Thursday, March 31, 2011

Reading can be dangerous

In between the various renovation jobs, I have been dipping into my book shelf, 1st a reread of Sita Ram's memoirs followed by a light weight book called Impossible Victories with  chapter on the Relief of Lucknow, a silly impulse purchase made a few years ago, it being so rare to find anything relevant on a local bookshelf though this one will soon appear on the shelves of a local used book store.

So what's dangerous about these? I just wish the brief battle descriptions in both books didn't read so much like a game of Charge!. I mean I just put all that single figure stuff to rest, again. Of course the smaller table means smaller armies, so......... NO.

Tomorrow I am going to declare a day off from working on grooming shop, house and yard and will dedicate myself to getting my games room back into some form of order, get a painting desk re-established and put the area around the shrivelled remains of my wargames table into order, including the playing surface that I am sure exists somewhere under the piles of boxes and books.  I am determined on a minor, improvised, play test of the Fire & Stone siege rules but what I need is a "storm through the city streets" game of HofT, just to check and reassure myself.

The 1st company of the 1st Foot, Royal Scots, finally based and flocked, varnish gleaming under a blazingly bright March sun.  

Speaking of my cut down table, did I mention that I came across an online copy of Jack Scruby's All About Wargames published in 1957? and that it recommends a 6 ft x 8 ft table? or a reduction in figure size?  Oh well its also big on encouraging ingenuity and improvisation and an attitude of being able to make anything work.  It was uploaded by the ever helpful Thor and is available here.  A few things have changed since I was 2 (why didn't my parents buy me a copy of this? I'd have learned how to read even faster!), more things haven't really.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the link to the Jack Scruby document. That is great!

    Why the 'putting all that single figure stuff to rest'? I am moving towards it now! :^D Well, for all except DBA...

    Dale

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  2. It is a great little booklet isn't it?

    As for the single figures, I like the idea of single figures, but I also like the idea of "elements" and I'm impatient, clumsy and lazy. So far experiments with movement trays as a compromise have failed and my 19thC toy soldiers have been on & off various single and multi figure bases so often they can almost rebase themselves without my help!

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