Spring - Summer 2006

(May 2006) Indeed, wargames have been pretty much on hold while we worked on the book. The good news is that the draft is almost complete. The bad news is that we are WAY over the top on word count!! Progress meeting this weekend (4 June) to discuss what to cut. We are short of images so this will need discussion too.

I have been looking through Nuggets for inspiration. Liked the concept of “Rebels and Redcoats” by Ian Drury for American Revolution. Rebased my AWI armies (R&R requires single figures). Tried Guildford Courthouse scenario. Good, although IMHO the American militia are a bit too strong.

Followed this with Bob Cordery's “Redcoats and Dervishes”. Rebased Pathans to singles. Not quite so good as R&R. British are outnumbered and it is difficult for them to make any progress. They probably need to use the brigade square tactic in the rules to get anywhere. Advantage is that single bases allows me to go back to the veteran “Sword and the Flame” rules (but with Bob Cordery's D6 15mm mods).

Produced a number of ECW scenarios for DBR. Found a useful way of producing maps by taking the OS scale map tiles from Streetmap into PowerPoint and then calculating a table area to suit at the correct ground scale. Brentford, for example, needs a 6 by 4 table because the fighting was so spread out.

Similar process to produce scenarios for Napoleonic battles (Peninsular War and Waterloo campaign). I also did Austerlitz for HF&G but I don't have the figures for the Russian/Austrian army. Maps are from the 'net where possible then same trick as for the ECW maps. Orbats are for “Horse, Foot & Guns”, Army Level Napoleonic or “Quatre Bras” according to the size. Too many Prussian Heavy Cavalry – will rebase some of them as Lights (cheaper than buying more figures!).

“Ludicrous Latitudes” by David Brock(?) seems a fun game. Need a few more small ships, but markers will probably do for the time being.

Card decks for games can be printed onto thin card straight on the printer.