Lobscouse And Spotted Dog

I have just finished reading the twenty complete novels of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series and at one point I dug out my copy of this book:

Anyway, my wife 'suggested' that I might like to actually make use of owning a book like that, and actually cook something out of it. So this weekend I did.

I chose to make the titular dishes - lobscouse, which is a kind of fried mass of meat, leek, onion and potato, and spotted dog, which is a dense suet pudding dotted with currants. These are not dishes that the ordinary seamen would eat; they are taken from a chapter devoted to the menu of a gunroom dinner, so this is officer food.

Lobscouse is based on a mix of both salt beef and salt pork, which is boiled first to tenderise it. It's then chopped up and fried, then added to fried, chopped onion, leek and potato. It's cooked through, and then at the end a stock is added (the water you boil the meat in) as well as some crushed ship's biscuit, the latter thickening it somewhat. A selection of spices are also added for flavour. 

And this is the final result of over four hours of cooking and preparation. Enough lobscouse for six generous helpings

I actually used corned beef and smoked ham, which were both pre-cooked, but still boiled them for an hour each to tenderise them. Uncooked salted meat has to be boiled for 2-3 hours!

A serving for one, in one of our delightful bowls from the Tunisian town of Nabeul. The colour difference is simply down to different lighting.

As seen in a previous post, here's the ship's biscuit that's used for thickening. The photo was taken before I pounded them to crumbs (I actually used a food-processor, because I'm lazy like that. Even then I almost burned out the motor. Those things are tough.)

And on to the pudding - a spotted dog suitable for six generous servings (and nine restrained ones). Enough that we'll be eating spotted dog for pudding at least a couple more times this week.

As a suet pudding this should have been steamed for two hours. Again I took a short-cut and simply did it in the microwave. It took just under ten minutes.

An 18th century recipe doesn't include raising agents, which are apparently a thing of the mid-1800s onwards, so the final pudding is much denser than you might expect from a more modern recipe. We served it with custard, which is what the book recommends as well. 

And the verdict? 

We liked the lobscouse. It's quite salty and contains a lot of meat, but was tasty and substantial. However as nice as it was we didn't feel it was worth the time. But, saying that, the underlying principle of it is sound, and we've worked out quicker versions that will capture its vibe without taking even half the time. My daughter has already earmarked a chunk of the leftover lobscouse to take to work for their lunch one day. The remains will do the three of us for another meal.

Unfortunately I was the only one who liked the spotted dog. It wasn't that the other two thought that it was horrible, but it was quite dense and stodgy, and not to their taste. I will have some more, and the other two might be persuaded, but I'm sad to say that some of it will probably end up feeding the chickens. And they will love it.

Even if you don't cook anything from it, 'Lobscouse and Spotted Dog' is a great book. The author's tried all of the recipes and dishes they could find mentioned in the book, from naval staples like these two dishes, to whole roast lamb stuffed with rice and even some of the more hideous options such as cooked rat (although they admitted to not even attempting to consume the rainwater filled with bird guano from 'HMS Surprise' - serves one). A highly recommended book.

With Pike And Musket

 

My book came! The 2009 reprint of Wesencraft's 'With Pike And Musket'. Given various postal issues, four weeks or so from the US to Australia was pretty good.

Anyway, this book was originally published in 1975, and, despite the title, is focused very much on warfare in the British Isles from 1550 to 1650, with a strong emphasis on the English Civil War. I have no objection to this.

It starts with a look at the weapons of the period, then covers the organisation of some of the armies - Elizabethan English, Irish, Scots and then those of the Civil War. It then dives into a series of chapters which build up a set of wargames rules for the period. Finally - and the bit I primarily bought it for - it has scenarios for 27 battles from the period, 20 of which are ECW actions.

The rules are kind of what you'd expect for the time, but are not without interest. They are centred around units having an effectiveness rating from 1-4, which can fluctuate temporarily or permanently during the game, and which affects firing, melee and what passes for morale tests in the game. The 'morale' tests are rolled when you want a unit to move, to charge or to receive a charge, and are a D6 roll with the effectiveness rating added to it. Read the result from a simple table to find out if the unit obeys order, stands its ground, falls back or simply flees for good. It's a prototype of the Fire & Fury system really. As a system I rather like it, although testing for every unit every time it moves could get tedious maybe.

The only gap I found in the rules was what happens after a melee. The rules cover how casualties are inflicted, but there didn't seem to be an assessment of winner and loser or any kind of morale test, implying that units simply fight until one is wiped out. And yet the rules do assume that one unit can force another to rout. But maybe I missed it in my first read-through.

The scenarios look pretty good, and cover a range of battles throughout the conflict; all the big classics are there, and some smaller one too. Unit details are deliberately kept a bit vague, and deployments, within certain limits, are up to the players. I like the simple terrain maps too; almost One Hour Wargames in their minimalism.

This is a fun book to read as well. I'm sure I read some of Wesencraft's stuff back in the day, but as a spotty teenager scouring his local library for any wargames books he could find. As a discerning adult I found the author's style as entertaining as the ideas an information he presented. I especially loved his section of why he adopts alternate moves rather than simultaneous ones.

I'm going to finish with my favourite quote:

"The secret of rule-writing lies in the ability to be able to take a detail of movement. fire effect, etc. study it, stretch it to its ultimate in an effort to cover all possibilities and then to simplify it until a playable rule emerges. So often that simplification is ignored."

Army Showcase - The Morthbrood

This army is the evil opponent of The Forces of Light and, like it, draws ideas from both 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The Moon of Gomrath'.

Here's the army in all its glory. The list is:

1 x Magician General (The Morrigan and Grimnir) @ 4AP
1 x Sneaker (Brollachan) @ 3AP
1 x Flyers (Crows) @ 2AP
1 x Behemoth (Mara) @4AP
1 x Beasts (Palug Cats) @ 2AP
1 x Beasts (The Hounds of the Morrigan)@ 2AP
1 x Lurker (Svart Alfar with Nets) @ 1AP
6 x Hordes (Svart Alfar) @ 1AP

The Morrigan (in her guise as Selina Place) is the magician general, whilst the weed-coated Grimnir is her second-in-command on the same base. The Morrigan is a railway figure, whilst Grimnir is a Micro-Machines Star Wars figure with some added weed.

The creatures of the Morthbrood - the crows are railway model seagulls (I kid you not) with their wings clipped. The Palug Cats are Irregular Miniatures tigers, but painted to look like tabby wildcats, for that is essentially what they are; huge cats. The Hounds of the Morrigan do not quite match the description in the book, but are Warmaster Chaos Hounds.

The behemoth in any HOTT army is usually the showcase figure, simply because of their size. The Mara are basically 20' tall malachite green troll-women. I used an Irregular Miniatures 54mm nude woman as the base, and gave her a ragged tunic made from tissue-paper. Their faces are supposed to be shapeless, so I chopped off the head and replaced it with a milliput blob with a few rudimentary features added. Fun Fact: The Mara were apparently based on the reclining female figures sculped by Henry Moore. 

The Brollachan is the figure I'm least happy with. It's described as a being of black smoke with two red eyes at the centre, which is not easy to model. I used some soft-toy stuffing, shaped and painted black, with the eyes painted in the middle. To be honest I really need to redo it and make it less of an unthreatening blob.

The Svart Alfar are basically your classic goblinoid horse, and I used Pendraken 10mm Orcs and 15mm goblins from what was then Chariot Miniatures to make them. The element with the net are the lurkers.

'The Moon of Gomrath' features Bodachs, which are larger goblin creatures. 

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these armies as much as I did putting them together and playing with them.

Army Showcase - The Forces of Light

Last year I had a request to do an Army Showcase for my matched pair of armies based around Alan Garner's novels 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The Moon of Gomrath'. Published in 1960 and 1963 respectively, these were popular childrens' fantasy novels when I was at school in the 1970s, but I never got around to reading them until I was an adult. They are set in Cheshire, in the area around Macclesfield, contemporary to the time they were written, and concern two children, Colin and Susan, who, whilst staying with friends whilst their parents are overseas, become embroiled in a magical conflict between good and evil. A lot of the concepts, creatures and characters are drawn from the mythology of the British Isles.

It's always hard to do this kind of army showcase without giving away spoilers, and I don't plan to summarise the events of the novels. Instead I will do a post for each of the two armies. The HOTT armies make use of things from both books, gleefully thrown together. Inevitably some things were dropped, simply because there weren't the points to allow for them.

In this post I will showcase the Forces of Light. Here is the army (you can click on the picture to make it bigger):

The list is as follows:

1 x Sneaker (Colin and Susan) @ 3AP

1 x Magician General (Cadellin Silverbrow) @ 4AP

1 x Hero (Albanac and Uthecar) @ 4AP

2 x Riders (Lios Alfar Cavalry) @2AP

1 x Shooter (Lios Alfar Archers) @ 2AP

1 x Lurker (Lios Alfar Ambushers) @ 1AP

1 x Blades (Dwarfs) @2AP

2 x Knights (The Einheriar of the Herlathing) @ 2AP

Here's the two main characters - Colin and Susan - along with the wizards Cadellin. The children would work as a cleric - one of them has a protective artifact - but this would hinder the magician in HOTT. But they also infiltrate the villain's stronghold and evade their minions so a sneaker works just as well. Colin is a plastic model railway figure whilst Susan is, I think, a Peter Pig French Resistance fighter with the gun filed off. Cadellin is a pretty standard literary wizard in the Gandalf/Merlin style, so I used a generic wizard figure from (I think) Irregular Miniatures.

This is the hero element, depicting the man Albanac and the dwarf Uthecar. Albanac is an ERM Border Reiver with a milliput hat, whilst Uthecar is a Peter Pig dwarf whose axe has been replaced by a sword.

Other dwarfs feature in both books, some of them named. I have lumped them together into a single blade element. Once again the figures are from Peter Pig.

I've noticed that in some games I run them as warband, thus showing that I don't really know my own lists. They work as either troop-type.

The Lios-Alfar are basically classic fantasy elves. They are four feet tall, and dress in silver and white with feather cloaks. So to depict them I used Irregular 10mm elves and a simple white/grey/pale-blue wash and dry-brush colour scheme. These are the cavalry.

And here are the archers - one element of shooters and also an element of lurkers.

Finally 'The Moon of Gomrath' features a lengthy appearance by the Wild Hunt (The Einheriar of the Herlathing). Five different groups of them are described in detail, but I only had room in the army for two and these are they. The figures are Sub-Roman British cavalry from Outpost.

This was a fairly easy army to put together, since the fact that it's based around common fantasy tropes means that there was a wide selection of figures available. I did a lot of it using spare figures, in fact - the 10mm Lios-Alfar were probably the only specific purchase I made.

In the next post I will showcase their opponents - The Morthbrood.

Tour De Wollongong

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here the past few days. I've been playing more Flamme Rouge. And not bothering to document the games that much either. Anyway it culminated in playing a seven-stage tour with my wife and two AI teams over the past two evenings (a game takes less than an hour, so it's not too arduous).

We used the bot teams from the Peloton expansion. I don't own it but the rules are available online and you can substitute exhaustion cards for the special Muscle/Attack cards the bot teams use. There are two different bot teams - the Peleton (who stick together) and the Muscle (who play as seperate cyclists, but with their sprinteur getting an extra movement card the player version doesn't have). Muscle teams aren't too hard to beat, but the Peleton is trickier.

We used the six courses from the basic game, but I added a long (12 space) section of cobbles to the first flat race to make it interesting. The seventh course (which we ran in the middle) was a rejig of a Paris-Roubaix course I found on the 'net, and consisted of three sections of cobbles with a couple of short descents interspersed. I was using a simple scoring system (3 pts for a win, 2pts for second place and 1pt for third).

Anyway, experience told. Catherine has played a few times, but I'd spent the weekend running numerous courses against bot teams and had started to grasp some of the concepts of planning and hand management that the game required. I picked up a fairly easy win, but mostly via coming second in six out of seven races. I only won two. Catherine won three races, but failed to score any other places, and came third behind the Peloton team. In fact this was down to the last race, where her lead rider was photo-finished into fourth place by a Peloton rider; had their positions been reversed Catherine would have come third in the race and scored enough points to finish second overall. The Peloton team placed in six out of seven races, and won one of them. The conventional bot team came a distant last, with a single win and nothing else.

There's a new expansion coming out this year with proper rules for tours. 

In other new I've been doing a bit of reading, after acquiring a copy of 'The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History ' by Alexander Mikaberidze. This is a weighty tome, but very readable. Those that know me wil now that my knowledge of the Napoleonic era is somewhat sketchy, but this book has done a great job of filling in the gaps. It's a broad-brush history looking at the interplay of nations and events between 1792 and 1815 but on a global scale. Highly recommended.

Portable Pike and Shot Published!

Regulars on this blog will know that for a few years I've been playing around with an ECW version of the Portable Wargame. Well, you'll be pleased to know that it's been published as part of a collection of rules in Bob Corderey's ongoing Portable Wargames book series!

It was actually published a few weeks ago, but I was holding off announcing it here for the purely parochial reason that you couldn't order print copies of it here in Australia. However it looks like that's now the case.

It's available through Amazon in both print and Kindle form.

So what do you get for your cash? Well, obviously you get my ECW rules, and that's obviousy worth the price of the book on its own. But, in all seriousness, you get a short piece on warfare in the pike & shot period by Bob, then three sets of rules - one for the period in general, pitched mostly at the ECW and 30YW, my ECW set and a set for the Sengoku era in Japan. The other two sets are written by French gamer Antoine Bourguilleau. On top of that you get a series of rules and pieces by Arthur Harman, which include a pre-battle deployment system, rules for sieges and assaults and a strange set of rules, plus a scenario, based around ECW re-enactors.

It's the first time I've had a set of rules properly published in over 4 years, so I'm quite thrilled, and it's a pleasure to be part of a book with some genuine 'names' in the hobby too. 

Obviously I'm biased, but if you're a fan of the Portable Wargame then this is a worthy addition to the series, with some interesting ideas and expansions for the concept.

(Ironically since my author's copy is coming from the UK, I don't have a copy of the book myself. Yet. Looking forward to getting it though!)

Heading East

I'm looking to expand the geographical range of my Galleys & Galleons games - today I got a parcel containing these beauties.

There's still one on 16th/17th century Dutch warships to come as well.

(The title says 'Heading East' but for me it's more 'North'.)

Happy Christmas

Have a great day. As a little gift from me to you, here's a picture of Aloy looking after some of my books. 

Bargain Books

Wollongong's newest second-hand bookshop has an excellent and eclectic selection of book, but it's small, so the group that runs it has made certain decisions about the types of books they want on their limited shelf-space and the types they don't. The latter categories includes children's books (which they reckon they've not sold a singe one of since they opened), cookbooks (ditto) and most military history. So any donations they get in these categories get put in a shelf near the doorway, or a box outside the shop, and you can have them for free, or pay what you want.

This cost me $2.50, and I got a coffee out of that as well (they do coffee too).

I got a history of the Eureka Stockade for free the other week. So on the whole I'm a big fan of their selection policy.

(For the record I've also bought a few books on mythology and folk-tales from their regular shelves. And lots more coffee.)

Peter Pan

On Sunday my daughter treated my wife and I to wedding anniversary trip to the theatre to see' Peter Pan Gone Wrong', which I can heartily recommend seeing if you get the chance. On the way back I was reminded that man years ago I subjected Disney's film version to the HOTT treatment, backed up with bits and pieces from the book, for one must always go back to the original source material if possible. So here it is; another article from the old Stronghold, resurrected and dusted off for your pleasure.

Peter Pan

Army Lists for ‘Hordes of the Things’

By Alan Saunders

My children have recently become obsessed with Disney's 'Peter Pan'. The only way to stay sane under such an onslaught was to consider the HOTT potential.

The Lost Boys

Stronghold: Hideout in hollow tree

Aerial Hero General (Peter Pan and Wendy) @ 6AP	1
Flier (Tinkerbell) @ 2AP	1
Water Lurker (Crocodile) @ 1AP	1
Water Lurker (Mermaids) @ 1AP	1
Warband (John, Michael and other Lost Boys) @ 2AP	7

At the end of the film they capture Hook's ship and Tinkerbell enchants it so that it can fly: Airboat @ 3AP.

Pirates

Stronghold: Pirate ship

Hero General (Captain Hook with Mr. Smee) @ 4AP	1
Artillery (Cannon) @ 3AP	1
Sneaker (Pirates bearing gift-wrapped bomb)@ 3AP	1
Warband (Pirates) @ 2AP	7

Indians

Stronghold: Indian encampment

Warband General (Indian chief) @ 2AP	1
Warband (Indian braves) @ 2AP	10
Lurkers (Indians disguised as trees) @ 1AP	2

This gives you a nice three-sided campaign set in Never-Never Land. The film even has enough shots of Hook's map to allow a simple campaign map to be drawn up.

These lists are based on the film. An examination of the book, however, doesn't require too many changes to the lists, although it gives Hook a crew of just seventeen, which is going to stretch the army a little. The Lost Boys fare even worse; there are only six of them, although there is, at least, an implication that there are sometimes more (Pan is described as 'culling' them from time to time, which is a little disturbing).

Although they don't put in much of an appearance, there is a fourth force in Neverland; the Beasts. A pretty simple army list - twelve beasts. Easy. Funnily enough the crocodile would make a good general for this army, although it would lose its water lurker status in the Pan's force. The rest of the beasts are, as far as I can remember, such things as bears, wolves and so forth.

Army Showcase - Redwall

I reported a battle between my Redwall matched army pair yesterday and promised an Army Showcase for them So here it is.

'Redwall' is a children's book written in the 1980s by British author Brian Jacques. It proved so successful that he went on to write around twenty more, three of which were made into animated TV series. The world of Redwall is one of anthropomorphic woodland animals (almost all native to the British Isles) adventuring mostly in an area called Mossflower Woods, but sometimes straying into other areas as well.

The books are very formulaic, which is both a strength and weakness. You know what you're going to get with each one, which is great, but the downside is that there are few surprises. They generally feature a heroic animal of some kind, plus companions, setting off on a quest, whilst evil forces gather and threaten some part of Mossflower. The morality of the characters is pretty much defined by their species (another area that has attracted some criticism). Mice, otters, hedgehogs, moles, shrews, hares and badgers are invariably good, whilst 'vermin' animals - rats, wild-cats, weasels, stoats, foxes and so on - are always evil. And within this each species has particular traits - for example, shrews are argumentative and militant (the author based them on Liverpool dock-workers), whilst the hares are heroic and talk like WWII British fighter-pilots.

The series jumps around chronologically; the books skip back and forth through Mossflower's history, and often the main characters only appear for one book only. Central to most of them, though, is Redwall Abbey, which features as a bastion of decency and community throughout the stories and it's around the Abbey that the first book in the series is set.* The story is simple. The peaceful Abbey is threatened when the mighty rat warlord, Cluny The Scourge, arrives with his horde. The inhabitants use wit and courage to defend it from his army, whilst a young mouse called Matthias begins to get dream-messages from a legendary hero called Martin The Warrior, and sets out on a quest to recover his lost sword and shield and save the Abbey.

It was my wife who started reading the series and suggested that there was a lot of potential for HOTT armies in it. The trickiest part was figure availability. There is a manufacturer who does suitable miniatures now, but twenty years ago (which is how long ago I put together these armies) there was nothing. I had to resort to conversion and scratch-building.

And here are the Defenders of Redwall

The army list is as follows:

1 x Hero (Matthias, with the sword and shield of Martin The warrior)
1 x Hero (Basil Stag-Hare and Jess the Squirrel)
1 x Horde General (The Abbot)
1 x Behemoth (Constance, the Badger Mother)
2 x Shooters (Mouse Archers and Otter Slingers)
1 x Warband (Heroic Abbey Defenders)
1 x Warband (The Guosim)
1 x Lurker (More Guosim)
1 x Flyer (Sparra Warriors)

And here's Matthias. He's the guide for most of the figures in this army; he's a Pendraken 10mm figure, with a head sculpted from Milliput, and that's pretty much the case for everything else.

Basil Stag-Hare and Jess. These are 15mm figures from Peter Pig and Irregular, but again the heads are sculpted. I might give Basil a sword at some stage. I can't remember why I didn't arm him originally.

Redwall generally has an Badger Mother, and during the events of Redwall the role was taken by Constance who proved a fearsome fighter. Classing badgers in the series as behemoths does not seem unreasonable.

Constance is an old-style plastic GW Skaven with the weapons and ears removed and more clothing added.

Although the various heroes and Constance provide the main fighting strength for the Abbey, it is still run by the Abbot, and so he is the general for the army. Classing him as a horde makes him suitably weak and vulnerable. Again these are Pendraken 10mm figures with Milliput heads. The mouse in the yellow dress is Cornflower.

The army has some conventional rank and file. These are its missile troops - otter slingers converted from Peter Pig figures and mouse archers converted from Pendraken figures.

There's also a warband, representing some of the minor characters involved in the defence of the Abbey - the otter is Winifred, and the hedgehog is Ambrose Spike. I can't remember who the squirrel represents.

The Guosim provide a lurker and warband for the army. Guosim? It's the Guerilla Union Of Shrews In Mossflower, of course.

Finally in the roof of the Abbey dwell a fierce tribe of Sparras (sparrows). Although they initially hinder Matthias's quest they end up as valuable allies of the Abbey. They are slightly modified giant eagles from Peter Pig's 6mm range.

Finally, of course, the Abbey itself. This was bought from Forgeworld who, many years ago, did resin models of parts of famous Irish castles. Needless to say that it cost me more than all the miniatures I used for the actual army.

Most heroic armies based in or around Redwall in the series would be similar to this one. The Sparra are written out early on, but a number of books feature helpful birds of prey that would make a suitable replacement.

And what of Cluny The Scourge? This is his horde:

1 x Hero General (Cluny The Scourge)
1 x Warband (Cluny's Lieutenants)
2 x Shooters (Rat and Fox Archers)
1 x Sneaker (The Shadow)
1 x Sneaker (Tunnelling Rats)
8 x Hordes (Vermin)

Cluny is big and fierce with one-eyeand a poison barb attached to his tail. I used a plastic GW snotling as the base figure, and added a plastic GW rat head. The sword and tail were scratchbuilt.

The rats that make up the bulk of Cluny's army are either from Pendraken or what was Chariot Miniatures. I liked the rat with the pirate hat, and thought it would make a good lieutenant for Cluny. The standard is part of a tapestry of Martin The Warrior that the rats stole from the Abbey. I scanned it from an illustration in the book, then coloured it.

Cluny tries a number of stratagems to get into the Abbey, and these are represented by two sneaker elements. One represents his attempt to dig a tunnel under the Abbey walls, whilst the other represents his mysterious assassin, The Shadow. The tunnellers are converted from Chariot figures, whilst the Shadow is a Pendraken rat.

The Archers are foxes and rats. They are all from Chariot - the foxes are dog-headed archers from their Fantasy Egyptian range, with Milliput tails.

The Hordes. Pendraken and Chariot again.

The two sneakers make this army tricky to use, and I'm inclined to consider adding another warband and downgrading one of the sneakers to a lurker instead.

Cluny's army is pretty much the prototype for all vermin armies in the books - not all of the generals would be heroes, but a mix of warband, shooters and, of course, hordes would pretty much cover most of them. The corsairs of the island of Sampetra offer an interesting addition of monitor lizard shock troops which are best represented as spears. And there is one all-aerial horde; the ravens and crows of General Ironbeak.

The other main army of the Redwall series is that of the mountain stronghold of Salamandastron, which is ruled by a badger-lord who leads an elite army of hares called The Long Patrol. This would be best represented by a behemoth general for the Lord, maybe a hero to represent the bravest or most skilled Long Patrol members, and then a mixture of blades and some shooters for the rank and file.

*The first book, 'Redwall', was written as a one-off, so there are a lot of things in it which are not consistent with the later books. Some of them are explained in later books; others are simply ignored.