The Rules of the Game and 15….

 The Rules of the Game is a truly wonderful book about how the Royal Navy arrived at where it did in order to fight at Jutland. I have owned a paperback version of this but really wanted a reasonably priced hardback version - 700 pages is a lot to ask of a paperback! For the other title in the picture, read on….

I am feeling particularly unwell as the seasonal chesty cough/sore throat/head full of cotton wool thing has kicked in with a vengeance! However, trooper that I am, I have managed to get a substantial amount of work done on the book and have rested the creative genes to tackle a little, shall we say, side hustle…

The big news though, is that I have been able to secure copies of not one, but two ‘grail books’ - and with a bonus!

So what does the mysteriously enigmatic ‘15’ mean then? Take a look at the picture below then, and all will be revealed….

Small War and Skirmishes 1902 to 1918 by Edwin Herbert - the first of two volumes with the second covering the period 1919 to 1935. Aside from the ‘Colonial’ style conflicts the book also looks at the sideshows of the Great War. I am really pleased to have this in my collection - especially as it is signed by the author and the late Ian Heath and is listed as copy number 15 from when it was published!

The Rules of the Game is a superb book and in my opinion essential reading if one wants to understand the how and why the Royal Navy ‘did what it did’ during the Great War. 

This is a brief post as the need for a hot lemon and honey has assumed greater importance - I will also throw in some paracetamol for good measure!

Ship Charts and Firing Arcs

The ‘Mark 2’ version of a ship record chart (actually more like mark 8!). I am a lot happier with this version as it is far ‘leaner’ and user friendly. The ship details are at the top whilst the bottom covers the weapons fit. 

 I mentioned in my previous post that I had been busy beavering away on the rules for the new book and so you can now see a couple of examples of what I have been up to.

The ship record chart I am rather pleased with as it is a lot tidier and far more obvious as to what is what. Having said that I have just spotted something that will need amending - the arcs of fire for the turrets do not account for port and starboard fire. The chart also reflects a rule change that I have incorporated. Essentially secondary guns get one box per two barrels whilst tertiary guns get one per three barrels. This was incorporated to help to equalise the hits between the hull (flotation) and the weaponry. I have also incorporated a very simple hit location table. In a nutshell, for each hit a ship suffers the owning player rolls a D6. A roll of 1 to 3 is a flotation hit, 4 is a tertiary, 3 is a secondary and a 6 is main guns or torpedoes. If a ship does not carry any of the weaponry listed then the hit is classed as flotation.

The beginnings of a firing arc diagram. I created this rather crude diagram using MS Excel. It was a royal pain to do so and worst of all, when you try and add it into Word you can see where the lines do not quite line up (the bold lines are where this occurs). This diagram illustrates the arc for forward firing guns.

I was rather pleased with the above until I tried adding it to a Word document. It looked horrible so the above is very much a work in progress. In the Portable Ironclads Wargame I used models and my hexed playing mat for the arcs but I was keen to add them as a diagram this time. I shall continue to experiment with this - I reckon that I just need to check out a couple of You Tube tutorials to get this bedded down. Aside from diagrams it will also allow me to draw battle maps on a hex grid which will be very useful indeed - way beyond naval games!

Risings and Rebellions 1919 to 1939

The follow up volume to Small Wars and Skirmishes 1902 to 1918

Definitely some very entertaining looking campaigns to look at and all very Portable Wargameable !

 It was a pretty lean November as far as blog posts went. No particular reason for this other I have been beavering away on the rules for the new book. I think they are now there or thereabouts and so I am arranging a further test game next which will be the largest action fought with them so far. It should be fun!

In the meantime though, I have been able to pick up a few items on the acquisition list, all of which will find their way onto the blog in due course but today I shall focus on just one of them.

The ‘tribal’ block armies - originally designed for Zulus (predominantly brown) and Afghan/Mahdist/Arab types.

There is an abundance of ‘small wars’ in this book and the preceding volume (which I am awaiting delivery of) so for me, there is certainly plenty of mileage. Couple with my earlier acquisition of Colonial Armies of Africa 1850 to 1918 by Peter Abbott, I reckon that I have more than sufficient for needs in terms of inspiration. I am leaning towards using the block armies again - they have been sitting patiently in their storage boxes for way too long - but I am conscious of the fact that they may need a little upgrading. Again, nothing major, just a few minor additions. This option of course means that I can get into action far sooner than painting figures!