Monday, 5 September 2016

New Desert Eagle stuff...

it's quite good!


NSyA top brass promo pic

Well I think so anyway! I've been doing quite a bit of work recently on the New Syrian Army (NSyA) to generate a first army list for DE. I have been surprised by how complicated the internal wiring is for Dragon Rampant and converting it into something it is not intended for is fraught with complications. Nevertheless, I have produced two things:

  • An army list description which is, as far as I can see, pretty much up to date (within the last week);
  • A very first draft set of unit characteristics.

You can find both of these on the DE page here. Loads more work to do on these but nearing a first playtest on a table with some counters!



My thoughts have been drawn to the impending battle for Mosul, Op. FATAH (CONQUEST). Over Christmas last I worked on the Ramadi game and found myself drawn into the conflict in quite a personal way. I was encouraged to do a similar piece of work on the recent battle for Fallujah and, in fact, have done a lot of research on the fighting as information has become available. Although I will return to Fallujah at a future point, the Mosul operation will have enormous consequences so my intention now is to work up a similar game to the Ramadi one but looking at Mosul in real time. 

Anyone with concerns about wargaming and real life should look away now because Mosul will be my immediate focus. It will also generate what young people call factions(?) for DE. I have spent some very interesting hours looking at the Peshmerga and my level of understanding has substantially increased. The ability of wargaming to gain insight into the real world is vastly overlooked so my next few months I believe will be a real journey. At the end of which I'll probably revert to playing Stratego but, hey ho, who knows!

2 comments:

  1. Absolutely agree: the hidden benefits of wargaming for real world situations is very much overlooked. The very fact that the 'God's eye view' is in the back of your mind, almost leads you to look at the bigger picture in many real life scenarios (even in manufacturing lol), rather than just focus on the detail. We wargamers are a very much underutilised training resource :)

    And no issue here from gaming real world situations. Whatever period of history we game, the tragic effects of conflict end up with the same results, with some section of humanity. Whether modern or ancient, we pay tribute rather than glorify.

    Wargamers are probably best placed to understand the nature of what they are gaming, and its real world repercussions. That much is obvious from the writing on your blog mate.

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  2. Hi Duc, thanks for your encouragement. I often feel a little exposed when I'm dealing with real world stuff. However, having grown up with the backdrop of Vietnam, Arab-Israeli conflicts, Angola, Cambodia, Falklands, Iran/Iraq and numerous other conflicts it is difficult to separate out my hobby interests from real life. The next few months I think will be very important so trying to understand what is going on can only be good.

    Cheers

    Jay

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