Bruce Catton

I was browsing thebookdepository.com the other day looking to see if they had the new Gettysburg Solitaire book from Worthington Games. It turns out they didn't, but somehow or other (as one does) I ended up going down an internet rabbit hole. This time it led to Bruce Catton. I'd owned one of his books and loved it (I forget which one - A Stillness at Appomattox, perhaps?) but had lent it to someone and not got it back.

Since that first reading I've always checked secondhand book shops just in case they have any Catton on the shelves but I've not had any luck so far. I imagine it would be a bit different if you were shopping in the US, however!

Anyway, by roundabout means, I came across the website of a secondhand book store in Wellington called Haven Books which had a copy of the Army of the Potomac trilogy. I ordered it and it arrived today, well-thumbed, yellowed, and obviously much-read. Just how a book should be.

But my search also turned up another gem - a C-Span video of a lecture on Bruce Catton given at Gettysburg by David Blight.  I won't spoil it with an inadequate introduction, but if you have an hour and fifteen minutes to spare, you might find it worth your time.   

To close, the Gettysburg movie, Catton, Foote, and Burns have no doubt been the catalysts for many a Civil War obsession. Do readers have any other particular books, videos or lectures that got them interested in the ACW? 

Back on the horse(s)

Well, I stopped procrastinating, rearranged the garage, bought myself a lamp, and started prepping some Greeks for the Mantinea battle day project. I've jumped into cavalry and Theban hoplites first. The figures are a reminder of just how lovely the Xyston figures in this range are - beautifully sculpted, characterfully posed, and nicely proportioned; just slightly north of average for 15mm, they are not yet at the giant stage that the Hellenistics became - but also of how much of a pain it is to drill out hands for spears. 

The other problem of course it that they are intimidating. For a limited painter such as myself there is always the feeling that you won't be able to do them justice. 

Garage prep space.

But making a start is the thing. 

In other news I succumbed to an artfully placed ad while browsing TheBookDepository and ordered Undaunted Normandy. It arrived on Saturday (along with my Landmark Caesar, which is just as good as I'd hoped) and I opened it up for a wee test run on Sunday.

The first scenario in the game booklet

The first thing you notice is that the components look a lot nicer on the table than they do in photos. I was impressed enough to almost go and order the expansions on the strength of the look and feel alone. Better sense prevailed however, and I decided that I would force myself to discover whether I actually liked the game before ordering anything more (radical idea, I know!). 

How is the game? Well, I must preface my comments with the caveat that while I love the idea of squad level WWII games, in practice I mostly find them ho-hum. This one might turn out to be all right. It has a card management aspect to it that I think could be quite enjoyable with the right opponent. Solo it lacks a bit, but then that is true for most games. 

The essence of the game seems to be to build up the cards in your draw deck so as to allow you to string together move and fire sequences (or fire and move sequences, if you prefer) that will put your opponent under pressure. Interestingly, when you fire and hit an opponent's piece, you don't remove the piece, you remove one of the cards which could activate that piece. The piece is only removed when there are no accessible cards for it remaining.

So there is a natural attrition there, but it takes place in the card decks, not on the board itself. Your pieces become less able to act the more they are hit (i.e. there are fewer cards left in the deck left with which the piece can be activated), and the more pieces move, the more undesirable cards are introduced into the deck, thus making it less likely that you'll be able to pull the cards you want when you want them. This is presumably a mechanism to represent the difficulty of coordinating effectively over longer distances.

Pleasingly, Undaunted doesn't have those overpowered 'heroic leadership' pieces which seem to drive so many tactical WWII games. Leadership is abstracted into allowing you to choose cards to put in your deck, and is not the old '+2 to hit when Sergeant Skegg is stacked with your MG squad' type arrangement. 

Not an heroic NCO in sight!

I only played through about five or six turns, but will do a proper review when I've had the chance to mangle my way through a couple of games. 

A good weekend, then! I hope any readers who've got this far also had a productive Saturday and Sunday.

Cheers! 

Working through prep for 2nd Mantinea

As mentioned in my last post, the Society of Ancients Battle Day for 2023 has been announced as 2nd Mantinea, 362BC. This is the first time in a couple of years that the battle is one I have armies for, so I'm determined to make the most of it. Pleasingly, although I don't have all of the troops I'll need painted yet, I do have a pretty decent start made on them. 

My rules of choice will likely be Lost Battles, so it's the Lost Battles scenario I'll look to to work out how many more troops I'll need to paint up. Bearing in mind that the troop scale is 2.5, it will be 1250 men per average infantry unit, half that for veterans, double for levies, and average cavalry will represent 625 actual horsemen per unit.

Allies: 

2 x Veteran Hoplites (Spartan)

8 figures per unit - 16 figures total 

13 x Average Hoplites (5 x Athenian, 2 x Mantinean, 2 x Elean, 2 x Achaean, 1 Arcadian, 1 Allied

16 figures per unit - 208 figures total

1 x Average Light Infantry (Mercenary)

16 figures per unit

3 x Average Heavy Cavalry (1 Spartan, 1 Athenian, 1 Elean Achaean and Arcadian)

9 figures per unit - 27 figures total

Total figures needed: 224 hoplites, 16 light infantry, 27 heavy cavalry

Thebans:

Average Leader plus Veteran Hoplites (Epaminondas and the Sacred Band)

8 figures per unit, plus Epaminondas and companion - 10 figures total

8 x Average Hoplites (2 x Theban, 3 x Boeotian,  2 x Tegian, 1 Megapolitan, Asean and Pallantian)

16 figures per unit - 128 figures total

5 x Levy Hoplites (2 x Argive, 1 Euboean, 1 Thessalian, 1 Messenian and Sicyonian)

32 figures per unit - 160 figures total

3 x Average Light Infantry ( 1 x Locrian, Malian and Aenianian, 1 Thessalian, 1 Euboean and Mercenary)

16 figures per unit - 48 figures total

4 x Average Heavy Cavalry (2 x Thessalian, 1 Theban, 1 Boeotian)

9 figures per unit - 36 figures total

Total figures needed: 2 leaders, 296 hoplites, 48 light infantry, 36 heavy cavalry

Grand total: 2 leaders, 524 hoplites, 64 light infantry, 63 heavy cavalry

Next step will be to work out how many figures I have already painted, and how many are in the lead mountain. Hopefully I will not need to buy any more, but if I do, it won't be the biggest disaster in the world. There is a little flexibility, too: if I end up being short I could use 12 figure units for light infantry and 24 figure units for the levy hoplites without losing too much in the look of it all.

Painted: 

64 Thebans (Xyston), 64 Generic hoplites (Black Hat) / 8 unpainted (unknown make), 88 unpainted (Xyston) - 224. (300 if Italians are added) - enough for Thebans

64 Spartans, 96 Generic hoplites (Xyston) / 64 unpainted (Xyston) - enough for Allies.

48 Levy hoplites (Old Glory Italians, but they could pass at a pinch)

28 Hoplites (Chariot Italians which could pass at a pinch).

48 Light Infantry with javelin and small shield (old Glory) / 32 unpainted (Xyston)

48 light infantry with bow or sling.

Oodles of peltasts.

Unpainted (all Xyston):

8 Mounted Generals

8 Cavalry with petasos and pilos in chitons

12 Cavalry with Boiotian helmets

8 Cavalry armoured with Boiotian helmets

12 Thessalian Cavalry with cloaks and chitons

20 Cavalry with petasos and pilos in metal and linen armour

12 Spartan Cavalry

19 foot command

To paint: 

64 Spartan hoplites, 88 Theban hoplites, 19 foot command

80 cavalry, though I can get away with a few less.

To buy:

Ideally, I would purchase and paint up another 72 generic hoplites (and about 120 more so I don't have to use Spartans for Athenians etc.!) I will think about this...

Society of Ancients Battle Day

Yesterday the Society of Ancients held their battle day. This year it was Adrianople; last year it was Bosworth. 

I have nothing against those battles of course, but as I do not have figures for them those battle days have passed without much comment or fanfare from yours truly. 

Battle day for 2023 will soon be announced. Apparently, the person who will do the presentation for it next year is Duncan Head, of (amongst other things) Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars fame. 

There is a flutter in my Macedonian and Punic Wars breast....

I am hoping that it will be Magnesia. 

Elephants, scythed chariots, Antiochus the Great, phalangites, cataphracts; legions, a camp, Eumenes of Pergamum and - da-dum-dum-dum - Scipio's younger brother?

EDIT - as it turns out, the battle will be 2nd Mantinea, which is an excellent choice, especially as I have a swag of more Xyston Greeks to paint. This might be just what I need to get started on them!

 

To everything there is a season

Goes the verse. 

I was lucky enough to get into wargaming seriously at a propitious time. I had long had an interest in it, had borrowed books from the library as a kid, had played rules-based games with a friend and his older brother, but had never really collected armies, boardgames or rules. When I did decide to get into wargaming in 2005, the variety had never been better, information had never been more freely available, and, because of the internet, wargaming was accessible to a degree it had not been before. I had disposable income (this is before children!), shipping was relatively cheap, and it was possible to collect figures rules and games from all around the world without the cost seeming burdensome. I could buy a 15mm army for the price of a night out. Being in Japan, I could get hobby paints for about US$1. What could be better?

I hoovered up painting guides from helpful people on theminiaturespage.com. I joined yahoo groups to learn about rules. I ordered my first figures through Magister Militum in the UK, then happened upon some old stock sales in the US and picked up masses of Xyston Greeks and Macedonians at $1.80 a pack and Old Glory 15s in the old 50 foot/16 mounted bags for $7 each. What a way that was to kick start a collection!

I discovered Commands and Colors: Ancients, joined the online VASSAL tournaments, and won a few of them. I met my Italian gaming buddies Roberto and Andrea. I wrote quite a lot on Boardgamegeek. 

In Japan where I lived at the time I found fellow gamers Luke and Pat. I was introduced to Phil Sabin's Strategos II (later to become Lost Battles) and joined the yahoo group. There was stimulating conversation, intense discussion (mainly courtesy of the late Patrick Waterson), and a set of rules you could get behind. I became a member of the Society of Ancients. 

It was a brilliant, exciting time. Armies got painted, games were played, articles were written, friends were made. Everything was new and fresh.

I started a blog to record what I was doing, and to write those sorts of battle reports I had loved in the books I borrowed from the library as a kid.

*****

Fast forward to 2022, and the landscape is different. Theminiaturespage is a shadow of its former self. Yahoo groups, those rules petri dishes, have vanished. Figure suppliers have gone out of business, passed away, or sold their ranges to others. Prices for 15mm figures have doubled in the UK in some cases. International shipping has become almost unaffordable. Consolidation of manufacturers and pre-packaged plastics sets appear to be the way the market is moving.  

Blogging has lost a lot of its early zest and joyfulness. Bloggers have quietly stopped updating, have moved on in their lives, or had adverse events intervene. The ever-increasing reach of social media has shortened attention spans. Who wants to read a thousand-word blogpost any more? Who wants to write them? 

As people get older, focus changes. You get a little over-familiar with the actual playing of games and start to think about 'legacy' elements, such as bringing new gamers into the hobby, promoting games that you like, building a following, or changing attitudes. When 'legacy' becomes the focus, the hobby becomes less about sharing your own joy and more about getting responses. If you don't get the responses you feel your efforts deserve, dissatisfaction and frustration find a way in. Desire wanes. 

There comes a point when you have to re-evaluate what it is that you enjoy about the hobby and what is it that gives you satisfaction. Is it playing a game with friends? Is it writing up a report of a solo game? Is it researching and painting armies? Is it writing rules or scenarios? Is it bringing other people into the wargaming? Whatever the things that you enjoy are, you have to find them and respect them, because once aspects of how you practise the hobby start to seem like work, it is no longer fun.

I write this because one of my favourite bloggers, Norm Smith of Battlefields and Warriors, is downing tools for a spell. I'm sure we all feel a bit of sadness about that, but also understand it, because we go through those phases ourselves.

I guess the point of this post and my message to Norm (to all of us, really) is that how we interact with wargaming and what we get out of it changes over time. That's natural and to be expected. There is no shame in it. The important thing is to recognise that a hobby has to be about enjoyment. It can't be about meeting expectations - well, it can be for a while, but that is unsustainable. Enjoyment is what first attracts us, but it is also the easiest thing to lose when we start getting caught up in other, more peripheral, things. 

Wargaming will be here when we are ready to come back to it. And Norm, we look forward to seeing you back writing if and when that again becomes one of those things that gives you joy.

Until then, cheers, and thanks for all your efforts. Much appreciated.  

Epic Commands and Colors: Ancients

It's been quite a few years since I bought the Commands & Colors epic expansion, and having been a bit of an afficionado of the standard game for a few years (though about a decade ago now, which is scary!) I decided it was probably time to actually try the epic version out.

Epic is basically two boards combined lengthways to create a board twice as wide and capable of employing up to four players per side. Obviously, as I'm playing this solo, the multiplayer aspect of it will be missing.

The scenario is Paraitacene. Who isn't a sucker for Successors?

In the picture below we have Antigonus coming from the left of the board and Eumenes from the right. The armies are reasonably well matched: Eumenes has the edge in elephants, but Antigonus has a stronger medium and heavy cavalry arm, and plenty of agile light cavalry on his left. The heavy infantry numbers favour Antigonus slightly, but Eumenes has the advantage in light infantry.

The lighting is terrible, but you can get a sense of the scale compared to normal C&C (as can be seen, I made an executive decision to use figures for this scenario. Not because I think they look better, but because I don't want to have to mix different coloured blocks to have enough units to play). 

Eumenes to our right; Antigonus on our left.

The winner will be first side to 15 banners, but you must be two banners clear to win, otherwise it's a draw (as it sort of was historically). It is an interesting match up. 

View from the Eumenid left.

View of the centres: Antigonid to the left.

View from the Antigonid left, showing his preponderance of light cavalry

The game began with some cagey manouvering on both flanks before two line commands played by Antigonus saw his centre advance to almost within striking distance. Eumenes suffered the first losses and was mostly playing reactively across the length of the battlefield. 

Skirmishing towards the Antigonid right...

... and towards the Antigonid left.

The armies battled tit-for-tat, with Antigonus keeping at least two banners clear of Eumenes the whole way. The infantry fight in the centre was vicious and unrelenting, but Antigonus' light cavalry also combined with his medium infantry to good effect to have Eumenes' right under pressure.  

Clashes in the centre: the Silver Shields advance.

Antigonus, leading 12 banners to 9, needed only 1 more kill to ensure at least a draw. Eumenes, knowing this was his last chance, decided to make a bid for victory. He would need to take 6 banners in one turn to do it.

The cards played, in order (Mounted Charge was for the right zone).

On the right, charges by the elephants and the heavy cavalry net two banners.

In the centre, two banners are taken, but two more are not.

On the left, a cavalry charge kills another unit. The final attack is elephants against light infantry. 

  

Two hits needed to kill the lights.

Two hits needed.... and two hits are rolled! Eumenes wins 15-12.

********************************

It is often the case in Commands and Colors: Ancients that there are moments of extreme tension, where everything comes down to a fatal dice roll. The epic game (in this instance at least!) maintains that tradition.

I enjoyed it. Playing a game designed for multiplayer meant that the confusion that would arise from different players making their own choices was lost, but realistically I'm not going to find seven other C&C:A players in the neighbourhood, so this was the best I could do. 

Will I play it again? Probably. It's a good option for when you don't have time or space to set up a full miniatures game but would like to get a battle in. It would be perfect for a rainy Sunday when all other plans are suddenly shelved and you have an afternoon to yourself.

For single player I give it 5/10.   

If you had the right people to join you, I would say it's likely to be an 8 or 9.

Battling Phil Sabin

A couple of weeks ago Phil Sabin of (amongst other things) Lost Battles, Simulating War, and The Face of Roman Battle fame, got in touch to ask if I would be interested in trying out a battle remotely. Phil is now retired and living in Chile, which was greatly to our advantage in terms of timezones. His afternoon would be my morning, so we set up a time and date. 

The Battle would be Cannae and the rules Legion II, his revised hex-based grand tactical ancients rules published by the Society of Ancients.

Not having played Legion before, I was a little apprehensive about taking on the designer himself. Thankfully, Phil directed me to a video playthrough 

that gives a good example of the rules in action, and talked me through the main elements of the gameplay before we began.

Being a Lost Battles fan (or bore, depending on how tired people have got of my blabbing on about it!), it was interesting to compare Phil's vision of ancient battle across the two sets of rules. Legion is more granular, but there are quite a few rules that are mirrored in both sets (skirmishers requiring the support of heavier infantry to be effective; the primacy of human factors such as experience and command ability; the inclusion of rules for marching your armies onto the field, and so on). 

Legion may have been new to me but it was, in a word, recognisable. 

Generously, Phil gave me the more interesting side to play, and it was with some excitement that I poured myself a cup of coffee and watched Phil, genius of the Roman Republic, direct his legions onto the field.

He has put up a report of the action on Boardgamegeek, which can be seen here, and is titled Cannae Across the South Pacific.