A Profound Influence

"The dreamers of the day are dangerous men...."

By now I expect that most readers of this blog are aware of the fact that the actor Peter O'Toole passed away after a long illness on the Saturday just gone. He was a very fine actor appearing in both films and theatre (I really enjoyed Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell) and of course, came to world renown with his portrayal of Lawrence of Arabia in the 1962 David Lean film of the same name.

The film is one of my all-time favourites and from when I first saw it on video (sadly I have never seen it on the big screen although I was lucky enough to see my other film of the era - Zulu - at a cinema in the early 1970s) was enthralled by the whole Lawrence story. At the present time I have the film itself on Blu-Ray, the extended version of Maurice Jarre's superb soundtrack album, numerous Lawrence related books, have avidly read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom and planned numerous tabletop adventures set during the Arab Revolt.

The film was truly epic in scale and Peter O'Toole's performance was certainly worthy of an Oscar - he hold the record for the most nominations without actually winning one although did receive an honorary lifetime type one. Historically the film was all over the place and being described as 'based upon' is probably the most generous way to describe it - any film using Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a reference is always going to be on slightly wobbly ground - but, like Zulu, doe not in anyway detract from what was a towering cinematic achievement.

As Lawrence it is fair to say that he captures visually much of the complexity of the man and his many facets. It was a thought-provoking depiction although in reality he was around a foot too tall - Lawrence was quite short.

In closing I would say that the film Lawrence of Arabia, and the late, great Peter O'Toole's depiction of the man himself have been the main instigators of my lifelong interest in the Arab Revolt and have contributed, by extension to interests in many related areas.

R.I.P Peter O'Toole.

A Very Special Day

Yours truly and the officially grown up Holly - I am not ashamed to admit that I did have a bit of a wobble when I saw this picture!

Yesterday, the 15th December was a day of much celebration. My darling daughter Holly reached 18 years of age. I cannot really add much to this other than to say how proud and blessed SWMBO and I have been by her and that whilst as parents you always hope your children can learn from you I can safely say that I have learned much from her in return.

I also learned a valuable lesson in computers as I set up her present from SWMBO and I - a Macbook Pro - in that using Apple is so easy after Windows!

The celebratory sombreros courtesy of Pancho's Cantina will feature in a separate post....;-)

So in closing - to my beautiful, witty, intelligent, considerate Holly, a very, very happy birthday!

Old enemies and new friends....

Fezian battleships circa 1905. Nusretieh served as the fleet flagship during the pre-dreadnought era.

The man cave is in dire need of a tidy up or, to be more specific, a reorganisation. It is not that it is a mess as such - more like I have another idea to make it more space efficient. All will be revealed in due course but the upshot of my 'moving-things-around-to-see-where-they might-best-fit-allowing-for-the-temporary-placement-of-the-Christmas-decorations-boxes-by-my-gaming-table' is that have made the acquaintance once again with the pre-dreadnought fleets of both Fezia and Rusland aka inspired by Turkey and Russia. Though I say so myself I was rather pleased with the way these turned out - so much so that I have revisited the partially painted battle cruisers for both the British and German fleets for WW1.

Enter stage, third left - cue change of plan....

The Rusland fleet - Admiral class battleships.

The models that I have currently awaiting the brush are not going to be completed as they were intended i.e. for the Royal Navy and the High Seas fleet. I have opted instead to go completely imagi-naval and complete the fleets of both Fezia and Rusland. Furthermore, I do not intend adding anything further to either fleet so they can make do with the models I have available. I have abandoned my plans to incorporate any Panzerschiffe models although I may possibly add a couple of C in C 1/2400th models in due course - just to add a little variety. I have a number of ideas around the composition of the fleets that have been described previously so I won't repeat them here but suffice it to say one side will be primarily British ships and the other will be German. Or possibly a mix of the two.

I have not played a naval game of any sort for some time and seeing numerous blog posts on the subject has got me hankering for the tang of salt in the air; the icy dagger-like sting of the spray at 30 knots and the boom of rolling salvoes of heavy ordnance with the acrid smell of cordite....

Well, in the mind's eye anyway!

I always find naval games to be a worthwhile diversion - a soothing balm to an overheated imagination - whilst I am beavering away on other projects - the only problem is that they then tend to take over what I was originally working on....Hmmm.

Ancient and Renaissance Blocks

The great block reorganisation has made some significant progress this weekend as the core sets for red, blue, grey and grey have been completed. It was not quite as onerous as I originally expected but was time-consuming all the same. One thing it has made me think long and hard about though is the possibility of using the block armies for earlier periods of warfare.

I have previously mentioned that I have played ancient games on a number of occasions and have owned Carthaginian, Ancient Indian, Gallic, Viking and Late Imperial Roman armies over the years. At the present time I do not own any painted ancient armies - in fact, the only ancient exposure I have is a complete set of all the Command and Colours Ancients series of games by Richard Borg (as I do for most of the Napoleonics as well). Now you could be forgiven for thinking that as devoted block user having these units available via the games would be sufficient for my needs. To be honest I certainly thought so but now am not so sure. The Command and Colours blocks are really good to look at but my feeling now is that it would be more in keeping with my current usage to use blocks of my own design.

Initially when I thought about this my head quickly became filled with a myriad of unit type permutations - pikes, spears, javelins, archers, swordsmen etc - which threatened to derail the entire idea or at least making it incredibly complicated. I then stepped back and thought about it rationally (which sets a rather dangerous precedent for me!).

Now that I have added some distinguishing marks to the existing horse and musket blocks - the black and white stripes - I should easily be able to differentiate between troop types so, for example, I could have Roman legionaries, auxiliary infantry and assorted allies represented readily enough. The same principle could be applied to cavalry so everything from Pathian Cataphracts to Numidian light horse can also be tackled simply by designating the appropriate label as the specific type required.

I must confess that my thinking was helped somewhat by referring to my copies of both DBA and HOTTs for reasons that are easy to see. As both sets of rules merge similar troop types into unit categories it makes it a lot easier to represent units using blocks - as long as they are clearly defined beforehand. This is something I will need to work out but to be honest, will be fairly straightforward to do by making use of the aforementioned different labels types and by standardising unit compositions in some way.

The biggest single problem I am facing with tackling this project is how to represent formed bodies of troops are with ranged weapons. The horse and musket era assumes that all infantry types are armed with a firearm of some kind (excepting those blocks used for native types - Zulus etc) but in the earlier period having having some way of identifying separate 'shooters and fighters' is required. After thinking about this I have decided that a new label type, based on the standard infantry label, will need to be designed. This will enable units of formed shooters to be represented and, by dint of the idea I am currently pursuing, will also double for pike units during the Renaissance period where the standard infantry block can be used as per its more usual horse and musket incarnation.

I realise this may seem a little on the confusing side for which I can only apologise but once the new block type is ready it will all make a lot more sense.

The plan is to tackle the ancient (taken in its 1500 and earlier guise) era and also the Renaissance in some fashion - simply because the lure of the Ottoman Turks of the period is something that I am unable to resist.

Greece in the Project Machinery

An entertaining and inspirational read in 2013....

Following on from my previous post I have just completed reading the book you see above - a book acquired by chance at a boot sale ages ago. The author, David Howarth, is a particular favourite of mine for no other reason than that he had written one of the most inspirational books of my war games career - A Near Run Thing, covering the battle of Waterloo. I read this avidly back in the early 1970s and still have a copy of the same which I dip into occasionally and still be inspired by.

....and the same in 1973!

The Greek Adventure flows along in an easy fashion and like his Waterloo title does not contain any orders of battle or maps of any of the numerous sieges etc. It just reads very nicely and represents a great primer for the subject (and yes, I have a copy of David Brewster's far more serious study of the war to read next). I particularly like his personal anecdotes as he sailed around Greece interspersed with the story he was telling - it gave one a real sense of almost being there.

It is not an in depth analytical study but is a cracking read and hugely entertaining - and more importantly, inspiring in many different ways.

Just like his Waterloo title was all those years ago....;-)

Greece is the word....

Greek brigands in action

Sometimes you come across a war or campaign that appears to offer little in the way of tactical or strategic interest. Notably absent are any great examples of the art of war; no 'great captain' or crack formation of troops cross the stage of the conflict but for all that, the war or campaign still manages to inspire the gamer in some way or another. Sometimes, the idea of the conflict is more inspiring than the events in actuality - in this case I am talking about the Greek War of Independence.

In a nutshell, the war consisted of gangs of brigands overcoming the bulk of the Turkish occupying forces - usually with a view more to the local situation rather than the 'national' one - and a makeshift 'navy' sailing rings around the far more powerful Turkish fleet. This was then followed by a determined Turkish response on land as the specially requested Egyptian army managed to take back pretty much all of the liberated Greek territory from the assorted rebels. By this time the great powers had taken an interest and the culmination of this was the destruction of the Turkish/Egyptian fleet at Navarino in 1827 which effectively ended the Turkish occupation.

The legendary Greek female admiral - Bouboulina. She was said to have had six children and was so unattractive to look at she had to seduce men at pistol point!

The Greek forces consisted of various bands of brigands - the Klephts or Armatouli - that operated across Greece and were usually more concerned with being the top dogs in their particular location and of getting one over their rivals. The idea of nationalism was very much a foreign import which the Greeks themselves were initially sceptical about. Even the foreign volunteers and adventurers were indifferently welcomed and the theatre of war led to many cases of destitution as the Greeks had little money or death by disease. Byron himself being such a victim.

From such unpromising material though a number of great gaming opportunities can be explored. My opinion is that for the most part this is very much like a Colonial campaign - the North West frontier springs to mind - except with a naval dimension. I like the idea of gaming irregulars against regulars as this always makes for some interesting actions given the differing priorities and objectives of the combatants. I am planning to try a couple of actions once the remaining block armies have been completed just as an experiment but I reckon there is much potential with this war - more so than would first appear from reading about it.

As ever, much to ponder methinks....;-)

Of Christmas, Blocks and the Adriatic....

It has been a busy weekend and no mistake. The first weekend in December is when we traditionally put up the Christmas decorations and so much untangling of lights (invariably accompanied by that seasonal game of 'find the blown light bulb' from amongst some hundred or so others - real men shun the use of bulb testers!) and trying to remember how they all went up last year. After several false starts and a quick trip to the local supermarket we managed to get this first part of Christmas completed yesterday - including the all important Christmas tree. From a practicality point of view we have an artificial tree but it is a very nice looking one all the same and now proudly occupies its usual haunt in the lounge - reminding all and sundry that it 'tis the season to be jolly. At this stage a special thankyou should be extended to the three family cats - Maisie and Mango never stirred from their feline slumbers whilst all this tinseled mayhem was going on around them whilst Minnie's sole contribution was to explore the inside of one of the boxes used for storing the decorations - luckily when she chose to jump inside all the breakables had been removed! I realise that may seem a little early in the month but December is a busy one for use this year especially as it will be featuring my daughter's eighteenth birthday in a couple of weeks and so the preparations for this auspicious event also have to be factored in....;-)

I made a lot of progress with the blocks although they are not quite finished. Whilst labelling and reorganising the collection I have changed the number of types by colour somewhat meaning that some additional labels had to be printed. Previously I opted to have the six colours available in identical permutations as far as unit types are concerned. This meant that for the red, blue and green set I also had various modern units - tanks, anti tank guns and infantry support weapons (machine guns and mortars) in the same way as the grey, brown and olive coloured set. I have now changed this. The brown and olive set are now mainly modern whilst the red, blue and green set are, for want of a better description, pre mechanised. The sole exception is the grey set which will feature both types. Looking at the new arrangement begs the simple question of why I did not think of this before. The new configuration should be complete over the next few days.

I have just finished reading Tom Pocock's book Stopping Napoleon - War and Intrigue in the Mediterranean - and what a fascinating title it has proven to be! I had no knowledge of the various plans afoot that the British had and successively discarded in the Mediterranean - aiding Calabrian rebels in Italy, offering to assist the rebels in the Tyrol in 1809, not to mention the myriad commerce raiding type operations carried out the Royal Navy - including 'cutting out' raids. There is a whole lot of inspiration here for low level games (eminently suitable for the tabletop) and of course with a few notable characters thrown in for good measure. It has given me a few ideas and certainly some intriguing combined operations may well result - especially as I have rather a lot of ships to make use of from the Pirates of the Caribbean game.

One to ponder methinks....;-)