Changing Direction

I'm not happy playing Age of Sigmar.  I thought maybe I could make it work, but it's just not the right game for me.  So, I've put out some feelers and might have a couple guys who'll take my army off my hands piecemeal.  And if I'm being honest with myself, I don't see myself putting in the level of work to get a Kings of War army off the ground either. 

Outside of Frostgrave and miniatures for role-playing games, I'm feeling just about done with 28mm scale.  And a big chunk of this is that we're getting ready to move out of our current apartment and into a new one in a few weeks, and in preparation I've largely packed up my miniatures stuff.  It ended up being a lot bigger of a pile than I expected, even with some pretty darn good Tetris'ing to get various boxes packed into a big plastic tote. 

So I've been doing some heavy thinking today, and I keep circling back around to an idea I've come back to a number of times in the past without pulling the trigger on: 1/72 scale plastic figures.  They're inexpensive ($11-$17 for around 40-50 infantry or a dozen cavalry), they'll take up less space to store, and the sculpting has improved significantly since I was a kid (although those old kits I used to see in my dad's monthly Squadron catalog are still on the market in most cases). 

The big stumbling block in my thinking in the past was getting someone interested in playing with me in that scale; and I think I've found the work-around.  Solo wargaming.  Yes, yes, "playing with myself" jokes aside, it does lose some of the social aspect of wargaming, but at the same time, gaming on my schedule, with the rules of my choice, is definitely appealing. 

As for rulesets, I'm leaning towards Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames, which I first picked up almost four years ago now.  I think a couple boxes of figures would make for a really enjoyable winter's solo campaign.  My current inclination is a couple boxes of Zvezda Hundred Years' War English and a few of Dark Alliances' Tolkien-inspired Orcs; run the English as a generic medieval human kingdom using the Medieval rules from One-Hour Wargames, and run the Orcs using the Dark Ages list to represent their lighter armor and looser organization. 

I Want War Elephants

You know what doesn't seem to exist in my neck of the woods? Historical wargaming, of the "paint some minis and push them around the table" model.  There are groups who meet to play board games recreating historical conflicts, sure, but I like the pageantry of a table with terrain and collections of painted figures.  28mm fantasy and science fiction skirmish gaming seems to rule the wargaming roost around here, and while I'm certainly not against that (seeing as how I have four Frostgrave warbands), there's an itch that can only be scratched with units, ranked deep, that have a story behind them, a layer of reality behind the painted metal and plastic.

So I got to thinking, and I came up with a plan.  I have no idea yet how well it will go, or if it will prove to be a colossal sink of time and money with no return.  Time will tell.  I want to put on a big demonstration game at a convention, with two big painted armies, recreating a famous historical battle.  I want there to be an element of spectacle, something that draws in passerby - and then I hook them, offering them command of a regiment or two for however many turns they feel like playing, giving them a taste of historical wargaming, that playing with toy soldiers can be fun without pretending to cast spells or fielding mythological monsters.

First step then, is to pick a battle.  I decided to focus on two key elements in selecting a battle to refight: Spectacle and Familiarity.  Spectacle, something about the battle should be eye-catching and lure people in as they walk by.  Familiarity, something about the battle should ring a bell, even to non-historians.  Some ideas I tossed around:

• Kadesh 1274 BCE: The massed chariots of Ramses II and the Hittite King Muwatallish would be very eye-catching, and Ancient Egypt is a perennially popular subject.
• "The Trojan War": Mycenean Greeks versus Trojans, perhaps with a big wall ("Troy") along one table edge.  Wooden horse is optional; sieges, I think, are boring to play.  
• Thermopylae, 480 BCE: Has some cultural cachet still lingering from the Frank Miller graphic novel and its associated film, but I don't know if "OK, you're the Spartans, let's see how many turns you survive" would be fun for anybody.  
• Plataea, 479 BCE: Almost all the perks of Thermopylae, without the guarantee of "Spartans, you're going to lose, it's just a matter of how long you last."
• Gaugamela, 331 BCE: Alexander the Great has name recognition value for sure, and I think most people who would be at a gaming convention would be at least vaguely aware of "the Persian Empire," even if they don't know why there aren't war-rhinos and guys throwing bombs on the table.  Refighting the battle that was, historically, the death-knell of an empire and having the opportunity to change history might be a good hook.  
• Hydaspes, 326 BCE: Alexander the Great again, this time trying to invade India and running into a crapload of brightly-caparisoned war elephants under the command of King Porus, giving a great balance of name recognition and spectacle.  

I think I'm leaning most strongly towards the Battle of Hydaspes; Alexander the Great is well-known enough to be a hook, a line of elephants advancing across the table is a visual hook, plus this was the last big battle of Alexander's career; not long thereafter his men forced him to turn back rather than continue on into India, and the battle was, from what I've read, a very close one.

As apprehensive as I feel about painting the brightly-dressed Achaemenid Persians, if Hydaspes goes well I may refight Gaugamela at a subsequent convention.  Darius fielded not just war elephants, but scythed chariots at that battle, which would be a draw I think.  

Next step is deciding on a ruleset.  I knew I wanted something that's easy to learn and to teach, with minimal granularity and plenty of dice rolling.  This was actually the easy part - Neil Thomas' Ancient & Medieval Wargaming is simple and straight-forward, without too many frills or complexities to remember, while allowing for tactics and maneuvering.  Plus, rolling handfuls of six-sided dice!

Because I'm likely insane to be taking on this project in the first place, why not go all in and have custom six-siders printed for the demonstration game? Do a big bag of "Alexander" dice with a Vergina Sun in place of the 6, and then a bag of "Porus" dice with...well, not a swastika, since that's taken on some unsavory connotations in the last century, but maybe a silhouette of an elephant? Big bag of each and then participants can keep one when they leave, because gamers love getting souvenirs from games they play in at conventions.  

Step three is going to be selecting figures, and I think I'm already there.  There's no way I can do this in 28mm and not empty my bank account in the process, plus the difficulties of storing large figures like that.  And 15mm-scale, I'm concerned, will be too small on the tabletop to be properly eye-catching.  Enter the 20mm, or 1/72 scale, plastics.  I've been combing through the Plastic Soldier Review site, and think I'm pretty well settled on HaT Industries' figures - you get 48+ figures per infantry box, the sculpts are good if not wildly exciting, and they have extensive lines of both Macedonians and Indians.  I'll likely be supplementing the Macedonians with figures from Zvezda's line of 1/72 scale figures.  

I've been discussing this with a few people over on the AMW Yahoo! Group, most notably Trebian from Wargaming for Grown-ups, who has done very similar things with the Ancient & Medieval Wargaming rules and 20mm plastic figures.  Because HaT does not supply spears for many of their figures (as it would be difficult to mold things like the 20-foot long Macedonian sarissa and have them come out well), I had been dreading slightly the prospect of carefully trimming florist wire or plastic broom bristles to length, but Trebian has suggested using pins with the heads trimmed off, and as best I can reckon it, a 3" pin would be just about the right length in scale for a sarissa.  

I'm looking at doing the purchasing and painting of figures in two stages; first, getting enough of each to field legal 8-unit armies, the standard for AMW, and use these to strengthen my familiarity with the rules.  Once I'm confident with that, then I can begin expanding; I think I want to run the demonstration game as a double-strength game, with 16 or more units on each side, and a few tweaks to the Indian list - Neil Thomas only allows for bow-armed infantry, while the HaT Indian Infantry box also comes with javelinists, hill tribesmen and a female bodyguard, so I'll be figuring out stats for each of them.

So where am I planning to put this game on? Initially I was thinking next year's Queen City Conquest, but have been worrying about this ending poorly for me - I can imagine putting in the time and effort and ending up sitting alone in a room with the figures I put in ages of work on.  So we shall see.  

Feeling the Wargaming Bug Again

Traditional historical wargaming, for whatever reason, is essentially a dead hobby in America, I think.  I don't know if the evolution of Dungeons & Dragons from wargaming contributed to its decline, or if it's somehow seen as an "English" thing that we, as Americans, have turned our backs on out of some sense of patriotism, or what.  Either way, I cannot drum up interest locally for historical gaming; wargaming, if it occurs at all (especially where I live), is strictly Warhammer/40K stuff, with a little bit of Malifaux seeming to float around as well.

I don't have the money, nor the time, nor the steadiness of hand and keenness of eye to handle that sort of gaming.  I'm realizing that as I putter at applying paint to a few Reaper Bones figures; even my big, chunky Bugbears are giving me trouble (in part because I can't lay down a basecoat on these figures without clogging the detail).  I think, for financial and eye-strain reasons, if I resume wargaming I'll need to go down to 1/72 scale plastic figures or similar.

Nevertheless, I'm craving the act of setting up painted toy soldiers, pushing them around a table, and creating a narrative of a battle being fought between them.  This flared up extra-hard yesterday; I was listening to the Hardcore History podcast's newest episode, on the rise of the Achaemenids, and I just desperately wanted to recreate the battles fought by the powers of the time - the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, all of them.

This is probably because I'm some sort of crazy person.

I also want to not spend money on things right now; Gina and I have agreed to do a giftless Christmas because the consumerist urge and the constant media barrage demanding that we SPEND SPEND SPEND BUY BUY BUY takes away from what really has value in our lives.  I don't want to keep up with the Joneses; I want to celebrate what I have that's important.

Instead, we're putting money away instead for two trips to Columbus, Ohio in Summer 2016; in June, to attend Origins Game Fair, which we may attend strictly as civilians or which I may try to run a game of Call of Cthulhu at.  Haven't really made up my mind yet, and I have a few months yet before event registration closes.  Then in July, we'll be returning to the same hotel to attend Pulpfest 2016; we both had a very nice time at the 2015 show, and met some really great people and ate wonderful food, so we'd like to return to that show.

So what's a crazy person to do?

I won't lie, I came close to pulling the trigger on some 1/72 scale plastic Egyptians and Sea Peoples yesterday; each box would have sufficed as a full-sized army for Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames (which I still want to try out one of these days; and there are solo play rules in there...) but restrained myself; even if it only came to $25 for the two boxes of figures plus shipping, that's still $25 that could have been a meal for Gina and I at Origins or Pulpfest, or a new book at either show.

I took a pretty significant pay cut when I switched jobs back in August, and I'm still adjusting to the new pay-schedule (I get paid every other week now, whereas every other job I've held since 2004 paid weekly), plus Gina just went down from working a per diem job plus two part time jobs while going to school full time, to just school and the two part time jobs, so we don't have a ton of excess money right now; we can cover our bills just fine and have a bit left over for fun, but it would feel very irresponsible of me to throw away money on a hobby on a lark like that; What does it matter how little I'm spending on armies if I've got nobody to play with? Playing a solo game just seems lonely.

So I'm going to bank this for now and see how I feel in the coming weeks; if the desire's a passing thing brought on by listening to the history of Cyrus the Great, I'll feel better about not buying two boxes of soldiers.  If this keeps up, I may just have to bite the bullet and play by myself for a bit.

Wargames Factory Spartans - Base 1

Happy New Year, wargames and RPG enthusiasts! As they say, what you do this night will be what you do for the rest of the year, so I ate some tortilla chips and guacamole and assembled some toy soldiers.

I had decided I would assemble and base my Wargames Factory Greeks, Amazons and Persians for Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames - I bought a stack of 50mm x 100mm bases to glue groups of figures to; eight figures to a base for heavy infantry, six figures to a base for archers and skirmishers, four figures to a base for cavalry.

In proper gamer fashion, I rolled a die to determine which unit I'd do first - my plan is for three bases of Hoplites, three bases of Persian Archers, three bases of Persian Immortals, and three bases of Amazon Archers/Skirmishers.

The dice came up with Hoplites, so I pulled out the box and got to work after dinner.  It's been a long time since I've assembled a multipart plastic kit like this - I think the last time I'd done one of these was back in high school when I was still doing Warhammer figures, more then a decade ago now.

So with this first batch of eight Hoplites there's a couple where the poses ended up a little wonky but by the time I reached the sixth Hoplite or so I was feeling pretty confident, and the next eleven bases I'm going to assemble will look darn good.

They're not glued down to the base yet - I'm going to sticky-tac them to a couple of popsicle sticks, prime them, paint them, paint and decal their shields, glue those on, and then glue the figures to the base.

One Hour Wargames

I got Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames: Practical Tabletop Battles for Those with Limited Time and Space on my Kindle yesterday and gave it a quick read-through.  For an ultra-light, ultra-streamlined game I have to say I like it; it looks like there's some things it's not built for (wargaming the Mongol Invasions of the 1200s, for example) but Thomas comes right out and is open about it, especially in the chapter on Ancients Wargaming - no horse archers, no scythed chariots, no elephants, but still a solid little set of rules.

The rules for the nine eras of warfare - Ancient, Dark Ages, Medieval, Pike & Shot, Horse & Musket, American Civil War, Horse & Sabre, Machine Age, WWII - are simple and straight forward, filling generally no more than 2, or at most 3, screens on my Kindle, and involve armies composed of 4-6 "elements" chosen from a short list of element types - for example, the Ancients list is composed of Infantry (including Hoplites, Roman Legions, etc.), Archers (such as those employed by the Achaemenid Persians), Skirmishers (quick-moving Peltast-types) and Cavalry.  Games consist of turns, with each player performing all their actions - moving, shooting, melee, etc. -  at a go, then their opponent doing so.  Elements are removed from play after suffering 15 "hits," which are calculated by rolling a six-sided die and adding or subtracting modifiers for troop type, terrain type, etc.

The rules take up maybe a third of the book, and then the second third is different scenarios to play through - and Neil Thomas really kind of opened my eyes here, because he comments on how often "tournament" games are two perfectly matched armies lined up and slugging it out in a pitched battle, and I realized that yeah, every time I've seen a Warhammer tournament that's exactly what's going on at every table.

The final third of the book covers solo and campaign play, which I'm looking forward to experimenting with as well.

I think once I finish Cthulhu (which honestly shouldn't be long now - I'm at the point of doing detail work, more or less) I'll base my Greeks and Persians as described here and start playing around with these rules.  I ordered a stack of 50mm x 100mm bases as a Christmas present to myself, enough to base two full-sized armies for One-Hour Wargames -- a little smaller than the 4-6" frontage Thomas recommends, but still a respectable size.

I think I can squeeze on 8 figures to a base (two rows of four) for Infantry such as my Hoplites, and then do six to a base for Archers (such as Persians) and Skirmishers (such as, perhaps, my Amazons).  Or maybe just four to a base for Skirmishers.  This also models the relative toughness and damage-dealing capacity of each type of element.