WARGAMER’S NOTES · 2017. 7. 8. · collecting or painting the miniatures, or building the armies? Is it the reading and collecting of books on your chosen periods and campaigns?

Issue 1 Volume 1 : January 2017

Horse and Musket Rules

Boer War Blockhouse

Designing Wargames

WARGAMER’S NOTES QUARTERLY

WARGAMER’S NOTES QUARTERLY

WelcomeWelcome to the first issue of Wargamer’s Notes Quarterly!

We have long had the ambition to emulate the terrific work done by Phil Olley of the excellent - and too short-lived - Classic Wargaming Journal. It was Phil who demonstrated a few years back that an amateur undertaking like Wargamer’s Notes was not only possible, but still relevant, and even valued in the 21st century. We would be hugely remiss were we to neglect mention of the late, great Don Featherstone, who paved the way many years ago with his Wargamer’s Newsletter. Imagine our surprise when both Stokes and I discovered a mutual admiration for these two hobby giants during an email exchange early last September. Not many days later, we began batting around this crazy idea for our own hobby periodical. And here we are several months later with the inaugural issue of Wargamer’s Notes!

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Nowhere is it more true than in Wargaming that people can call themselves the members of a broad church. It seems to us there are so many possible directions one might take the hobby.

So, consider this. What is it that you love about war gaming? What makes the hobby fun for you? Is it the making of things, collecting or painting the miniatures, or building the armies? Is it the reading and collecting of books on your chosen periods and campaigns? Is it some combination of all these activities? Perhaps it is something else altogether? Maybe it’s the people you meet across the table? Or, possibly, it’s the games you play? Or is it the broad array of activities

In this issue...Wargaming the Ninth Cape Frontier War .................................3

Call It Macaroni! .................................................................................................................................7

Converting Plastic 20mm WW2 German Paratroopers, Part 1 ...................................................................................................................9

Boer War Blockhouses .................................................................................................... 12

Simplicity and Brevity in Game Design – Part 1 .... 13

About the Editors ...................................................................................................................... 16

The Costs of War: Wargaming on a Budget ..................... 17

Hexagonal Terrain: A How To .......................................................................... 19

Setting the Scene for Russo-Japanese Naval Armageddon ....................................................................................................................................... 23

Little Lead Men ............................................................................................................................. 27

Tales from a Bedfordshire Village ........................................................... 28

that people who call themselves “war gamers” actually undertake?

Over the next months and hopefully years we may get a chance to at least partially answer this question through the pages of WN. This parcel of pixels you are looking at represents for us the culmination of our own attempts to answer the question for ourselves. We hope your own contributions may help others explore this for themselves as well, and invite you to get in touch with us should the writing bug bite, and you have a sudden urge to share your particular take on the wargaming hobby with the rest of us. Go on! Don’t be shy!

Greg and Stokes

Graphic Design by Amy Geddes.

Contact the Wargamer’s Notebook team at: [email protected]

Wargamer’s Notes Quarterly: Issue 1 | January 2017 | Page 2

Front cover: Xhosa Ambush, Noel Williams


Wargaming the Ninth Cape Frontier WarNoel Williams - Sheffield, UK

Scenario: You’re established on a plateau 1500 metres long, with steep sides to North and South, but easy access up the Western and Eastern slopes. You’ve a 1000 native levies of Mfengu tribesmen, around 200 Colonial mounted police, and a 7 pounder. Below you, in the valley are three divisions of the Gcaleka tribe of the Xhosa people, each mass probably well over 1000 warriors, approaching loosely from three directions. How do you dispose your force?

Your gun has an unusually slow rate of fire, but has some success in holding up the Gcaleka advance. Yet it can’t be everywhere, and your force is gradually being outflanked. After ten rounds, the carriage of the 7pdr breaks. Seeing this, your Mfengu levies waver. They may run. You may soon by outflanked and overwhelmed by superior numbers. What actions do you take?

This is the battle of Gwadana, the opening battle of the 9th Cape War. It’s a war largely unfamiliar to most gamers and rarely gamed. It’s interesting, though, as the last war in a hundred years of conflicts in the Cape and the immediate precursor of the Zulu War of 1879. Many familiar names from the later campaigns in Natal first learned about African conflict against the Xhosa in the Cape, including the 24th regiment, soon to become the defeated of Isandlwana and the heroes of Rorkes’ Drift.

From the gamer’s perspective, if you want to do something a little different with your existing Zulu Wars collection this war offers some new scenarios here. Or if you’re interested in the Cape

Wars more generally, but just want to put an initial toe in the water, starting with the last war is quite a good introduction to it. Because the wars stretch back beyond the Napoleonic period, the Cape theatre offers lots of opportunities for adapting existing collections and using them in different ways.

On the other hand, if you want a really authentic simulation, it’s hard to find accurate figures. For some this’ll be a problem. If you’re looking for accurate models of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police (FAMP) of 1878, you’ll find it difficult. For others, this will be a great opportunity, as you have no choice but using proxy figures, or else converting your own, so you might as well simply use “best guesses” without worrying about the niceties of accuracy. This means you can use the war as the basis of a more imaginative colonial wars setup, employing any set of figures you find acceptable for the conflict.

My brief scenario from the battle of Gwadana, the opening conflict of the 9th Cape Frontier War, tells you quite a lot about the wargaming possibilities of this period. Combats are typically quite small scale, with the native, Xhosa, forces generally much larger than their Colonial opponents. Xhosa losses in this battle were perhaps two or three hundred. Colonial losses were six troopers of the FAMP.

So you’ll need either a large Xhosa force, or good rules for recycling native forces. Sometimes the Xhosa tactic was to extend its superior numbers at its flanks to encircle the enemy. So for this tactic you’d need comparatively large forces. But more often the Xhosa approach was to keep up sporadic skirmishing from cover in the bush, with occasional attacks in ‘clumps’ or ‘waves’ of warriors, sometimes with clear coordination, sometimes rather haphazardly. This can be simulated with fewer figures as hidden snipers do not necessarily require any figures, whilst scattered forays can use the same figures repeatedly.

As for figures, if you’re not too much of a stickler for historical accuracy, you can easily use Zulus for Xhosa, as long as they wear minimal regalia. In fact, the two ethnicities are essentially unrelated.


Xhosa in this period seem to have fought in mixed dress, with some completely naked in traditional manner, others protected by hide capes or occasional hide shields, and some in elements of European garb.

So the gamer can plausibly mix figures of different origin together to approximate Xhosa forces. Although my figures are predominantly from the Perrys’ Cape Wars range (and there’s also a substantial Cape Wars range from 1st Corps) I mix in Foundry Africans and Warlord Zulus, with some small conversions. I think Old Glory have African figures that could be used too, and there are probably others. In the smaller scales, where niceties of native dress are less evident, though I know of none which are specifically intended as Xhosa, there are many ranges of African and Zulu warriors which could be used.

Colonial forces, as in this battle, were heavily dependent on native levies, from Mfengu tribesmen (known to Europeans rather demeaningly as ‘Fingoes’). Gwadana shows their potential brittleness in battle. Their performance could be quite variable. These, again, will be a little difficult to represent accurately. At the time of writing, I’ve not been able to identify any manufacturer. However, as their dress seems to have been quite variable, a mix of European supply and native adornment, generally of poor quality so quickly spoiled by the rigours of bush fighting. In effect, they’re a motley crew of ill-dressed Africans, so you can reasonably use any assembly of figures you feel fits the bill. One approach for the 9th CFW could be to use the Natal Native Contingent from the Zulu War, interspersed with Zulus, Xhosa or Africans in European dress. In my force, I even mix in a few figures from the AWI and cimaroons from my pirate collection.

Xhosa Attack a Boer Farmstead


Mfengu and also a high proportion of Xhosa would be armed with guns, though assegais would also feature. Xhosa guns would be largely “trade muskets”, that is, obsolete models, whilst the Mfengu would be equipped with better quality muskets and, in some cases, breech loaders. Both forces were poor shots, Xhosa shooting being worsened by a lack of good quality ammunition, sometimes using as missiles just about any object that could be crammed down a barrel. At least one British soldier judged that they were better shots with their assegai than their muskets, almost invariably shooting high.

Besides the large Mfengu element, Colonial forces were typically made up of two kinds of troop. The first is a frontier policing force. At Gwadana this was the Colony’s Frontier Armed and Mounted Police (FAMP), the most widely used of the Colonial policing forces, but there were small local defence forces of various size and status. Often these were in civilian dress, though some were uniformed, perhaps in line with the FAMP themselves: brown corduroy jacket and breeches, black leather boots coming nearly to the knee and buckled down the side, and a leather peaked cap with a white cover. Later illustrations of the FAMP, or the Cape Mounted Police, as they were also known, show a uniform not that different from the later Mounted Natal Carbineers and Natal Police, so I’m happy using these figures for the FAMP.

Secondly were armed civilians, operating as a collection of individuals rather than within a defined volunteer force. In wargaming terms, these are best thought of as Boers, which most of them were – farmers formed into mounted commandoes when called upon. Boer means ‘farmer’. These mounted irregulars, almost all frontier farmers, sometimes operated independently for their own purposes, such as seeking revenge or hunting down stolen cattle, but more often co-opted to take part in a larger campaign for the Colonial government.

A typical Colonial army, then, might consist of a core of FAMP, able and experienced, but a relatively small unit, supplemented by an irregular commando, skilled horsemen and good shots,

but independently minded, and a large body of Mfengu, with minimal training, uncertain ability and fragile morale. The Boer, moreover, might decide at any time that their period of service was over and return to their farmsteads.

Additional to the Colonial forces were British Imperial regulars, relatively few of whom were in the Colony and who were not allowed beyond the Kei river, as this was the limit of the Imperial Colony. Colonial troops, however, sometimes pressed beyond the borders.

The good news for the gamer is that just about any regulars you have for the Zulu Wars (taking place barely a year after the 9th CFW) can be used. Uniforms were the same, many of the forces serving in the later conflict had already done service in the CFW, including the Naval Brigade, the Royal Artillery and, of course, the 24th Regiment, 2nd Warwickshire.

As the strategic approach of the Colonial commanders was typically to coordinate anything from two to six co-operating columns, the wargamer could justifiably construct a scenario in which a small British regular force encounters a much larger Xhosa command.

However, a more accurate representation would have a column made up of a cadre of regulars operating with a rather larger force comprised of any or all of the Colonial troops. There could be a further problem for the colonial command, too, for during much of the war strategic control of British regulars was through separate command, uncoordinated with that of the Colonial forces, meaning that troops might be unavailable when needed, or the two commands might be operating at cross purposes.

Even so, this was a one-sided war. The Xhosa lost almost every encounter and even those they could claim as a success generally cost them losses which were much heavier than that of their opponents, typically in a ratio of fifteen to twenty Xhosa lost for every Colonial casualty. So if you wanted to fight a straight, Isandlwana-type encounter battle, you either have to begin with radically disproportionate forces, hamper the Colonial forces or give the Xhosa strong tactical or territorial advantages.


However, there were few such battles. Most encounters were less straightforward. It’s here that the real interest for the wargamer arises. There’s lots of opportunities for skirmish games, with the real character of the war being the ebb and flow of conflict in the bush.

The 9th war was really a series of separate campaigns. The key objective of Colonial forces was to remove Xhosa people from Colonial territories, and to some extent adjacent territories, too, thereby to expand colonial control and influence. Whilst that could be accomplished ostensibly by forcing them from existing territory, but if it entailed a high mortality rate, that achieved the same objective. The Xhosa, of course, wanted to stay put, having seen Colonial expansion push them from their pasturelands continually across a hundred years.

A typical Colonial column, then, aimed to oust a Xhosa tribe from its current location exacting reparation, justly or unjustly, for perceived crimes or to deny the Xhosa the means to live, by burning crops and villages, seizing cattle, rendering the land uninhabitable and killing as many Xhosa men as possible.

Typically, the Xhosa would not resist directly. They would abandon their living, perhaps leaving

the women and children for the Colonial troops somehow to deal with. They’d retreat to the most difficult mountainous or bush terrain, which was not merely tough to search, but even to traverse, especially with any sort of discipline. Often the only trails were those created by large animals, which might offer their own dangers. Pockets of Xhosa would hide in the bush, ambushing any isolated Colonial groups or attacking weakly guarded supply. Sometimes they would mass on hilltops in impressive force, demonstrating to intimidate their opponents, then ‘melt away’ back into the bush when attacked. They would harry the flanks of their opponents, whilst retreating to their front. Then, when the Colonists believed they’d cleared the area, they would ‘filter back’, reoccupying the cleared terrain and if any Europeans or Mfengu had attempted to establish their own living in the cleared territory, that new farmstead would be attacked or its livestock driven off.

The wargame, then, should be a game of harrying, piecemeal action, and communication problems. This is perhaps a little difficult to reproduce on the tabletop. In the next article I’ll outline my approach to this.

If you want to read more about the history of the 9th Cape War, sources are pretty sparse. However, a good online summary is here: http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol056pg.html and the only really extensive account in a book is The Wedding Feast War: The Final Tragedy of the Xhosa People, Keith Smith, Frontline Books, 2012

Xhosa Ambush

Call It Macaroni!A Quick and Dirty Approach to Horse and Musket Warfare

Stokes Schwartz, USA

Until recently, I was a dyed in the wool devotee of the rules presented in that great tome, Charge! Or How to Play War Games (1967) by the late Brigadier Peter Young and Colonel James Lawford. For the last decade or so, “real life” permitting, I have played a couple of large unit, old school-style games a year using two semi-fictitious 30mm 18th century armies. I’ve enjoyed solo games and a few play-by-email games as both an active player commanding one of the armies involved, and as an umpire carrying out the orders of the two generals and working out the various movement and combat details. It has been great fun building up my forces, befriending like-minded hobbyists around the world, and learning more about the War of Austrian Succession and The Seven Years War in the process. But there has always been one tiny fly in the ointment.

What, pray tell was the problem? Well, I’ll bell the cat and say it. It’s the rules. The thinking behind the rules presented in Charge! -- and The War Game (1971) -- and the lively descriptions of how they work in theory, make for highly inspiring reading and entertainment to be sure. But in practice I have always found the rules themselves slow going. They are also a challenge for me to remember although I generally have a pretty good memory. This is not to suggest that the rules laid out in either of these hobby classics are bad by any stretch, but they don’t work well for me given the limited amount of hobby time available these days.

Neither, should I point out, am I after strictly accurate simulations that reflect warfare as it was fought between roughly 1700-1850. That idea does not exactly scream easy, quick, and fun. Trying to write rules for true simulation games using miniatures is something akin to a snipe hunt. A snipe, for those who don’t know, is a well-camouflaged, highly elusive type of bird in America’s desert southwest that is extremely hard to catch. Instead, I want a relatively hassle-free way to resolve combats between my brightly painted metal and plastic soldiers as I push them around the tabletop without worrying about man-to-figure ratios, time and distance scales,


De Lattes Lines SIttangbad Refight 2012


precise combat calculations and so called realistic results, or the like. Put another way, what I am after is a quick, easy-to-comprehend and use set of rules that is possible to memorize after just a few games. Anything to avoid the need to thumb through the original books mid-game in search of obscure points in order to resolve what ought to be an action-packed cavalry melee for example.

As is so often the case, I found the answer was already within easy reach there on my bookshelf. The late Donald Featherstone came to the rescue with the rules presented in both War Games (1962) and Battles with Model Soldiers (1970) both of which provided a basis for what follows below. Keep in mind, the following is not original with me but based on the work of the hobby “greats,” including a cup of Mr. Featherstone, a dash of Young and Lawford, two tablespoons

of the Grants, along with a shake or two of Wesencraft plus a pinch of Hezzlewood stirred in, and a breath of Wise with just a smidgeon of historian Christopher Duffy for good measure. I have, in other words, taken an inspired plagiarist’s approach here and simply borrowed bits and pieces that I liked from these authors to give me the kind of game I want. What is that exactly? Basically, an excuse to play with my toys and see my glossy units on an attractively laid out table engaged in fun games that move along at a fair clip without getting too bogged down in the name of realism.

With that lofty goal in mind, I have boiled horse and musket warfare down to six (yes, ONLY six) core guidelines with an additional dozen ‘optional’ points to include in games as and when needed. The resulting rules, if I might be so bold as to use the term, are very much a work in progress, so I claim no authority over them, and I have yet to try any playtesting myself. However, I am nevertheless curious to know your impressions. Like so much in the hobby press and blogosphere, these rules are meant to inspire daydreaming, doodling in your notebook, more concrete thought, experimentation, and discussion above all else. What works? What doesn’t? Where could things be improved? Why? How might these rules be refined to fit certain historical conflicts more specifically? We want to know what you think here at Wargamer’s Notes Quarterly, so be sure to let us know! And who knows? Maybe you might write your own article in response about how you have used and adapted the rules presented below to suit your own needs. Ladies and gentlemen? I give you Call It Macaroni! Easy-Play Old School Rules for the Horse and Musket Era.

In our next issue we will be glad to present Stokes’ rules for your delectation. Why, we may even take them out for a test run!

Von Tschatschke Accepts De Lattes Surrender August 1770

Conclusion of Action at Picklehaubewicz January 2009


Lying down Revell Para and HaT machine gunner with Airfix para head and green stuff added. A kneeling Revell Africa Korp with para head, Standing Airfix para legs with Revell Africa Korps body and para head.

Front standing Airfix para legs with Revell Africa Korps body and Airfix para head. Rear standing Revell Africa Korp and Airfix para head and various conversions.

Converting Plastic 20mm WW2 German Paratroopers, Part 1By Will Harley - UK

As wargamers, we all leap into projects without thinking if the chosen period or range of figures will live up to our expectations. This is certainly true when one decides to build a WW2 German para battalion in 20mm plastic. Airfix, Revell Esci and Caesar make some excellent figures, but all of these packs lack the specialist troops needed for an elite unit. So, I decided to make them using the tried and tested method of hack and chop. Since these figures are plastic and as cheap as chips, any mistakes can be recycled without difficulty.


Here is a more complicated conversion, left Airfix para legs, Airfix German infantry machine gunner, para head. Right Airfix para legs, Matchbox sergeant body, para head. Both figures have had a wood glue and water wash, then liquid green stuff wash. The second picture shows various conversions using a selection of different figure manufacturers.

Heavy weapons using Hat machine guns with staples and pins for tripods. Airfix, Revell, Waterloo Folgore Division Light Artillery and a command group.

Necessary tools include a sharp modeling knife, super glue, liquid green stuff (it can be watered down to make a wash), a pin drill, pins, and wood glue. That’s it. Start your conversions by cutting figure body parts with a very sharp knife and then drilling body parts with a pin drill. Pin the parts together with pins cut to required length, then superglue them together next. When dry, add a wash of wood glue and water mix. Use green stuff to fill gaps and add form or shape to any gaps. After this is dry, slop on a wash of watered down liquid green stuff over the converted figures. I then apply an undercoat acrylic car spray (grey primer for £2.99 a large can) Finally, I paint my figures with acrylics, and coat them with acrylic matt varnish when fully dry. For WW2 figures, I base them in pairs on 2mm artist grey board.


Support weapons. . . On the workbench.

Action!

What else is required? Not much. Just a few boxes of Airfix, Revell / Esci and Caesar paratroopers or German infantry, Luftwaffe, Afrika Korps, WW1 German infantry and Matchbox German infantry, Revell Africa Korps, Hat machine / mortar crews, plus any other 20mm plastic figures that work for you, and a bit of ingenuity. Don’t be afraid to have a go at chopping up plastic figures either. It’s cheap, easy, and with the use of green stuff, or any form of modelling paste, there is an unlimited choice of figures for you to create. I hope this short photo article on modelling with 20mm plastic figures will be of some use and interest. Ok. Time to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in! Try a few of these simple conversions yourself, and let me know what you think.


Boer War BlockhousesBy St John Holystone Greenacre

My most enduring memory of the second Boer War was one of boredom. Ye Gods! I had arrived late for the fun and missed out on all that jolly messing about on the Modder and found myself in charge of a motley crew of City men and barrow boys out on the veldt, broiling by day and freezing by night as we manned a ramshackle collection of corrugated iron water tanks which we were told were block-houses.

You see, old Kitchener was a hustling sort who thought he could hustle the Boers, so he strung these blockhouses all over the countryside with barbed wire fences between them and ran his mounted infantry in ”sweeps” usually from the railway line to the wire line to catch any Boers in the area against the wire. Any farms in the sweep were burned, but not before being well-and truly looted by the troops – the Australians were as I recall especially proficient, although a little keen on shooting surrendered Boers. I saw one fellow with a grandfather clock of all things. What he expected to do with it was quite something else. Any civvies caught up in the sweep would be sent down the line to camps of concentration.

So, anyway, these blockhouses were pretty basic affairs, just a couple of layers of corrugated iron

with shingle or earth packed in between. Some of the lads piled extra shingle up around outside it to make double sure they’d keep rifle bullets out!

Here’s a model I made once, just a cardboard tube with corrugated paper pasted to the in- and out-sides with a pitched roof made from card, again clad with corrugated paper. I painted the whole thing silver with black for the gun slots.

A more enterprising chap than I might glue some stones to the outside for that extra bullet-proofing I mentioned earlier.

Quite a jolly game might be had with a couple of them, some wire and a couple of dozen toy soldiers with a party of Boers trying to slip through the wire with one of our patrols on their tail!

What a lark.

Bullet Proof blockhouse? We’ll see!


Simplicity and Brevity in Game Design – Part 1By John Acar, USA

Gone are the days of the short and simple commercial rules set. Wargame rules sets these days are, if I am being honest, quite attractive with there color photos and diagrams. They are, however, often quite lengthy, complex and expensive. Some rules sets claim to be “simple yet innovative” or “elegant” but usually they turn out to have layered simple game mechanics that prove to be cumbersome. Well, cumbersome to me anyway. For those like me who long for the simple game experience but can’t find anything new they like should try their hand at game design.

Game design: Like eating a sandwich

When you go out to lunch and get a sandwich, you wouldn’t try to eat the whole thing in one bite, right? Of course not! A bite at a time is what you do until you are done. The same logic can be applied to game design. Start with a very basic system. Set a goal and work towards that goal. Lay down the frame work. Once you have your model working the way you like, then you start adding the details. Like I said, break it down into bite sized pieces.

Choose your weapon, sir!

Probably the first step would be to pick an era that you are interested in. The 18th Century Horse and Musket Era would be a good start as unit types are few and the amount of detail for most troop types of the time were fairly limited. The Medieval Period might be another good choice. Here there are several different and interesting troop types though not so many to make your task a daunting one. Whatever you decide upon, make sure your chosen era really

interests you because you will probably be doing a bit of research to gain some insight on how battles were fought.

A question of scale

Once you’ve settled on an era, you now need to decide what scale you want your game to be. Don’t try to define “levels of operation” where one unit equals a brigade or battalion or whatever. It’s not necessary. It’s easier to simply define that the game is grand tactical or skirmish. In a grand tactical game, you are fighting entire battles. In a tactical game, you are fighting part of a battle where each player may only be fighting with a single division or a corps. In a skirmish game, you are fighting on a scale where each figure equals one man. Units might be a dozen or more figures in size and you may even have 100 figures per side, but it is still a skirmish game.

Hold the salient!

Salient points are those important features that make your chosen era unique. In the Horse and Musket era, for example, there is limited control over the troops because there are no radios and smoke from weapons limit visibility. Weapons are slow firing. Men are grouped into large units so that with the enormous amount of lead they fire, some shots might score a hit! Cavalry can get into combat quickly and they may also be used to finish off a fleeing enemy. Artillery is used to soften up the enemy so that your advancing troops will have an easy time of it when they come to grips with their foes. Finally, there is morale. No army is willing to fight to the last man. There needs to be some simple mechanism to govern when units and even entire armies flee the field.

A random thought...

Most folks are taught from an early age that “high” is good and “low” is bad. They also are taught that plus as good and a minus as bad. So, when designing your game, it is probably a good idea to make high rolls and pluses “good” and low rolls and minuses as “bad.” The player that benefits from the high roll should be the one that rolls the dice!


What we have defined is this:

We will write a simple game in the horse and musket period that allows us to fight large battles in a few hours covering movement, shooting, melee, morale and command.

It sounds like a lot, but these are really the essential points of most wargame.

Basic Design – The Caveman Fight

No. I am not talking about actual cavemen but rather a very basic design with few moving parts. Troops should be able to move, shoot, melee and fear the effects of combat but no more. All men at this point are created equal.

Your tool box

Every gamer has his/her favorite game mechanics. It might be hit/save, opposed die rolls, rolling on a chart or simply rolling buckets of dice and counting 6s. Taking the various elements of a game we’ve outlined so far, think about what games you enjoyed most. How did these games accomplish these points in the various phases? You can use these to cobble together your own game. Our hobby is old enough that just about every game mechanic has been thought of. There is probably no “original” game mechanic out there anymore. Decide which game mechanics from other games that you like and use them in your design. You can even make variations of these mechanics to suit your taste.

Sequence of play

Every game has a sequence of play. Each player must complete a series of steps or pass to the next player. You could make it as simple as a free form turn where you can do any action with any unit in any order you like or you could be very structured and have various steps such as move-shoot-melee-morale. Players can alternate in each turn or one player could do all the steps before the other side goes. I prefer to have morale checks at the beginning of the turn so that adverse results count as the unit’s move for that turn. It is a simple way of adding control

problems to your game. Another favorite of mine is to allow units to perform just one action per turn. It could be move, change formation, change facing, shoot or charge into melee. When you do this, if your movement rates and shooting ranges are correctly proportioned, there is no need for defensive fire rules. The unit will be shot at one or more times before it closes to contact.

Forward march!

Units have to be able to move and maneuver. Depending on the scale of your game, units might be very rigid and thus be difficult to move because of the large number of men they represent or they might be quite nimble perhaps because they represent just a handful of men. Should a unit be able to drift from side to side or should they march straight ahead? Maybe they have to pay a move penalty to change facing because they are in formation. Is changing formation even appropriate to the time period? In ancient warfare up through the late Renaissance, units were either on the march or deployed and ready for battle. During the horse and musket period, sometimes formations mattered. A square, for instance, might be appropriate because that was the formation used to fight off cavalry at least from the mid 18th century on. Artillery would be limbered and unlimbered. Infantry might form a deep column to carry out a bayonet charge against the enemy.

Combat

Whether it is shooting or hand to hand, one combat mechanic can be used for both. Hit/save works well and ultimately extends the granularity of an ordinary die. You could instead use a chart and add up points based on weapons and training. You might even go simple and throw a bunch of dice needing 6s to kill. You could then halve and double the number as needed based on the situation. This method is especially fun for horse and musket as you feel like you are firing a volley. Some folks you run into will have there pet peeves about one game mechanic or another. It’s all probability in the end. Just don’t get carried away with the dice rolling. One or two dice rolls is usually enough to accomplish a given task.


Morale

Morale is the last bit. It represents fatigue as well as fear and shock from combat. Many games out there simply step you down through morale levels in an orderly fashion. In this way you can kind of predict how much fight a unit has left in it. And yet, we’ve always been told that combat is chaos and unpredictable. A better way to simulate morale is to make it more random. I’ve been using a random chart in my game similar to that of “Fire and Fury.” You make morale checks at the beginning of the turn by rolling a 6 sided die and adding modifiers. You abide by the result on the chart. Sometimes the unit will rally with out issue and even can make a full move. Other times it will not move or fall back in disorder despite the fact that the enemy is bearing his flank to you! It is infuriatingly fun! It also adds that certain amount of chaos sometimes lacking in other games.

Our simple game

I’m now going to cobble together a simple game off the top of my head. We will use our mission statement above.

Simple Horse and Musket

1. Units are made of 12 figures. They may all shoot.

2. Play alternates between players. Starting with the first player, make morale checks for all units. Carry out compulsory moves for each unit.

3. Perform one action with any or all units. Actions may be move, shoot, charge, change formation or change facing.

4. Units move straight ahead up to 6”.

5. Units may change formation for half a move and move the rest as desired.

6. Valid formations are line or column.

7. Units may face up to 45 degrees for free or face in any other direction for half a move. They then may move the rest of their move straight ahead as desired.

8. Units get 1 die per 2 figures for combat. Melee hits on a 4+. Short range shooting (6”) on a 5+ and long range shooting (12”) on a 6.

9. Each successful hit may be saved on a 5+. One casualty is inflicted for each failed save.

10. Units that took casualties check morale at the beginning of their next turn. Throw a D6. 1 fall back 1 full move facing away. 2 fall back half move facing enemy. 3 no move. 4-5 half move this turn. 6 full move

11. Deduct 1 from morale for each 25% of casualties. Units quit the field at 75% casualties.

There. It took me 15 minutes. Nothing original. I’m not even sure it is terribly interesting at this point. It almost certainly has problems but with a little fiddling on the tabletop, something good can come of these rules.

Next time, we will be “Adding Chrome.” Until then, good gaming!

I’m sure we’re looking forward to it, John!


Stokes

I’m from the United States, currently in the state of Michigan, and have been involved with wargaming in one form or another for over 30 years. Initially, I got into the hobby after two or three years of D&D in the very early 1980s, but by the winter of ‘84 had all but abandoned Orcs, Kobolds, and Lizard Men for grenadiers,fusiliers, and hussars. Truth is stranger than fiction as the saying goes. I was soon hard at work collecting and painting 15mm Napoleonics with the vague idea of assembling corps-level forces for the Waterloo Campaign. And all on a teenager’s pocket money. You can kind of tell how that went though. By the early 2000s, I was, frankly, bored with the on-again, off-gain project and sought something with which to re-inspire myself.

Enter the Yahoo Old School Wargaming online discussion group (abuzz at the time with plans for the upcoming SIattangbad reight at the May ‘06 Partizan), Young and Lawford’s delightful “Charge! Or How to Play Wargames”, and, coincidentally, Greg’s own Duchy of Alzheim blog. Just the thing! This remarkable coalescence of events happened in late 2005 and early ‘06. Since then, I’ve managed to build two small 18th century fictitious and vaguely Germanic 30mm armies, build lots of scenery, squeeze in the occasional game, and even write the occasional article for the glossy hobby press. Many of these activities, and others that have nothing whatsoever to do with wargaming, have been documented on my own blog, The Grand Duchy of Stollen, since August 2006. Barring alien abduction, I don’t see myself veering away from where I now am hobby-wise. For a variety of reasons, the semi-fictitious mid-18th century has it all for me. Maybe one day, I’ll take a crack at finishing those Napoleonics, but I’m having too much fun now to give it serious consideration anytime soon.

Greg

I’m from Australia - Melbourne, Victoria and drifted into wargaming as a kid. I started off like many others making model aeroplanes and tanks and getting those boxes of polythene toy soldiers produced by Airfix. I was initially a military modeller, being very much seduced by the books I found in my local library, especially Airfix Magazine Guide #19. Everntually I stumbled across (of all things) Charles Grant’s book on Ancient Wargaming and a little penny dropped...

Honestly though, I doodled about with the wargaming side of my hobby inconclusively for years. Like Stokes I dabbled with D&D at High School and just generally got on with life. Stokes and i ‘met” as he says through the OSW Yahoo Group and we discovered what may well have been worlds undreamed of for either of us. Indeed, I think a great many of us owe a debt to Patrick Wilson and what he started tat that online nook. All of a sudden there were just these amazing conversations being spun and I was hearing all these stories of how wargaming in it’s modern form got going and the wonderful people who made it happen - many of whom are no longer with us.

The magazine that you hold in your hands (or are viewing on your hand-held device) is our attempt to give back a little something to the richly rewarding hobby that we all share. We hope it gives you as much please to read as we had in bringing it to you. And remember, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

About the Editors


The Costs of War: Wargaming on a BudgetNoel Williams, Sheffield, UK

Wargaming can be an expensive business. I’m always on the lookout for ways to get more value out of the (far too much but never enough) I spend on the hobby. In this occasional series pieces, I’ll offer some ideas from my own experience, and gleaned from many gaming sources over the years, of where we can save a little money as wargamers. No doubt you’ll be familiar with some of these suggestions, but some may be new to you.

Our main expenses, of course, are the raw materials of gaming: figures, vehicles, terrain and rules. I’ve found a good source for all these is the auction house. Of course, we’re all familiar with Ebay and similar online auction sites, but these are sometimes less than the wonderful resource they originally were. They’re often inhabited by speculative traders trying to squeeze as much profit as they can from “rare” Citadel miniatures or “collectable” toys. I know one dealer who says he has 2000 separate items on Ebay at the moment. Finding the honest hobbyist who’s just trying to finance his next army by clearing out the old can be a difficult task, unless you’re interested in what no-one else wants.

Which is not, in fact, a bad place to be, if you’re keen to save money. Pick a period, scale, manufacturer or rule system that’s totally out of fashion, and you may well find it cheap. Another means to success online is to be prepared to buy a heap of dross in order to extract a few good figures. Buy a mountain of old and broken lead, and find the six unbroken miniatures within it. Then be ready to repaint, rebase and reorganise what you find. It can be rewarding, but also a lot of work.

Recently, rather than Ebay I’ve had more success with traditional face-to-face auctions – the kind

where you’re worried that if you sneeze at the wrong moment you might accidentally buy a stuffed badger. Whilst modern auction houses often put such sales online, I still think it’s best to visit the viewing and to bid live, in the room. Why?

Bidding online at a live auction costs more and, most importantly, risks more. Until you’ve actually handled the lots, you don’t really know what you’re getting. Caveat emptor is an important principle here – if you’ve not actually looked in the DVD boxes to check they contain the promised Zulu and Waterloo rather than a bootleg of Peppa Pig or How to Grow Zuccini, you might be disappointed when you get your bargain home. The auction catalogue description is often too brief, sometimes incorrect and few valuers actually know about wargaming, so the true nature (and value) of what passes through their hands can be missed. A bland description and a bad photograph may therefore hide a wargaming gem.

Here’s an example from a recent Militaria sale. Most of the people interested in these collect either weapons, cap badges, medals or WW2 memorabilia. In such auctions, I love to be able to handle actual artefacts, as if in a rather casual museum, though prices are generally beyond what I’d want to afford. (Uniforms are often dirt cheap, if that’s an area of interest, though). But neither auctioneers nor militaria collectors generally know much about gaming. This is the catalogue entry for one recent lot: “A Large Quantity of 20mm/24mm and Other White Metal War Gaming Figures. Napoleonic Wars theme. Mainly painted. Four boxes.” How much would you pay?

The auction house estimated £100-£200, which is their way of saying “we know it’s worth a decent sum, but we’ve no idea how much”. In fact, it went for £150, but even though many were simply scrap metal, still over 1000 pieces were usable, and three quarters of them were painted. I only had to find 100 of them I wanted to keep, and I’d a bargain.

Militaria auctions also often include books on military history, generally in lots of 20-50,


with such lots selling for as little as £10. On one occasion, a box of 50 Strategy and Tactics magazines, each with their games unpunched, sold for £50. Ebay traders try to sell these games at £20 each.

Specialist toy sales are also a wonderful resource and general Household (or “Collectable”) sales can hold gems, too. I’ve seen many plastic kits, for example, such as Airfix and Tamiya. Usually the fully assembled models sell more cheaply than unassembled kits. (If buying the latter, make sure you check the contents, especially as instructions seem to go astray). I’ve seen collections of 54mm Del Prado figures sell for less than 50p a piece and large scale waterline ship models for only a couple of pounds each.

The mainstay of toy sales, of course, is model railway collections and collections of die cast vehicles. As these are collected in their own right, you may find you’ve a fight on your hand in the bidding, so the trick is to work out, piece by piece, what the maximum value that collection is actually worth to you and not to care if the bidding goes beyond that total. For example, Lledo and Matchbox Models of Yesteryear typically fetch less than £1 each, but if you only want six models, and there are forty in the lot you’re bidding for, you might set the value at £2 each, making the total lot worth £12 to you, though it will probably sell for over £20. However, if you feel you can sell the 34 models you don’t want to your mates at, say, 50p each, then the value of the lot to you is £12 for the six you want, plus £17 you’ll get back from fellow gamers, making the total value of the lot £29.

Do be aware, though, that in the UK at least if you habitually do this – buying with the idea of selling – then you are “trading”, which means operating as a business, and that opens all sorts of implications.

An important word in live auction toy sales is “playworn”. This usually means “bashed about by children using them as they were intended” rather than “kept in the boxes by a collector”. Playworn items can fetch ridiculously low prices, because no collector wants them. Yet playworn condition is perfectly acceptable if your aim as a wargamer is to repaint, kitbash or otherwise modify the model, or if you want to use it as damaged scenery. As with many other sources, use your imagination to figure out what a model might be used for. Playworn diecast can make excellent Car Wars games. I’m currently thinking of a Car Wars game set in the 1920s/30s, with modified old bangers.

Remember three things in live auctions if you want to save money and be happy. Firstly, you’ll have to pay a buyer’s premium, which is 21% on the sale price in the auction house I most often go to. So I add a fifth to whatever calculation I’m making, because that’s what I’ll really be paying, not the amount I bid up to. Secondly, if the bidding reaches the maximum you’ve set, you must drop out. Don’t get so desperate to own that lot that you bid over the value you’ve worked out for it. If you do, then you’ve either wasted your money or your original calculation was not an honest one. You won’t get a bargain if you argue yourself into paying more than it’s worth.

Thirdly, finally – and I’m not sure if it’s a warning or an encouragement – one excitement I get at a live auction is the feeling that I could just put in a bid for something, even though I’ve not a hope of getting it. At a recent sale there were two 3 pdr brass cannon on naval carriages, valued at £1500-£2000. I was sorely tempted to put in a bid of around £200, just for the thrill of bidding on something like that. And, who knows, I might even have won!


It all started back in the days of Geo-Hex when a friend and I drooled over the beauty of the product, but that was back in its early days when the $140-$180 you had to shell out for a basic to a deluxe set was a big nut to swallow. However, we managed to walk up to the dealer booth ready to buy but failed our morale check at the last minute and didn’t make a purchase. Eventually, I decided to try producing something similar myself. How hard could it be… right? RIGHT? Not difficult at all if you want a carbon copy of Geo-Hex, but one thing led to another, and I eventually developed a different and far superior system.

While Geo-Hex is nice, it is made of expanded Styrofoam and thus fragile. As a result, it is susceptible to dents and dimples when players lean on it. That’s a major problem with war game terrain. It can’t be made like our cousins in the model railroading hobby do it. Their stuff is wondrously beautiful, detailed, life-like, and accurately scaled. But it’s also fragile, and most

model railroad techniques and supplies simply won’t survive an eight-turn game. War game terrain, by contrast, must stand up to a huge amount of manhandling. It also has to endure often less than ideal storage conditions between games. Here is a way I developed for creating terrain that is both realistic AND sturdy.

There is one important point to keep in mind before we start. For tabletop battlefields to look good, they must look notionally, or evocatively realistic. In other words, items like model woods and fields must call to mind the spirit of actual woods and field. They do not necessarily have to be super-detailed, down to tree stumps, dense undergrowth, and little paths, but our model woods and trees must nevertheless be completely believable. Think of them as stage scenery in a movie, TV show, a stage play, or an opera, rather than a minutely detailed dioramas. OK. Let’s look at how to make attractive, realistic, and tough fields and grasslands more specifically.

Hexagonal Terrain: A How ToBy Otto Schmidt, USA

Hexes in action


Materials

• Piece of Bristol Board (available at any art supply store) at 22” by 24” and 1/16 to 1/8” thick.

• 1 utility knife.

• 1 Compass with at least a 12” reach.

• 1 pencil

• 1 Carpenter’s square or thick heavy metal ruler or straight edge.

• 1 Jig saw or sabre saw.

• 2-3 pencils (you’re sure to lose one—the sharp one.)

• 2 1 lb bags of “Celluclete” Paper Mache. Available at arts and crafts stores.

1) Make the Hexagon Template

Make a hexagonal pattern by cutting the Bristol Plate to the size of hexagon you wish to create. The exact size depends on what you want to use it for, and your decision you will serve as a guide the rest of the project. Decide how long each chord (side) of the hexagon will be and measure carefully before you begin cutting out the template. Hold your breathe!

2) Trace Your Hexagon Template

OK, relax a bit, take your template, and trace it repeatedly on your ¼” thick piece of luan plywood. Be sure to leave about a ¼” gap, as shown below.

3) Carefully Cut Out Your Hexagons

Once you have covered the entire sheet of luan take the jig saw and carefully cut these hexagons out, one at a time. Hold your breathe again, keep your eye on the work, and don’t ruin adjacent hexes by cutting into them, or lop off a stray fingertip. Be meticulous and cut carefully along your lines. Remember, you want these to fit fairly uniformly into a large hexagonal mosaic when you place them on the table. If you have a friend who works in a tool shop with access to a C&C cutting machine, you might possibly ask him to do this for you. All he has to do is load the plywood into the machine, which will cut out exact hexagons every time and save considerable time.

4) Check Your Hexagon Cut-outs for Accuracy

Once done, stack up the hexagons and shift them around to see they are symmetrical, or very close to it. Exercise strict quality control and reject any that don’t line up to within 1/8” on any side, but don’t throw them away. You can always reuse them and use the leftover and rejected material for other projects. OK, you now have a pile of “plates” ready to turn into terrain.

5) Prepare Your Hexagons for Terraining

OK, so you’ve carved up your hexagonal base plates. Now you have to decorate them. But it’s not enough just to paint them. Usually luan plywood comes with one side finished, but even cheaper stuff is used for subflooring and is unfinished on both sides. You’ll want to smooth out the grain the wood on at least one side. Simple wood putty or spackling paste (filler) does nicely here. Apply a small dab to each hexagonal plate and spread it out with a broad putty knife. Scrape away most, leaving just enough to fill in the woodgrain. If you plan to use the hexagons for rougher constructions, you can forgo this particular step.


6) Take a Stroll

Really! But with a specific purpose in mind. Take along a small writing pad and a few pencils, observe what actual fields look like, and jot down your observations. Pay attention to how the ground looks, its slope, and its colours. Notice that, unless you are in a town park or on somebody’s front lawn, the lay of the land is rarely flat. Almost all open fields and grasslands, perhaps the most common terrain we wargamers deal with, feature many small swales and undulations and are rarely level. Keep in mind that unless a field has been planted with a monocrop, like grass- it will also have a certain texture to it. Pay attention to the ground about 100 yards away too. How clumpy doe it appear? Does the dirt lie in small divots like cottage cheese? I’m talking now about plain grass, not hillsides or forest floors. You will also notice that in spite of the best efforts of the farmer, small rocks always make their way to the surface. The main point to remember is that unless it is a stretch of manicured park or lawn, fields and open grassland are rarely smooth in texture.

7) Back to the Workbench

Once you have reviewed those landscape notes, it’s time to take a crack at modelling what you have observed in real life and recreate a reasonable facsimile of it in miniature. The best material for approximating actual ground in miniature form is “Celluclete” a commercially made papier mache, available in one pound blocks. It’s basically just powdered paper or newsprint or fiber, and it forms a gooey paste when mixed with water that is excellent for modelling. Buy a lot! You’ll need it.

8) Mix Your Celluclete

Follow the directions on the package carefully. The consistency you want is like loose putty, so you will probably need to use a little more water than they recommend (I always do). Most of the time, this stuff will adhere all on its own, but you can add a quarter cup of white glue (elmer’s or even a latex wood glue) to a slop of prepared Celluclete to provide extra strength and help the mixture adhere better to the surfaces of your hexagonal plates.

9) Apply the Celluclete to Your Hexagons

Take a golf ball-sized spoonful of the Celleclete, put it on the hexagon plate and smear it around with your hands. Working it into the wood and pat it down so that it looks like half a dozen heavily constipated English Mastiffs suddenly let loose all over it. Remember this is for flat terrain, so you just want to roughen it up a tiny bit. Once you have slightly smeared the Celleclete onto the surfaces of your hexagons, set them aside to dry. You can come back and tamp it down later, smoothing it with your finger to get a nice effect. Set everything aside for a few hours to dry thoroughly.

10) Consider Your Colour Options

Now, what colour do you want to paint those hex plates? Revisit the notes you took during your country stroll one more time. The colour you are after should resemble the shade of grass growing in the wild viewed from a distance of about 50-100 yards rather than that deep green shade of a highly manicured, chemically treated lawn. Surprising isn’t it? We’re so used to bright green felt and modern, over-fed golf course grass and suburban lawns that it’s almost strange to realize that actual fields don’t look the same particularly when viewed from a distance.

11) Visit Your Local DIY Store

Go to the paint mixing section and pick up a couple dozen of those paint sample chip cards with five or six shades on them. Choose about 10 in the blues, 10 in the greens, 10 in the browns and 10 in the yellows. You’ll need these for colour matching, and if you do get lost and didn’t lay down a trail of paper bits, you can eat them. The chocolate brown shade does not taste like chocolate, but the “Colonial Plum” is quite good. Narrow your final choices to just three colours or shades of a particular colour and purchase a quart of each. Be sure to get FLAT interior paints.

12) Paint Your Hexagons

Once you are back at your workbench, simply paint each hex with a brush, mottling and varying the effect using your various colours or shades. Use disposable brushes, which are cheap


enough to throw away if you don’t want to bother cleaning them when finished.

See the example of the now painted hexes below.

And there you are! A bunch of grassy hexagons that look every bit as good and even better than commercially produced (and much more expensive) modular wargame terrain. Best of all, you will have made it yourself, adding one

more personal touch to your tabletop and future games. A couple of final points to keep in mind. First, be sure to paint around the edges of your grass hexagons. Second, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit. After all, you can always repaint a mistake. OK. Those are the basics. Next time we’ll consider some interesting things to build on those basic grassy hexagonal bases.

An advance in terrain design


A few (let’s not be too picky) years ago I became frustrated with evenly matched naval encounters where players happily sacrifice their fleet with no aim other than to rob the opponent of his. It was clear the only way to overcome this mutually assured naval destruction was to run a campaign. So, taking a deep breath I thumbed through my trusty back catalogue of wargaming magazines and settled on a Russo-Japanese campaign system devised by David Manley and printed in both Wargames Illustrated (#181) and Miniature Wargames (#265). The Russo-Japanese War (RJW) was already a front-runner for this project as I was keen to exploit the quick-play pre-dreadnought rules, ‘Damn Battleships Again’ (DBA) by Phil Barker – freely available on-line. A quick play-test with card counters, also from the trusty Interweb (see Mikasa example), was an unqualified success. Filled with enthusiasm I cast around for miniatures and selected Panzerschiffe’s 1/2400 range. They make almost every ship I wanted and being resin castings they are easier to convert/modify than metal; especially when drilling holes to mount steel rod masts. The masts were given

tops by rolling strips of paper around the masts and securing with superglue – see photo of the Russian cruiser. Yards were omitted as too fiddly/fragile for wargame models. The ships were mounted on magnetic tiling with a sea texture applied with fast-setting epoxy resin teased into waves and wakes with a cocktail stick. The ships were fitted with a card spacer before mounting on the base to maintain their freeboard once the sea texture was added. While the fleets were under construction several further play-tests fine-tuned the rules - I’m an obsessive rule-tweaker - making the DBA rules more RJW specific and setting out how campaign encounters are translated onto the table. Unlike many others, this project was not abandoned and the completed Japanese and Russian Pacific and Baltic fleets were soon (by my standards) ready and war was declared!

Setting the Scene for Russo-Japanese Naval ArmageddonRob Grace, UK


For those interested ship counters and modified DBA and Campaign rules can be supplied via the editors on request. The original DBA rules are at: http://www.wrg.me.uk/PHIL/DBSA%202003.htm

A Quick Campaign Overview

The campaign theatre of operations is divided into several sea areas (see map). The Japanese accrue victory points (VPs) for successfully convoying their army across the sea to seize Port Arthur; 35 VPs being required to win the war. The Russians win by either denying Japanese VPs or cancelling them out through actions such as bombarding the disembarkation ports. If the Russians can delay a Japanese win for long enough the Baltic fleet arrives to save the day – or meet a watery doom at Tsushima. Each turn (two per month), aside from the initial attack on Port Arthur, the players have to apportion their ships across variety mission types; these include patrols, convoy escort, bombardment and minelaying / sweeping. Players must specify the route that each mission takes to its destination (the return leg is ignored) hopefully avoiding any enemy patrols. Of the different mission types patrolling is probably the most important. Successfully patrolling a sea area gives a player control of that area in the following turn which will limit their opponent’s ability to conduct missions; a mission may enter an enemy controlled area but may not pass through it.

Glossary of ship types

AC Armoured Cruiser BB Battleship LC Light Cruiser OAC Obsolete Armoured Cruiser OBB Obsolete Battleship OPC Obsolete Protected Cruiser PC Protected Cruiser TBD Torpedo Boat Destroyer

For those interested maps, order sheets and campaign timeline (schedule of troop convoys, reinforcements, etc.) can be supplied via the editors on request

The Naval History of the Russo-Japanese War by a partial, prejudiced*, & ignorant wargamer

[*written entirely from perspective of the commander of the Japanese Fleet.]

PART ONE: From Disaster at Port Arthur to Recovery at Chemulpo

As 1903 gave way to 1904, the tension between Russian empire and the rapidly expanding power of Japan came to a head. Recognising the futility of negotiation, his Imperial Majesty, affronted by repeated intrusions into Japan’s rightful sphere of influence, commanded his armed forces to muzzle the savage bear. The offensive nature of the Czar’s new naval base at Port Arthur made this the obvious place to affix the muzzle and the army was accordingly ordered to seize it forthwith. However, the deployment and sustainment of the troops tasked with the capture of Port Arthur was the responsibility of the navy and needed them to wrest control of the sea from the larger Russian Pacific Fleet. Seeking to even the odds the navy sortied its entire torpedo-boat-destroyer (TBD) fleet (19 vessels) in a pre-emptive night-attack on the Russian battleships (BBs) anchored in the roadstead outside the entrance to Port Arthur. The attacking TBD squadrons slipped in undetected past Russian TBD patrols and shore batteries to achieve surprise [on a D6 roll of 1-4]. Unfortunately, the battleship Tsarevich was more alert and spotted the TBD squadron approaching from the north as it entered searchlight range and opened fire. As rudely awakened defences slowly came to life an increasing volume of fire lashed the intrepid TBDs as they sought to close with the armoured leviathans. The flag division of the northern TBDs (Shirakumo & Asashiwo) almost immediately took a series of crippling hits and was forced to retire. The remaining three divisions managed to close and all six boats delivered text-book torpedo attacks on the stationary battleships. How the perfidious Slavs emerged unscathed will probably never be known but rumours of saboteurs in the torpedo depot seem to be the


only reasonable explanation for the failure for a single torpedo to strike home [I can think of no other reason for such a poor series of dice throws]. As the Tsarevich got underway and backed out of her berth the other battleships and shore batteries switched fire from the retiring northern TBDs to the squadrons still approaching from the south. Undeterred, the plucky TBD crews pressed on through the maelstrom of fire assailing them from all sides. With four vessels sunk and four more crippled it was clear that not even their superhuman courage could prevail against such towering odds. With sadness in their hearts the southern attack was discontinued and the squadrons withdrew to seek vengeance another day. With a balance sheet showing four TBDs sunk and another five crippled against a broken night’s sleep for the Russians the campaign was off to disastrous start!

The failure of the Port Arthur attack left the Russian numerical advantage in battleships (7 vs. 6) intact and forced the Japanese High Command to take stock and reconsider their war plans. Despite this setback, the High Command’s belief in the qualitative superiority of their ships and men convinced them a bold offensive remained the best strategy that would sooner or later present them with opportunities they could exploit. Accordingly, the troop convoys sailed as planned and the battleships were sent to patrol off Chemulpo to block any Russian attempt to interdict them.

The Battle of Chemulpo (10-Feb-1904)

6 hours before sun-set, with squalls from south-west, the Japanese sighted a squadron of four Russian battleships escorted by TBDs sent to extract the Variag (PC) and Korietz (OPC) from Chemulpo through the Japanese blockade. The Japanese keen to demonstrate that when not sabotaged they were more than a match for the boorish Slav immediately rang up full steam ahead and steered to attack. While the Japanese battleships engaged their opposite numbers the armoured cruisers steered to stop the enemy ships escaping from Chemulpo. The rats bolting from the port were stopped in short order; the Korietz was sunk and the crippled Variag turned tail and limped back into Chemulpo where it was scuttled to avoid capture. The battleship contest was short-lived; the outnumbered Russians seeking safety in flight. The Japanese seeking to press home their advantage were thwarted by the unstable Shimoze filling in their shells with many detonating on impact before penetrating the Russian armour. The fleeing Russians concentrated their fire on the Imperial flagship (Mikasa), which was crippled and forced to fall out of the battle-line. The Russian admiral then sought to use his TBDs as a shield in an attempt to buy his escape with their lives. The sad waste of human life consequent on this dishonourable act was not long in coming as the Japanese battleships, denied a suitable opponent, contemptuously swept the TBDs aside, sinking and crippling many. Despite all these obstacles the Japanese battleships inflicted damage on all the Russian battleships before they escaped into the failing light. The final spiteful act of the fleeing Russian battleships was to cynically target the weaker armoured cruisers (AC). The Asama (AC), overmatched and crippled, slewed to a halt directly ahead of the Yakumo (AC) which put her helm hard over. Too late! The Yakumo crashed into the Asama sending her to the bottom. The Yakumo damaged in the collision, and the Idzumo (AC), both suffered further hits from the fleeing Russians as they stole away into the murk. As night fell the Japanese were left in command of the approaches to Chemulpo but at a high price: the battleships Mikasa crippled and the Yashima, Asahi and Shikishima damaged; and the armoured cruisers Asama

Night Attack on Port Arthur (8/9-Feb-1904): T = Tsarevich


sunk, Yakumo crippled and Idzumo damaged. To set against this loss they had damaged all four Russian battleships, eliminated the protected cruisers Varyag and Korietz, and sunk 8 TBDs and crippled two more. But more importantly with the seas swept clear the Chemulpo convoy arrived unscathed.

In the post-mortem following the battle the Japanese were at a loss to understand why the Russians had only committed 4 battleships leaving them outnumbered in a key action. They were not left wondering for long as the cruiser escort scouting ahead of the convoy to Chinampo spied the ‘missing’ Russian battleships blockading the port. The convoy was turned about and unnoticed by the patrolling Russians slipped away back to Sasebo to sail another day. Reviewing the first weeks of the campaign the Japanese concluded that, after bad start, they had performed well against the larger fleet although robbed of a decisive victory by defective ammunition. While faulty shells could be replaced it was unlikely the Russians would again commit the error of dividing their battleship force in the presence of their enemy. However, with 4 Russian and 3 Japanese battleships undergoing repair a small window of opportunity opened during which the Japanese would have parity in capital ships.

The next phase of Japanese operations (Late-Feb 1904) started with a bold attempt to bottle up the Russians in Port Arthur. A small force of cruisers sent to lay a minefield off the port inexplicably encountered no enemy patrols and completed their mission unhindered. The folly of the dull-

witted bear in not grasping the importance of patrolling the approaches to his lair was repeated with the dispatch of 7 TBDs to bombard Pitzuwo. This mission, chased off without loss by a Japanese patrol, was a worthless gesture; their higher command failing to appreciate the TBDs lacked the firepower for an effective shore bombardment . The same could not be said about the force sent to bombard Chemulpo.

The 2nd Battle of Chemulpo (28-Feb-1904)

in rough seas with only 3 hours to sun-set, a menacing line of 3 Russian battleships with an armoured cruiser and other vessels in support closed on Chemulpo with evil intent. However, before this barbaric bombardment could be visited on the unsuspecting port 3 Japanese battleships hove over the horizon. The opportunity for an even match was there for the taking and this time the Japanese, having replaced their faulty shells, were no longer fighting with one hand behind their back. The Japanese, assuming their foe would head out to sea to gain sea room, were wrong-footed and temporarily lost sight of the enemy as they swung around Chemulpo Island. As the Russians emerged from the far side Japanese fire began to tell and the Peresviet was crippled and, temporarily out of control in the heavy seas, run down by the following ship, the Retvizan. As the fatally holed Peresviet slipped beneath the waves the remaining Russian ships fled into the night abandoning the now crippled Retvizan to its fate. The Japanese not wishing to see the helpless crew of the Retvizan consigned to a watery grave accepted its surrender and took it as a prize back to Sasebo.

Battle of ChemulpoM = Mikasa, A = Asama, Y = Yakumo, V = Varyag, K = Korietz.

Second Battle of Chemulpo: only Russian BBs & AC shown; P = Peresviet, R = Retvizan.


This action, during which the Japanese only suffered damage to the Fuji (BB), marked a turning point in the campaign with the Japanese overturning the Russian superiority in battleships. It also marked a change in battle tactics with both navies increasing the separation between ships

sailing in formation to avoid the catastrophic collisions that both had experienced in the last two actions . As February passed into March the Japanese admiralty had cause for satisfaction with progress so far.

1. The rules only allow shore bombardment by battleships or armoured cruisers.

2. Actually, a rule amendment to make collisions less common.

Little Lead Men By Chris Gregg

Chris is a talented artist. If you are interested in purchasing his work please contact us and we’ll be glad to put you in touch with him. More examples of Chris’ work can be found at www.cheltenham-art.com/chrisgregg.htm


Tales from a Bedfordshire VillageJohn Preece, UK

I have always blamed Wargamers Newsletter. As a teenager I was enthralled by the monthly series ‘At The Colonels Table’. The Colonel gamed on two billiard tables with a huge collection of figures for the Napoleonic wars and he lived in Bedfordshire. Five years later I was living and working in Bedford but sadly I never found the Colonel. I did however discover a surprising repository of knowledge in the local social club.

The Bedfordshire Brickworks had a mainly eastern European workforce all of whom had wartime experiences, which they were happy to share, though it was not a good idea to ask to closely which units they had served in. Indeed it was a standing joke that if you played the Horst Wessel through the company PA, half the workforce would spring to attention. I was fascinated not just by the stories but by the way they contradicted so much that was happening every week on the Wargames table.

There was the German infantryman who served on the western front from 1938 to 1944, yet claimed that he never ever saw a tank in action and the only time he saw a unit was at the victory parade in Paris. How could that be when they were bumper to bumper down the club?

Not that the Germans were the faultless machine that gamers claimed, I learned that at Leningrad their artillery bombardment started at precisely 8.15 each morning and at 8.10 you got under cover. That in all theatres German HMG were sighted too high and if you kept your head down you could ignore them. Most surprisingly of all a little old lady in the post office told me that the noise of the rocket salvoes was very frightening but any tiny fold of cover in the ground was enough to ensure safety.

On the allied side I listened to an account of the Fall of Crete told by a pre-war regular to an ex paratrooper. It went something like, “we looked up one morning and there were all these parachutists coming down. Well, we sat around for a while then the officer came up to us and said, It’s all over boys, we’re surrounded stack your rifles over there.” The para was apocalyptic by now and exploded, “you had your **** rifles why didn’t you shoot them when they were hanging there?” The regular replied in a phrase that exploded a thousand wargame rule sets: “Nobody ordered us to.”

Sadly now, almost all of those voices are silent and I do my listening in my library. But still across the years the occasional voice speaks clearly. The British medical officer who sits on the side of a mountain in the Pyrenees, munching his lunch and watching the skirmishing on the far side of the valley, makes a careless note. ‘The French Voltigeurs and British rifles spread out to skirmish, but the British light companies who grouped together in clumps for mutual support, suffered greater casualties and were driven off.’

Two hundred years later, I learn more from that casual comment about the reasons untrained troops could not skirmish than by reading a dozen tactical explanations on Austrian and Prussian skirmish organizations.

There is of course no substitute for experience, no matter how little valued it is in today’s society. In all the WW2 rules I have read only one specifically has a rule for crossing the street when fighting in a BUA. That was by Lionel Tarr who himself fought as a paratrooper at Arnhem and might be expected to consider it of some importance. But for the legion who were not there...?

Dreaming Spires? Maybe not but certainly holding more knowledgeof the eastern front than anywhere else in the UK.


That is not to damn all wargame rules, most have something of merit and all represent an honest attempt to reflect the authors interests. Indeed modern preoccupations with initiative rather than morale seem to be a great step forward. (Almost as good as having no morale rules at all.) However the best set of rules in the world is no substitute for having a feeling for and knowledge of the period that is being played.

Eventually I did become part of a group of close friends in Bedford who played games that seemed rather more historically based. Indeed the one rule that was sacrosanct was that we would rather lose a game than win it by using an unhistorical tactic. The Colonel never did join us but do you know I rather think he might have approved.

Afterward...

So, there you have it. We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed this magazine as much as we have been delighted to bring it to you. We feel sure that there’s something here for everyone.

When we conceived this magazine we were sure that there was a place for a content rich publication in this fairly crowded marketplace. A publication that was focussed on the great pleasure that this hobby can yield and the joy that there is in being able to share this enjoyment with others.

Have a happy new year. One last note; we’d welcome your feedback, but beware – we are considering a letters page! And remember, any letter of sufficient length threatens to become an article.

All the best, Greg and Stokes

Documents

WARGAMER’S NOTES · 2017. 7. 8. · collecting or painting the miniatures, or building the armies? Is it the reading and collecting of books on your chosen periods and campaigns?