C19

So strange to see my last post and realize how "normal" life was back then.  I hope that everyone is staying safe, NOT getting together for games, and using the time to paint and read.  Be safe my BFE friends.  I am working on a version of BFE for ACW and another for the Great War....long term projects, but fun to tweak when I'm not working on online course materials and communicating with my students.
Take care.

Ulundi, well, sort of....

We played the scenario in the Skirmish Campaigns Zulu War scenario book designed for TSaTF.  I amended the scenario somewhat to suit BFE II.  Well, I was likely too generous to the Zulus.  This was definitely not the swan song of the Zulu nation and was, instead, a very heavy and ultimately losing fight for the British.  Nevertheless, it was great fun (at least for the Zulus) and it was great to get  BFE game on the table after lots of ancients and Napoleonics.

Here are some pictures.  Included are a couple of shots of some new units being based.  To stretch my collection I have used a few rocks to fill the base.  I like the look, but not really sure why I felt the need to do this.  I have about 40 Zulu units and this is really more than I ever need.

Happy Holidays!

Hello friends,
I just want to wish everyone a happy holiday season and the best for 2020.  I have just finished painting another 100 Zulus and look forward to pushing them around this coming year.  I suppose January 22nd and 23rd loom!

All the best.
Chris

Foreign Legion Rif Game

We played an excellent game on Thursday using the rarely employed ladder assault rules against a fort.  Tough for the attackers, but the rules worked well.  In a big abstraction, the siege rules are even more abstract, but they seemed believable in their representation, I think.  The game did however highlight the need to refine the language in this section which I have done.  At some point I will release a new errata sheet with some of these refinements.  And down the road a third edition of the rules will be released although this will be campaign specific (Sudan or Zulu War etc.)

All the models and buildings came from the collection of Colin, the youngest member of our group pushing 50?  Aging bunch we are....

BFE II is now available ready printed!

On Military Matters (US) contacted me to have the book printed for customers that wanted to avoid having to print the rules from a PDF.  So, now you have the choice - PDF from Hotz or a printed version from OMM.

Cheers,
Chris

Further Contemplations on Gaming

Thinking about my previous off-the-cuff "rant" I realize that what drove it is something that has preoccupied me for a long time.  As a cultural and military historian by profession, I am conscious about the role that popular representations of warfare in the culture play in "militarizing" society.  A book like Chris Hedges War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning or Joanna Bourke's various books on violence should give us pause when we push around our models.  I know that we are normalizing warfare.  This is why I think it is important that we really consider what we are simulating and why and that our "games" should be somehow scholarly and taken somewhat (and I am very guarded here) seriously.

I know that this is raining on the parade.  I love this hobby and the people I share it with.  My friendships of 40+ years built around a table filled with toy soldiers are important to me.  They are thoughtful people of high moral standards.  I also think that they are aware of the moral problem of the hobby.  But when that miniature unit of soldiers flees, the hoots of victory obscure what that is simulating.

Recently I read a book about war representation in modern culture by Philip Beidler aptly titled Beautiful War: Studies in a Dreadful Fascination (2016).  In a chapter on ACW re-enactors and the making of the film Gettysburg, this US army veteran-scholar expressed his disdain at those who play at war and make it "beautiful" while expunging from their re-creation any of the horror of war.

Now, I know many former military personnel that play war-games.  I also know that some scholars see worth in the pursuit (Phil Sabin most notably -- many others keep it quiet and most military historians are professionally disdainful of it).  I suppose I hold onto the worth of the hobby for its many social, scholarly and entertaining attributes.  I also know that, as the conservative historian Martin van Creveld has asserted, war is a deeply engrained part of human activity.  It seems to be something that we do.  So examining it, in its many forms, is important.  But I would be lying if I didn't struggle with the issues noted above, while taking the game seriously enough (but not too seriously to over-blow its worth) to respect what is being represented.

I would love to read what others think......

Rant alert...."easy" rules

I am all for game rules - any type of game rules - to be designed as simply as possible to get across the desired result.  Indeed, it is the mark of a good set of rules to have a clear design focus and not add any extraneous details that detract from efficient, edifying and pleasurable play.  But I do think that the complexities of warfare and the military systems that societies construct to wage war demands some attention in war-games design.  I also think that players should apply some effort to learn those games to make the games we play a little more than a rather dubious entertainment.

This is a delicate balance.  Taken too seriously, I think this hobby disrespects the horrible price people have paid in war.  Taken too lightly, however, we do the same thing and learn nothing from the process.  Wargaming can teach us things while being challenged by the "game."  They are studies in this violent human activity whose systems have been supported by huge effort and resources.  Trying to figure out how these systems worked has occupied military historians and game designers for a very long time and, as Phil Sabin has asserted, war-gaming can be a useful tool to explore these realities.

The effort to represent warfare, or limited aspects of it, on a game table demands some careful consideration.  While war reduced to its most basic purpose on the battlefield has commonalities across time, the military systems that have developed for both practical and socio-cultural reasons are less generic.  Romans did not function like Classical Greeks or Celts.  Zulus operated differently than British.  Germans applied different doctrines in WWI than those of the Canadians.  Representing these differences has some importance.

For these reasons I come to my concern about the popularity of very simple and generic rule systems that seem to rely on simply repackaging the same rules in different clothes and calling it a game set in particular historical context.  Mechanics can and should always be as simple as possible, but rules that really differentiate armies across time need more attention.  I also think they make games more interesting.

Funnily enough, many of these simple and generic games are skirmish games.  I do not like skirmish games because I find that they are either too simple and reduce to absurdity the even greater complexities of warfare down to the personal level (that must still account for the doctrines and systems).  Or they are too complex, trying to represent 'everything' and making it impossible to play.

Now, I have not right to say what others should play.  But I do think that this hobby has much more to offer than 'bang-you're-dead.'  With a bit of effort we can be engaged and learn something.

I'll stop now.  :)