The Zulu War

Been after this for a while and its arrival is doubly welcome following the recent Mike’s Models 15mm Colonial collection

As is my usual modus operandi when embarking upon a new(ish) project, I carried out a quick trawl through eBay for some suitable background material. My library for this particular Colonial adventure takes frugality to new levels as it consists of three, now four, books! The volume you see above I was particularly pleased to get hold of as it is one of the more useful Osprey hardback compilations.

The title contains material previously published as Campaign series 14: Zulu War 1879, Elite series 32: British Forces in Zululand 1879 and Elite series 21: The Zulus. Written by the renowned Zulu War experts Ian Knight and Ian Castle and featuring artwork by the late Rick Scollins and the late Angus McBride, it is east to see what I was so keen to grab a copy of this 2004 publication. 

15mm Colonials

The Zulus War collection I posted about recently - the unpainted horde of Zulus with a smattering of British and Boers - should be with me shortly so I will at last be able to enjoy some Colonial games (once the rebasing has been completed and the Zulus painted that is!). 

Needless to say, the Portable Colonial Wargame and Dominion of the Spear and Bayonet will feature once I get to the tabletop.

The Lure of the Sublime Porte

A new history covering the campaigns that shaped the Ottoman Empire up to 1600. I was never going to be able to resist getting a copy!

I blame Eric Knowles for this! I first became acquainted with the Ottoman Turks via the Madasahatta campaign, the follow on WW1 South East naval camapign, along with an epic refight of the Siege of Vienna in 1683 fought using 25mm figures (mainly Minifigs and Hinchliffe) in the cellar beneath the New Model Army shop in Manor Park. As I recall - this was in the early 1980s - the result was the same as the historical version but the Turks came a whole lot closer, within a whisker even, of capturing Vienna. It was, as were most things Eric organised, large, brash and a whole lot of fun to take part in!

I have flirted with the idea of a Turkish army over the years and in a variety of scales, but never really settled on anything specific. To start with, the number of figures required to do the army justice tends to be on the large side which translates as a lot of painting. I was also undecided as to what scale of figures to use and indeed, I have looked at scales from 6mm to 28mm but have never settled on one. To be honest, for a long time I had given up on a land based set up for this very reason but instead focused on the naval side. This translates for the period in question (15th/16th century) to galleys and lots of them!

My thoughts on the naval dimension of the Ottoman Empire of the period will form a later post but as far as the land side is concerned I will, in the short term at least,  fall back on the use of my block armies. 

A long time ago in a man-cave, far, far away….

A good few years ago, when I chopped up umpteen sets of ‘not-quite-Jenga-blocks’ to make my block armies, I wanted to make a set that would be suitable for tribal or irregular armies. The formal armies consist of red, blue, green, light grey, brown and olive sets whilst the irregular set is a little more varied in colour.

The ‘Irregular’ blocks set. The blocks in the bottom three rows were designed as a ‘Zulu’ set whilst the two rows above are intended for use as Afghan/Arab types. The top row has some artillery and my version of the famous Janissaries.

The top left two sections contain the blocks that I organised to represent stylised Janissaries - the colours were deliberately chosen - with their famous white headdress, blue tunic and red leather boots. 

Jannisary blocks - although I made these best part of a decade ago up until now they have never been in action. The ‘Zulu’ and ‘Afghan/Arab’ sets have been used on a few occasions and have given some really good games (see the Games folder).

With my recent acquisition of the first two Portable Wargame compendiums - with all that 3 x 3 goodness and much else besides - as well as the ‘Dominion’ series, I have some very good rules to experiment with and so the lure of the Sublime Porte makes a compelling case for further investigation.

And of course, there is the naval dimension to consider - and consider it I am!

Thoughts on The Portable Ironclads Wargame

Then and now - a book of two halves. Could it have been written as one? It would have been more compact but probably less digestible!

The Portable Ironclads Wargame and the follow up Developing the Portable Ironclads Wargame: The American Civil War, have taken up the best part of five years from start to where we are now. During that time I have built (and rebuilt) some eighty-odd models, fought a significant number of battles (solo and face-to-face although for the latter I was mainly umpiring), and typed and re typed great swathes of text for the two books you see above as well as for the blog and The Gridded Naval Wargame Facebook group. All of this set against the backdrop of Laurel’s live-changing surgery and the seismic effect this has had on  us - physically and emotionally. It had been, to use just one of any number of emotive cliches, a roller-coaster of a ‘journey!’

I am of course, really delighted to have achieved all this - mainly because my attention span and follow through in terms of projects is notoriously ‘short-winded’. I have proven to myself that I can do it - which is a reward all of its own.

So what is next then?

Whilst I was away on holiday I was able to spend some time thinking about what comes next. As mentioned previously, I plan to pen a couple of campaign specific supplements with the fictional Anglo-Turkish War of 1880 being the first. This is some way off yet as I need to finish the ships first as well as organising the land components from the recently acquired Mike’s Models collection.In the meantime though, I have the capacity for a couple of smaller projects but, and it is a significant but, I am now deep in writing and research mode for my next book which has a year for the manuscript to be ready.

This will mean that projects will need to be modest in scope which points quite handily to Portable Wargame 3 x 3 or Dominion of style set ups. I suspect that I will be in good company pursuing such a modus operandi!

WW1 Aerial Card Game

Quick and easy to play and with an alternate (and to be fair, more ‘wargamery’) set of rules available on BoardGameGeek.

There are twenty aircraft types for each side - note the lovely artwork on the two examples above - and fifteen of the action cards (three of each of the five types depicted).

 Laurel and I braved the thirty degrees plus heat on Sunday to visit our usual boot sale. It was quite small in terms of the number of sellers and buyers, presumably the weather warning deterred many from attending. Despite the paucity of sellers I managed to pick up the small card game you see above for the princely sum of £1.

Dogfight was released in 2015 and was designed by Martin Wallace - a designer of many boardgames (I own his excellent version of Waterloo) and personally known to a number of readers of this blog (sadly I am not in that number!).

The game is a type of Trumps style game where the applicable aircraft rating - determined by any one of the five action cards you see above for - is compared to the opponents with the highest score being the winner. Simple but effective although as mentioned, there is a meatier set of rules available from BGG which would sit rather more comfortably with the WW1 aerial enthusiast.

The artwork on the aircraft cards is very nice and would be useful for painting colour schemes for the aerial model gamers amongst us.

All in all, a nice acquisition for a £1 and a game that can be easily played anywhere and with a very quick set up time.

Backfilling the Portable Wargame

At long last!

Despite being an avid fan of the Portable Wargame series I am embarrassed to say that I have somewhat remiss in engaging with the Compendiums. In short, up until around six months ago I did not own any of them! The first edition I received was kindly donated to me by my old friend Nick Huband and this was a hardback copy of the third compendium.

Fast forward to Father’s Day this year and courtesy of two Amazon gift cards from the offspring, I duly rectified this shortcoming and purchased the original compendium as well as the second.

There is plenty of reading material for me to get my teeth into but I figure that most readers will already know that! As a penance for this oversight I will have to pen a couple of articles for the fourth compendium….

Dead chuffed and getting even more inspired, especially by the 3 x 3 variants!

Armies in Africa

I am absolutely delighted to have landed a copy of this at long last - even with a sticker mark slap bang in the centre of the cover!

Just before we headed off to Andalusia I scored a major win on eBay. Unfortunately it was too close to our departure date (09/06) for me to see it before we travelled but it arrived safe and sound whilst we were away.

Colonial Armies - Africa 1850 to 1918 by Peter Abbott was published by Foundry Books in 2006. For a variety of reasons I missed out on getting a copy then and have been on the lookout, off and on, for one since then. I have seen several secondhand copies listed on odd occasions but the price - usually in three figures - was more than the Imperial coffers (not to mention domestic harmony) would stand. So scoring a copy of this for £22 was, as they say in certain quarters, a right result!

The book covers the armies and campaigns over the period mentioned and on a national basis. These are as follows: Congo Free State and Belgian Congo, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. This is supported by sections on the organisation, warfare, dress and weapons along with 229 figures, 58 illustrations and 2 maps.

For my fledgling 15mm Mikes’s Models Colonial set up - and with the seductive allure of Madasahatta as a gentle reminder - this book is an absolute goldmine of information and inspiration.

Dead chuffed for sure!

I have been to….Andalusia!

Laurel and I have just gotten back from a two week holiday in Andalusia, about an hour inland from Malaga. We stayed in the same place (even the same room!) as we did last year - a small hotel in the mountains overlooking the town of Alcaucin,  designed for people with mobility issues and owned and run for the last twenty two years by a charming English couple - Hannah and Adrian. 

The food was excellent, the company convivial (more of which later), the pool - most welcome in the thirty two degrees plus temperatures we were exposed to - wonderfully refreshing and then there was the Alhambra Palace….

We had planned to visit the Palace (around 90 minutes from where we were staying) as part of our stay and so duly booked it in some months beforehand. As the number of visitors is controlled you have to book in advance and are not able to just pitch up on the day. 

The palace itself has a fascinating history and is a delight to look at so I will let a few of the 200 plus pictures I took do the talking!

As part of this visit I had made a point of reading up on the Reconquista and the fall of Granada beforehand and also, unsurprisingly, made a point of looking at the naval side. Granada was blockaded by the Castilian fleet for the most part which restricted the arrival of any reinforcements from North Africa. A few blockade runners managed to sneak through so there is some gaming potential there - stopping blockade runners being a popular naval pastime, probably since the time of the ancient Greeks!

From the land perspective raids and sieges loom large and so I am looking at some suitable figures for something Portable/Dominion/DBA ish.

Trafalgar with Cheese and Cider….

One of the guests at the hotel gave a very engaging talk on the Battle of Trafalgar one evening. Dave used pieces of cheese to represent key elements of the opposing fleets - Brie for the French, Manchego for the Spanish and Cheddar for the English although the two main attacking lines of the Royal Navy were represented by tins of Cider! Once the talk had concluded the assembled company then joined in a rousing rendition of  ‘The Wellerman’ in a variety of keys, some of which were even right ones….

Trafalgar as you have never seen it before! The large lump of Manchego (in the uppermost red ramekin) is of course the Santisima Trinidad….

Dave and I also decided to have a ‘loud shirt Friday’ in which I have to say that the honours went to him for the rather fetching number you see below - the dark blue background of my own attire was eclipsed by the pink hue his own shirt enjoyed….

The two Daves doing Dave stuff….

The only souvenir I acquired whilst on holiday - aside from the pictures and wonderful memories - was a small beer glass. The glass itself was produced to go with a local beer called, you’ve guessed it, Alhambra.

An Alhambra glass, embossed with typical Moorish patterns and with the name near the top. It really is quite lovely and no, it was not obtained by any knavery on my part - I asked the waiter at the restaurant we had lunch at for one and was prepared to pay for it but he insisted I took it free of charge. Ideal for the ‘little green bottle of joy’ that the beer comes in.

We are already looking at returning next year for some new adventures.