Chimera

A little bit of transport for the growing Imperial Guard army.

 

 

Fully equipped with a twin flamer and mega-big dakka as an Ork might say.

As ever GW model.

League of Augsburg - Leipzig

A few pictures from the League of Augsburg game in Irvine on April 10th 2016. More pics and a full explanation of why Murat is getting his feet wet to follow.

Going Analogue

There comes a point in most long games when I realise I have been doing something completely wrong. In the League of Augsburg refight of Waterloo last October, this inevitable epiphany came half way through the Saturday when it was pointed out that I had not only been calculating the number of skirmish fire groups erroneously but also inadvertently halving the movement of them in wooded areas. Fortunately my opponent round Hugoumont way has such vast experience of my bumbling ineptitude that he kindly calculated his own skirmishers' fire and movement in the same manner for the remainder of the game. As usual I was left thinking to myself there has to be a better way to keep track of these things than bundles of paper and naturally my thoughts turned to computers.


What was the close combat bonus for Piedmontese Jaeger units comprised entirely of Pomeranian circus folk? Book is Waterloo - Warhammer Historical

Readers of this blog (all five of you kind gentle folk) will be aware of the occasional confessional tone that can pervade; not only am I cursed/blessed with wargaming as my primary personal interest, after Jo and the kids obviously (you never know who might be reading this) but imbedded geekery extends to my working life too. I'm in computers, as they say, I wish they wouldn't it sounds way too contagious.

So, given the problem and given the profession when hit by my inability to follow basic rules and the embarrassing sound of my voice pestering the one umpire who foolishly held my gaze as it swept the room pleading for help with the same question I asked last round, I immediately think - write a program.

When learning to map out decision trees I used to take old sets of war games rules, Warmaster for example, and translate them to flow diagrams and then into applications. The algorithms in most wagames are reasonably straight forward with each calculation having a limited number of outcomes (usually between 6 and 12) and modifiers (usually between 6 and 20). Surprisingly the area that takes up time is entering units into the program whether this be via a database or an xml file. The order of battle for Waterloo for a game of Republic to Empire would involve the creation of hundreds of such entries and then there has to be a way to quickly search and edit these even after they have been inputted.

Some judges avoid the authors pleas for help by sitting at the opposite end of the room and fiddling with their cameras (Barry, Gerry and Bob from the League of Augsburg)

But I rarely got that far in a conversion. The first item is to write something that simulates one or more die rolling and the result is, to me, rather soulless. You put in the firing unit, the target unit, the range and pop get an answer - quick, accurate but lacking drama unless you're running on some retro hardware from the 90s. I like the act of calculating the number of dice required, running my finger down the tables and testing my (often in-) ability to count to ten. I love the anticipation of the little cubes rattling around and occasionally off the table, the bursts of laughter from onlookers (particularly when I roll for officer casualties); the counting and recounting of hits and so on. Despite the likelihood of inexcatitude brought about by three or four players wrangling a couple of dozen tables it feels much more fun that way.

So, I would like to apologise in advance to all the umpires, particularly those from the League of Augsburg, who will have to continue to patiently listen to my weedy requests for clarifications, judgements and reassurance. Feel free to roll those eyes whilst I get on with rolling those dice! 

(If you've read this far, congratulations you managed to get through a post that mentioned, programming, flow diagrams and had a Colin confessional. Truly you have exceeded your recommended caffeine intake for the day!)

Stern Guard

Just proving you can't keep a Blue Marine down - some Ultramarine Stern Guard.

Plenty of detail on these chaps as you would expect from a modern(ish) GW plastic kit.

Some of which hasn't been obscured by my rush paint job.

All they need is a far flung battlefield somewhere...

 

Rewards

As a reward for finally finishing the Lego Sopwith Camel the other half bought me...

Lego Daleks! What could be cooler than that???!!!

More French - or the League of Augsburg Waterloo Hangover

Having returned from Derby in October I had a look over the garage shelves and decided it was high time I got some more of the 28mm French knocked off the spreadsheet. This has resulted in a large Gallic incursion on the painting desk back in the study:

Most of these are destined to be light, partially because I already have the flags but mostly as I could get away with simple blue uniforms without having to worry about white trousers.

I also had a handy half can of spray paint left over form all the blue marines I've done over the years, which further greased the path of least resistance.

But there are also some standard line on the way...

Figures are a mixture Perrys' .

The Spreadsheet

Been very quiet around here and I'm not going to nauseate you with the details; suffice to say I've had a viral infection and that floored me for two months.

Still my indolence gave that ill-used, oft abused, organ casually referred to as my brain some time to fester on the odd idea; most are best left in a forgotten recess of one lobe or another but some will be dragged blinking into the sunlight for playful examination and violent dismemberment (this is the interweb after all).

One of my many inconsequential personal issues with wargaming is the sheer amount of unused stuff I have accrued since I got back into the past time eight years ago. Speaking to other gamers I know I am not alone, most of us find following that sage advice of picking a period and scale and sticking to it impossible. For example, until six months ago I didn't know I needed GNW Russians or Swedes until they started turning up in all their sparkly goodness on the League of Augsburg site - actually I hardly knew what the GNW was, but enough on the deficiencies of history teaching in British schools and my own ignorance.

I'm finding this constant accumulation depressing!

Of course I haven't helped myself by utilising some questionable work skills and visualising the issue through that wonder of the digital age, the Excel spreadsheet. This combined with the devilishly distracting internet and the cloud means that I can now analyse my failure to complete wargames projects on any number of handheld and desktop devices with a 4G connection (not always possible in the wilds of Bathgate but in these parts it's probably safer not having the final option in the fight/flight/surf instinct).

To be clear I am not recommending fellow wargamers follow this approach unless of course you are suffering from some legal high and need a big downer or have found your recent alcohol consumption lacking conviction. Certainly, under no circumstances should any results be extrapolated out into how much has been spent on unused plastic, pewter and resin, particularly if you are still trying to keep the kids in roofs, tuition fees and toy rabbits. My figures (no pun intended but since it's out there let's leave it in - I don't often hit the humour node intentionally or not) came out at 48% undercoated and 22.91% based; believe me that 0.91% is really important and has gone up by exactly three hundredths in the last two months according to the graphs on worksheet 6.

Obsessive, compulsive... what?

Taking this to even more refined levels of self-inflicted mental torture, the spreadsheet tells me that at my current sloth like rate I should finish painting and basing my purchases sometime around Autumn 2067.

Even my limited project manager powers can see a problem with that and I doubt the twins are going to want forty year old Perry plastics on the sprue or even painted ones as an inheritance; though I would love to see the dimension where they go to court over who gets the 15mm XXX Corps tanks.

"But you got the Jagdpanthers and the half painted Space Orks, all I've got are his early Napoleonics before he'd bothered to research the uniforms properly - I mean yellowy riflemen?!"

Is there a solution? I'm considering temperance, at least I've admitted I have a problem, isn't that half way to a cure?

My name is Colin and I am a wargamer, it's been one day since I bought my last miniature.

(Yeah I was going to type 'had my last miniature' but I am a wargamer, I know how our minds work and we really don't need the encouragement!)