Not the battle of the magazines...again

More inspiration than I can shake a stick at

I haven't posted any thoughts on wargames magazines recently, largely because they have been very uninteresting. I do take the usual suspects and find that Wargames Soldiers and Strategy is generally not only the best produced (with the shiniest, thickest paper) but also the most informative. That, of course, depends on their chosen theme for the issue. Wargames Illustrated is only occasionally interesting and, unfortunately, Miniature Wargames is a bit variable.

This month, things have picked up a bit with new and interesting things to ponder.

The Foreign Correspondent, for example, has the following interesting bits:

• Balloon to Balloon combat in 1870.
• A review of Chris Pringle's Bloody Big Battles.
• Wurttembergers (hurrah!) in the Siege of Paris.
• The Battle of Schleswig, 1848.

The Battle of Schleswig is unfortunately feeding my growing interest in the Danish wars of the C19th which also reinforces my interest in the Baltic. On the other hand, I think I'm going to save some money by not investing in BBB. I don't say this in a critical way. The review of the rules is excellent and gives a really good insight. Think Fire and Fury with 1,000 man bases. It is simply that the intended types of scenario are far too big for me to handle with the time and space at my disposal. I suppose that I should have realised that Bloody Big Battles was actually about Bloody Big Battles! Having said that, the scenarios would be of great interest. Time to resub to the FC!

In looking at magazines, I'm really looking for inspiration. Miniature Wargames this month (February 2015) does provide some of that.

• An 1809 campaign games with a very useful map and OB!
• An article on Rapid Fire at 21 years old.
• A big selection of reviews.

Its the reviews that have caught my eye in particular as they are wide ranging and cover some interesting stuff:

• Battle on the Lomba, a book about the SADF in Angola (AK47 old style!).
• GMT's Glory's End/When Eagles Fight games. I have the magazine edition of When Eagles Fight and I have been very tempted to get in on the table during my Tannenberg researches.
• Class Wargames, a book about left wing wargames of the C20th including Guy Debord's game of war. I find the latter extremely interesting as I have a copy of the game (with cardboard counters) on my bookshelf. This has gone straight on my wish list. I recommend the article on Geographical Imaginations which links through to an e-copy of the book on the Kriegspiel site which also hosts a computer version of the game (which is shortly to be relaunched). Every now and again we need a healthy input of real intellectual dimensions and you can get that from both of these sites.

Debord playing his game with his wife, loser does the dishes. 

Much to ponder but hopefully not too much to knock me off my immediate course of action. I survived last weekend's diversion to Stalingrad, although I took an immediate dive into the War of the Spanish Succession and Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames. His Horse and Musket rules are perhaps one of the better ones in the set because the combat engine replicates really well the degrading of units by fire over time. Expect another hex grid conversion imminently!

Keeping it up...

Morale that is!

Over the past few weeks I have seen my team Saracens lose in two finals, the England rugby team lose three on the trot to New Zealand and, to top it off, the England football team having an early bath. This requires urgent morale boosting activities....and that does not include watching tennis!

Fluff.....

Activity number one involves Saalfeld by Decision Games. I got this out the other day and started taking the counters off the sprue with a craft knife as I know these things can be tricky. The Decision Games counters are quite nice but their separation in the die cutting is not very good.

Given that these counters are in the tufty club I resorted to counter clipping. Not something that I ever imagined I would spend time doing. However the results are good.

The rules for this series are not the same as the old SPI Napoleon at War/Last Battles folios. They are more complex and, as yet, I haven't decided if I like them. I'll have a couple of goes during the coming week and get a flavour for them.

Cardboard mountain

Activity two is admiring the contents of Heroes of Normandie which I got on Father's Day. No fluff or tufty bits here. In fact it is difficult keeping the counters in the frames while I figure out how to store them. Admire these pictures or else...

The game itself is like a euro miniatures game, if that is possible. Lots of fun to be had here. 

Buying more stuff....

Yes, stuff that is not shopping, shoes or gardening equipment. However, times being what they are, merely stuffing things on to a card is not an option. One regular purchase of mine is Wargames Illustrated and the August issue (so available end July) is looking very interesting.

Flames of War are releasing "The Great War", a new set of rules and army lists for the last year of WW1. These are free with WI 222 and so are not to be sneezed at. They are an adaptation of FoW so will probably not be my cup of tea but I'm certainly looking forward to having a look. See the details here. I will not be needing to spend lots on the official figures. My extensive Revell, Airfix, Emhar and HaT toys should see me through.

Not the battle of the magazines!

or perhaps the battle of the not magazines

Having re-entered normal life after Xmas I find myself easily diverted and not quite ready to get into planning mode for this year. In fact I have been arsing about. However, in doing so I have stumbled across a couple of publications which are entirely new to me. Both are PDF documents and both are part of a long running series of similar publications so in my mind they are pretty much magazines.

Christmas Special 2013, Two Fat Lardies, 167pp, £6.00

I don't have any Lardy rules but I am familiar with IABSM and have read about Chain of Command (ChoC). So why did I get this? Well, simply because it is absolutely packed with stuff. Yes, it is largely Lard related but it contains some great material on the Spanish Civil War (army lists, tanks and improvised tanks), 76mm Shermans plus 1914 infantry tactics. This is just the stuff I'm interested in. I'm particularly pleased with the interview in the mag with Richard Clarke. On the basis of this I will be strongly considering getting ChoC. I have havered over Bolt Action and decided eventually that I want to take tactical decisions not game decisions. Until now that really has only left PBI as a contender, not being happy with Rapid Fire or FoW. So, I'm catching up on reviews on ChoC and putting on my thinking sombrero.

I understand that Summer and Christmas specials have been produced by the Lardies for some years so that will be something else to catch up on.

Simulacrum 32, 75pp, £3.51 This is an occasional board game e-zine. There is no doubt a professor of history, who, if not too busy disputing nonsense with Michael Gove, might offer some advice on how to pronounce this. Coming from the eastern area of London my natural difficulty with vowels and the letter l probably mean that I am saying something rude in Swedish.

I happened across this through Consim World. What engaged me with it is the involvement of Brian Train, game designer of some repute, and the fact that is contains a game about N Africa, Panzergruppe Afrika to be precise. The magazine is the work of John Kula, a Canadian, and obvious expert in the world of board wargames. It can only be described as eclectic, off the wall and quite mad. It contains a chronicle of wargames from 3500bc to date, some nice disputation about C G Lewin's book on the history of wargames, a brilliant photo of two top Stalinists playing a board wargame in the 1930s ((looks like Napoleon's War: The 100 Days to me), the rules for Kurt Vonnegut's GHQ game and a board game dictionary. Wacky. I haven't evaluated the game (pnp of course) but it has a really novel combat system that looks interesting.

Find this edition at http://www3.telus.net/simulacrum/main.htm worth five bucks of anyone's money.

Talking of bucks, if you go to Wargame Downloads http://www.wargamedownloads.com/index,  which I do a lot, you will find:

1. A free game published as part of Draken Game's latest catalogue, Santa and the Goblin War, featuring evil snowmen, polar bears, elves and goblins. Nice.

2. A bargain basement ($4) copy of the original Vietnam Solitaire game, shortly to be re-issued for some money by White Dog games. This is not to knock White Dog who seem to be developing some really interesting solitaire games, (Dunkirk anyone?). Well worth watching.

3. A finally, Two Buck Games, yup, games for $2.

And another thing, if you go to Web Grognards you will find Trenches in the Tropics, a free game on the battle for Dien Bien Phu. Really nice.

Oh, by the way, who is the winner? Well, its me and you basically.  There is simply so much inventive, funny, free/cheap and interesting stuff going on that we are really lucky. 2014 is looking good so far. Hurrah.

No Turkeys!

Don't panic, its a game magazine

A fanzine to be precise. I have spent sometime on the phone today trying to track down a parcel which was due to have arrived on Monday. I'm left with a sore ear and no parcel. However, the time spent sitting in front of my e-mails was not wasted. I came across this Italian fanzine called No Turkeys. It is a high quality board wargaming publication produced by a gaming club and some editions come with a game. The magazine and games are free. Not only that but, while the magazine is mainly in Italian the rules are in English. Hurrah.

You can find the magazines and games at the club's website: Valgame. from what I can see there are a number of games tha have been published. Not all magazines have a game and some games have been produced without a magazine. Here is what I have learnt so far:

• No Turkeys 7: Walcheren 1809 game
• No Turkeys 6: Agordat 1893 game
• No Turkeys 3: Au Pont de Lodi 1796 game

The games look very professional but the club do say that they have not been extensively play tested so don't expect them to be polished professional products. Having said that, one of their games Caldiero 1796 (apparently not in a magazine) was jointly designed by Valgames' Enrico Acerbi and Kevin Zucker. That last name having a particular cachet for Napoleonic gamers. Here is the map from that game:

So, if your parcel hasn't arrived, your presents are naff or your turkey is tough, chill out, print out some free games and have a cool time. Cheers.

Battle of the magazines 2...

Making really unfair comparisons

A quiet month in magazine world. No WSS so just the usual from WI and MW but happily this month we also have an extra and rather long awaited guest publication.

 

Wargames Illustrated 314 £4.50 120pp: A Spanish Succession issue which leaves me a bit cold. Barry Hilton has an interesting article looking at why wargamers find it difficult to talk about their hobby with outsiders. I share this problem and like to think that it is because I have some self awareness and appreciate that really I am playing with toy soldiers, however one wishes to dress it up. Also, a nice piece on painting the Douglas Skyraider for Vietnam, bringing back some happy childhood memories of making the Airfix kit.

Miniature Wargames with Battlegames) £4.25 76pp: I'm pleased that this issue includes some inspiring writing by Jim Webster with rules for a biblical warlord game. Just the sort of article to encourage reckless (or more reckless) purchasing of interesting biblical plastics from Caesar. Also, the article of the month must be the one by John Treadaway about introducing school children with autism to wargaming. Just brilliant and heart warming!

Ok, so this is where we introduce our wild card!

Battles magazine #9 £22.00  162pp: This is the first edition of this magazine that I have received and it has been a long wait. Pretty much a year as the publishers humorous postmark recognises.

The magazine is produit en France (but is in English) and is run by Olivier Revenu who is a one man band. He has suffered from numerous problems with this issue, including printer foul-ups with the counters for the included game. Oh yes, its got a game! In fact the original reason for buying this edition is the Charles Vasey game, Flowers of the Forest about the battle of Flodden. The game looks great, and I'll get to this in a minute, but just look at the quality....here is a random page from the magazine so you get a feel for it.



Oh yes, this picture also includes top secret information about my Christmas lunch!

This edition has reviews of 17 games plus plenty of game related articles by such luminaries as David Isby (Green Fields Beyond etc). The writing is good, plenty of enthusiasm but with some rough edges and heartfelt opinions. No corporate mush and no filler. Admittedly, if you don't do board games, this isn't for you at all.

In terms of the game, it is beautiful to say the least. BGG will no doubt have some good pictures of this soon but here is my rough attempt to capture the oversized counters in this game.

These counters represent the main battles on the hex map with further counters on a roster showing their strength.


Sorry for the glare

The game looks simple enough and will play quickly. I'm really looking forward to giving this a go.

The comparison of the magazines is grossly unfair, Battles and WI/MW are not in the same market but as a consumer interested in miniatures and board games, these magazine co-exist in my hobby. If I had the remotest confidence in the future delivery of Battles I would sign-up for it now. Having said that, I might just anyway, who cares how long it takes if it is this good.

My Blogging activity has been hit quite hard by the problem with IE9/10/11 which the Googlies are attempting to fix. I have persisted with this post as it has been in draft for a couple of weeks and I have just got the latest edition of MW!. So I hope it works OK, otherwise I'm off to Chrome.

As I may not be able to blog with confidence in the next couple of days, Happy Christmas to one and all, and especially to my very first follower!