600,000 views and 13 years

Introduction

Well my blog has reached 600,000 views.  Looking at Google Analytics that includes about 60% bot hits, but let us not dwell on that. It has been going 12 or 13 years.  Why 12 or 13?  Followers may have noticed I have posted nothing for a year.  So you could say is lasted 12 years, or that it still exists and so 13 years :-)

Addressing the last year then.  The good news is that I am still doing wargaming, just less playing and no posting.  My mojo was low for both FTF play and also solo, especially solo. And with not much for playing, none for posting.  I was fine playing both sides for 10 years - somewhere is the last few years I have lost that ability!  I madly write lots of rules but when it gets to playing them I rarely get it set up and usually not that far. And then write some new rules, and then not play them either etc.  

I am still playing occasionally (and have a lot of draft rules :-)) and my interest seems to have recently picked up in blogging and playing, so you may see some posts out of me this year.

My gaming spans mainly Ancients, WW2 and solo SF skirmish/role play so will discuss them each as I have done some in each over the last year.

Ancients

I played four more of the Peter Sides’ ancient battle scenarios about May-June 2022 and they mostly written up but need an hour or so each to finish and just don’t have the energy.  

A melee from the Pharsalus battle.

About 18 months ago I play a dozen or so games of my modified ABC rules without marker on a 12x12 grid.  It worked OK but the no markers thing really needed other rules, not a modified set of mine. Not a big fan of DBA 2 onwards (don’t mind DBM), I thought about playing DBSA (the precursor to DBA) but then modified it to add elements of DBA 1.0, then made it work with a single die roll for combat, then made them for a 12x12 grid and added in some reaction moves.   I did actually play the resulting rules a few times and they were fun but so many recoils!  The DBx game mechanisms rely on recoils as it has no unit degradation and for its command and control system.  The system is so elegant but without recoils the game doesn’t work so well.

DBSA derived game playtesting, on a grid

So I looked at a few other ancient rules without markers.  I tried Phil Sabin’s Phalanx rules out but found that a) they don’t work as well when you set them up as a deployed battle (compared to the rules where they deploy out of a camp) and b) I could not keep track of the modifiers.  But I did like Phalanx and may go back to it (spoiler – I did go back to Phalanx).  I also tried Ritter – markerless and diceless - but it is not for me playing solo but a really well thought out diceless system.  I may get back to Ritter as well someday.

I was playing with 6mm forces on a 12x12 grid but really wanted to use my 15mm based figures but will small forces.  I had done a 1’x1’ board before so why not try my favourite rules – Armati 2 – with just the core forces (about 5-7 bases) on a 1’x1’ table at Intro scale.  I love Armati 2 – it to me feels a little like a chess game.  And that is the problem with only a few units and little manoeuvre.  You can see what is going to clash with what and have a really great idea how the game is going to play out.  Ah well, the normal game size is where these rules shine.

Intro Armati 2 - core units only on a 30cmx30cm (Macedonian Vs Indian)

I then started to look at other rules and then went back to DBSA.  But quickly pivoted to DBA and then I realised maybe I could handle a marker.  So looked at my favourite single marker game – Bill Banks Ancients (BBA) and looked again at DBSA, then added in BBA components.  But haven’t played a game yet.  And still haven’t.  I did go back to Phalanx, redid the modifiers chart to make it easier to follow, modified movement slightly to work on an 8x8 grid and did play from deployment rather than from a camp.  I found after a few test games with deployed forces it worked quite well after all.  There should be some blog posts on historical games with Phalanx coming.

Phalanx on an 8x8 grid. Midway through Battle of Taurus 39BC.

WW2

So my last WW2 game was on an A4 3x4 grid with 6mm forces.  I was expanding it to play on a larger 5x6 grid and then thought I should try and play with my 20mm stuff.  So I went back to my rules but was looking for something where could have 3 figures (or bases for 6mm) per section.  I did play one 6mm game with the WRG 1st edition (1973) inspired rules (I just streamlined them a little) and they were ok.  So then I thought I could play a small game with 20mm and 3 figures  one section.  I set up the next Operation Jupiter game on a 2’x2’ table in my map drawers  It take place in a town so does not need a lot of space.  And then lost interest.

2'x2' setup ready for a ww2 game; still the same after 12 months.

I then streamlined the WRG rules a lot more, thought about a Five Men in Normandy campaign (using 5MiN rules) and then went back to the rules I used to use for 20mm games – Take Cover!!  I started streamlining them and realised I had been on this path before about 10 years ago.  So I grabbed those rules and updated them slightly and setup a game.  And then realised they did not work for 3 figures per section too well.  But did that matter anymore to me anyway? Not sure still.

30cmx30cm 6mm ww2 game with 3 bases = 1 section.

I remembered a draft version of 5Core Platoon Commander (no longer available) and wrote up a QRS for it as it could work quite well using 3 figures per section.  As you can see skipping around and not actually playing.  Nothing really capturing what I am looking for.  I then thought maybe I should go back and play some games of the A4 6mm games as I did enjoy them (spoiler: I did).

Recent ww2 6mm game on an A4 page in a document box.  

SF RPG

Over the last 5 years I have been doing some SF skirmish mainly in the wider context of solo SF RPGing.  The odd posting occurs on another blog just for these games.  In 2021 I wrote some fast play rules similar to some ones I wrote for WW2 skirmish.  I played about 20 games (they only take about 5 minutes each) but not really happy with them.  I toyed around with Fistful of Lead – Galactic Heroes and played a few games with them and quite enjoyed them but found they were not really suited to 2-3 figures a side, which is a common occurrence in my solo SF RPG games.  I tried to change to rules to be faster and more suitable to a small number of figures but was not happy with the result but will get back to Galactic Heroes as they are a lot of fun. 

Some Galactic Heroes with Heroquest figures and Battlesystems terrain

I was playing my solo SF RPG quite happily and then the Two Hour Wargames Quick Play Kickstarter was delivered and so I madly played two of the titles for a few months.  And got a hankering for more skirmish combat and thought about this for a while.

THW 5150 Quick play

And during this time also played a few games of Nordic Weasel’s Starport Scum (underrated but many elements now incorporated into Five Parsecs from Home 3rd Edition)  and Dwarfstar Games Star Smuggler.  I really like Star Smuggler but it takes a lot of effort to play and after a few weeks (game time) I found I just did not have the time to do it justice. I did rewrite bits to make it clearer and made the random events spread out over multiple planets.  I did play a turn a day (so game time = real time) which is one reason I found I had to invest too much time into it. But one day I might get back to it – it has a lot of interesting parts.

And then I thought, I really did like the solo SF RPG games I was playing in early 2022 so rejigged the rules a little and played a few rounds with them.  Still in playtesting as I write – I think I am making it too difficult to pass tasks. And I am still getting distracted by simple skirmish rules. 

An SF RPG scene (interaction) using 20mm railway figures.

Postscript

Anyway, I do have a Peter Sides scenario with Phalanx to post, as well as a holiday where I played some of the above games.  And four other Peter Sides scenarios that are nearly writte up.  Hopefully you will see these posts soon!