Summer Rerun: 10 Years Ago

Ah summer, a thousand and one chores outside, especially cutting firewood for the coming winter now that my usual supplier has retired. Effort vs cash.
(Our wood stove is a main source of heat when the winter nights drop to -15C,-20C....... )

Since I'm also rearranging my game room when I have time, any game or figure additions are likely to be a few days away. So here's a look at the 2016 Fall In wargame convention, I think the last HMGS Con that I drove 1,500 km each way. Portland Maine was only 1/2 that distance and I've missed meeting with some of my American friends, but, my passport has expired.  .

F&IW 40mm homecast figures from the collectons
 of 2 of the HAWKS club and their Canadian mascot.

For a bit more on my blog report on HMGS  2016 Fall In Con, see:

Falllllll Out!

Any future wargame convention, if any, will be the same distance from Nova Scotia but in Canada. 

Hopefully, in a day or two I'll have time for figures or a solo game with a blog post to follow.

1/2 Century of Service

"When the world was young, there came a race of warriors from the White Plains. They were like giants to the Aerphix  warriors who preceded them as today's warrior's are to these heroes. 

Long years they have slept in the caves, waiting the call to return to serve the King again."
 
"Excerpt from the Book of the Four Winds" 

Minifigs, bought, painted and 'bloodied' in the service of Valdur in the winter of 1974. (WRG 3rd),
(Except the Ral Partha guy in the back rank, not sure where he came from!)
Now, at last, called upon once again to take up arms and face the dice.

It was back in the fall and winter of 1973/74  at Military College that Simon MacDowall  (see Legio Wargames blog) ordered a copy of the 3rd ed of WRG Ancient's, built small armies of Airfix figures, soon joined by Minifigs.  We haven't stopped yet, and neither have these lads though they haven't marched under my command since 1976/77. 

When I graduated, I was posted immediately to a ship in Halifax for on job training. I managed to pack a few of my favourite figures but left the bulk for the Wargames Club to use until I could collect them. Well, that time never came but over the years I would periodically bump into some of them in friends' armies, where they were well and happily employed.  Not too long ago, I was surprised when a package from Simon showed up including some old Minifig castings and....... some of my original Minifig Britons! 

Veteran Warriors: still ready for battle 1/2 a century on!

I replaced a few broken weapons, and a missing leg and stand, touched up the occasional scuffed paint and they are once again ready for service to the King, pardon me, the now Duke of Valdur, on my Gathering of Hosts blog.

One Hundred and Fifty Five Years On!

Happy Canada Day!

It was on this day in 1867 that the Dominion of Canada came into existence (legally/politically speaking) by the union of the 4 colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper and Lower Canada. No doubt Britain sighed with relief at the thought of no longer having to listen to the complaints of those squabbling colonies, nor be pressed to spend money on defending them from the US and the Irish, and on developing infrastructure for the colonies' interests.       

A MARI USQUE AD MARE is the motto on our coat of arms, "From Sea to Sea" is the usual english rendition but there should really be another sea thrown in.  So, rather than a jingoistic picture, here's a shot of HMCS Ottawa in early July 1977, in Hudson's Bay which is technically a part of the Arctic Ocean. 

It was taken by a young, (oh so VERY young it seems now) newly commisioned, Sublieutenant, fresh out of military college 45 years ago. We didn't do the whole NorthWest Passage but at least I can claim to have sailed on three of the traditional Seven Seas.  

How The Internet & MacDuff Changed My Life

Relax, you haven't been redirected to a tabloid, this is merely a post about the convoluted and intertwined background to the matter at hand.

Now, where to start? 

A GM + 6 player original or Colonial MacDuff game from the turn of the century on my old 6ftx10ft table circa 2000. Each player had his own secret victory conditions but could have a private parley with another player if their figures were together. In one case, one player realized partway through the conversation that his opponent's mission involved capturing him and dispersing his rebels, so he pulled a pistol and fired at him point blank range, unfortunately for him, he missed! The battery powered train was operated by the player calling go and stop with me switching it on and off. Alas, the young fellow playing the Midshipman in charge of the train, panicked at the near approach of angry natives and sped off abandoning the civilians at the little red station which he was ordered to take to safety.  Neither his father nor the abandoned passengers were impressed but an expedition to rescue the captives became the storyline for the next game.

I had been aware of Colonial wargaming since my first Featherstone book and had been fascinated by the Boer Wars since I was old enough to pull the History of the War in South Africa off the shelf to look at the pictures. It had been published in 1900 after the fall of Pretoria had ended the war....OOPS! (It was a gift to my mother from her father who  had enlisted in the British army when the Boer War broke out but was judged too young to go overseas, he had to wait 14 years for that. All of which says something about my heritage and moulding l suppose.) Upon my reentry into civilian life in '81, I spent a year proving that I wasn't very good at running a game store either but it did introduce me to Larry Brom's The Sword & The Flame. I even got to read it when a friend bought it, but he got posted out before he got a force painted up so we could try it. When I finally got a real job and shut down the shop, the leftover stock included some packs of Mike's Models 15mm Colonials so I had my first Anglo-Boer skirmish. A score of figures per side didn't make for much of a game and I had neither cash nor desire to buy more of those chubby little dwarves and there was so much else to do, like 25mm Persians and  15mm French Revolution and Napoleonics and microarmour and ........

Actually I  suppose this article in a Scouting magazine from '69?.'70? was my first look at Colonial Gaming as well as homecasting. It gave me hope but no rules. 

Time passed, friends came and went and eventually in the late 80's Ron, a fellow alumni of the Montreal Wargaming Club from my college days, arrived in Nova Scotia. We've been gaming ever since in various scales and periods but of interest here was his collection of Ral Partha Colonials. The rules he had brought with him from Montreal were a sort of mashup of Space 1889 and TS&TF which sort of worked. Ron was trying to tweak them and I started painting up Frontier 25mm British and Mahdists and then...ummh..... offered to help with the rules. The result was With MacDuff To the Frontier.  

One of the few pictures I have of Ron's 25mm figures on his old table, full of Geohex terrain.

Why MacDuff? Blame my roommate who I shared my first real apartment with after graduation. We had spent 7 weeks in the summer of '74 backpacking around Europe by rail pass and thumb, sleeping at youth hostels and sometimes, in the open air; like the night we crept through the hedge and slept at the foot of the Lion Mount at Waterloo. (That summer was also the closest I came to attending a British Wargame Show when I took an impromtu sidetrip upon seeing an add for a Wargaming tent at some sort of Aldershot military show on the coming weekend. It was the best weekend of the trip, even over the co-ed hostel in Copenhagen, the two Swedish girls and..well, never mind. I mean I walked in and there was Peter Gilder playing a WRG Ancients game with figures I'd seen in a book, and there was  Phil Barker and a Minifigs stand!  It was also the only time I have slept in a jail cell, not locked I hasten to add. There was not a hostel, hotel or motel bed to be had. An old feller in a pub told me to find a copper, show him a shilling, tell him I couldn't find a bed for the night and ask if he could direct me to somewhere to sleep, and he'd let me sleep in a cell. It worked like a charm but on the next night I found better accommodations by being invited to join the gamers in the Wargaming tent for supper, join in a test run of a chariot racing game, and roll out my sleeping bag there but now I'm really off topic.)  Anyway, on that trip Eric would often say to me "Lead on MacDuff" and he kept it up when we were roommates later on. I guess that misquote stuck in my head. 

By the mid 80's I was working in the regional IT department of Canada Post where mainframe terminals and new mini-computer terminals were mixing with the even newer microcomputers, so I was learning as much as I could as fast as I could. At college my exposure to Cobol programming and punch cards had not been inspiring apart from the ability to go have a beer at the mess in between feeding in the cards and getting the output. When I did an exchange tour on the USS WV Pratt in 1976, a tour of the Ops room with CRT displays, keyboards and trackballs was like something out of StarTrek.  Now some of that handy stuff was spreading rapidly and I was learning fast. So it was that in the early 90's we bought a home computer so I could do the books for the Kennel that Kathy & I  were then running, 365 days a year, on top of my day job, travel, overtime, call ins....... OK now I'm just whining; apart from the accounting and wordprocessing, my brother had been urging me to try bulletin boards and email as a way to keep in touch, so we also bought an acoustic coupler modem, you remember, the type where you take your analog telephone hand set and plug it in to the cradle on the.....OK, never mind.

Now, at last, the threads are starting to come together. It didn't take long to find 'rgmh', you know, that old internet bulletin board: rec.games.miniatures.historical. You could make posts and could browse through, reading posts and replying to other posts. Later you could even upload small grainy pictures. It was amazing to connect to gamers around the world. I still remember posting a question about Yugoslav partisans when I was building a 54mm force to face Ron's Germans and I received an answer that started "When I joined the partisans..". 

A few of my 54mm Partisans, all conversions.

I also remember a younger Yugoslav wargamer whose father had been a partisan. He sent me pictures from the war,  scans of illustrations from books, with some translations, and pictures of his 25mm minis. For someone who had been a kid during the Cuban Missile crisis and who had enlisted in the Canadian forces while the US was still at war with North Vietnam, it was amazing. The last time I heard from him was 1995 when NATO was bombing his home city but he and his friends were not going to be intimidated and he was going out despite the raid to play an ancients game. Every now and then I wonder what became of him.

Anyway,  around the same time, someone who was writing a set of rules posted a question about something and I responded and offered to send him a copy of my in progress MacDuff rules for him to pick over. It was a surprise to get a  response from Dick Bryant asking if I would send him a copy for possible publication in The Courier. I did a quick edit, formalized them a bit and sent him both the Colonial version we had been using and the French & Indian version which hadn't even been play tested yet!

OK, now we are approaching the last steps on this long trail.  B this time, rgmh was being supplemented by email lists like Onelist and since Ron and I were playing the new  Armati rules, I signed up to the email group. In 1996 I had to suffer through not being able to join in the first Armati "Arena" at Cold Wars and I decided that I would make the 4,000 km round trip next year to join them. That Armati event was a complete success for me, the format had allowed not only for tournament games, but also for scenario games, as long as you brought both armies, terrain etc and gave the other player choice of sides. I brought two 25mm Scots armies, Lord of the Isles vs Lowland Barons and wrote up two fictional scenarios set in the 1411 Red Harlaw campaign. It turned out that I was the only one used to scenarios but several were quite interested in something more than line em up and go at it, so after I played one game, I GM'd two others. A good time was had by all. 

My 25mm Scots facing Ron's English in an Armati scenario game.

Prior to Cold Wars, Pete Panzeri had put out a call on rgmh for anyone with 54mm figures suitable for a Waterloo game to help him out. I was in the process of building my first 54mm War of 1812 armies so I volunteered to bring British infantry and some US and Canadian units to serve as Dutch Belgians and KGL Riflemen.  While I was building my 1812 force, I had found some old boxes of OOP Airfix 54mm figures at a comicbook/game shop in Halifax. The owner offered me a good deal if I would take them all so I kept what I wanted and had some to sell. I posted about the  WWII Russians on rgmh and got a response from some guy named Rob Dean and agreed to meet him at Cold Wars.   

Pete Panzeri's Haye Sainte game (buildings by Tom Milmore).
The greencoats in the sandpit are some of my lads. 

To my great surprise, the 54mm Haye Sainte game was over crowded with many new players including lots of kids. Pete was soon over stretched and asked if I'd run one end of the table. Well I'd done plenty of that at Cangames as well as Dalhousie game days and the rules were simple, so I jumped in, only slightly distracted by things like chatting with Rob about those Russians which he decided not to buy and then with Frank Chadwick who was showing some of his newest 54mm Volley & Bayonet ACW units.

It was a great weekend but I had barely gotten home when I got an email from Arty Conliffe, he had been into the printers and had seen the latest Courier magazine:

The almost completely untested F&IW With MacDuff To The Frontier was first to print!

Before long, I also got an email from Rob. He and Chris Palmer were planning a 40mm homecast F&IW convention game and had decided to try the new MacDuff rules from the latest Courier. Rob  recognized my name and had a few questions. I was  already decided that I was going back next year so I decided sign up for their MacDuff game and to use MacDuff for my planned 54mm Chateauguay game instead of the proposed regimental level variant of  Volley and Bayonet that was being discussed on that email group. 

How did it go? Well 25 years later, having co-hosted scores of various convention games including one Best In Show at Cold Wars, and various other smaller awards, as well some of the other things friends do, Rob and I are still at it! 

Huzzah 2019: Our Sittingbad using a fastplay version of MacDuff and some of our Not Quite The Seven Years War, Prince August homecast armies.   

So it was that the internet became one of my major connections to the hobby, leading me to start the Littlewars email group and then set up a Webpage which eventually became this blog, but also helped me form friendships around the globe and made my remote corner of the world a little less remote. 

In the next post, I'll talk about developing the rules itself and the dangers of not knowing when to stop! 

What do I want anyway?

In a comment on my last post, Johnathon of The Palouse Wargaming Journal suggested that I consider writing "an expanded discussion on your rules' analysis including what works, what doesn't work, what you want, what you don't want, and how your preferences have changed over time".  My first reaction was that it would be like wandering through a maze lit by strobe lights. After some thought, it seemed to me that I might benefit from it and there may be some others would would find it of interest or even of some use, like those cautionary fairy tales, while the rest can skip over it pretty quickly. More than  that, I might even find the exercise useful apart from the pleasure one sometimes gets from nostalgia. 

In 2010, this was the sort of thing I wanted. 
(See 31 January 2010 post.)
This solo game was played using 'Warhammer Ancient Battles'. The rules were OK if played with the right mind frame, and I had friends with 25mm armies who played them, then they released a new version. Amongst other things, they changed the number of ranks of infantry that could fight and suddenly my basing and unit organization was a liability. At the same time, we made our move away from the city and I found  myself playing mostly solo. I decided to write what became the first edition of Gathering of Hosts. 

Luckily for everyone, I don't have much, if any, documentation or pictures from the first 30 years so we don't need to wallow too much in the past.  The present didn't spring into existence fully armed though, so  I will at least touch on the early days in this post. My very first book on wargaming was Featherstones's Battles With Model Soldiers which did not contain a full set of rules but did talk about the advantages of writing your own and how to go about it. It included some suggestions about how to write a simple set and then customize them. So there I was, in high school in 1971, conscripting my childhood friend next door, getting down on the floor with airfix, dice and rulers and enjoying ourselves in a private setting using cobbled together WWII rules!  I was lost! (Last year he mailed me his sole unit of 25mm Napoleonic Prussians which had managed to play one game when I was home on leave from college. He turned to golf instead of wargaming. )

Cold Wars 2010: Scenario 3 from The Raid on St. Michel.  Featherstone's book may have been my first, but Charge! was my first complete set of rules, purchased with my first paycheque as a young Officer Cadet at the College Militaire Royal de St. Jean in 1972. Before I could build two 30mm armies, I was on to WRG Ancients with Airfix  so it was 1998 before I got to play a proper game of Charge!. I still play it happily when the opportunity offers and if I still had room for even my old 6'x8' table, I might well still use it for my Horse and Musket rules but with 40mm figures on a 5'x4' table, it is rather limited. (Mind you, I did consider using it for the French Revolution with reduced ranges and moves.) 

Anyway, I'll largely pass over my college days where I really got into things along with Simon MacDowall (Legio, Comitatus, etc),  so much learned in those days and so many good memories over the decades. I'll also largely pass by my  15mm days, partly because I don't have any pictures, but also perhaps to spare reminding The Single Handed Admiral of his days of being prime guinea pig in the ever changing series of rules that eventually ended up being published in Wargames Illustrated. They were the days when I began to get hooked on writing rules and running multiplayer and convention games though so I can't skip them entirely. 

There were some great games in those years, including a number of multiplayer games at Dalhousie where we ran various 15mm early Napoleonic games involving 6 or 8 players,  not counting us, and multi-national 15mm armies. One of my favourites was one where a player panicked when seeing chaps in the wrong colour unit coming over the bridge towards him and opened up with canister, only to find out that they were his allies in full retreat, while in another, an allied cavalry commander was ordered to move into a reserve position while the infantry in reserve launched an attack. He tried to move out of the way only to be ambushed by French light infantry in a wood so he moved forward out of range. This triggered a charge by some French cavalry who had been in dead ground. His brigade won the melee and had to pursue over the crest of a hill, finding the rest of the French. So it was that his honest attempts to allow the infantry to advance while he manoeuvred  into reserve, turned into an attack that disrupted the enemy plans.  Oops. 

One doesn't really need fake command rules and event cards when you have multiple players and hidden units! 

The "Why" intro from my article in Wargames Illustrated Issue 23 (1989)
This is the published version of the ever being tweaked rules we  used with our 15's.
Bad habits are strong!

Another of those games from the 80's, a refight of Austerlitz at another Dal game day, taught me that its entirely possible to be too clever as scenario designer. In order to recreate the allied command confusion and poor performance vs the small but veteran French army, we put all the most experienced players on the French side with the Admiral playing Napoleon, and all the inexperienced players on the other side. They were each given  a written order but there was no over all Commander to coordinate their efforts or react to events.  Great re-creation but the new players thought they'd been set up so we could make fun of them. Even worse, some walked away before the debrief. Those who did stay understood the idea but didn't appreciate it. Instead of having made 5 new recruits, I suspect most never played another historical mini game. Lesson learned, try to make sure that all players have a chance to have fun at these sorts of events, even if they are doomed as they man the walls of the Alamo. 

And that is at least enough for one post if not too much. The next time I take up this topic I'll talk about MacDuff and the effect on me as a few other people actually played it and how I tried to cope with the struggle between reacting to  changes in me while knowing that at least a few other people were playing the rules thus making me feel that I should avoid changing them, and on another unforeseen consequence.    

A Beginning

The second book (booklet technically) that I learned conversion and painting from in my pre-wargamer days in the early 70's, was Peter Blum's The Model Soldier Manual. 

It was illustrated by Claude Risley. (Which probably explains why the  drawings are all of ImrieRisley castings. Note the identical ACW  uniform to my marching fellows and the arms which also appear on some of the figures that are currently on my painting desk.)

It was from the text and these b&w line drawings that I learned to convert and paint figures. None of these full colour, step by step, plates for the young me!

I forget what I paid for the booklet in 1970, a couple of bucks perhaps, and have no idea what the equivalent would be in today's dollars, but it led to hundred's of hours of enjoyment and satisfaction. Money well spent indeed!

Today I didn't have hours but I had enough minutes to begin the un-shaded shiny toy soldier painting style that I am now imposing on these model soldiers. 

From the Archives: The 1st Edition of the Noodle

 Almost done with fiddling about with a couple more display samples from some old moulds so I can get back to gaming, but not quite done. This November will see the 10th anniversary of the First Edition of the Newport Noodle but why wait?

Besides...a few recent games mixed with some looking waaay back, has got me rethinking some of my ideas about the best way to tackle using some of my older figures in the occasional small, quick game while keeping overall numbers down.  So, without further ado, here is a copy of the first battle report based on a game, to be published in the Newport News. I enjoyed writing it so much and it was received all enough that I'm still periodically writing them when an appropriate game seems to call for it.  

From 1 November 2011:

_________________________________________

NOV 1st, 1841

INCIDENT AT N'HARO PASS

Reports have been received of an unprovoked attack yesterday on Her Majesty's troops in the Origawn Territory. It seems that while on a tour of FTC trading posts, Lord Walts received a terse note declaring that the Faraway troops that accompanied him would not be allowed to proceed. Disdaining to reply let alone turn back, the column proceeded. Our correspondent on the Frontier has posted this report:  

______________________________________________________________________________

It was about 10 in the morning when our column, under the immediate command of Colonel Stoneforte, Brevet Brigadier,  entered N'haro Pass. Bearing the previous night's warning in mind, the experienced Frontier Fighters of the FTC DG's Bodyguard led the way,  scanning every rock and hollow where a Bushwhacker might lurk. As we approached the narrowest point of the pass, the signal was given to halt and scouts were sent forward towards several large clumps of lichen adorning a ledge which overlooks the road. The crack of rifles and several puffs of smoke was the response. Our way was to be challenged!

Like a well oiled machine, the Bodyguards fell back as the Wye Fusiliers, the famed Green Tigers, rushed forward and deployed, their new colours flying proudly. In no time at all the ruffians had been driven back and the column proceeded past the sad site of the bodies of 4 young soldiers, lying by the side of the road. 

 The Wye Fusiliers drive the ambushers from Lichen Point while the Voyagers scout up towards a patch of trees, exposing several dummy cards.

As we pushed forward through the pass, the Belmont Fusiliers or Buffs, doubling forward to shield the coach and wagon, I heard some of the experienced officers mutter about the risk about getting so tightly bunched should there be more Oberhilsers in the vicinity. I know there was some muttering about the clubs about the army's most junior Brigade commander being given such an important task but he is a man cast in the same mold as General Turner (literally- ed) and "fortes fortuna adiuuat". 

The crowded pass.

For a while, it seemed that this dozen or so scruffy frontiersmen (actually it was probably only 10, ed) were all that we faced. The bridge over the South Sloy River could be seen ahead and the road to Roslin and safety beckoned. Suddenly from a ridge ahead, more shots rang out and the grey clad forms of Volunteer rifles could be seen. The Bodyguard had been taking a terrible toll from sniping and that was no ground for a cavalry charge so they dismounted and forming a skirmish line, returned fire.

More foes appear!

With Corporal Blogger and his fellow Horse Guard riding ahead and a column of the Buffs pushing forward on our right, we felt no threat but the carriage ground to a halt while the situation was sorted. Suddenly the road ahead filled with troops,the pale blue of Oberhilse regulars and the wild troopers of the infamous Frontier Horse.

 The trap is well sprung!

It was a bad time for us to lose the initiative! Before they could react, the skirmish line of the Body Guards was ridden down. The Horse Guards who had posted themselves as a reserve, found themselves too close to the action and were forced to draw swords and spur forwards, being caught up in the precipitate retreat of the FTC troopers. With their blood up, the enemy troopers spurred forward in pursuit, scattering the Buffs before they could deploy from their march column and surrounding the Director General's coach.

The Frontier Horse seize the carriage containing the Director General, his wife and Duke Peter. 

font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.456px;" />All was chaos but Colonel Stoneforte rose to the occasion! Quickly rallying the Buffs, he seized the initiative and led them forward in a wild charge before the Frontier Horse could drive away their prize. True to his last breath, Corporal Blogger spurred forward to join them and rescue those whose safety had been placed in his care. At the same time, Stoneforte ordered the Green Tigers to drive off the enemy skirmishers who were creeping close on the flank. With a brave huzzah the red coated troops stormed forward.

 Colonel Stoneforte rallies the Buffs and gives the order to Charge! 

Alas, fortune does not always favour the bold. Corporal Blogger cut down one of the enemy with a masterful stroke of his broadsword but a rifle bullet threw him from the saddle. The Buffs, their ranks ragged, tangled with the horsemen about the carriage but honours and casualties were even. The melee hung in the balance. Then , as Colonel raised himself in the stirrups, urging his men on, another rifle shot rang out. These Frontier Horsemen are crack shots, born in the saddle and raised as hunters. The Colonel was flung backwards off his horse and the Buffs, gathering him up fell back in dismay. On the hill slopes beyond them the Tigers struggled across the broken ground as the enemy rifles cracked, time and again. Finally as the Buffs behind them gave way, it became too much and they turned and fled pell mell down the hill again.

Too little, too late.

Anxious to prove themselves the Black Horse pressed forward from the rear, but this was no parade ground. The wagon, which had been saved by the charge of the Buffs, still blocked the pass so the big black horses were urged up over the ragged ridge. By the time they had reformed on the flat, the carriage and the enemy horsemen were gone. In their place stood a  resolute square of blue clad infantry while the rifle fire from the hill swept the road. For a moment it looked like the horsemen would throw themselves onto the square but they were the bulwark behind which the army must rally and there was still the vital paychest and records to protect.

Lord Walts confronts his captor, Brigadier Zinn.

The mood around the campfires that night was bleak indeed, the groans of the wounded and maimed mixed with the laments of the men for their failure in the face of the enemy. There was the usual post battle chatter about how the Buffs should have advanced in an attack column, how the carriages ought to have been held back till the way was secured and how we needed more Riflemen on the frontier as musket armed line infantry are no match for riflemen in rough ground. I even heard arguments that the day was really a draw because the Oberhilsers didn't get their hands on Ol' Betsy the steam tractor nor on the gold, but in truth we were bound for Roslin and none of us made it, least of it the Lady and Lords that we had been charged to protect..

The gloom was only slightly lightened when a messenger appeared out of the darkness. Colonel Stoneforte, his wounds bandaged, called the men around and announced that word was received that the Director and Duke Peter were safe and sound and were the guests of the Oberhilse commander for tonight but would rejoin us in the morning.

11 Years Ago Today

 I was at Cold Wars in Lancaster  PA, where Rob Dean & I were cohosting the last scenario in the HAWKS Not Quite The Seven Years War presentation of CS Grant's Raid on St Michel click to see all 5 games (5 posts in reverse order so scroll down to the start). 

The Final Game

Me in 2010, checking some scenario detail. (OMG Look at that hair!)

Last convention before my little heart incident 3 months later. Here's to a convention in 2022!

End of an Era: Last Post at the Littlewars Email Group.

I've known this was coming and the group hasn't been as active in the last 10 or more years as it was 20 years ago but.......its hard to over estimate how important the group, and the friends I made through it, have been to me.  It all goes back to the 90's and the rec.games.miniature.historical message board followed by Onelist email groups, later taken over by Yahoo. Bits of this have appeared in past blog posts but its a nostalgic moment and this was a big part of why this blog is here, so, please bear with me.

Cold Wars 1997. A colour photo taken in poor light then later scanned.  

My first exposure to sharing my hobby on line came during the early/mid-90's. I forget now, who or what got me started, but there I was dialing into (yes dialing) the news group rec.games.miniature.historical. It was around this time that some articles in Wargames Illustrated  (or was in Miniature Wargames, or one in each?) about 54mm miniatures appeared and after having scoffed a few times, and reread the article 100 times, I some how found myself picking up some boxes of 1/32 Revel, Accurate and old Airfix, figures, and thinking about a War of 1812 skirmish game. Then I met a local guy who collected and painted 54mm plastics but hadn't wargamed..yet.....suddenly a group of us were playing Rapid Fire in 54mm and I was building War of 1812 armies and fiddling with some rules. 

 

I don't remember what made me to decide to do some Yugoslav partisans but information was scarce   

and I turned to r.g.m.h and asked if anyone had information to share. The first response was from a gentleman in the US and started :"When I joined the partisans as a boy in 194........ " suddenly the world seemed smaller. A later response was from a Yugoslav wargamer whose father had been a partisan  and he shared pictures and resources with me as well as pictures of his wargame figures, mostly Foundry iir. The last time I heard from him was during the NATO bombing . He and his friends were determined that the bombing would not beat them and he was venturing out for a game, as a mark of defiance I think. A little awkward since Canada was part of Nato.  I still wonder sometimes if he made it through all that followed and hope he did. 

In the meantime,  my friend Ron and I had been playing Armati and One List had come along, an email list rather than on line message board and I joined Arty's Armati mailing list.  In 1996, many of the members got together to play Armati at Cold Wars while the rest of us just got to read about how great it had been.  I had been to Cangames in Ottawa a couple of times and in ..hmm..81? went down to  Philadelphia  with 3 friends to a multifacet wargaming, rpg, boardgames,miniatures etc con but had not yet flown down to the states  to go to an HMGS con. I decided not to miss Cold Wars 1997.  Then Pete Panzeri put out a call on r.g.m.h for help, he needed more troops for a 54mm La Haye Sainte game he was running at that Cold Wars. I was building up a War of 1812 54mm army and volunteered to bring about 100 figures,  British, Canadian Militia in green subbing for rifles and US as Dutch.Belgians. I had also picked up a clearance on 54mm Airfix figures but had no immediate use for the Highlanders or WWII Russians so offered them for sale on rgmh. Pete offered to buy the Highlanders and a chap named Rob Dean expressed an interest in the Russians for a skirmish game he was considering. I packed my bags, boarded a plane and was off!

Cold Wars 1998. I dragged Ron down to help me run the games.
(Graham and Eric from our old Montreal group from the 70's stopped by, Eric being behind the camera.) 

I had a great time at both events and met some great people but of relevance here, I met a number of 54mm and homecast 40mm gamers and we did a lot of talking. We resolved to hold a special 54mm event room in 1998. Well that needed more organization in advance, some of the games were held elsewhere, some were cancelled and there was no official mention anywhere but some 54mm games went ahead including my two War of 1812 ones using the recently published With MacDuff to the Frontier and I got to play my first full game of Charge! with semiflat 40's which the HAWKS were running.  Rob who I had met briefly the year before and Chris Palmer had been building a homecast 40mm French & Indian war game using MacDuff so I had to sign up and somehow ended up sort of helping run it. (always awkward having the author sign up to play.) We've been running games together ever since but he never did buy those Russians.

Cold Wars 2000.  The Littlewars email group's "Bring your own" 54mm battle of Chippewa. 

An awful lot of people stopped and looked and some even talked. A comment of "I didn't know we were allowed to play with big figures" really got to me. Its a hobby! Who's  going to stop you? Talk got going on having an email list for  wargaming with bigger figures (some of it may have happened in the bar in the evening...)  When I got home I floated the idea on rgmh and the response was quick and enthusiastic and the Little Wars email list was born to be transferred to Yahoo when they took over the one list groups. 

By 2000, the Little Wars group was buzzing and we had .. 6-8 people all eager to bring a unit of two to stage a "bring and play" 54mm Wargame. (Troops provided for those without.)   We had similar events over the next few years but with the new century the world seemed to change a bit. Technology exploded and there were so many social media options for people to choose from that things seemed to splinter. At that same time it became easier to find like minded people for just about any niche and to find almost any miniature in any scale that you could think of that playing with bigger figures had become just another routine option. Slowly the group dwindled and activity died down to sporadic chatter, often about new releases. 

Still, I will miss it and am ever grateful for those years, the companionship of those on line friends over the years and all the tips I picked  up from them. Here's  to the even richer electronic community of today.   

ps Yes Charley, you're still right, when it comes to toy soldiers, "a shako is a shako" and we shouldn't let details spoil a good game.

 , 

20 Years and 6 months ago

I recently came across a scanned image of this old photo from Cold Wars 1998.

In 1997 I made my first trip down to HMGS' Cold Wars in Lancaster PA. I made the trip primarily to meet up with and play games with Arty and other members of Armati email group but also to bring some 54mm Napoleonic figures to add to Pete Panzeri's  54mm La Haye Sainte wargame. That event led to a discussion about having a 54mm themed room for Cold Wars 1998.

This was my 54mm War of 1812 'inspired by Sittingbad' game. I dragged Ron down to Cold Wars with me that year and as often happens some of our old Montreal gang were there.
(l to r) Ron Porter, Graham Wilkinson, me
(I suspect Eric was behind the camera but it was 20 years ago...)

So it was that I registered  to run two  54mm War of 1812 games: The Battle of Chateauguay and an 1812 get the wagons over the bridge and blow it up game. Since the Courier had published With MacDuff to the Frontier the previous fall, I decided I'd best use them for my games but a chap called Rob Dean was also running a 40mm F&IW game using MacDuff so I signed up and we have been friends and a convention GM team ever since.

Before Featherstone there was

My first heads up that there were "adult" wargames out there somewhere. A photocopy of 2 out of 3 pages of an article on Wargaming and making model soldiers from the Boy Scouts of Canada magazine, some time in the late 60'a or early 70's.  Wish I knew what happened to the 2nd part of the main article, not that it had any specifics on wargaming. 

I also wish you could still get Britain's for .35 apiece!

OK back to work on my game for Huzzah. The refurbishing of the old cloth is coming along nicely.

Soldier Stamps

While I was pondering just what native Atlantican regulars (not to mention irregulars) looked like, I realized that I had a vague, not quite remembered image in my head. After mentally rummaging through various possible sources it came to me.

One of my very early books, probably when I was 7 or 8? maybe younger, was the Golden Stamp Book of Soldier stamps. A very influential and formative book which I occasionally forget about consciously. I don't think I ever forget it unconsciously. I hadn't realized until today when I dug it out and looked through it, just how many of the stamps have inspired wargame units (or armies). Just looking at the front cover, I've never done any Samurai. That's it, which is worrisome in an "Invisible Finger" way.

Anyway, it turns out the picture in question was of an 1800 Haitian rebel in French habit-veste, bare calves and straw hat. This one got opposing wargame armies in 15mm.  The Atlanticans won't look like that though they may wear similar straw hats.