Travel Reading Pt 2

I picked this up in Waterstone's in Chichester.  It's a mark of how busy our trip was that we were in the UK for 18 days before setting foot in a bookshop!  Excellent stuff and tons of source material for gaming.  Grab your cup of mead and get ready for an adventure.

The cast of characters is truly epic.  Saints galore - Columba, Wilfrid, Cuthbert and plus Oswald himself.  Panda of Mercia and Sutton Hoo man himself also appear on the pages, and the Venerable Bede is a key source.  We're talking wild and wooly stories in the gray area between history and myth, the ear that inspired Tolkien.

There's source material for a fantasy series, an epic RPG campaign,  or wargaming on multiple scale -  Dux Brittarium, SAGA, Hail Caesar or old school WRG.  Speaking of WRG, if your recall Phil Barker's throw away comments in many of the dark age army lists - many of these occur in this story.

Travel Reading Pt 1

I picked this up at the Canterbury Cathedral shop.  Excellent read and food for thought with lots of gaming possibilities.  Ok knights hacking down un armed clergy doesn't make a great war-game, but the back story sure has possibilities!

The cast of characters is larger than life St Thomas, Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine.  It really calls out for Hollywood epics staring Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn (oh wait, they did that).  The author gives really good coverage of the 12th century - the reign of Henry I, the tragedy of the White Ship, the civil wars of Stephen and Matilda and then the Angevin empire.  The Cliff Notes histories focus on Becket the Archbishop and Martyr but he was much more before that.  Plus there's lots of potential for medieval warfare on both small and large scales.

Reading, Research and Blucher

http://www.historydata.com/images/graphics/Rd_Rivoli.jpg

This week I've been reading "The Road to Rivoli" by Martin Boycott-Brown.  The book is OOP but I got a copy last year via a bookseller dealing in ex library books.  It came at a good price and great condition, although my wife keeps wondering when I will return it to the library!

Last summer Curt ran a 100 Days Campaign using Blucher, which hot me thinking about creating a similar campaign based on the early Italian campaigns.  Of course that went no further than the "I wonder and Wikipedia" stage, and by the time this book arrived I was on to chains new squirrels.  This summer Curt is running a second Blucher campaign based on Austerlitz, with me playing the French.  This will be blogged about but I am holding my cards close to my chest.

But the new campaign got my thinking again, and that got me reading....stayed tuned but I be got far more progress this year.

Anyway I do recommend the book.  It is a bit of a slog at times, but a good read at others.  There us good background on Boney's early days with less hero worship than other sources.  There is also a ton of wargames potential here - river crossings, mountain actions, surprise attacks etc..  So far I've covered the campaigns in. Piedmont, the crossing of the Po, had grudge at Lodi, the crossing of the Mincio, setting up the Siege of Mantua and the battles of Castiliogne/Lonato.  The early campaign in the mountains is a big heavy but like the Army of Italy things really get going on the plains of Lomdardy!  Next up, the have chasing Wurmser from Bassano into Mantua and the the bridge of Arcola.

Little Cold Wars

A belated shout out to Tim Gow over the publication of his Little Cold War rules (available as a real book or an ebook).  In keeping with my cheap and impatient nature I picked up the ethereal version on Amazon and give it a full recommendation.

The game simulates 1970s cold war actions using 54mmish toy soldiers and toy tanks.  It is played in an HG Wells manner, using match stick firing cannons and dart board anti tank fire!   It's goofy as all get out, a heck a lot of fun to play and gives a very good game. As afar as I could tell it also does a pretty reasonable job of simulating armour and infantry combat in a mid-to-late 20th century environment.  And there are good resources on unit organization, equipment and where to find the silly toys!

I play tested an early version of the game back in 2014 (see the AAR report) and am in fact the Canadian play tester referenced in the rules.  I could sorely be tempted to play this on my back lawn, if I can locate a good source of toys (lacking the car boot sales available to Mr Gow et al).  I fore see clashes in a post breakup Canada between the Cape Breton Liberation Army, Soviet Canuckistan and le Quebec Libre.  Please note that these were not invented by me but by a Nova Scotian comic, a right wing American wacko and a senile French generalissimo.

Later addition - ok I was waaay too flippant on Quebec Nationalism there, which has of course been a recurring theme in Canadian politics for 50 odd years.  I am however thinking of a French French supplied and influenced French Canadian force.  In my experience Quebecois view the idea of influence from Paris with about as much joy as they view influence from London, Ottawa or Washington.

My Other Addiction - Books

I got taken in by Cyber Monday this week with a BOGO (buy one get one free) sale on E-books over at Pen and Sword, typically my go to pusher of military e-books.  I like the ebook route for a number of reasons.  Mostly it comes down to the fact that I am both cheap and impatient and most of my hobby wants are way to obscure to be found in a Saskatchewan book store.  ebooks are a cheap and fast way of feeding the addiction!


So what did I get in my electronic package?  Two absolute classics.


This one feeds into my Italian Wars project which is timely as it arrives just before the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and my upcoming side duel with Curt.  Well written, good detail and lots of flavour.  It covers from the 13th century to the end of the 15th, ending with Fornovo.



It doesn't get much better than Marder when it comes to Naval History.  This volume covers a number of topics over the two world wars.  Of particular interest are the chapters on the Dardanelles  Churchill's time in the admiralty in the early days of WWII and the Battle of Mers-El-Klebir.

What Are the Odds?

Fridaynight was board game night.  First up was Chariotteer (aka Formula I) run by Curt.  Curt (the bastard) drugged my horses which hobbled my whole race.  It went better than it should have as two teams (Jeremy and Stacey) flipped and crashed out so I finished a close third having lost a bid for first at the post.

For the second game I trotted out Terry Pratchett's the Witches  which was good silly fun.  Link to a review

The box notes that you don't need to know the Discworld series to play the game, and test results show this is this case.  Yep, in a random survey of 4 long time gamers we batted 0/4 on Pratchett.  I wish I knew something about probability so I could work out the odds of that!  I knew it was an odd event when Sylvain asked "why do I know the name Terry Pratchett?".

Anyway for those of you who don't know, Mr Pratchett is the best selling UK writer, the top selling non-US bases writer in the USA and he's bloody good!

I love his books because:

• He's bloody funny and a damn good read.
• He has a better way with words than most others and I'm a lover of puns.
• He creates a better thought out world and characters than most "serious" fantasy writers.
• His books have some very biting no wicked social criticism of religion, politics, money, class and other classic comedy topics.
• He writes about things that relate to what I do for a living (death, money, a academics etc).
• He's bloody funny and a damn good read.

 So if you are one a of few who haven't done so,go read yourself some Pratchett.  I recommend Mort or Going Postal.

When Reading and Current Events Collide With 90s Canuck Rock

Ok so currently I am reading Anthony Beevor's history of the Spanish Cicil War.

Highly recommended - a good read and good history and I am learning a lot about a period that I don't know much about.  His Introduction starts with the events of the attempted 1981 Coup which King Juan Carlos played a key role in stopping.

So today Juan Carlos announced that he is stepping down in favour of his son (this seems to be all the rage in Europe these days).  I am not always the biggest fan of monarchies in the 21st century but to me Juan Carlos earned his bacon on 21 February 1981.

IF you are Canadian and IF were into indie folk rock in the early nineties THEN you might have asked yourself some questions when you heard this news.

Will he work at Pizza Pizza?  Vaccuum the turf at Skydome (ok Rogers Centre)?  Or drive the Zamboni?

If not then I present for you education Moxy Fruvous
King of Spain

Christmas Reading

Most years I tend to get some very good history books for Christmas, and 2013 was no exception.  Two are highly recommended. The third I haven't read yet, but based on my skim through and O'Hara's past work it'd bet my hat that it's a corker.

I am about halfway through this one.  The defenders have just pulled back from Maleme airport in fear of the seaborne invasion.  We'll see how that plays out for them…

Excellent work that gives the full story from before the Greco-Italian war in Albania through to resistance.  I find it very interesting how the SOE hired operatives for Greece - they looked at archeology and classics grads from Oxbridge.  The theory was that they would understand Greek!  It did also give them excellent cover.

On a personal note, it is kind of weird for me that two of the witnesses quoted also appeared in one of my favourite books from childhood - Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (Durrell's brother Lawrence and tutor Theo).

This is a book I've read before, but I am very happy to have my own copy instead of continually borrowing copies from local libraries.  I am sure the librarians are happy I have my own copy too!

Excellent book, and highly recommended - as are all of Graves work.  It covers both Crysler's Farm and Chateauguay, from the Americans two pronged assault on Montreal.

I haven't done more than skim through this yet, but his other books are excellent and this one looks great.  O'Hara covers the twin convoys Vigorous from Alexandria and Harpoon from Gibraltar in June 1942.  These actions are really the Italian Navy's best moments from WW2.

Vigorous turned home when the Italian heavy units closed and Harpoon resulted in the Battle of Panteleria.  Panteleria was the one occasion where the Italians won a surface engagement in WW2.

Readings and Ramblings

So the recent Hail Caesar game got me thinking more about my ancient (mid 80s) greek armies.  I could have sworn that I had a bag of left over Greeky bits (odd figures and spare Rafm spares) but I thorough scrounge through the spares and unpainted piles came up short.  So back to the drawing board on getting new figs....Maybe when the kid is off at uni I can justify a small order.

Meanwhile I been trying to figure out how to base my units for Hail Caesar.  No firm decisions on questions like 16 or 24 man units?  2 or 3 ranks deep?  Use the official HC 20mm per fig or the existing 15mm per man frontage?  Oh well.

On the plus side I've been reading!

Highly recommended - if majorly depressing.  It's always a wonder that those darned meddling Hellenes managed to buy their hatchets long enough to turf the Persians out of Greece.  Any way I learned that the Hoplite class was real read and needed to be burly to cart that panoply about.  Plus apparently olive trees are really tough to get rid of (the author tried to take out old fruit trees on his land and broke his axe).  While the big hoplite clashes were limited, there's plenty of scenario based stuff to work with.

Battlefleet

I got my PDF copy of Battlefleet by email this week and I thought I'd give a shout out to a couple of fellow bloggers involved in this production.

First of all, what is Battlefleet?  Well it's a damn fine publication and it's the journal of the Naval Wargames Society.  And it's a steal of a deal at £4 for an annual electronic subscription as its pages are chock full of useful articles and game ideas if you have any Naval inclinations at all.  Even if you are too cheap to put out the £4 you should check out their website which has great links, scenarios and a newsletter All Guns Blazing, all of which are (as my father in law would put it) free, gratis and at no additional charge.

And yes, the editor of Battlefleet did ask Curt, Sylvain and I to submit an article for a future issues based on our latest convoy game.  But don't let that discourage you from the publication - I'll admit that I had a bit of a Groucho Marx moment and wondered if I should be reading a journal that would accept me as an author!  But heck no they have much higher standards than that.

Ok the two bloggers are

1. Jeff at http://forhonourssake.blogspot.ca/ who has stepped up and taken the editor's role for the NWS - great first issue Jeff; and
2. David at http://dtbsam.blogspot.ca/  who contributed an article on a WW2 Med based action for General Quarters.  Good article David, I expect that I'll be subjecting my local gamers to a raid on Genoa shortly!

A Conversation About Books

We did a quick family clear out of the book shelves yesterday.  Fear not no books were harmed in this process - a few were marked to donate to charity book sales while others were relegated to the basement book shelves.  Any the following conversation took place

Self:  Hey cool, I didn't know that we had a copy of "The Man in the Iron Mask"*!  I've always wanted to read that.

Spouse (much better read than I): Oh yeah, you'd really like it.  It's a great read.

Self:  You know I don't know much about this era.  I've never gamed it but....

Spouse: On second thought don't read it!

So the Dumas has made it to the on deck position in the reading pile.  At bat right now is the Swedish novel "The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared".  It's appealing to my inner curmudgeon and it's nice to see a Swedish novel that doesn't involve nasty murders (I've read a lot of Wallender, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Camilla Lackberg over the last 2 years).

* I do own a copy of the Billy Bragg "Man in the Iron Mask" - love the guitar lines and creepy lyrics!

Reading List - England's Last War Against France

I spend 3 days at the Actuarial Research Conference in Winterpeg last week.  Unusually for a conference it was within driving distance (590kms) so I took a car to save shekels and to give myself added mobility - i.e. hit some games stores and bookstores!  

I picked up some flaming wreckage from Game Knight, since I was so impressed with Curt's for our Tariga convoy game.  Otherwise, there was limited historical stuff but good board game materials available.  Interestingly enough they also have a section of the store devoted to wine and beet making.  Personally I've found that wine and games are offsetting hobbies instead of being complementary - but what ever floats your boat.

Better yet for me was the flagship store for McNally Robinson Canada's largest independent bookstore.    They also believe in combining vices, as they have a very nice restaurant on site!   Find of the day for me was this book, a title I failed to purchase at my local big box last year (and ruing the decision ever since).

I'm only part way through so far, but it looks chock-a-block full of stuff on obscure campaigns and battles (Oran, Dakar, Syria, Madagascar, Casablanca, Algeria...).  There's enough to keep Tim Gow building obscure models and units for months.

Smith gives a really good look at the political background before and during the war.  I also love the title, which sounds like it should be about Waterloo (or Crimea if you're Raglan).

The Reading List

Earlier this week I finished Robert Malcomson's A Capital in Flames.

This books is highly recommended- great details and well written.  The battle of York doesn't get a lot of attention, mostly because it was a disappointment for both sides.

The Americans took the town and got away with a bunch of stores and equipment, but failed to cripple the British lake squadron or deliver a major blow to the army.  They executed a well organized landing and defeated the defending forces, but lost 200 men and their leader in a magazine explosion.

On the British side, they prevented the capture of the warship under construction by burning it and the regulars got away to fight another day.  However, they lost the use of the warship themselves and had the town burnt and some stores.  The sight of the redcoats retiring in good order and leaving the town to the mercy of the invaders left a lot of bad blood and cost General Sheaffe his job ()even if he made the right decision militarily).

However, there's lots of potential for a good landing scenario here and it could be expanded to give the defenders the objectives of getting the stores and army away safely.

More Reading for 1812

Highly recommended, a very coherent account of a not so coherent action!

Worth the read but not in the same league as the Graves and Malcomson books.  It was a very confused action - a night attack on a camp, with both US generals captured and the British CinC gone missing!  Some good stuff on Stoney Creek and the landings at Fort George, but lacks the overall flow of the other authors (IMHO).

Next up is Malcomson's book on the burning of York (seeing Toronto get burnt - the dream of many Canadians).

1812 Diversions

The War of 1812 is luring me with a siren call.  I'm back to painting Perry plastic Napoleonics as the 49th Foot (the Green Tigers) and working out which combination of US army uniforms to go with for the opposition.  Meanwhile, I've been raiding 3 libraries for 1812 material (mine, the Regina Public and the University of Regina).  Best pickings to date at the UofR since they teach Canadian history and I get extended borrowing privileges as a faculty member.

Recommended reading so far

The Reading Shelf

With the living space occupied by kitchen furniture and the basement cleared to allow for the table saw, there's no space for modelling right now.  So I've been reading a lot.  Currently it's Duffy's book on the '45, which I highly recommend.

This has lots of good war games appeal, even if you don't plan to game the '45 (I'm not planning to ...yet).  I'm still in the early chapters but two key points jump at me.  The first is that I can't remember another occasion where the red coated infantry turned and ran like they did at Prestonpans.  The second is that the Jacobite army showed incredible flexibility and speed on the march.