Midwinter update....

Weather hot but the news is cool!

I haven't posted for a while due to pressures of the day job. However, I have not stopped thinking about stuff which will now have to go on the list for next year. So, a nice opportunity before Christmas to get my thoughts in order. 

1. Battlefield Hobbies: This is a new wargames store and gaming facility(?). I came across their Facebook page by accident via PBIcandy. A new wargames store is always pretty rare. What's even more rare is that this one is situated only a short walk from my house in Daventry. Simply unbelievable. Judging by the clientele in the photo I'll fit right in. I'll check it out tomorrow and will do a short write up. I'll even take some photos.

2. Airfix Battles: This project is continuing to surprise me. I see that Benthamfish is now engaged in the game design process. You can check his blog here! This looks like it might be very good indeed. 

3. Aurelian: A new game from Sam Mustafa. This looks like Blucher with ancients. The BGG entry reads like this:

Aurelian is a tabletop game about the Crisis of the Third Century, the period during which the Roman empire nearly disintegrated in constant civil war and foreign invasions.Players take one of four roles: a Roman, Germanic, Sarmatian, or Persian commander. Any number of players can conduct a campaign, in which each type of army has a different set of victory conditions. While holding off Rome's many enemies, the Roman players are also trying to defeat each other and ultimately become (and remain!) emperor.Aurelian can be played with miniatures, or with "unit tiles" on any flat surface, much in the same manner as Blücher's unit cards. The centerpiece of the game is the campaign, in which each player manages the fortunes of his character and faction, much in the manner of the campaigns in Maurice and Longstreet. 

Sounds good. I have this vague idea that PSC have been mentioned in connection with this project but can't seem to find the reference.

4. Neil Thomas' Modern Rules: Well, not quite. Brian Cowan has just published his interpretation of Neil Thomas' second world war rules on the AMW Yahoo Group. Brian has done a great job. The rules include army lists for Vietnam, Yom Kippur, Falklands, Cold War Europe, Modern wars in Afghanistan etc. Well worth a look.

5. Nordic Weasel: Well I'm a dedicated Weasel fan. I'm not sure that sounds good, but it is. The Fivecore series rolls on with this really tempting collection of additional and optional rules. Available for very little ($3.99) from the Wargames Vault. Also on my Weasel list are Laserstorm (sci-fi) and War Story (a narrative based game). This is great stuff, mainly because it is very simple (just like me) and completely interchangeable. My Somewhere in Africa game will use all three levels of Fivecore (skirmish, company and brigade). Looking forward to it next year.

Also, the Polemos GNW rules are now re-released by Baccus and also on the Vault for not much. Something else for Santa to sort out (actually that means I have to pay for it and my wife says, "Happy Christmas").

6. Horse and Musket: This is the Hold the Line adaptation in development by Sean Chick. The rules are now available on BGG as well as a Vassal module so you can get to it now. No news about a publisher yet but its definitely on my list when it comes out.

7. Ideas: Yep, still having some. Thankfully, other people come up with them and I play with them. Two important things so far this month:

• Kaptain Kobold has done some more work on his OHW ECW rules. These are very interesting and I may re-visit my ECW hex based interpretation as a result. Dashing cavalry anyone?
• Combat model for Tannenberg: I have really been struggling with this. I've got a map and OBs and a good idea about time and space. However, the combat model is just missing and I have not been able to get excited about it. Never fear, someone else has had a good idea and I'll just nick it. This idea comes from my chum Norm and his published game Anzio. More on this next year but its a real relief that I have finally got to grips with it.

Unfortunately, its back to work now with a lot to do before Christmas. Hopefully I'll post again before the big day. Cheers.

Back from more holidays!

And its raining....

I have had another week off, that makes a whole two weeks this summer. This time I and the family have been in Norfolk.

As you can see, nice weather, great light and a lovely time. Now we are back it has started to rain and may do so for some time. Never mind, I have been doing some thinking, not of the ponderous sort but more focused on a couple of specific problems I set myself.

1. Tannenberg: I spent some time looking at my preferred combat model (from Worthington's Holdfast) and continue to think that it is probably a good fit. I took some prints of my work on the OB on holiday with me and discovered that I didn't think very much of my research! Next step is to revisit the books and bash out another one. A bit disappointing. especially when the map had gone so well.

2. OHW Napoleonics: I was incited to take Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames with me by two things, firstly Kaptain Kobold's latest version of his OHW Great Northern War variant and, secondly, Max Foy's latest thoughts on how to play simple Napoleonic battles on a hex grid "Maneuvering in hexes". This set me to thinking about doing a version of my In a Cocked Hex rules for Napoleonics. Essentially this would be an excuse to give the Cocked Hex rules another going over, look at the Kaptain's variant rules on combat (rolling to hit rather than just rolling for casualties) and then having another go at my hex grid variant of Neil's Napoleonic rules. 

I'll sleep on this and give it another think tomorrow!

Under an August Sun?

More Tannenberg

Not quite an August sun today, a bit rainy in fact, so time to update the blog.

I like to take a difficult book on holiday with me, the sort of book that is hard to read on a train journey without falling asleep. This year it was....

I bought this in February 2014 when I started work on my Tannenberg game. I have had it on my desk since then and have made various attempts to get through it. I have now succeeded and found that it is a very good book.

Dennis Showalter provides a very insightful analysis of Russo-German relations from 1870 onwards. Although he has a heavy weight style of writing, especially on the political and strategic background, the description of combat operations is simply superb. Perhaps one of the best descriptions of a battle since "The Battle" by Alessandro Barbero! Critical points are that neither side knew where the other actually was and neither side really knew the other's intentions. German corps and divisional commanders frequently did what they wanted, when they wanted to, so top down direction was very difficult.

I also had the opportunity to drop into Claymore in Edinburgh the other week. Probably my favourite show. I bought a game....

With a hundred counters, this is a brigade level game of the battle against the Russian 2nd Army around Tannenberg. It looks very good, although Decision Games have had to carry out major surgery on their Fire and Movement standard rules to make them work for this battle. The rule book is therefore a mess. Other than that it looks very interesting.

So guess what, I have dusted off my Tannenberg design and got on with it. The map is now done, hurrah!

I now also have a more informed view of the OOB, it will be corps level for the Russians and division for the Germans. I have also better understood the movement dynamics and scale following the descriptions of the operations in the book. 

The combat model was the sticking point last time and I have now resolved to use the Worthington Games approach in Holdfast, i.e very simple. It will be interesting to test this out.

Personally I blame Norm!

Well, not entirely....

The publication of Norm's Tigers at Minsk rules the other weekend has forced me to take stock. Here is where I am at the moment:

• Tannenberg game: This has stalled for a few months because I have made great progress with the map but am struggling to represent railways on it. I have played around with various packages and am now getting the hang of using curves. Once I have completed the map the rest should be easy!

• Venture Fair: A blockage on this game has been creating images of the counters so that the scenario maps can show the actual deployments, rather than just deployment areas. I think I can now do this but am still having trouble because the font changes when I create a picture of the counter. I think I just need to play around with the font I'm using so I reckon a solution is very close.

It is interesting that I'm having trouble with graphics and not with rules. That is simply because I haven't got that far yet. Luckily, I'm as keen to get the games looking right (the "realisation") as to get them to work so I am maintaining my interest. To help with this I have looked at Cyberboard and Vassal. Neither of them are easy so I am preferring to stay with the real basics (i.e. Paint!).

Why Norm has disturbed me is that his game uses a hex grid of 8 by 6. 

This is Kallistra Hexon four inch hexes. I don't have any of this nor do I have any 10mm troops which is what Norm is using. I do have, however, a very nice T35 that I bought the other week in 15mm and I wondered whether I could use this plus some 20mm plastics. 

The short answer is yes but I need to to use 125mm (5") hexes.

15mm T35 on a trial 5" hex, there is even room for some soldiers!

If I use these can I fit them on my kitchen table (which is the only one the children haven't covered in junk)? The answer is again yes, and I don't have to move the fridge.

Loads of room

So, if I get some 125mm hexes from East Riding Miniatures (48 for £15) I can knock up a nice board for Tigers. This means that I can not only have a crack at Tigers but also Norm's next effort which is ACW.

My other thought, and this is what worries me, is that i think I can fit Neil Thomas's Napoleonic rules (which use a standard eight unit army) to fit on the same hex grid. Mmmmmmh, how much will power will it take to finish the Tannenberg and Venture Fair games when an opportunity like this arises. Stay tuned..... 

Don't forget I also have some Wurttemberger's to use.

I've got an OB..

and I'm gonna use it!

Yes, progress is proceeding at a snail's pace on the Tannenberg project but it is proceeding which can only be a good thing.

Starting with the Germans I have built up an initial picture of the units involved. This has come from a variety of sources including the Nafziger Collection but also the appendices to the Golovine book, The Russian Campaign of 1914.

Evocative picture of German troops resting in East Prussia 1914. Pugarees?

Russians ready for a fight

The Golovine appendices are great because they give numbers of battalions, squadrons and batteries. This gives a real sense of the components of the German army. I must admit that I wasn't expecting to feel any romance in this story but there is something about the thought of the German fortress troops leaving their positions to reinforce the field army that strikes a cord. In some ways it feels almost medieval.

The data in the book seems OK, having checked against my other sources. Golovine makes some interesting points about how the Russian troops were outgunned by the Germans. He makes an argument that German troop superiority was 3:2, largely because of German heavy artillery. This is part of a sequence of arguments that he puts which are intended to give the impression that the Russians on the East Prussian front were not especially superior to the Germans. Norman Stone in his book "The Eastern front" has a good go at demolishing these arguments.

Hey ho, I'm designing a game and not solving the mysteries of the universe so my design assumptions are:

• Germans and Russian troops are broadly comparable. Russian first line infantry were professional and should be reasonably equivalent to German first line troops. Both sides had pretty rubbish cavalry, the Russian just had more of it. The artillery on both sides was professional and competent but the Germans had more heavy batteries.
• The real difference between the two sides are command, control, communications and intelligence and this should be reflected in a number of different aspects of the rules mechanisms.
• In facing one or other of the Russian Armies the Germans are unlikely to be at a disadvantage in numbers, even on a simple comparison.

My first go at preparing OBs and combat factors for German 8th Army and Russian 1st Army are shown here:

I have used the same combat weightings as shown at the tops of the columns for both armies. Obviously the whole of the German 8th Army is not going to deploy against the Russian 1st, but it has sufficient combat power (weight) to be able to take them on at equal strength. I'm interested that I have not had to apply a different divisor to the Russian numbers, the disparity in strength coming partly from their lack of heavy artillery, one of the points made by Golovine. They also lack infantry but have lots of cavalry. I'm worried that the Russian cavalry "corps" is too strong, this contains four divisions. I'll need to think up a different approach, perhaps applying a different factor to the Russian squadrons. 

Next steps are to research Russian 2nd Army and then to examine the reinforcements. Hopefully I'll have some time over Easter to do this.

Mobilisation begins!

First draft counters for Tannenberg

This game is beginning to grow on me. I have been re-reading Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August and started sketching out some of the factors to be taken into account in the rules. Mmmh, that General Francois can't obey an order even if it was wrapped round a brick. That will fun!

In my own head I have a model for what I want to do but developing this and producing a decent and informative game may be tricky. But the momentum is growing and I'm really looking forward to getting this on the table.

I've started work on the counters....

A bit rough and ready at this stage but good enough for a play test.

These counters are generated in Excel with some added pictures, the flag and the Landser and dragoon. The flag is the German naval jack but I like to see iron crosses marching across the map! The Landser and dragoon are cut out of 1914 posters/prints and are a little blurry up close. My intention with the design is to be clear about the type and strength of the unit but to build in some real period feeling while avoiding any copy right issues. Not being a good drawer I'll have to rely on pinching other fellers work.

I'm pleased with the general format of the counters. I developed the Excel model when I wanted some colourful counters for the Minden Games' 1914 Opening Moves, a very nice little solitaire game. There's more about this on BGG. 

Hopefully some more progress tomorrow.

Real life evasion

Return to Tannenberg!

Last weekend's plans for research were stuffed by an inordinate workload. My only respite was the rugby so its a good job England won!

Looking forward in hope to this weekend, I have just competed another round of thinking on sources for the game. Having already got both Russian and British first hand accounts I have now turned up Max Hoffman's memoir of the Eastern front.

Max, left, and chums at Brest-Litovsk 1917

This is entitled "The War of Lost Opportunities" and is available on line. It is a very easy read and one gets a real impression of the man behind the glasses.


Being slightly frustrated by my current sources for the narrative I have returned to Amazon and with the help of a nice gift certificate have ordered today "Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914" by Denis Showalter. Denis is an American historian of whom I was unaware until I recently started looking at some books on the Red Army. He has a good rep and I'm looking forward to getting into the detail.

I have also taken the opportunity to look into my games boxes and have come up with both the 1978 SPI "Tannenberg" game and also "When Eagles Fight" from Command Magazine. Both bring back happy memories so I just have to resist them to get on with my design. 

If I'm too tired to do anything sensible tomorrow I'll get the crayons out and play with some counter designs.

Electronic maps...

the learning curve

Why do I need an electronic map when I have a trusty paper one?

Last week's draft map

Well, I will need one eventually so I can publish on this blog but my main motivation is to be able to storyboard the campaign as suggested by Phil Sabin. The scale of the map is around 15 miles per hex so two hexes will represent 3 days travel for foot mobile troops. The key dates are:

• 7 August: Russian First Army enters East Prussia
• 17 August: Battle of Stalloponen
• 20 August: Battle of Gumbinnen
• 23-30 August: Battle of Tannenburg
• 7-14 September: 1st Battle of the Masurian Lakes

This is around 38 days which at, say three days per turn, gives 12 or so turns. Anything longer than 12 turns is likely to be beyond me. This means I'll need at least 12 maps to get a grip on the storyboard and to test out movement rates and combat duration. Ideally. the story board will be on PowerPoint so I can effectively animate the action and use standard unit icons to move around the maps. I know I can do this in PowerPoint so that is the plan.

I have never made an electronic map before. Step 1 is to get some hexes. My hex grid is predetermined by my design parameters (13 by 9) so I generated an SVG file, using an on-line programme, which I then loaded into Paint. 

The rest is trial and error. Here is the map as of today. The only missing items are names and railroads. The terrain and features are pretty standard and you can probably guess most of them without difficulty.

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with this so far. Now I know a few things about Paint, I can make a better job of the final version.

The town icons are interesting and this is a really cool part of the story. I'm with Redmond Simonsen in terms of what information you put on the map. It should be designed for play and should be very simple. However, I'm increasingly interested in "visualization". The things that you play with, toys, counters, maps, model terrain, should be designed to form part of the narrative of the story. This I suppose is a set designer approach and like the theatre or the movies, we should look for style and, perhaps, some necessary exaggeration. I'm not a realism junky so don't look too closely at my toy soldiers, they're painted for effect.

In mucking about on the internet I came across this hand drawn map, obviously from prussianpoland.com!

I don't know the source of this map but it looks post-Tannenberg and may well be a child's artwork. What I really like about it is the characterisation of the different towns and cities and the very nice little drawing of Fort Boyen. I have tried to use some of these little drawings in my map as it helps put the player (i.e. me) back into the early 20th century.

If I'm lucky, story-boarding at the weekend which will lead onto OB compilation.

Fortresses and Zeppelins

History or Dystopian Wars?

I have had a chance today to pursue some further research into the Tannenberg project. What I hadn't appreciated fully before is the extensive use of fortifications by the Germans in the wide open spaces of the east. I was aware of Konigsburg and Danzig but was not conscious of the plethora of fortifications, armed camps and forts that existed in August 1914.

Fortress Boyen

My understanding is that German fortifications were grouped into districts under a District Commander. The relevant districts in the east are:

• Konigsburg District: Including Konigsburg itself (a first class fortress/fortified camp), Pillau (a star fort, part of the Konigsburg defences on the Vistula Lagoon), Memel (coastal fort), Lotzen (Fort Boyen, a brigade sized armed camp in the Masurian Lakes).

• Thorn District: Thorn (a major fortified camp), Marienburg (minor fort), Graudenz (minor fort), Dirschau (minor fort); all of these being on the Vistula south of Danzig, except Marienburg on the R. Nogat. These forts represented the final line of defence for Prussia from any incursion from the east.

• Danzig: A major coastal fortification at the mouth of the Vistula.

• Posen District:  Posen (fortified camp), Glatz (minor fort), Neisse (fortified camp), Glogau (railroad obstruction fort). 

These were not static defences. While having thick walls, heavy guns and supplies to outlast a siege, each fort had a main infantry and artillery reserve. The purpose of these reserves was to prevent the fort itself becoming invested. In wartime, fortresses in the war zone would come under the control of the appropriate Army commander. The fortresses would give up their main reserves to support that army.

For example, Thorn was a major fortified camp providing a home for the equivalent of a whole Division (35th Reserve Infantry Division). There are some 15 individual forts encircling Thorn and covering both sides of the Vistula. The garrison included:

• 35 Reserve Division (two Landwehr Brigades plus artillery and cavalry)

• The equivalent of 14+ heavy artillery batteries (estimated), mainly Landsturm and Reserve;

• A Landwehr Infantry Regiment plus six Ersatz Battalions;

• More than one Fortress Machine Gun Battalion;

• Two armoured trains.

Further details of the garrison can be found in this summary. The 35th Reserve Division was deployed with the field army on the outbreak of hostilities.

What has really spiked my interest is the presence of aviation detachments (aircraft) and Zeppelins as part of these garrisons. Posen, for example, had:

• 16th Feld Fleiger (Field Aviation) Battalion

• 4th (Posen) Fortress Aviation Battalion

• Z-5 (Zeppelin) in Posen (Army Airship: Haupt. Gruener)

A further Zeppelin, Z-4 (Army Airship: Haupt. von Quast), was operated from Konigsburg.

Nice German with aerial toys

Right from the off German air units, including airships, mounted reconnaissance operations as well as bombing enemy targets with improvised weapons. The two Zeppelins conducted the following raids into enemy territory.

10 August: Mlawa Z-4
11 August: Lodz Z-5
22 August: Lager by Gumbinnen Z-4
22 August: Modlin (Novo-Georgievsk) Z-5
25 August: Sierpe-Rypin Z-5
26 August: Lager by Nordenburg Z-4
27 August: Mlawa Z-5
28 August: Lager by Muldszen Z-4
9 September: Lager by Insterburg Z-4
24 September: Bailystok & Lomsha Z-4
25 September: Warsaw Z-4

Note that Z-5 ended its career when it was forced down by the Russians during its last attack on Mlawa.

Another thing that has got me interested is the Baltic Fortress Route. Effectively a tourist trail around the Baltic forts. Great stuff, not sure the wife will let me book it as a holiday!

Pillau, very pretty

Why Dystopian Wars? Well, Germans in pointy hats, airships, aircraft, armoured trains, cossacks? You can't get much more steam punk than that, even without dreadnought type ships and armoured river gunboats. Sometimes real life is richer than even the best created worlds. 

Does Googling while drinking beer count as serious research?

Well really, how else are you going to do it!

My adventures with Tannenberg continue and the research is going well.

I have prepared a test map based on the general East Prussia map in Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August. I'm doing this because I believe that all wargames should have direct links to the material that people actually read. If they encounter a game that has a map that is instantly recognisable to them it will enable them relate game play to history.

I generated a 13 by 9 hex map using an online programme that generated an svg file (whatever that might be). Being technically brilliant I printed it out, took it to the copy shop and got an A3 version made of the grid. I then used pencils and pens to make a map Simple!

Having said that, I will try to make a wholly electronic version but this will take me a while as I will actually have to learn how to create this on the computer. 

Unusually, I made this map very quickly and am pretty happy with how it looks. I spent some time trying to eliminate questionable areas. My only concern is with the Masurian Lakes section where the inter-lake defences need some verification. One of the issues is with Fortress Boyen and in deciding what the fortifications on the map actually represent. More in this in a later post.

In terms of research I haven't just been Googling, tempting as that may be. I have used:

• The World War 1 Data Book: James Ellis
• Guns of August: Barbara Tuchman
• The Eastern Front: Norman Stone

No beer here despite misty outlook!

I think that if you are a casual reader of military history you will have come across the latter two books. The Databook is quite good on OBs but can be a bit limited. I have, of course, cast my net on the internet and found two brilliant references:

• With the Russian Army 1914-17: Maj-Gen Alfred Knox. British Military Attache and front liaison officer. He was with Second Army at the time of Tannenberg. Great stuff from his diaries and it really captures the atmosphere of the times.
• The Russian Campaign of 1914: N N Golovine. A professor at the Imperial General Staff College before the war and holding a variety of staff and command roles during the war this is truly brilliant. Part analysis and part polemic, this was written while the author was in the West following the Communist revolution. Careful Googling that name though, he has a long lost relative called Tatiana!

Both of these references are free on the web through the Internet Archive and US Command and General Staff College respectively.

On the OB front I've used the Nafziger collection. Getting the OB straight, designing the counter manifest and starting on the shape of the game is next on the list. There will as usual be a slight detour, this is around the nature of the fortresses in the east and the tactics of their use. Fortresses with Zeppelins?

I have settled on a  name for the game: "Under an August Sun: Battles in East Prussia 1914"

I shall now do some pointless Googling while drinking some Brains SA Gold, highly recommended.

Action stations!

Anything can happen in the next 30 ...er weeks 

Having pondered my priorities for the year I have made a decision. The target is to design two games. Last year I had considered entering a game to the BGG solo game design contest. My chosen subject was Kursk. In fact I started out on this really well but got severely bogged down in the sizable data about the battle. I missed the deadline but, never mind, it is still on the list, perhaps number 3. 

I have carefully thought through my strategy for this year (on the back of an envelope). My two subjects will be Tannenberg 1914 and Neuve Chapelle 1915. The reason for these selections is:

• They are both relatively small actions. Although Tannenberg is bigger in both geographic scope and numbers of troops, the numbers of formations is limited as is the geography.
• Although games have been published on both subjects, neither are big name battles and there is plenty of scope to take another look (Kursk is, of course, the subject of huge numbers of games and therefore it is difficult to do something really new).
• They are both WW1 battles and therefore there will be a ready current interest which will keep me going. 

So which one first? Well obviously Neuve Chapelle which is why, after making a good start I have suddenly reverted to Tannenberg as the first item. Why? Because I found this brilliant little game on BGG which deals with the whole battle in four "tiles" (i.e. one map and three counters!). This has given me some real inspiration and insight into how perhaps I might pull this one together.

Tannenberg 4 game

The way that I plan to design these games is inside out (top down might be a better way of describing it). The following are my key design parameters:

• The game should be playable on a small surface and fit a 13 by 9 hex (or area) board. This is because I have not yet decided how the game will be presented. It could, perhaps, be a type of Memoir 44 (M14?) game with toys or it could be a very tiny hex and counter game. I'd really like to use some toys on this but will test out the game concepts using counters.
• They should be real, playable games, not just wargames. They should be games that my children would enjoy playing for fun without having to understand early 20th century technology or obscure military terminology.
• One side should be playable by primitive AI (of some sort) making the game an enjoyable solo experience.
• The game should be playable quickly so that balance can be tested out over a large number of plays.
• The towns, terrain and general geography as well as the key units and formations should be instantly recognizable by anyone playing the game who has read one or more popular works on the subject. So if you pick up Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August you should be able to relate the game and the game play to the descriptions in the book.
• An historical outcome should be achievable in up to 50% of plays so the outcome is not pre-determined.

So far so good...and here is some evidence!

My first attempt at the map using the general map from Barbara Tuchman's book. At last, we have some action.....