it; my first thought was to be thankful that I did it at my house rather than someone else's. Anyway, no permanent harm was done, except that when I had picked it all up one of the cards was missing. Again, especially given the size of the room, it's a mystery as to where it might have gone. Still it will turn up, and the pack came complete with blank cards; presumably to allow for clumsy players.

After that, things proceeded smoothly, although not in the way that I expected. Instead of the besiegers moving up their siege guns and battering down the wall, it was the fortress guns which forced the retreat of both artillery and infantry from the third parallel. I'm not going to go through things in detail, but I will repeat my previous caveats: it's certainly not a good game to play solo, and it's at least possible that I'm not doing it right anyway. 

The turn ended abruptly when it started to rain very heavily; so heavily in fact that some of the siege works have flooded. Now, the players get some choice as to where the flooding occurs, but my decisions were done in the context that I hadn't (still haven't actually) read the rules for repairing them.

So what I've tried to do is to isolate the gun emplacements so as to further delay the commencement of the bombardment of the walls.