No sooner am I drifting from the mid 19th century by almost 100 years into world war 2, than I go the whole hog and leap several centuries – welcome to Bronze Age to Baroque does SciFi! – maybe.
I started the Wargaming Erratic blog in 2019 and aimed to cover my self declared restriction of “Bronze Age to Baroque”. In fact I had determined (for wargamer sanity reasons) to abandon not just my long time interests in world war 2 but also Napoleonics and the Seven Years War – anything after about 1730. The decision has proven to be easier to say than do.
It is not just bookshopping which can sidetrack your latest project (in my case Wars of the Italian Unification 1,2,3 – WOTIU). Strolling through other gamers blogs can be seriously distracting. Of course that is a very enjoyable activity with the vast range of ideas, activity and games being shown.
In this case “wargaming with barks” served up their new project using “five parsecs from home”. Now SciFi wargaming really has passed me by – even my D&D era, now eons gone, did not really depart from ancient medieval themes.
What caught me eye was that this ruleset is for solo wargaming – now that it is something that does fascinate me: Well wargames rules fascinate me anyway, solo rules especially so, because of the potential mechanisms on offer.
A hardback subA4 sized rulebook with very high quality print – colour throughout.
As Neil Thomas (author of one hour wargames) says, it is easy to write complex wargame rules while simple ones that constantly work are very challenging to compose.
In Five Parsecs from Home (FPfH) the movement and combat mechanisms themselves, look simple with the narrative derived from the wider aspects of character and weaponry for example.
at almost 200 pages loaded with data and ideas – this is the 2021 edition
So it is the case that two player wargames rules are more easily composed than solo rules when it comes to creating that unexpected and surprising element, which is at the heart of so much enjoyment in wargaming.
So far I have bought the book and had a quick speed read.
It looks very interesting and is a complete package including all your necessary rules plus both scenario and force generators.
Solo wargames much depend upon narrative to provide the variety and surprise in any game. It looks like this ruleset offers that potential in spades?
Finally solo wargames work just as well with live opponents – often just simply leaving out some rules is all it takes. So maybe you actually get two rulesets for the price of one!
Back in 2008 Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies published Sharp Practice. I had always considered this black powder ruleset very Napoleonic. Yet it is for black powder wars and these ran well into the 19th Century.
Take Two books – published in 1907 and 2008 but connected in just the right way
Enter George Macaulay Trevelyan (GMT) who a mere 100 years before Sharp Practice wrote a trilogy on Guiseppe Garibaldi hero of the Wars of Italian Unification (WotIU).
This little post is not about my current interest in WotIU. We must travel back to the 1830’s and sail to South America. Uruguay to be more accurate.
If I was not up to my armpits in Bersaglieri and Kittel dressed Austrians I might just be tempted south……………
The War for Rio Grande do Sol was fought out between Uruguay and Brazil. Later Uruguay fought Argentina along the rivers that fed the Rio de la Plata.
Garibaldi fled Piedmontese execution in 1836, having failed to cause rebellion in its navy, served in both these wars and became a local hero by 1848.
Garibaldi on his return to the Papal States and revolution
In the process he developed his expertise in warfare, leading bands of highly motivated and very mobile forces. This experience would serve him well on his return to Italy.
Warfare in and around Uruguay was fast, furious and often mounted
I am not sure how you might acquire the GMT trilogy – I got mine from Paul Meekins Military books. There are a few other more modern Garibaldi biographies.
In the introduction to Richard Clarkes Sharp Practice the author makes it clear the rules aim to relive the exploits of 19th century literary heroes. GMT hero worships Garibaldi not least because of his political leanings – a true revolutionary of the people. GMT adds a lot of praise and enrichment to the story shall we say.
Contemporary accounts and later biographies recount small naval actions with Garibaldi being shot on deck and his wife Anita Riberas also being shot as she fought with him. Lagoons, amphibious assaults, cattle rustling (the key cash crop), sieges, river gorges, forests, upland ridgeways, prairie, pampas, arroyas (wooded streams) and canadas (ground dips deep enough to hide your forces in!), not to mention lancer cavalry fighting musket armed soldiers.
If your desperate for figures maybe you could try the Carlists, while at least some of the regular enemies kitted out in napoleonic kit with british style shakoes.
In fact the Risorgimento continues to be fought over as a literary subject in itself. I have enjoyed Lucy Riall’s book which injects some 21st century objectivity into it all. Lucy has also authored a book about Garibaldi, that might be a good starting point for using Sharp Practice in a different way.
Those pesky Bersaglieri cannot be left alone…………..postings to follow
So my offering today is to the jaded “Richard Sharpe” player – cast way those green jackets and take on the slaughterhouse cloth of Monte Video* and march or should I say ride with Garibaldi across the uplands of the Rio Grande do Sol, grossly outnumbered yet most often victorious: And he lived to tell his tales.
*the famous italian red shirts apparently started life as a very cheap industrial clothing for Garibaldis Italian Legion in Monte Video.
I guess I have become an accidental acolyte for Neil Thomas. Why?
In wargames rules terms we live in an era where there are “gazillions” of rules. There are probably AI engines knocking them out these days: I am of the view that wargaming is the multi billion dollar hobby that includes every online gaming app from fortnite to defend the cauliflower patch from aliens (ok I made one up). Miniatures is just an oxbow lake in this mighty river of gaming. And this particular oxbow lake is up to its ears in rulesets for miniatures gaming and seems to love it.
So who needs another ruleset and especially one that is so “retro”?
I do.
Sometimes you have to go back to go forward and just sometimes you can go back and rework an idea using more recent thinking to go somewhere else instead.
I like Neil Thomas rules because there is a hint of Donald Featherstone in his thinking. He is quite direct in his writing – this is useful – and his approach is to apply the right amount of abstraction.
It is quite interesting to reread Donald Featherstone occasionally. For example one of his books is ladled with “scale” as in movement, time and distance: yet Donald says at one point he would rather just approximate matters so he can get on with the game – a battle. The book is his offering on Wargame Campaigns!?
This is my key to Neil Thomas. He wants you to play games and specifically battles. That is his endpoint, the outcome desired.
Neil’s book “Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815-1878” delivers battles using miniatures. It starts at the end result and is designed to give you a game in a space – typically 6’x4′ or 1.8m x 1.2m and very often less.
Neil presents his take on the various elements that defined the era and then puts all these into a neat package of rules that are brief and to the point.
The rules mechanisms are familiar to those who have his other rules to hand. Not too many and simplicity is the order of the day.
I think the important thing about his rules are what he leaves out – which of course you need to fill in – so abstraction is all.
Neil normally achieves a balanced asbtraction in his rules. They feel right to me. So did I like these rules?
A qualified YES, I have only used them once after several rereads of the book itself.
If Neil Thomas were an artist I would fancy his work would look like this – a detailed landscape of a pretty coastal portI do not think Neil would be offering you this much detail as an artist. Just look at that sky as well.
Both paintings are to be found in the excellent Hull City Ferens Art Gallery: Go visit when lock down ends.
The rules come with scenarios and cover all the key changes in weapons and fighting that occurred from the demise of Napoleon to the Russo-Turkish war of 1878. His rules are so abstract or rather to the point, that technology changes like the railway and telegraph get little mention. Actually covering this periods scope in itself is quite a feat – a bit like a ruleset mixing Napoleonic, AWI and most of the Seven Years War yet along with significant weapon/technology changes.
In 2020 I was at the Lance and Longbow Society stand where Lithuanians and Poles were fighting it out with the Teutonic Knights at the battle of Tannenburg (1410). There were live opponents that day.
For Virtual VAP 2021 I have time warped to around 1850 to play a solo battle.
My latest project is about the Wars of the Italian Unification (WotIU). The outlier campaign is 1848 when the world also first saw Garibaldi play a signficant role in the peninsula.
By 1859/60 Garibaldi was ready for a star role leading 1000 red shirts driving out the Two Sicily’s Kingdom troops from Sicily in short order. I have already discovered some new aspects in my expanded reading on this fascinating period: That Naval muscle helped him was a surprise. And there seems a varied range of battle situations with the red shirts not having it all their own way.
The real wars seem to be fascinating. I normally like to fight with “imagination” forces which offer freedom to generate many battles and situations without the confines of “well that happened next”.
My WotIU armies are still “under the brush” so to speak. This means my game is populated with what is to hand. And the protaganists are the elusive “Empire” and “Kingdom”.
Back to the rules. I chose to start with the early period set – 1815 to about 1850. Smoothbore muskets and cannon. So pretty much Napoleonic era kit.
I had bought the “e book” as a limited dip in the water for a new period. I struggle with using rules in this format even though it is quicker to flick the pages!
So I wrote out on two sides of A5 the rules that seemed to matter.
When you look at them they amount to about a quarter page on movement, a quarter on firing and half on close combat plus a bit on morale.
Neil parcels up his principles clearly even if my scratty writing undoes some of this!So on one side of A4 (2xA5) you have all the rules for a game – neat – unlike my writing
So the usual fare then from Neil. Neil likes his saving throws and uses this double dicing to achieve some of his flavour/depth or granularity. So even though for solo play it seems avoidable this step provides a bit of subtle ebb and flow.
Both the Empire and the Kingdom fielded “Monarchist” armies.
I will run through the resulting battle in my next post.
The Wargaming Erratic 