If a picture paints a thousand words

What's your hobby?

As someone reading a wargaming blog, you might be tempted to reply "well wargaming, durrr" but things aren't necessarily so clear cut.

I was pondering this in response to the return to the blogosphere of Solo Wargaming in the UK. Carl, who I'd like to think of as a friend although we've never met or even corresponded, has been going through some tough times in recent months that we won't dwell on here, and in response took a step back from blogging and gaming while real-world issues played themselves out.

Now personally, based on my own experience, I believe that to be a mistake. It's exactly those times that put us under the most pressure, when it's most helpful to have a hobby to fall back on and help us unwind. My time blogging here has roughly coincided with a significant decline in my father's health to the point where we are now considering the worst. I've found picking up the wargaming hobby again to be a great therapy and playing around with toy soldiers a great way to decompress.

I'm pleased to say Carl has also come around to enjoy some "gaming therapy" but his postings along those lines were all about painting miniatures. Which got me pondering - I think pretty much all of the posts at Solo Wargaming In The UK have been about painting or terrain building or some other form of gaming prep, rather than any actual gaming reports. And there's nothing really wrong with that.. our hobby is so all-engrossing that one could keep oneself entertained for years without ever actually playing a wargame. There's research, which can not just include proper academic research but also reading appropriate fiction and watching TV and Films to help get into the mood. There's figure painting, terrain building, rules writing. And then of course there's blogging about the hobby, taking part in online discussion forums or even writing for one of the remaining wargaming print periodicals. And... dare I say it... Hats?!!

Now I'm a great advocate of the "Go Play!" fad that swept the RPG community online a few years back but sadly seems to have died out. You may still see forum avatars with small green "play button" symbols in them, like mine on this blog. The idea behind "Go Play!" is that gamers have a tendency to spend too much time discussing games, buying games, reading games, re-writing games... effectively doing all of the peripherary aspects of the hobby except the core crux of the hobby - actually playing and enjoying the games themselves. I think the same thinking can be applied to the wargaming hobby as well.

So while I may enjoy many of the other aspects of the hobby, at the end of the day they're really all just a stepping stone towards the real reward, which is putting figures and terrain on a table and having a jolly fun game of toy soldiers.

So the new regime of "Family Duty" has me retasked as a full-time carer for my parents. Fortunately that's not quite as onerous as it may sound, since in between preparing meals and medication and doing general chores, there's an awful lot of sitting around waiting, time which I've been able to turn towards the other aspects of the wargaming hobby. Here are the next tranche of steamtanks, assembled and awaiting primer. The front three are the Scotia Grendel dwarven steam tanks from the Leviathan fantasy range, the same as the "Thunder Hammer" mentioned previously. On the left is the heavily converted "Iron Drake" which used to have an exposed dwarven driver figure. I've removed that, filled the top surface with Milliput and added a turret from Ramshackle Games "Tridlins" catalogue. Removing the original driver and weapon proved quite an irritating challenge, so I'm electing to leave the original driver and weapon intact for the Rapier (right) which seems to be armed with some sort of harpoon launcher. Front and centre is the Ironclad, whose multiple rocket launcher is just crying out for some sort of custom rule in GASLIGHT to make it suitably random and chaotic.

At the back, and shown in greater detail here is the customised "Brass Coffin" from Ramshackle Games. An extra set of large wheels, the smokestack from the Huntsman Spider Tank and a turret (I think from the Liger) go together in such a natural way, I'm surprised Ramshackle haven't released this as an "official" variant model. I'd love to take credit for this design, but all plaudits have to go to Papa Midnight over at the Lead Adventure Forums, who did this first and, it has to be said, a lot better than I've done it.

So painting. I've developed a weird relationship with figure painting recently. Bottom line is that I'm no good at it. I'm colour blind (and yes, there may be one or two greenish horses in my collection), have shaky hands and in the last year have found that I'm totally incapable of actually focusing my eyes on paintbrush and figure close enough to apply any sort of controlled detail. In 25 years of gaming I've tried all the "how to paint figures" tutorials - used various techniques - black undercoat, white undercoat, grey undercoat, outline and fill, drybrushing, washes, shadow, colour and highlight..... really all of them. And I've practiced and practiced and practiced.... and I still suck ass.

So nowadays I've given it all up and settled on the "technique" that gives me the best results.... dipping.

I first read of the "magic dip" technique back at the turn of the millennium, where US gamers were generally using Minwax Polyshades

floor stain & varnish. I tried it with the nearest UK alternative I could find - the black "Tudor" stain didn't seem to be available so I went with the darkest brown I could. The result gave a better overall effect than I could ever hope to achieve with other techniques, and I could quite happily live with the high-gloss finish especially since it seemed to be well-nigh bulletproof.

Pause for eight years.

Army Painter came along and brought out their "Quickshade" range of varnish/stains aimed specifically at the wargamer. Now these are significantly more expensive than the floor products in the DIY stores, but you have to take Army Painter's word that these products are new formulations that are optimised for figure painting and not just the floor finish poured into new cans. Besides, used carefully a single tin can last a while (I've done all my GASLIGHT figures and Jonesy's Force On Force figures and are still less than halfway through my first can).

So these are the figures I've been painting during odd moments over the last week or so. I'm not quite sure why I started collecting unarmed Victorian Civilian figures - in fact I started before I ever had any thought of switching from 15mm to 28mm. A few scattered around a battlefield might add a bit of colour to proceedings. They are a mix of manufacturers (Foundry, Westwind, Eureka, Blue Moon, Parroom Station). In keeping with my own personal vision of the 19th century, I've gone for a slightly brighter palette than you normally see for Victoriana miniatures, but this matches the "toy soldier" look I use for the troops. The two sets of photos show the "before" with just the base colour coats and "after" immediately after applying the Quickshade. Personally I don't physically dip my minis, as the approved Army Painter technique of "shaking off the excess" seems to just be a recipe for wastage. Instead I take a size 8 brush and dip it about 5mm into the Quickshade, and apply that brushload to the front of the figure, then pick up a similar brushload and apply it to the back. I then spend 5 mins spreading the varnish and stain around, mopping up any excessive sized pools and generally neatening up the results.

The results? You often hear naysayers claim they could easily get the same results and better using ink washes and conventional techniques, so what's special about this "magic dip"? But they miss the point... I cannot get figures looking as good as this using those other techniques. And I certainly couldn't paint any significant numbers in a reasonable length of time. If you can, then bully for you, but if I want to get the painted white metal onto the gaming table, then this is the method that works best for me.

So there I am, wincing as I strain my eyes to focus on the figure, jerkily waving the brush in what I hope is roughly the right area for the part I'm trying to paint and hoping I'll be able to tidy it up later. I'm doing what most other figure painters would consider only a quarter of the job, and falling back on a speedpainting "cheat" that gives passable wargames-quality results. At no part in the process do I feel like I'm having "fun", and yet, overall, I'm finding it strangely enjoyable and relaxing.

And if anyone should ask me the reason why I'm wearing it..

I haz a hat.

One of the things I particularly wanted to pick up from The Asylum weekend was a pickelhaube, and I was delighted to find one for a not unreasonable price - I could have had the same for £9 cheaper from eBay, but I'm not going to quibble.

I understand that the wearing of hats remains a deeply divisive issue amongst the wargaming community.

Some may consider it to cheapen or demean the serious competitive sport that is modern tournament-level wargaming. How can outsiders take our game of toy soldiers seriously, they say, if you're wearing a silly hat?

Personally, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to command my Germanic legions in the invasion of England if I don't have a nice spiky helmet to get me into character as General Manfred von Rumpelhoffen. That's just crazy moon talk.

Joking aside, there is something about wearing (in)appropriate headwear to a game that says "I'm here to have fun, first and foremost." I just can't imagine myself getting into a heated rules argument while wearing a pith helmet. If you're umpiring a game, wearing a silly hat can also serve to set you apart from the other players and through some subtle subconscious cues help reinforce your authority in some ways.

It doesn't need to be expensive. Unless like me you're cursed with a freakishly capacious cranium, fancy dress hats for as little as a few pounds can be useful. eBay is full of military surplus headgear in various styles, along with historical reproductions like my Pickelhaube. Amazon.co.uk sells pith helmets in several styles, along with helmet badges for the 24th Foot if you want the full Zulu war look (mine has been adorned with a pair of carting goggles for less than a fiver). Remember you're not looking for something to satisfy the Historical Accuracy mafia, just something that makes you feel a little bit closer to the era of the game you're playing. My pickelhaube is based on an 1891 pattern, but that won't stop me wearing it for the next battle in my 188x invasion of England.

Which brings me round to the upcoming wargame calendar. The GASLIGHT game planned for last Sunday obviously got canned as I was tied up with family duty, so I'm going to try to re-arrange something for the next MAWS Sunday which will be in two weeks time. Whether it's GASLIGHT or another try at Force On Force (now that we think we understand what the authors were trying to say) is undecided.

PS.... I've just noticed something... see that photo above.. you know the one of the dashing fellow in the helmet. Look right... see the old guy talking to the girl in the black dress. See that old guy? That's Wilf Lunn, ladies and gentlemen, who was one of the guests of honour at the Asylum weekend in Lincoln. If you're British and of a certain age like me, you'll remember him from vintage children's TV shows like Vision On and Jigsaw, where he was always portraying the Mad Scientist demonstrating his latest inventions. Despite being... what he must be about nine hundred years old now... Wilf was still active and spritely when he appeared at The Asylum and I'm terribly sorry that I wasn't able to attend his lecture/presentation.

Message in a bottle

If anyone is wondering about the lack of posts... On my way back from a pleasant weekend visiting the Nineteenth Century, the time machine has broken down stranding me in the early Twentieth, in a savage and uncivilised time before blogs. Fortunately I have a plentiful supply of tea to sustain me.

Or put another way, my arrival home coincided with my Dad collapsing and being rushed to hospital, so I am currently drafted in as full-time carer for my Mum, with no internet access. Since there's a chance this arrangement may, to some degree or other, become semi-permanent, I'm ordering broadband for my parents home, but this will be a couple of weeks away at the earliest. In the meantime when free from family duties I'm assembling and painting some of the steam tanks I have in the queue, and trying to make inroads into the Victorian Civilians collection.

Chin up, stiff upper lip and all that!

We got... steam heat.

Quick post - the Asylum weekend is turning out to be absolutely splendid. UK steampunks are an astonishingly friendly community who are just as welcoming to n00bs like myself with scraped together costumes. The weather is holding at a nice compromise between oppressive heat and a nice cooling wind, with only a few minutes of rain so far. Which makes for splendid promenading weather.

There will be more details forthcoming in a later post, including some pictures. Plus some vitally important hat-related news. Stay Tuned!

Over the hills and far away..

I'm writing this post from a B&B in Lincoln, where I'm attending the Asylum UK Steampunk Convivial. I must confess to being more than a little apprehensive at the prospect, as despite my love of VSF I'm not really much into the steampunk subculture, which owes as much to the goth scene as it does HG Wells. I'm afraid my humble attempts at the mandatory costuming look pitiful next to those more into the scene, despite having assistance from a self-styled Crafting Queen. The weekend's official programme seems to have absolutely no gaming content whatsoever, although I have been tasked with running a semi-impromptu RPG session tomorrow while we're waiting for the event to formally open.

We have a GASLIGHT game pencilled in for next Sunday at Manchester Area Wargames Society, this time open to anyone who wants to join in (with certain limits, one must keep the riff-raff out, you understand.) While it's going to be too short notice to get either the slum housing or the Fenians or Russians ready to play, I'm hoping to get at least a couple of new vehicles into play for the existing factions. The Brits have a couple of mini tankettes formerly made by Ground Zero Games, the Germans have the Scheltrum "Armoured Pullman" while the Evil Genius forces has the heavily modified Iron Drake from the Scotia Grendel fantasy line, augmented with a turret from Ramshackle Games "Tridlins" catalogue, plus hopefully the converted Brass Coffin model, based/blatantly copied from Papa Midnight's conversion.

As research for my upcoming Fenian army, I've just re-read the Stars and Stripes trilogy by Harry Harrison. It's an alternate history novel which diverges from our history early in the American Civil War. Through bad diplomacy and a sequence of unlikely events, North and South re-unite to give the British Empire a good kicking, pausing only to liberate Ireland before invading England and kicking out the monarchy in order to impose their version of democracy.

You'd think this story would be full of excellent inspiration for VSF wargames, but you'd be wrong. Harrison is reputed to be very anti-British in real life, and this comes blaring through in the books. Every single British character is portrayed as incompetent, bigoted, rude and completely unable to adapt to new ideas. Queen Victoria is portrayed as a drooling semi-imebecile, every British politician a jingoistic warmonger. The British soldiers stationed in Mexico are portrayed as completely unable to adapt to a hot climate, despite having redeployed there from India. I think it's accurate to say that in all three books there is not one positive adjective ever applied to a character from the British side.

Compare and contrast the Americans, who are all peace-loving but uber-competent visionary professionals, who instantly adapt to the new technologies of war that debuted in the Civil War. After promptly setting aside any "misunderstandings" over the whole messy slavery business, they instantly re-equip all their forces with repeating rifles, a seemingly unlimited supply of Gatling guns and a brand new class of nigh-unsinkable and surprisingly seaworthy Ironclad Monitors. Harrison sets up his scenario to give the Americans every single possible advantage, and as a result they steamroller the Brits in every encounter. USS Monitor meets HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy's most advanced ironclad, in a perfect storm of favourable circumstances.

What rankles a little is that Harrison seems to flirt briefly with some potentially meaty plot elements, only to quickly move on to more one dimensional "British bad, America good" ranting. The problems of the South reintegrating into the Union are teased at briefly, with a major plot twist in the first book, which is then instantly forgotten. The centuries of ill feeling between Catholics and Protestant in Ireland are steamrollered over once the Americans declare Ireland liberated and the complaints of the minority Protestants are mentioned then immediately brushed aside. The final pages of the book show the Americans in the conquered Republic of England (having also broken the union with Scotland) casting their eyes eastward to mainland Europe and speculating whether at some point they too would need "sorting out",

And then despite blatantly loading all the dice in America's favour and displaying a clear ignorance of some of the warfighting technology he describes (grapeshot being effective at a range of over a mile, in the first shot of the Battle of Hampton Roads, no less), in an interview included at the end off the first book, Harrison piously proclaims that his story is exactly how it would have happened.

The best way, I've found, to enjoy the Stars and Stripes series is to ignore Harrison's claims that he's writing Alternate History. He's not. He's actually writing a pastiche of the "Coming War" genre that was extremely popular in the late 19th century. In it, writers would postulate some new and revolutionary warfighting technology or method that would be used to finally vanquish the enemy. HG Wells' "The Land Ironclads" is one such story, as is "The Battle of Dorking". I've read a couple of other examples, one German and one American, in which the British were the enemy, their traditional-bound military completely unable to resist the new and scientific methods of warfare used against them, leading to a series of one-sided slaughters. The Stars and Stripes book match this tone down to the smallest detail.

The other way to get the most out of the Stars and Stripes books is to put them down and instead read Harry Turtledove's "How Few Remain", from a Harry who really knows how to write alternate history. After the South survives the Civil War intact, a second civil war flares up in the 1880s. Turtledove looks at the impact of a lot of the same new technology as Harrison, but does so in a much more convincing narrative. The fighting in 1881 becomes a grim foreshadowing of the trench warfare of WW1, which Turtledove would go on to cover extensively in the Great War series which follows on from events in this novel. But How Few Remain stands up well as a rollicking piece of war fiction in its own right, despite its intended role as an introduction to the three alt-history series that followed on from it.

Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin' glass

First off, thanks to Willie for becoming this blog's 14th follower. I'm not *that* superstitious, but seeing the blog stuck on 13 followers for so long did have me reaching for the lucky rabbit's foot.

As ever, the weekend took an abrupt left turn. Jonesy, (mi hermano paternal) came round on Sunday in what's evolved into a regular wargaming painting/crafting session and we decided to go to work on the victorian slum housing project, which sadly won't be ready for the next planned wargame in two weeks time, but will be ready for the game after that. We've settled on cork tiles as the building material of choice and decided on a couple of points that had me stalled. Jonesy made a start on two of the corner buildings (a pub and a shop) while I focussed on pavements and progressing the three terraced house blocks that were in various stages of construction.

Today is once again family duty, so I'm going to try to use the time to assemble the four base boards, covering them with cobblestone paper and painting them 0n both sides.

Next weekend is the Asylum, the UK Steampunk Convivial, and along with Jonesy and a large chunk of our gaming group I've been persuaded to attend. I'm not really keen on the steampunk scene, nor does my physique really lend itself to cosplay, but I have a rather nice plastron-style shirt and black trousers with a uniform-style red stripe, both crafted for me by one of our gaming group, plus of course it will be an excellent excuse to wear a pith helmet in public. If nothing else it will be an opportunity to enjoy the chap-hop stylings of Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer and Professor Elemental MC. Although those two rivals are playing on different nights of the weekend, one lives in hope that we might yet see the steampunk rap-battle of the (19th) century.

I hear you knocking...

Had a response at last from Peggy at Ambush Alley games. She's of the opinion that my application to join the forum got flagged as a spammer and blocked, and has asked me to resubmit.

Oh well, third time's the charm, eh?

I have often walked down this street before

Another week dominated by Family Duty I'm afraid, where wargaming was relegated to a back seat.

I'm still waiting for those fine fellows at Ambush Alley Games to approve my joining the AA forums so I can ask for confirmation that we're now on the right track with the rules. Since I first applied to join the forum back in March and still hadn't received confirmation that my account had been activated, I registered anew on Monday. Usually these sorts of things only take a day or so, but four days later and I've still heard nothing, despite polite emails to the forum administrator.

The modern 15mm/20mm debate still rages on. I've dugout the figures I ordered from Rebel at the start of the year (plus a few from Peter Pig, QRF, The Scene and the Irregular Miniatures figures I already had). Together they make a decently sized lead mountain. Combined with my old 15mm SF figure collection, all of which need stripping, rebasing and repainting, they make a sizeable lead mountain range.

15mm = I already have loads

1/72 or 20mm = I have a small selection of figures (bought as pedestrians for Hot Wheels-scale autoduelling games)... BUT

15mm = I'm collecting solo

20mm= I have another gamer nearby in the same scale.

15mm = cheaper and easier to assemble wargaming vehicles vs plastic kits

20mm = even chaper die-cast toys for civilian vehicles and technicals (there are more 1/72 compatible Matchbox/Hot Wheels than 15mm compatible.) Also 00 scale model railway scenery and equipment. BUT likely to be missing key vehicle types, which would need to be bought as more expensive plastic kits.

Brain still hurting......

In happier news, on my one free day this week I visited Lark Hill Place at the Salford Museum. It's a reconstruction of a Victorian street that I had the vaguest memory of visiting when I was a small child. With no knowledge of where it was, and looking for a bit of Victoriana inspiration, I decided to try to find it for a revisit. After finding numerous similar streets dotted around the country, I managed to find it, located on the campus of my old Alma Mater no less. So on Wednesday I trotted down there.

The museum itself has four galleries and a library in addition to the Lark Hill exhibit. There's not much in the way of exposition available - you basically walk onto the street and it is what it is, with no signs or information about what you're looking at. The lighting on the street is also kept very low, giving the impression of a murky, gaslit night. This makes taking photographs very difficult, as the light is too low for modern digital camera's preview screens to pick anything up without the flash, so you're reduced to point & pray. I've enhanced the photo attached to this post considerably so you can see some of the detail in the scene.

Finally the buildings are all copies of buildings from around Salford and Manchester (or in some cases, the actual building frontages themselves, salvaged when the buildings were being demolished). Because they are from different areas, you have a wide disparity of building styles - the polished Georgian stone of an upper-class townhouse right next to the crude brickwork of a blacksmith's shop.

Though I did honestly find it a bit of a disappointment, I did pick up some useful tips, like the way the guttering was fixed to the walls and how narrow the pavements are. I was also happy to note that the pavement was raised slightly above the road. Nowhere near as high as a modern kerb, but noticeable nonetheless, which makes my plan of having building with pavements resting on top of a cobblestone base a perfectly acceptable one.

Plans for the weekend - start painting the VSF Fenians that I undercoated last week, make a decision on the 15mm/20mm modern question and put together a couple of forces for the Paradiso army & rebels for Force On Force.

Everybody knows that the bird is the word

After spending the weekend trying to make sense of Force on Force I've spent a couple of hours this morning looking through the Ambush Alley forums reading rules questions. Based on that, and a reading of the example of play, I've come to the conclusion that the "Overwatch always goes first" that vexed me isn't what the authors intended and is an artefact of unforgivably sloppy rules writing.

The general game mechanic in Force On Force is that you roll a dice of a given type and any result of four or more is considered a Success. Some rolls however are 0pposed, in which case both sides roll a dice of their relevant type, and the higher roll wins. The problem is that the rules still talk about the 4+ result in relation to opposed rolls, whereas from what I've read in the forum, the intention was for this to be irrelevant for opposed rolls.

What then further complicates matters is that the rules writers then went on to use "pass the Reaction Test" as a synonym for "win the Reaction test" Overwatch units that "pass the Reaction Test" get to act before any other units. Since they also get a +1 on the Reaction Test roll, that means they'll be passing (4+) on anything other than a 1 or 2.

Replace that with what the rules writers seem to have intended and you have a much less severe Overwatch. Overwatching units now roll opposed Reactions as normal, with their +1 bonus, but have to beat the unit they're interrupting to fire first. If they don''t, then not only do they fire last, but they also lose overwatch status (by "failing" the Reaction test). Similarly, non-initiative units that "fail" a Reaction test aren't able to make further Reactions in the turn.

I can't find this explicitly stated in the forums or rules FAQ, but it tallies with the example of play and the assumptions stated by posters in the forums. Ambush Alley Games have nerfed my forum account so I'm waiting for a new one to be activated before asking some questions to definitively clarify these points, but I'm 99% confident that this reading of the rules is what the writers intended, even if it's definitely NOT what they put down in black and white.

Which to me is absolutely unforgivable, sloppy and incompetent rules writing. If you mean "win the Reaction test" say "win" not "passed". If you don't really care if either side rolls 4+ in an opposed roll, just who get's the highest total, then don't mention "rolls 4+ and beats their opponent" in the definition of winning. Define your terms, use them, and don't expect your reader to understand what you "meant to say" when you start throwing synonyms around.

If I'm right, then I'm liking this game a little more than the one we were playing over the weekend. But by God, it shouldn't have taken this much work to get there.

Everything today is thoroughly modern.

As a break from all the VSF of the last couple of months, this weekend was dedicated to ultra-modern wargaming with the popular Force on Force rules. Jonesy, mi hermano del instigador, dragged me along with him to visit an old, old wargaming friend of his who I'll name only as the other-other-Chris. The two go way, way back and OOChris is lucky enough to have a dedicated wargaming room with a 8'x6' wargames table, although we weren't going to be using more than a fraction of it.

I'd originally picked up Force On Force with a view to using it with 15mm figures for more military-style games in the Axis Of Naughtiness imaginations (Chain Reaction being my preferred game for smaller scale skirmishes). Jonesy got the idea of "trying out" the game with a few packs of soft plastic 1/72 figures, although this weekend he admitted that between multiple figure packs and plastic vehicle kits, his investment in 1/72 is almost as much as mine in 15mm!

So Saturday came around and off we went to OOChris's house. On the way we called in at Transport Models of Preston. It's every bit as impressive inside as their webstore, with stocks from pretty much every plastic figure manufacturer in the business, including some I've never heard of. Jonesy picked up a couple more Dragon HMMV kits, while I stumbled into their die-cast collectibles section and found some absolute bargains. They had a number of Lledo Days Gone die-cast vehicles for silly-money prices (£1 /£1.50 each) including a couple of horse drawn and steam vehicles. I scored a brewers dray and a removal van, both horse drawn for $1.50 each, and an "emergency services" set for £4 with vintage police car and ambulance but.. and this is the prize.. a horse drawn fire engine. The horses on all the Lledo vehicles tend to be comparable in size to the smaller "old-fashioned" cavalry figures, like those I use from Irregular. The driver figures on the dray and fire engine are roughly 25mm, while the removal van driver looks closer to 20mm. But with a new driver for the removal van and a little bit of paintwork all three should be fine for populating the Victorian-era streets with some civilian traffic.

Anyway flush with our respective purchases, we proceded on to OOChris's house. Arriving towards the early evening, we started sociably with a cuppa and a catch-up, before settling into the serious business of learning Force on Force. Sadly I managed to forget my camera, so there are no pictures of any of the games, which is probably just as well, because we quickly moved on to proxying vehicles with OOChris's World War II collection, which gave us the bizarre image of USMC infantry supported by a Tiger Tank.

Over the course of a day and a half we managed to get in four full games, albeit one very short one. We started with a straightforward kinetic infantry engagement, then moved on to an asymetric battle, then a pure tank action to learn the vehicle rules and finally OOChris and Jonesy faced off in a combined arms "Cold War Hot" battle with half-tracks pretending to be BMPs and insurgents pretending to be Soviet Motor Rifle troops.

I have to say it, but Force on Force is not the best-written ruleset on the market. Oh the rules themselves are OK. I personally love the way the unit activation/reaction system interlaces the move sequence so that both sides need to be actively engaged in the game at all times... it's never "not your go". But the rules themselves are so badly organised, and we found multiple instances of contradictory rules, sometimes within the same block of text. We found some sections that just did not make sense... in an English language sense, that is, and a couple that were major "Huh?" moments. Take morale checks. You basically roll a morale dice for each trooper left in the unit, looking for 4s or better. If you get more successes than failures, then you pass, otherwise you fail and are pinned (for regulars) or shaken (for irregulars). If you do the statistical math as we did (or rather Jonesy and OOChris did, while I looked on making tutting noises) you see that the probability of success plotted against the number of men left in a unit gives a bumpy graph line with no real rhyme or reason, which suddenly becomes twice as difficult to succeed when a unit only has two men, then becomes a lot easier when there's only one man left.

The activation/reaction/overwatch interruption sequence also caused us some headaches. If I fire at a unit that hasn't been activated yet, it gets the option of reacting and returning fire, and we dice to see whose fire takes effect first. If I fire at a unit that's on Overwatch, it gets a bonus to return fire and automatically fires first, but at one stage it was posited that Overwatch fire is a completely separate phase and the Overwatching unit would get an additional round of return fire after the original firing unit had gone.

One other point I'm still a little dubious on - Overwatch is described in the rules as allowing a unit of the initiative-holding player to interrupt the reaction of a non-iniative unit to an activation by another initiative holding unit...... getting dizzy just trying to describe it... let's start with an example.

Red player has the initiative. He puts one of his units on Overwatch and Activates another one moving it forward. Blue player is watching and sees the moving unit come into view of one of his units and declares a Reaction, firing on the moving unit. The Red Overwatch unit can then Interrupt the Reaction, and provided it passes a troop quality test, will be able to act before the Blue unit fires. If the Blue unit survives, then the Reaction between it and the moving Red unit is resolved normally.

Fine as far as it goes, although it took us long enough to reach that understanding. But once Red has activated all the units he has on his side, play passes to the non-initiative player who can move and fire any of his units that haven't already reacted to any of Red's activations. The rules explicitly state that Red troops on Overwatch may React to Blue's Activations, but my question is, do they still get the "Overwatch always goes first" bonus, or is it resolved as a normal action. Overwatch is explicitly described in the rules as being a function of interrupting Reactions, but if the non-initiative player isn't reacting....

I suspect if we put that question to one of the authors they'd say something like "Well obviously what we meant was..."... which is all very well, but that's not what you ruddy well wrote down, sunshine. Which when you consider that the Osprey edition of Force on Force is the third incarnation of the rules (original Ambush Alley, Ambush Z and 1st ed Force on Force) is pretty much unforgivably sloppy work.

I have a feeling that I'd quite like the ruleset that the authors obviously meant to write. Through trial and error over the last two days I think we've gotten closer to reaching that game and I can think of several cases where I could rephrase the rules to say what we think the authors meant but much clearer and with half the text. As it stands, the domination of Overwatch stops the game being one of fire and manoeuvre and makes it largely a question of "get to defensive positions then micromanage the sequencing of fire exchanges to optimise your outgoing fire versus return fire". It also means that the best tactic for the Initiative player seemed to be to put everything on Overwatch and just respond to actions by the non-Initiative player. Which as OOChris pointed out, is rather the opposite of what "having the initiative" ought to be.

Despite the qualms over the rules, we had a great weekend of gaming and I think we'll be persevering with Force on Force. Jonesy, I think it's fair to say, will also be persevering with the 1/72 scale, which put me in a bit of a quandary. 1/72 is a great scale for figures (cheap soft plastics) and scenery (OO scale model railway scenary) and some vehicles (selected Hot Wheels/Matchbox die-cast cars) As soon as you start looking at military vehicles however, the price starts to skyrocket. You won't get a BMP kit in 1/72 for much less than £10, whereas in 15mm from QRF or Old Glory you'll be looking at around £6 each.

The problem is, I'm finding myself drifting away from 15mm on all fronts. I've already abandoned 15mm for VSF gaming with GASLIGHT. When I kicked off my return to gaming with a large order of 15mm from Rebel Miniatures at the start of the year, a sizeable chunk of that order were zombies, with a view to doing All Things Zombie in 15mm. Since then I've somehow picked up more 28mm zombies than I have 15mm, and have a much better selection of vehicles in that scale. 15mm modern also meshes nicely with my 15mm sci-fi figures... except that Jonesy has already pre-ordered Tomorrow's War with a view to using it with his old GZG 25mm Stargrunt army, and I've got a box full of 25mm lead and resin that could be used for that.

So I'm weighing up - Is there a case to be made for uncluttering the wargaming collection by getting completely out of 15mm, despite the scale's obvious advantages and my existing investment in it?

It's not easy, being green

Today was another morning of family duty, which I parlayed into an opportunity to clean up and prime the Fenians and the Russians.

I'm not honestly sure where the idea for a Fenian army came from. I'd just started playing colonial wargames following the inspiration of the Major General, and had setup my fictional arab state of Olistan as a playground for the Great Powers to clash in. While looking at various ranges of figures, it was obvious that American Civil War figures were most widely available, and I had a vision of ACW-equipped infantry in green instead of the usual blue or grey, making a rather splendid hypothetical 19th century Irish army. However apart from the fictional setting, I wanted my Olistan colonial gaming to be strictly historical in scope, with real-life Western powers and natives with clear real-world analogues (I had smooshed the Sudan and the North West Frontier together quite successfully - I never quite went as far as having Boers and Zulus on the same map, but I did have Egyptian-like native troops battling Pathan-like hill tribesmen with Russian advisors. It was quasi-historical at least.

It wasn't until years later that I saw the picture of the Battle of Ridgeway and found out that, yes indeed there was a nineteenth century Fenian army and yes indeed, they did look an awful lot like ACW troops.

In actual fact, the real-life Fenian raids were more like a few hundred lads out for a spot o' riotin' over the border than a serious military force. But there are enough seeds in the story that we can weave an alternate history where the raids, and the uprising in Ireland were significantly more successful than in real life and that the Fenians have maintained enough military clout, possibly with US sponsorship, to become a real threat to the British. I'm visualising a modest but significant Fenian Free State in Ireland, possibly the reverse of the real-world Eire/NI split, with three quarters of the island still in British hands.

This whole setup has not been without a little soul-searching, however

Although as wargamers we can usually gloss over the sheer horribleness of the events we're representing in the games we play, every so often they hit a little too close to home. I know US Vietnam veterans who can't bring themselves to wargame the conflict. I know someone currently serving in HM Armed Forces who feels a little awkward about playing counter-insurgency games with Force on Force, having been doing it for real in the not too recent past.

In my case, it's hard to overlook what evolved out of the Fenians' original struggle. Although I've lived all my life in England, I'm about 3/4 Irish by blood and grew up in a house filled with statues of St Patrick and Daniel O'Donnel CDs. My childhood was dominated by the "Troubles" at their worst. IRA bombs were a real and constant threat for us, and indeed 1996 saw Manchester hit by a massive bomb attack. (Just as my Dad had seen his home town of Enniskillen devastated in 1987) No-one in my family was "active" in the struggle, and my Dad has always been apolitical although I did learn years later that my Grandfather (who I never met) was a pamphleteering Fenian, though from what I know of him I can't imagine him doing more than giving someone a nasty paper cut.

I've gone from the child frightened of the IRA bogeyman to the adult who's learned the history of the Troubles and with understandable national pride, favours a free and violence-free Ireland. But even though peace has mostly broken out, the old hatreds still remain, their origins now meaningless beyond... "We hate them over the other side of the barricade. We always have, we always will." As always happens, power-hungry men exploit the conflict for their own ends. It's going to take generations to unlearn the prejudices of the past.

So it's not without some trepidation that I set out to create a Fenian VSF Army for GASLIGHT. Though I can happily refer to them as Taigs and talk about the Fenian Brotherhood, in the back of my mind I'm aware that some might be offended and feel I'm trivialising an important cause, while others might consider it provocation to bloody murder. Lest anyone think I'm glamourising the organisation that terrorised my childhood, I'm dropping any references to the Irish Republican Army (the Battle of Ridgeway being the first time that name was used) and even the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and referring to the force purely as Fenians. I am however pushing the boundaries of good taste a little bit by including a number of bomb-throwing anarchists in the force - the Fenians did carry out an early "dynamiting" campaign against targets in mainland Britain in the 1880s, but I have to confess it does sit a little uneasy with me even now.

But at the end of the day, we're talking about frickin' toy soldiers here. It's an excuse to have another faction with slightly different uniforms and equipment to throw into the GASLIGHT mix.

Plus I get to have a cool standard bearer.

I do hope that no-one takes offence at me having a few little toy soldiers painted in a green Imagi-Nation uniform. I hope no-one takes offence at me playing up the "drunken, fightin' Irishmen" angle. I hope no-one takes offence if, when time comes to paint the figures' hair, there are more redheads than are statistically appropriate.

To anyone who does take offence at these things I say - They're frickin' toy soldiers, man. Get a grip.

While I was priming these and the Russians, the postman arrived with a long awaited order from Old Glory. It held the two packs of Victorian London civilians from Blue Moon manufacturing, part of their "Things that go bump in the night" range. They are absolutely beautiful figures, possibly the best sculpted Victorian civilians I've seen, full of animation and personality. They seem to fit well sizewise with my other Foundry and West Wind civilians, but they're cast with integral bases slightly larger than a UK penny that are sculpted to resemble cobbled streets. While they look fantastic, I'm a little concerned that the decorated bases will clash a little with the sand & flock I'm using for the rest of the figure collection. It seems a shame to cover the sculpted base up, but I may wind up doing so in the name of consistency.

I've also received my first shipment of tridlins from Ramshackle games, enough to start work on the converted Brass Coffin. The Scrap Tank turret does fit very nicely onto the GW Leman Russ tank, giving it a more steampunky profile, but I'm afraid the HST boiler has turned out to be way too big to use on anything short of a Leviathan (or possibly a large Aeronef)

Finally Scotia Grendel have sent me the last two of their Dwarven Steam tanks - one which looks like it fires some sort of harpoon gun, the other with a concealed multiple rocket launcher system. They're both going to require a little bit of work, but both should find their place in the Evil Genius army before too long.

Ain't got time to fix the shingles, ain't got time to fix the floor

For some reason I'm really struggling to get motivated to do anything over the last day or so. As a result I've been dabbling, doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but not really making significant progress with anything.

Last night I started cutting out the doors and windows for the second slum building, this one being double the width of the first to make it a proper terrace. But I found cutting all those shapes out of foamcore seriously unfun, so on a whim I started a third building, this one using cork tiles as the primary material. The cork cuts a hell of a lot easier than foamcore, and the basic shell of the building was thrown together in super-quick time. This morning I've covered the front and back walls with brick paper and so far there doesn't seem to be a massive difference in appearance between the foamcore building and the cork one. The long walls are possibly bowing a little more, but that should sort itself out when the frame is glued to the base and the roof fitted.

Project priorities right now are (1) the slums and (2) the Fenians. Need to try to keep focussed.

(PS: My problems focussing are probably not helped by the fact that I've got this song from Flanders and Swann stuck going round and round in my head)