A Wargaming Odyssey
This is a long running and continuing journey around a collection of ideas, projects, games, models and a variety of wargaming related themes from my own imagination and from others. As I have been described as having the attention span of a forgetful goldfish you can rest assured the resulting subject matter will be diverse and (usually) entertaining! "He lived in a frenzy of enthusiasm — but nothing lasted for long with him".
Wednesday 15 May 2024
My Own Private Kobayashi Maru
Thursday 9 May 2024
A Waterloo Footnote - Literally!
….and the contents.
The footnote to page 4 - I cannot help but be delighted by this!
A short while ago mention was made of a book that was freely available on the net written by the esteemed author and historian, Charles Esdaile. The book was entitled Wargaming Waterloo and at the time I thought ‘Oooh, goody!’, downloaded it onto my IPad and then proceeded to forget about it!
Imagine my surprise and delight then, when my old friend Bob Cordery emailed me this morning and drew my attention to the footnote on page 4 of the text (see the picture above). So I am now contained in a footnote in an academic publication about gaming one of the most famous battles of all time that coincidentally happens to be a personal favourite of mine!
I had no idea about this and so naturally am rather pleased to be so noted. I did chuckle at ‘The many projects developed by Crook’ part of the footnote - I wonder if the esteemed Prof. Esdaile knows how many of these projects I have started or more importantly, how many I have finished!?
The three blog posts can be found here:
Waterloo A La Carte….Game Number 56, Part 1
Waterloo A La Carte….Game Number 56, Part 2
Waterloo A La Carte….Game Number 56, Part 3
I should also point out that the above idea was not entirely original in that I adapted a similar hex based concept designed by ‘Old Trousers’ of ‘Numbers, Wargames and Arsing About’ fame. The idea was originally mentioned in the following blog post:
Hard to believe this was four ago - the figures have long gone and so I now have another method of getting my Napoleonics fix, but more of that at a later date.
Many thanks to Bob Cordery for bringing this to my attention!
Sunday 5 May 2024
Bank Holiday Weekend Boot Sale Bargains
Very different but welcome all the same. 20p for the Duggan title and £1 for the Macintyre.
A short while ago Laurel took delivery of a powered wheelchair for use outdoors and what a boon it has been! It gives her a huge amount of independence which is especially useful when out shopping and in this case, visiting our new local boot sale.
Her chair is not really designed for use on grass and so the boot sale we visit takes place in a park and ride car park just off the A12 near Chelmsford and so is fully paved.
My personal boot sale pickings have been pretty slim this year so I was delighted to come away with the goodies you see in the picture above.
I have read Count Bohemond by Alfred Duggan but had not seen the title above so was very pleased to get his for the princely sum of 20p. I am rather fond of the crusades so this was a welcome addition to my fiction library.
The Naval War Against Hitler I have not seen before but for a £1 it was definitely worth a punt albeit probably a little dated.
A nice sized and unused cutting mat for £1 and a brand new (still with tags etc) laptop case for £3 - not that I have a laptop but it will be useful for my IPad and keyboard combo and headphones.
All in all then not a bad haul and a pleasant way to spend a sunny Sunday morning!
Friday 3 May 2024
Air Force, Dauntless and the Expansion Kit
The circle is even more complete! Note the Avalon logo on the Expansion Kit box - this was produced shortly after they had acquired Battleline. I had a small problem with my copy of this as it was missing a Yak counter as well as being Avalon Hill thick counters as opposed to the chunkier Battleline versions. The seller speedily rectified this and so I now have a full set of the Battleline counters! Spitfire is included for reasons you will see in the post.
Way back in the late 1970s and following on from buying Flat Top, I came across the Battleline board game of Air Force. This is a game of tactical plane to plane combat over Western Europe during WW2 and was designed by S. Craig Taylor. Very much of its time, it was fairly chart heavy and required written moves. For all that I spent many happy hours playing this series of games with actions ranging from single plane versus plane engagements right up to using the full counter mix of US bombers (36 aircraft in all) is a series of daylight bombing raids over the Reich. As I recall I even managed a refight of the climax of 633 Squadron and true to the film, only a single badly damaged Mosquito made it back. It was and remains one of my favourite board games. The game included counters for the following aircraft types:
Air Force
Great Britain
Spitfire, Hurricane, Tempest, Mosquito, Wellington and Lancaster
U.S.A.
P47, P51, B17 and B24
Germany
ME109, FW190, ME110, JU87, JU88, HE111, ME262 and even the V1!
With the exception of the V1 each aircraft had a data card showing what could be done and when in terms of movement, weapons fit, ammunition capacity and damage. A number of variants existed for most types and indeed, later versions of certain types had their own data card so, for example, the Me109 has a card for the E, F and G version and each card usually features some additional variants so the overall pool of aircraft is quite wide (more so when you take into consideration the types available in Dauntless and the Expansion kit).
Dauntless was released after Air Force and featured the Pacific theatre. Naturally there were a number of US types that could also be used in Europe so the rather slim pickings for the Americans found in Air Force received a welcome reinforcement! The game also included expanded rules for attacking naval targets as befitted the theatre. This standalone game included the following aircraft types:
Dauntless
U. S. A.
Buffalo, Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair, Dauntless, Avenger, Helldiver, Devastator, P38, P39, P40, P61, A20, B25, B26 and B29
Japan
Zero, George, Tony, Oscar, Tojo, Frank, Nick, Betty, Val, Kate and Emily
The Expansion Kit
The final part of the series was an expansion set that added to both Air Force and Dauntless as well as including the French, Italian and Russian air forces. The rules booklet added to the series with some detailed rules for determining pilot quality on a national and year by year basis so, for example, the Japanese started the war with very good quality aircrew but by the end were largely ‘green’ with the exception of the very few ‘aces’ left flying. The Luftwaffe followed a similar pattern although not quite as extreme as for Japan.
The following aircraft counters were included:
Great Britain
Stirling (spelt Sterling on the data card!), Gladiator, Beaufighter, Beaufort, Sunderland, Swordfish, Blenheim and Typhoon,
U.S.A.
B25, B26, P63, Catalina, A26, P36 and C47
Germany
Me410, He219, HS129, FW200, HE177, DO17 and they also have the HS293 guided bomb.
Japan
Jill, Dinah, Claude, Sally, Frances, Peggy, Judy and Nell
Italy
G50, MC200, MC202, SM79, CR42 andBR20
France
MS406, D520, BR693, MB152, LEO451 and Potez631
Russia
Yak, I16, PE2, Mig3, LAGG3, LA, IL2 and Il4
As with the other games in the series a number of data cards for variants of the counters were provided and indeed, some of these featured aircraft from Air Force and Dauntless. An example of this would be the ME109K and the Spitfire Mark 14.
S Craig Taylor mentioned in the designers notes of his WW1 game Wings that Air Force, Dauntless and the Expansion Kit were based on a system that was no longer ‘state of the art’ when his Great War aerial game was released in 1981. Wings represented his thoughts on aerial combat as a result of playing experience, further research and thoughts on the subject since the release of the Air Force family. Whether or not he planned to update the Air Force system to the Wings standard is unknown although elements of this system appear in the board game Spitfire that covers the early war period up to 1941.
In the meantime though, there is much in the way of fan made additions to the Air Force design available on BoardGameGeek or the dedicated Facebook group. The latter also addresses one of the perennial problems of Air Force, the difficulty in tailing an opponent although most enthusiasts probably have their own workarounds.
The acquisition of the above three games represents the end of a journey for me in many ways as these, along with Flat Top, Bismarck, Jutland, Submarine and a few others were all games that I derived many happy hours of gaming from.
Is this a nostalgic indulgence, perhaps even an attempt to recapture past glories?
In part the answer is probably yes but with a degree of qualification. In my opinion these games are extremely good at what they are representing and so as a kind of ‘toolkit’ for scenarios they are incomparable. For sure the rules are unfashionably comparatively detailed when compared with today’s offerings but they work in respect of the flavour of what they are representing. All could readily be used with miniatures and indeed, I have done so in the past with some of the naval titles and am planning to do so with the WW1 Wings of Glory models using Wings. I may even extend this into WW2 using the Air Force series along with Mustangs - its direct descendant.
As it stands now there is probably just one other game from ‘back in the day’ that I want to add to my collection and I am not ashamed to say that this will be purely for nostalgic indulgence - details as and when I get my hands on a copy!