Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group
I have been thinking how to enable the players to have their own interactive map and counters. I was disappointed how I facilitated the players’ map in my recent game “Seize Warsaw“. I had provided the players with a map and counters via a Google Slides (PowerPoint). James Kemp copied this and maintained his version […]
Many thanks to Nick Luft for putting on his game about a battlegroup of the 4th Panzer Div attacking Warsaw on 7 Sept 1939. I found it rather spooky in a couple of ways and they affect my initial impressions of the game as well as reflecting my status as an old person. Back in […]
Seize Warsaw was inspired by reading about a failed offensive of the 4th Panzer Division which attempted – on its own – to attack and take Warsaw. This event occurred during the collapse of part of the Polish Army, 6 and 7 September. The Panzer Division thought it could push into the gap formed by […]
This is a review of a radio broadcast and a musing on the ideas it deals with. Review The radio broadcast was on the BBC World Service and is part of the series: The Cultural Frontline. The episode: Board games: The politics of play It starts by looking at the boardgame Pandemic, and its happenstance […]
Or Where The Hell Is 3rd Div…? A Suggested Mechanism for Reflecting Line of March Efficiency. We’ve all presumably read loads of stuff about campaigns which develop into clashes/battles in which a key feature is the arrival of units off the line(s) of march. How well this is managed over the centuries seems as much […]
As part of a longer article on making logistics systems both fun and integral to games (no, really) without dedicated and very bored players and/or access to computational engines, I thought I would share something I came across in my on-going reading of the ACW. Apparently, it was a rule of thumb for Quartermasters in […]
A pre game report The German Army has ripped a huge hole on the road to Moscow. What is next, they decide to rip out another hole on the northern flank of the Moscow road. My inspiration was the very good book “The Defence of Moscow 1941: The northern Flank.” I presented a classic big […]
Altering supposedly ‘fixed’ criteria in games Given the difficulty of getting some players (and even umpires) to read rules with varying impacts, I have been experimenting in some of my system design models with adjusting the ‘big reality’ rather than adding loads more – sometimes occasional – factors. That may read as just gobbled-gook so […]
An interesting report about an interesting sounding game. If you’re thinking of doing any more with the game it may be worth taking a look at Send A Gunboat, a megagame I did with Jim back in 1995 and 1996. The handbook and gazetteer are available on the MM website: https://megagamemakers.uk/Makers/125/SAG2/ and may be of […]
Or “Wow, That Was Close Fred….Fred?….” I have been doing quite a lot of intense reading on the ACW over the last few years, and it has increasingly struck me that many accounts of combat describe units either “…trading destructive volleys for an hour or two…” (inflicting significant casualties), or suddenly breaking in surprise […]