Reflecting Progress 2

Following on from my previous post, I cast my eye across the next lot of toy soldiers on my work bench and it indubitably true that one cannot out-stare a lead figure. The next group that awaits the soft touch of my paint brush are my Pendraken WW1 British & Germans troops. I have a platoon of British painted and based, but need a Company, as I have plans to do a Company level attack with tank and artillery support, for a game that represents a small part of a much bigger action. So there sits on the shelf the rest of the British infantry company, based and primed, with dry-brushed with one colour. The Germans are based, but not all the bases have been textured, and none are yet primed.

In a shoe box, on a shelf above my work bench, I have a French Company that I haven't looked at since I bought it. This includes tanks and artillery too. I also have some tanks put aside for the Germans; one AV7 and the rest will be made up with repainted versions of the MkIV, Whippet and FT17 tanks, representing captured equipment. I also have some lovely MkVs from Pendraken, which are noticeably longer than the MkIVs, and I also have some MkI howitzer/supply tanks too. Lots of toys, and that is why I like modern games. The variety of machines fascinates me much more than the intricacies of uniform details.

When I was younger, WW1 was considered a pretty "black" period to play wargames about. The image that had arisen in the sixties, from dialectical arguments by arts academics were solely focused on the "lions led by donkeys" idea. Depending on your point of view, revisionist historians have challenged that point of view, and what has emerged is a more complex and challenging reflection on the Great War. Certainly the Great War epitomised industrial warfare, even if the first fully modern war was arguably the American Civil War, which we Europeans dismissed as a Colonial affair with no relevance. It is also arguably true that the lessons learnt by the major European powers, between the end of the Napoleonic wars and WW1, were the wrong ones due to confounding variables specific to each conflict.

All my reading around WW1 has also got my creative juices flowing about how to use historical events in Sci-Fi games, of either Ogre/GEV, or more likely Battletech. For instance the whole evolution of tactics and the introduction of tanks can be mirrored in a Battletech game through the use of the "primacy" of the battlemech over other more conventional forces as one's starting point. I especially like the idea of replaying historical civil wars using Battletech. For instance the Spanish Civil war, or even WW1 with mechs, though that is more a Games Workshop Space Marine thing, if truth be told.

Reflecting Progress 1

One of the interesting things about writing a blog is that it's like having a conversation, in that you can readily check your hit stats and comments. The former indicates how many people think you are interesting to talk to, while the latter gives you a fair idea of whether what you're saying is a conversation or a monologue.

I tend to view post with no comments as monologues, while those with comments are conversations.

I prefer conversations to monologues, if only as a nod to the evil villain trope of monologuing. Cue evil laugh... I've also been looking at my work bench recently, more importantly, looking at the growing expanse of unfinished figures.

Hundreds of figures stare at me in various stages of being finished, ranging from based, on the road to becoming fully painted units, but not quite ready for the table. Like these Peter Pig AK47R 15mm Somalian militia.

Two companies, each of four platoons with four squads each; based at nine figures per squad, which is not AK47R compliant

Why did I do it this way? Well, for me, I like my toy soldiers to be something more than just a token, otherwise I might as well just use a token. Therefore, I like my single toy soldiers to represent a single soldier on the table.

I know it limits the scale of the conflicts that one can realistically manage, but when I want to play strategic, or grand operational level games, I'm not fussed about using toy soldiers anymore.

Anyway, Somalia is an interesting modern conflict that causes a lot of upset with wargamers, because it is modern, yet they would not flinch at Rourke's Drift, or the tribal wars associated with Africa at that time.

For me it's all about the toy soldiers on the table top.

When people ask me "Hey Pip why you do play wargames, are you some kind of war junkie?" 

Nowadays I don't say a word. Why, because they don't understand why wargames are fun to play. People don't understand why we do it, because it's all about the game and toy soldiers you play with and paint. And that's it, that's all it is at the end of the day is people playing with toy soldiers.

So I'm fairly open to playing "black" wargames, assuming you agree that such a thing exist.

One of the reasons I am driven to playing Science Fiction games is that it allows me to play games inspired by modern conflicts; without the baggage associated from the reactions from people who bristle at modern wars from Vietnam on.

Of course, one then gets the reaction of "I don't play Sci-Fi Fantasy games as they are not real," response. Funnily enough, as an aside, I don't play fantasy wargames anymore either, and by fantasy I mean games with creatures from mythology, folklore and involving magic.

I asked myself why do I avoid fantasy games?

For the same reason I no longer play ancient historical wargame, because for me their technology is too tactically limiting. The reason I like modern warfare, as in WW1 and on, is that the technology drives the tactics, though arguably that's always been the case, but that the selection of "toys" is greater in modern periods.

Not just siege artillery, or mobile artillery, but self-propelled artillery too! One can even mix traditional horse, camel etc cavalry, with modern mechanised versions of same. Then there are the extra bells & whistles of main battle tanks and helicopters functioning as cavalry too.

IMNSHO what is there not to like about this kind of variety?

T&CA, E&OE, YMMV.

Paddy Griffiths

As some of you already know, Paddy Griffith's died recently.  I can't say I was his best friend, or even a friend, but he was the most influential wargame writer I ever read, and I had the pleasure of playing in several of his games too.  Paddy was a well know military historian who wrote extensively and taught at Sandhurst, here in England.  I know him best as the editor of the Nugget, the house magazine for Wargame Developments, who also run a yearly Conference of Wargamers.  The title of which alone speaks volumes for the groups' sense of humour.

I remember playing at the first CoW I attended in one of Paddy's games, called First Bombing Raid in History.  I volunteered to be the Batman, which was fortunate for the pilot that I was accepted.  Paddy had given players folding bicycles for them to ride, all folded up of course.  Given I’m a keen bicycle enthusiast, a recalcitrant folding bicycle holds no horrors for me, so my fellow team member was able to take to the runway.  The initial take-off was aborted, but fine-tuning allowed a successful second attempt to be made.  Then flak fired at the bicycle/aircraft by having several boisterous lads throw Frisbees at the unsuspecting player.  Much fun was had.

Another game by Paddy was a freestyle role-playing game called the Red Star Express where we had an hour (representing twenty hours) in which to drive our great workers’ express from Moscow to wherever the Revolutionary action was (I was too lowly to be told our destination).  It was a miserable ride with the cook short rationing us and then ripping us off with over-priced vodka.  As the track ganger my job became vital in overcoming the counter revolutionary forces that bedeviled our journey, and I can say with out doubt, or fear of contradiction, that I led the way in patriotic fervour and willingness to face action and do my job under any conditions (by keeping my character totally drunk on vodka).  I was even wounded, by capitalist terrorist fire, but not a word of protest or anguish passed my lips as quietly I waited for medical aid (encouraged to scream my head off by the umpires), which I received from the hands of no lesser person than the Political Commissar (Bob Cordery I think).

A very busy man who had to keep an ever vigilant eye out for subversives and counter revolutionaries, his duties led him to re-educate several firemen who were sabotaging our noble cause.  If more citizens were like this man then the Revolution would be assured and we would not have failed to reach our destination on time.

Another fun game that also managed to teach its participants about an obscure part of history.  That was Paddy's greatest gift, he opened up people's minds to new ideas and ways of thinking.
   

Downtown Mogadishu 1

  

I got a bunch of buildings for Xmas from the 15mm range from Fieldworks, which are still awaiting their turn through the Paint-it-Pink workshop. Given that it is now June and they are still in the plastic bags I guess I'll be lucky to get them finished by next Xmas at the rate I'm going.

However, some of the buildings in this post don't appear to be available for sale at this time. Sorry about that, they obviously withdraw and replace models according to sales.

I'm tempted to buy another three of the above building, which is still available, so that I could make a square block using them around a crossroad, or alleyway. All of the buildings in the Fieldworks range come with accessible interiors thorough using removable floors and roofs. The pictures below show how the interior works.

Overall, I think these are pretty neat buildings, and I really must get around to painting them soon.

Clan Jade Falcon

       

There are two things on needs to know about Clan Jade Falcon. The first is that they are a Clan force, and the second that they are called the Jade Falcons. Please excuse the Black Adder referential joke, but that pretty much sums up what I knew about the Falcons when I acquired some MechWarrior Clan mechs.

As a diehard in the wool (!?) OSR BattleTech player, the Clans have a lot of baggage for me, which is doubly ironic given that I got the chance to write and design the stats for a whole bunch of Clan mech designs on the 3055TRO. However, the rules for MechWarrior clix game focus on combined arms command & control, which means that the disparity in tech between the Clans and the Inner Sphere forces is less intrusive. That is not to say that Clan tech is less superior, as quite frankly I don't know, as I've not played enough games of MechWarrior, or spent enough time taking apart the mechanics of the game to say.

What I will say is that the Jade Falcon "totem" mechs look way cool, which is enough for me at this time.
 

Yesterdays Heroes of Tomorrow

 

While what I am about to write largely concerns BattleTech, I feel the arguments are apposite for a large number of wargaming eras.

Though reminiscing is sometimes seen as a sign of old age, when I was a teenager, I use to play tabletop wargames with a friend called Tim. 

He was very much into the Germans, and the SS, and introduced me to the questionable delights of Sven Hassel. Tim used to pretty much beat me every game we played. I started off as Anglo-American, tried playing Germans, and ended up fielding Russians. As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all of its own", and furthermore as I saw it then, the Russians has the Josef Stalin heavy tanks. 

Even so I still lost to Tim and his Tigers, Panthers and assorted special panzers etc. 

Just to assuage everyone's sympathy for my string of losses, I did turn it around, and at the end I totally humiliated Tim by defeating him in detail in one long summer afternoon's game on the floor of his front living room. AFAICR we never played again after that. Then Tim got into being a skinhead, and I was a bit of a hippy chick (artistic & highly strung), so we had a natural parting of the ways, which brings me around to the concept of "powering-down" games. 

I think it's only natural to want to play the elite units when you begin wargaming. 

After all, they represent the so called best-of-the-best, and who doesn't want to be associated with the best? After more than 25 years of playing games I also think we tend to move on from this place and start to see that playing the worst-of-the-worst and winning is actually rather rewarding, if a whole lot harder to achieve. 

So, I have found myself intrigued by the challenges of WW1 and the first tanks, which lets face it were a nightmare to operate. I call this process "powering-down", which is the opposite of the tendency to want to have bigger and better, or "powering-up" games via the introduction of better stuff. 

While tanks in WW1 were shiny new things that opened up tactical options, they could at the end of the day be rendered inoperative with fire from a battery of heavy machine guns. The same can also be said of the inter-war period tanks when the lessons of WW1 were reflected upon, and the operational doctrines for using tanks were formulated by people like Liddell Hart. 

What he proposed found itself being used in various theatres of operations around the world, and it became clear that not everyone had learnt the same lessons from WW1, or came to the same conclusions about the role of the tank in future wars as a result. 

Like any transitional period, things can happen that suggest one course, while the reality that was that WW2 really sorted out the sheep from the goats. 

While people will argue that giant battling robots is rather a silly idea, for a whole heap of sensible reasons, the fact is that conceptually they are no different to the tanks of WW1, except in that theirs is an imaginary role that only the mechs can overcome. If you accept this premise, then we can look at tank development in real wars affects how we game them, and by extension look at what happens when you develop games that try to represent the ultimate war machines in action against each other with tanks and mechs as interchangeable units. 

What I have seen from this process is that rules to cover different periods of WW1 or WW2 are different. 

There are few rules that try to cover both wars, because the "powering-up" that occurred, which in real life means that WW1 tanks are completely outclassed by early WW2 tanks, let alone late war tanks like the Tiger, Panther and King Tiger etc. BattleTech is a set of rules that covers a period of more than 50 years of war, and justifies this through the initial premise that prior to main 3025 period there was technological stagnation. The game background then goes on to posit that in the post Helm data-core renaissance, the in universe realms rediscover the lost technological processes. 

That as an assumption for a future universe background is a pretty reasonable place to start, but it then led to further conflict, which has meant that the mechs have become far more powerful by 3075. 

A bit like the difference between early WW2 and late WW2 tanks, while in the background of circa 3025 we have the WW1 and interwar style mechs. However great this may seem to those players who want to see the universe "powered up" with new weapons and technology, the result is that the nature of the game is fundamentally changed. 

New BattleTech is not the same as old BattleTech, even though the core rules remain largely the same, and it's all down to stuff that has been added to the game to "power-up" the mechs. 

This is IMNSHO a very bad thing indeed, because it removes the charm of the initial background. 

The charm for me lay in the idea of mechs as knights. Once mechs just became commodities then you may have more powerful tanks/mechs, but the significance of the pilot is downplayed. This "cost" has affected how the game is played. 

Now if you agree that the original background of the game is where the idea of mechs as a concept works best, then the question becomes how do you return the game to its roots? 

You have to find some way to "power-down" the game background. 

This is why I think that moving the BattleTech timeline forward to 3130 and the Dark Age/Age of Destruction is a good thing. It will allow the game designers to remove the large amount of Tiger, King Tiger and Panther tank analogs, while giving a good reason for using simpler mechs for games. 

Much as in the same way players who have been playing WW2 for a long time gravitate towards early war period as it is tactically more challenging than fielding herds of Tiger tanks. 

This direction is even supported by the original background of the game universe where battlemechs were rare and people converted civilian mechs, called "industrials" into military vehicles by adding weapons and armour to them. In much the same way as in the Interwar period trucks had weapons and armour added to them to make them into armoured cars, or for a more recent example in the Middle East etc, Toyota trucks are converted into so called 'technicals" by adding weapons to them. 

So, I welcome the new Dark Age and the chance to field "industrial"mechs to the game, and only having limited access to true battlemechs for the same reasons that I have found that I enjoy playing with WW1 tanks and the inter war period conflicts like the Spanish Civil War.