Tag Archives: writing

Pods and Projects

About 18 months ago I began planning for a podcast about gaming the Pacific Northwest. My view was there was lots of great stuff happening here, and that it would be great if others knew about it. I’d listened to some podcasts, but not a lot, and I thought I had some things worth saying, and that others would enjoy listening to. I was working with my son Patrick, a veteran podcaster, and preparing for something starting in the spring of 2025.

Almost exactly a year ago my friend David Sullivan died and I spent more than a month cleaning out his game stuff with others. It derailed my plans and really sent me to just kind of a dark place. I didn’t have the energy or the confidence to take on something this new or this unfamiliar. So my super spiff microphone sat in a box in my den alone and ignored.

I was at a game day in November when Steve Abarr expressed his interest in doing a podcast for exactly the same purpose–a Pacific Northwest focused podcast that featured local gatherings, game designers, business owners and other topics that would inform local gamers and the larger game community what we do out here. I asked if I could tag along and he seemed happy to have the company. Though my roots in local game history are older, Steve is better connected and his reach is broader than mine. We compliment each other. I offered to participate and he agreed. We’ve been recording the Tanks and Tomahawks podcast for the last couple of months. We’ve completed five episodes so far, but only the first three are available. We’re trying to keep it a monthly offering. We are both going to have a busy summer, and we’re trying to get some additional episodes in the can and release them in a deliberate manner.

The Repulse and Prince of Wales join Tirpitz and Illustrious in Daveshoe’s box of ships. All, including the destroyers, appeared at an Enfilade game (or two in the case of Tirpitz). I can think of no more honored spot for my ships.

Doing the episodes is fun. We’ve started with a script that we stick to less and less with experience. Each episode we have a guest and the pod is focused on them. We’ve had a blast. Steve is doing all the hard work of editing and posting the work, and he’s doing a super job. Still a few things we’re trying to get right, but we feel like it’s coming along.

The Repulse in all of its gray and black glory. The model is quite long, and I love it’s lean battlecruiser appearance. The photo also caught an amazingly large fingerprint in the middle of the black camouflage block I’ve had to go back and repaint. Nice.

Today, I’ll complete the HMS Repulse and the Force Z project will be nearly done. Let’s just say that building the Trumpeter Repulse has been a humbling experience. It was an order of magnitude more difficult than the Prince of Wales, which was another order more difficult than any previous modeling experience. It felt like the Trumpeter kit was needlessly more difficult with more assembly of structures that had to be properly fit, while similar pieces of superstructure were cast complete in the Tamiya kit. And honestly, I just couldn’t make it all fit. I’m sure a more experienced and capable modeler than I would have been just fine, but it was definitely more difficult for me. The good news is the paint scheme is far simpler than the PoW.

I’ve been marching Force Z toward completion. I’m creating some player aids. So far there are torpedo hit markers and some torpedoes in the water markers. I need to create some damage markers from bombs, but those should be an easy evening’s work, and honestly I don’t need too many of them. I finally wrapped up the torpedo damage charts. The good news is Saturday March 14th is the day of the first playtest, so I’m anxious to see how it turns out.

Finishing up this project will leave me free to do other things. I have piles of other things to do. In some ways I’m just looking forward to doing something different and if that leaves me wandering a bit that’s okay. A couple of the guys from our Wednesday group have expressed an interest in doing some MESBG, and it just so happens I have a bunch of Lord of the Rings figures that need painting. The American Revolution and the Hundred Years War are my Forever Projects, that I’d like to make progress on as well. Plus there is all the stuff on behind my painting area that are just piles of goodies I need to take care of. It should be done. Maybe from now until Enfilade it’s just The Big Cleanup. At this point I’ll do anything

Whatever it is I work on, the good news is the Repulse will be done by tonight and I will have finished my first figure of the month.

Sometimes a Little Ken Burns . . .

I had the good fortune to have spent my working life doing something I really enjoyed. Before I retired in 2019 I was a school teacher. 36 years in the classroom. But it was so much more. I finished as a high school history and English teacher, which was my dream when I graduated from Carlmont High in 1973. The path there wasn’t easy. The Baby Boomers were aging out of schools and the vast demographic bubble that was inflated by a massive population of school age kiddoes was collapsing and there simply wasn’t a need for fresh-faced know-it-alls to share their truth with the young ‘ens. I was only able to become a teacher through a back door and for my first ten years in the classroom wasn’t really doing what I wanted to do.

But I did eventually make it into a traditional classroom and taught U.S. History, Washington History, and English to 5th and 6th graders, middle school students and high school sophomores and I loved it. I was able to do some super cool stuff with outdoor ed. I took students camping and we regaled in the wonders of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial here in the Northwest. I earned a Gates Foundation tech grant in 2000, and was able to bring computers into my classroom where students could do research without being limited to the library. I became a journalism adviser and took part in the wonderful community supporting journalism advisers here in Washington State and nationally. I had a wonderful career, and would never choose another. Unless, of course, I could just read, paint figures, play games, and have lunch with friends, which is sort of my current vocation.

Or if I could just be Ken Burns.

I love books. I don’t have a massive library, but I do fill my bookshelves. I read each day, not as much as I should, some time every day. I love interesting documentaries. But Ken Burns’ work I simply worship. I love his style-the inclusion of historians, the voices of David McCulloch and Peter Coyote, the variety of perspectives, the illustrations. Every Burns documentary makes me look beyond what I already know. After Baseball, I sought out Buck ‘O Neill, after Lewis and Clark I built a library many colleges would envy, after Vietnam, I acquired and read books by Vietnamese writers like Bao Ninh. A great documentary film maker should inspire us to learn more, read more widely, or at the very least seek out more documentaries and Ken Burns does that for me. He isn’t the final word, and he always inspires me to learn more.

The most recent Burns opus, The American Revolution, was another inspiration. I think I’ve watched every episode twice. It wasn’t that I didn’t already know stuff. I’ve read both the Rick Atkinson volumes he’s published on the conflict. Atkinson was the chief expert pictured in the doco. I thought broadening the focus of the TAR to include greater detail on the lives and views of women, Native Americans and enslaved people was perfectly valid and interesting. I’ve added Colin Galloway’s books to my Amazon want list. It has inspired me to read more deeply about George Washington, and I’m in the middle of James Flexner’s George Washington: the Indispensable Man, a book I’ve owned and not finished since, well, forever.

Rebels and Patriots is from the Daniel Mersey pile o’ rules published by Osprey. I like ’em and use it for a variety of periods from the Horse and Musket era. Reasonably available and relatively inexpensive. Regimental Fire and Fury is hardcover, more costly and harder to get. There is an excellent Fire and Fury website with variants for AWI, War of 1812 and Mexican War with some handy rules for specific battles.

More importantly, from a gaming standpoint, Burns and TAR have fired greater interest in returning to my two (!!!!!) American Revolution projects. I have over 1300 painted 28mm American Revolution figures. Yes, I know, it’s absurd. What’s even more absurd is that I have plenty of unpainted figures. Compounding that problem is that I took on all of my friend David’s unpainted figures when he passed away last spring. They do live in the house, taking up a huge bunch of storage area. I swear, while I’m sitting at my desk painting and watching something terrible on television, I hear them whispering about their place in the painting queue. I’ve actually put some on the painting calendar, with Hessian units for Rebels and Patriots up next.

Lefferts, Katcher and Berg. Indispensable Old School sources on the AWI armies.

Do I have a plan? Well yes. The plan is to paint the damn things. Oh you mean, what will I do with them? One of my goals is to have the figures to do each of Nathaniel Greene’s battles in the south, 1780-81. There are four of these actions-Guilford Courthouse, the siege of Ninety-Six, the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, and Eutaw Springs. All of these battles were losses for the patriots, sort of, but each were costly victories British that caused them to surrender ground in South Carolina. I’ve already gamed Hobkirk’s Hill once. Perhaps some future Enfilade, I’ll run them all and see how it turns out.

The First Maryland mounted for Regimental Fire and Fury. This is my oldest AWI unit. Front Rank figures painted in 1992 for a Guilford Courthouse game at Enfilade 2. David Sullivan, Phil Bardsley, Bill Stewart and myself were some of the participants in that project. I think they’ve been remounted three times.

The Nathaniel Greene battles all involve a fair number of troops and units. Those games will be played with Regimental Fire and Fury. It’s an older game, but I love the mechanics. It was written for the American Civil War and chiefly for 15mm. However there is a super Fire and Fury website with rules to support variants including the American Revolution and 28mm scale. Greene’s battles are larger and often include a lot of militia The good news is that for the Americans, a lot of the units show up at all the battles, so they can be reused. Guilford Courthouse was the first of those battles and the British under Lord Cornwallis marched off to recover in Wilmington, N.C. and then made their way north to Virginia. Greene’s enemies changed with each of the succeeding battles. There is still much painting to do, but I seem to have the figures.

David Sullivan and I ran a Rebels and Patriots game featuring the Retreat from Concord April 19, 1775. It was the best game we ever ran together and was decided on the last turn of the game. Enfilade 2019.

One of the great things about gaming the American Revolution is the plethora of smaller engagements. These actions can be gamed using the Daniel Mersey’s Rebels and Patriots. I love these rules. They are looser and easy to learn. The New Jersey winter campaign of 1777 is replete with lots of engagements between New Jersey militiamen and British and Hessian forces attempting to forage, ie steal, food, fodder and supplies from New Jersey landholders. South Carolina is another theater in which there was intense fighting between Patriot and Loyalist militias that were very bloody and very important to the course of the war. I have tried to acquire a fair number of Perry militia figures so I can effectively recreate actions like Fishing Creek or Blackstocks Tavern.

These Hessians are in my painting conga line. I’ve had these for some time (like more than five years) and to be truthful, I don’t know the maker. Could be Hinchcliffe, could be RSM, but they’re old school one pose dudes. They’ll do for Rebels and Patriots.

I’ve generally tried to avoid the major actions of the war–Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth. Part of it is the size, part is just personal interest. I am fascinated by the Southern campaign of 1778-81, and its political and military difference from the northern campaigns. It is far more of a civil war than the war in the north, they exist in both places. The northern war, however is fought more with ideas, prisons and seizure of property, while the southern war is fought with bullets and battles. Burns did a great job of emphasizing this when he pointed out that the only British soldier at the Battle of Kings Mountain was the Loyalist commander Patrick Ferguson, but all his soldiers were Loyalist Americans. There are also fascinating personalities in the south from Daniel Greene and Lord Charles Cornwallis to Banastre Tarleton, Daniel Morgan and Thomas Sumter (and those are just a few.)

In any case, I am hoping 2026 is a year when I can make a lot of progress on this project, and Ken Burns is definitely helping my level of motivation. Now if Burns could only do a documentary on the Hundred Years War, perhaps I could make more progress on that project.

Changes of Pace

The cover of our Spanish Civil War rules, nicely designed by Michael Koznarsky

I’d like to say I have some new big ol’ project I’m rushing to complete, but that would be a fib. Actually September and October were filled with fun non-game things. In September Lorri and I used our timeshare to stay in Whistler, B.C. for most of a week. It was the perfect time, with the gondola to Blackcomb and Whistler mountains operating for one last week. Kids were back in school and we had a wonderful time just hanging out in the valley. In October, son Patrick and I flew to Albany and made the trip to visit the holy of holies, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. This was a bucket list adventure that included the Cooperstown visit, trek across New York to the Canada side of Niagara Falls, and then down to Cleveland for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Both trips were a delight.

Before I left, I completed a pretty big project, my Cuban Rebellion/Moro Rebellion/Philippine Insurgency/Spanish American War projects. I’d also been working pretty hot and heavy with Michael Koznarsky and others on a Spanish Civil War project, including developing our own set of rules. There is more to come on the latter, but I’ll hold off until it’s a bit further along or at least until my brain is a bit more settled on what is happening.

One thing I have been doing is working with AI on Chat GPT to help with developing player aids and scenario design. Chat GPT is free, though it does limit how much work it will do without a subscription. i don’t recommend it as design tool per se, but I have used it to help me gather information about the Spanish Civil War. It has helped me develop several scenarios for use with my Aztecs and Quetzacoatl Rampant, and it is helping with player aids for Airwar C21. Usually it successfully provides what I want, but sometimes it doesn’t help much. It’s worth exploring. Little Wars TV also has a video on YouTube about using Chat GPT for scenario design.

Today is Halloween and the month is coming to a close, so here is what I’ve been working on and what I will likely be doing for the rest of the year. I’m still meeting with my Silver Kings group as often as possible. That’s 2-4 times per month. We’re still playing SAGA. I’ve had an offer to play my Skraelings. My answer is always “of course . . . muhahahaha” Everyone hates them. They’re painful to play, but honestly they probably have a 50/50 win factor. They have crappy armor, no legendary hero, and no mounted figures, no hearthguard. But they all throw or shoot things and make people crazy, so I love ’em. I also try to attend the games at Wizard’s Keep in Kent each month. It’s a great gathering with lots of different games played, so very worthwhile. I am gaming much more than I did before retirement.

My hoard of SCW militia. About 120 figures of socialist and anarchist militia. Mostly based for urban conflict in Barcelona 1936.

I’ve painted a lot of Spanish Civil War figures, as I’ve said, and my stash of unpainted guys have pretty much ended. We’re hoping to do another playtest of our rules on the 11th, so we’ll see how that goes. I have a few more figures coming, some vehicles and an anti-tank gun to finish, then I think I’ll put additional figures on hold for a while until we sort out some important rules issues.

Republican Regular infantry from North Star Miniatures

I’ve been in contact with George Kettler about playing some Vietnam-era air stuff. George has most of the planes needed. While I am slowly starting to complete my planes, I don’t feel the need to have them all done before starting something with him. I am working to try to complete some game aids for the Airwar C21 system. Hopefully I can get some AI help. If not, it’s Kevin alone doing my best Daveshoe impression, which isn’t very good. Finishing the planes I have is a September goal. There are about 20 Thunderfchiefs, Phantoms and Corsair II’s.

Two-fifths of my printed train. It’s coming along.

David Sullivan and I also did a project with Bob Murch’s Crucible Crush Flint and Feather figures. These are just gorgeous Native Americans representing Iroquois and Hurons during the early and pre-European contact periods. I had about two dozen and David had a few more plus some early Europeans with firearms. I painted all I had, but I took a couple dozen more that David hadn’t painted. I’ll add these to the pile and run some games using Ganesha’s “Song of Drums and Tomahawks.” These were fun rules that don’t require many figures, but having more is just fine, and it will be a way of resurrecting a David and Kevin project.

I always have lots to do and paint so I won’t succumb to boredom any time soon.