A boost for the club

Following our open day I posted that we had five separate visitors that expressed an interest in becoming members; I was quite pleased with that. The real issue, of course, is how many would actually become members?

We had our first post open day club meeting on Tuesday and two of these interested visitors came along, a husband and wife team no less! They are to bring along some 15mm ancients to the next meeting and want to try Hail Caesar, so far so good. They have been given membership forms so lets wait and see.

Once I got home there was an answer phone message from a third of our visitors. He was apologising for not being able to make it to the meeting that night but assuring me he would be at the next, fantastic news! He asked for a chat but failed to leave a contact number and there was a second call after his so I couldn't check either.

We have no membership forms or fees yet but this does look positive, and not bad for one simple open day....we didn't get this much interest from Broadside!!

Some new pics of our Open Day

I thought you all might like to see some of the pictures taken at our open day. My thanks to Andy for taking them and making them available.

 

Martin (left) takes on Alex with a 15mm SYW clash using Black Powder

Some of Martins brillianly painted figures, all Old Glory I am told

The German gun boat, part of the great ww1 African lakes game provided by our good friends of the Maidstone Wargames Society

The British flotilla to deal with the pasky Hun!

Phil, Richard and Clive provided us with some nostalgia by playing this ancients game with WRG 6th edition!!

Some of Phil's Peltasts

and some of Richard's Pikemen

Mark and Steve T. with their Operation Squad game, Waffen SS take on some British Fusiliers

Some of Mark's US Paras, used in a second game

The table used for Operation Squad

And now, a chance for you to all join in the fun! Can you provide a suitable caption for this picture?

Memoir '44

Hi JFaria, welcome to my blog!

Every so often the term 'Memoir 44' appears on the Wargames Miscellany blog, a board game that Bob is quite fond of it seems. I am not a huge boardgames fan myself, although that is not necessarily true; I just never seem to play any is probably more accurate. Some of them are so expensive I would rather spend the cash on figures, but so many look good. I have a copy of War on Terror: The Boardgame! that I roll out occasionally and I do enjoy that, so I wonder what is stopping me?

Anyhooo, having seen the various boards and expansion packs available to Memoir 44 players on Bob's blog I have to admit my curiosity was piqued. I then noticed that you could download 'Memoir '44 Online' via Steam, the online games site. It was free too, so I gave it a go and downloaded the program and was impressed. Whilst the download is free you will need to buy points to play games but these are very, very cheap and you get 45 to start with. i have played a dozen games and have loads of points left, another 135 points will cost you just £4.00. The game plays exactly as the boardgame would but with the added bonus that you could play people from anywhere in the world. The game is simple enough to get to grips with and the basic rules very straight forward. The interesting thing for me is that the board is divided into three sectors, left centre and right, and the actions you can perform are dictated by cards that only allow you limited activations. For example, you may have a lot of pieces in your centre and right sectors but most of the cards you end up with will only activate units in your left sector; or vice versa, its all quite random. As you play one card it is replaced with another so things can change turn by turn.

Combat is worked out by rolling a number of special dice marked with an infantryman, tank, grenade, flag and a star. All units roll the same dice but the number rolled depends upon range and cover etc. so, if you are attacking a tank unit, for example, and get to roll four dice you will kill one model in the unit for every tank or grenade symbol you roll. Flags make the unit retreat one space and stars are misses. If you roll an infantryman against tanks then that is a miss, a tank symbol against infantry is a miss; grenades kill everything. It is a simple but elegant system.

Thing you can do is download the game and see for yourself, I can heartily recommend it....so much so that I am now seriously considering buying a 'hard copy'! Prices vary wildly I have noticed so do shop around if you are ever tempted, Amazon seems the best option so far.

Just thought I would bring this natty download to you attention, it has got to be worth a look. And, if anyone out there plays Memoir '44 the board game, let me know what you think of it.

MHWC Open Day

The Mayor of Swale and two of our younger visitors making the Armourfast tanks

Well, that wasn't so bad. We have now had our first Open Day (as opposed to Broadside Show) and I have to say that it was pretty successful........ok, apart from one of our guest clubs not turning up and one or two other cancellations.....but, apart from those it was pretty successful.

We had no idea how much interest we would generate, it was a simple club event after all and aimed at the local general public as much as other wargamers. We had advertised at the Military Odyssey show, magazines and a myriad of poster and flyer spots wherever we could put them. We had some 23 visitors through the door, not many, but all were interested and brought something to the party, so to speak. The local Mayor spent over an hour with us and spoke to everyone; she had never come across wargaming before but left impressed (her words) with the knowledge, dedication and enthusiasm of all involved. Can't argue with that.

The press arrived and took a lot of the usual snaps...you stand there, you there...someone point at something...and all smile! I also received a phone call from the editor today who wanted some background about the club for a larger article; now that can't be bad. We even had the local WI (Hi Val! Great cakes!!!) help us out by running the refreshments, a very handy relationship and one we will call on again whilst also offering our services to them to support one of their events.

Armourfast very kindly provided us with some kits for a kiddies make and take area, this proved very popular with even Grandma's helping out...and one or two yummy mummies too....although I didn't really notice and could not, therefore, comment further.

Fun for all the family!!

But, now down to the important bit....what will the club get out of it? Actually, possibly five new members.........yes! FIVE possible new members. I say possible because until they come back and pay their membership that is exactly what they are. But, in all honesty, I can see us getting three out of the five. Two of those are a married couple that moved to the area from Tonbridge and miss playing. Another was really into the ancient game we ran and who we may have converted into a Hail Caesar player! I have high hopes but the irony of such success for such little hassle compared to running Broadside is not lost on me. Two huge shows with a third set of June 9th 2013 (hint) have netted us one new member (Hi Clive) but Broadside is not all about gaining members, it is more to do with bringing a show to our own doorsteps...even though I don't get time to actually buy anything!

Club member Martin ran a Black Powder SYW game with some very nice 15mm figures!

Would we run an Open Day again, most definitely yes. I think most clubs could get something out of such an event no matter how small. We ran three games and a make and take table whilst our good friends the Maidstone Wargames Society ran a game as our guests...and we were helped buy the WI of course. Not a big event by any means but a great shop window for us and our hobby,

Wargames in the community

Bloody hell, I am so crap at this whole blog malarkey! When was my last post? exactly. For crying out loud Leo, get a grip man!!!

Any-hoo.

Following the success of the Broadside shows, and the support we get from local borough councillors, the club is reaching out to the wider community with offers of help. Not decorating little old ladies flats or anything like that, not since the last time....we never did find the cat. I think the loud sirens on the fire engines scared it off you know. Very temperamental animals cats...and old ladies...rude too; never heard such language! Where was I? Oh yes, helping the community.

Wargames are very visual and often quite spectacular to look at, even a basic club game can look really nice. Many such games lend themselves well to public participation too and so we are talking to non wargame groups in our area and offering to run a game at their events as an attraction; we could even help raise money by charging visitors a small fee to take part in a game. It is certainly something different and with careful selection of games possibly lucrative for the event holder. One such game we play is a western gunfight that uses cards rather than dice and is very simple to play. Younger visitors love it and can pick it up really easily too. If their character gets killed off, they can simply re-spawn at the cemetery etc.....for a small fee of course.

Our first foray into this wider world took place on Saturday last. The Minster Abbey on the Isle of Sheppey holds an annual fair and invites local groups to take part. I offered them a game, realising it would also be a useful piece of advertising for us and our open day, but also as an interesting sideshow.

we were supposed to be running a Saga Saxon Vs Viking thing...with Normans...but you know how these things go; so busy painting 1/700th scale Napoleonic ships for October etc etc etc. Instead, I decided to run something that was actually available and that we were more confident with rules wise...ish...a ww1 skirmish using 'To the Last Man' by Chris Peers. A good set of rules, once you have managed to find everything in the most frustrating rule book ever. I wont bother you all with it now but, well, blimey. The pic above shows a platoon of 1914 Brits defending a rather knocked about hamlet. The Germans, who outnumbered the Brits by something like 2:1, were part of an advance guard sent to probe ahead of the main force...you get the idea. The pic below shows the initial German advance, the two central squads getting a rough time of it.

There were three of us playing, Steve T., Andy and my good self in a more solid and less anthropomorphic guise. Steve T. played the Brits and dug himself in to the available terrain. We decided to allow the Germans to enter the game from a random direction in DBA fashion. Steve nominated a favoured edge that was numbered 1-3 and the remaining three edges numbered 4-5 &6. We rolled a one so promptly advanced into a reasonably well prepared defence. There rules favour very early war Brits and make them hard to hit and they are able to shake of pin markers more easily...they can also shoot well too but all of this is kept within reasonable boundaries...but bloody hell did we need the extra troops! We advanced half the German platoon in the hope of keeping the Brits occupied, then bringing on the rest to exploit weak points etc. In this Andy and I were partially successful but we lost quite a few men in the process. The Brits ability to shake off pin markers and their sheltered positions made this a tough job but we kept pushing and were applying a lot of pressure. By the time we brought on our reinforcements the British line was looking a little shaky!

By the end of the game though we had pushed Steve into one central area, shown above at an earlier stage of the game, and was threatening to surround him; but the casualties were mounting up. It was hard to decide upon a winner, the Brits were being pushed but were now in a more solid position from which to mount a defence...that said, they were also now at a real risk of being surrounded and if this was a real fight the oncoming German forces would have found a nicely concentrated target. The Brits may have been better to fall back whilst still in good order and continued to inflict casualties in a running fight.

The rules are great and provide a good game with historically accurate results. I think that the Germans need to keep moving and try to get to melee with the Brits to minimise their shooting bonuses but, melee is bloody in these rules so.... A good game was had by all but, more importantly, how did we get on with regard to promotion?

Not too well as it turns out. We were in a hall, which was good, but nothing much else was...so we were a bit isolated to say the least. We did get a few visitors, all of which were given one of our nice bookmarks and an invite to the Open Day. A few youngsters came to chat and we helped with ideas for setting up their own club at school, we even offered to help where possible and work with the school. I did speak to several of the other groups involved and offered our services and it seems that we may have made a few friends for the future here. It was our first go, of course, but I have high hopes that we can integrate ourselves as a club withing the wider community....a good way of advertising ourselves and attracting new members too of course!!

My SAGA army, the Normans

Yep, I have been bitten by the SAGA bug....not that I have ever played a game though; I have been infected by association. I should say from the outset that I do not in any way agree with the way the forces in the game work or are arranged from an historical perspective. A large part of my degree covered the society and culture of the period, how social orders came about and worked and the role of the more martial aspects of that society. Most books you will find will focus upon the battles and a few key figures, occasionally (and casually) mention that Saxon armies came in two distinct and easily divided parts (not right at all), and that is about it. When you look at the society as a whole from the bottom up rather than the top down it all looks very different. Saxon armies, and the later Anglo-Danish version, are organised in very feudal way; almost like groups of gangs from local areas grouped into larger geographical regional blocks. But this detail is beside the point, lets just say that the rules do not give much in the way of historic accuracy but it is still a rather cleverly devised game with much to recommend it. And when all is said and done how many wargame can really be considered as more than a game based upon a period?

I like the idea of the large skirmish / small battle games and these rules and army sizes suits the period brilliantly; period armies are almost always small and battles contained, sharp and brief! Hastings was a serious anomaly and a one of in many ways. With SAGA we can now fight the more usual clashes, the raids, the pillages and so on, something that interests me a lot. There are so many options and local historical precedents to inspire games you are spoilt for choice.

My intention is to build two forces, a Norman and an Anglo-Danish. I could have done Saxons against Vikings (Norse or Danes) as I live on the Isle of Sheppey (a direct translation of the Saxon name is Sheep Island, so I now live on The Isle of Sheep Island...I know, mad!) and there is a wealth of early period history to inspire SAGA games here. The Norse and the Danes both raided and settled on the island on several occasions, attracted by the Abbey there on occasion but more often than not to over-winter or take advantage of some good land. They also used the island as a base to raid  into Kent and Essex, Milton (by Sittingbourne) was a bigger and more profitable target at that time and was hit and threatened a lot. So local skirmishes against the Danes by a disgruntled local lord and island residents are logical for games, the locals perhaps supported by the higher Lord from Milton and his retinue. But I have always been interested in the Norman assimilation of the English shires, the landscape archaeology clearly shows that this was not as straight forward as most histories would have us believe. The minor Normans that were gifted estates were far from confident....or safe as the number of moated manor sites attest! Imagine you being the new Lord of the Manor, turning up to take over your new estate...outnumbered by the locals all of whom less than happy to see you....there must have been many localised mini revolts...one or two big ones too. For me, the guy sent to Sheppey was taking a risk....good land, but isolated and surrounded by marsh and even swamp in those days. I would think that the new owner of Shurland Hall took a few looks over his shoulder and at twitching bushes after landing on the island; Kent may have struck an odd deal with William (Invicta....hmmmm) but the locals??? I can see there being some good scenarios for this period, and its something not so obvious as Viking raids. Hereward is a well known example, just think a little more locally.

I need to have this force finished by the 1st September, we are to run a game at the Minster Abbey fair, and I will post my progress here stage by stage. As you can see, the army has arrived and I can begin. My force is a full six point army and will have the warlord, three points of mounted knights (hearthguard) giving twelve figures that I will divide into two units of six, one point of eight crossbowmen, one point of eight spearmen and a point of twelve bowmen.

To face these Normans I will need to raise a band of locals led by a Saxon lord that didn't get to the battle...or the young son of one killed at Hastings perhaps? He will have a few close family retainers, a smattering of reasonably experienced men but a few more of the levy type, the angry locals! I am not happy with the term levy here. The Saxon system of military obligation meant that each area sent a number of troops to the lord when needed, and these were the same people sent each time so some experience was gained. Do not believe anything written about the period by American scholars....be warned, they are ardent anti-Saxon and write awful histories!!!

MHWC purchases new rules sets

Our club believes in making purchases on behalf of the members, the earlier post regarding the 1/700 scale ships being a case in point. But we do not just believe in buying things for events, we have bought club terrain and other resources for the members to use. Our latest batch of buys on behalf of the members are some of the new rule sets recently published. Rules sets are so expensive these days and it can be a real risk buying a set only to discover they are not for you; online or magazine reviews are not always spot on and can leave much out.

MHWC members have all spoken about different sets of rules at meetings or on our club forum, many tempted but wary of the expense. So we took the top five sets that had raised interest and bought them to create our own mini members rule book library. This is what we have bought;

 

First up is SAGA, this rules really seem to have caught on....despite the heavy cost, £25 for a fairly thin book and four cardboard counter boards. The game seems to have countered any cost concerns but it seemed reasonable to buy a club set so everyone could see what the fuss was about for themselves given the interest.A test game was played at the last club meeting and looks to be a hit. There are a few concerns for some, it is a game first and historical simulation second...like most rules to be fair but this set more so. That doesn't mean it isn't any good, one or two quirks aside it works well and makes you think. It uses sets of army specific dice to control possible actions and these can be £12.00 for a set of eight!!! This is an expensive hobby as we know but the costs involved in SAGA are very high for such a thin rule book. that said, the armies are small and with the rise of plastic figures can be very cheap, perhaps this balances things out? Just nine possible armies at the moment but I can see this changing, there are already a number of home spun variations to use the game mechanics with other periods appearing in the magazines.

I can see this becoming a bit of a club favourite, many already have figures that can be pressed into service and others, myself included, have embarked on an army since seeing the rule book. A wise purchase that has actually encouraged members to go out an buy their own copy.

Next we have Operation Squad Modern War. The WW2 version has been a great hit with the members and so all were very interested in taking a look at the latest offering. It works on the same principles, using a squad of figure with a one figure one man ratio, most forces use a dozen figures at the most so this is a really accessible game in these troubles economic times. The rules have been adapted to take into account the more varied forces involved in modern combat theatres and the weapons. Units are built using a points system but these units are nation specific and so you purchase from a given pool of nationally accurate options. This is another game that makes you think, you need to plan but also need to adapt in equal measure. Some find the rather unique turn sequence difficult to get the hang of but it does work and works well. I can see these being very popular, small units on a 4ft x 4ft table....what's not to like?!

Pike and Shotte is one of the more traditional 'big battle' sets compared to the more skirmish based rules we have bought. That said, many asked for it and so we were happy to oblige! This is a warlord Games publication, essentially Black Powder for the seventeenth century but with enough period tweeks to make it a stand alone rule set. If you have played Black Powder then you will take to this quickly, there is also a lot of info and arm details so plenty to help get newcomers to the period up and running quickly. List price is £30.00 but can be found on Amazon for just £19.50! Bargain!!! We have a few members that play this period and others that just enjoy playing it with other peoples armies, part of the joy of a club of course! This will get plenty of game hours at the club, the Black Powder systems lend themselves well to club nights, big games can be fought to a conclusion and a good game is had by all...except the losers of course but there is no helping some people.

Muskets and Tomahawks is an eighteenth century small battles / large skirmish set of rules for fighting in the wilds of the American Colonies; French Indian wars or AWI. Not every ones cup of tea of  course but the rules are well tested, the have been available in France for years, and they provide a great if not quirky game. Each side has their own victory conditions but these can be augmented by 'side plots' that can have a bearing on the result. Like its stable mate, SAGA, it does not need too many figures and so many people could run this using figures they already have....others, given the more skirmish orientation of the battles, may wish to splash out on a new force. I know one idiot who been bitten by the bug so badly he is going to do it in 40mm using Front Rank figures! I have no idea what come over me but they are fantastic models and quite reasonably priced....did i say me?.....I meant someone else that I have never met before.....Damn!! 

There is a Meeples & Miniatures pod cast about these rules that you might want to listen to given that the rules are quite expensive, almost £25.00 again, but you do get a set of cards in a sturdy plastic box. The pod cast is detailed enough to give you enough detail to make an informed decision....then go and look at the Front Rank 40mm web page............hmmmmmmmmmmm.......

last is Normandy Firefight. This is the cheapest set at £11.99 and it uses the least figures, you can easily get away with just three or four per side! It calls itself 'detailed', in so much that each game turn is just two seconds of real time, removing an empty magazine is a move in itself so you can imagine how much planning you need to do...but don't panic! The game is really easy to pick up and flows really well. It can also be quite fast too. The rules are designed for 54mm figures, which may be a bit of a bugger terrain wise, but a 4ft x 4ft table is all you really need. Unlike a lot of modern rule sets these rules have a useful turn by turn battle report that gives you all the detail you need to follow what is going on and how to do it. The combat is really simple but very elegant too, you can even be hit in the hand or lower leg, and without complicated slide rule mechanisms too! I really like these rules, they are the real surprise of the bunch for me and I can heartily recommend them. I also think that they would lend themselves really well to club team play, even inter club team play. Each player could control one figure....I am getting ahead of myself.

The last action of a players/figures turn is to chose a stance, either standing, kneeling or prone. Give the low number of figures needed I think each figure/character could easily have three models to represent these important stances....just a thought.

So there you have it, a brief introduction to our recent club purchases. No doubt reports will appear here as these games get played and armies get painted...I can't wait!!!