The African Wars, by Chris Peers

Have been slowly but steadily working on this book, learned a lot and gained quite a bit of inspiration. It's available free through the Hoopla library app. Peers lists his original sources, too; most of these will be available on Google Books and Archive.org, as they are long out of copyright.

There is significant useful detail on the Ashanti (of Bronte fanfic fame), perhaps for an Angria campaign as Man of Tin sometimes runs. We tend to think of the colonial period as the "Scramble for Africa," but there was plenty of excitement in the period of Brown Bess.

Some pages are devoted to the Zulu, particularly their "Wild West" clashes with the Boers. I've never seen a wargame recreation of a hasty wagon fortification, but am not sure it would be all that fun for either side.

The chapter on King Kabarega of Bunyoro is interesting because it was a case in which the Egyptians (under Westerners like Emin Pasha and Chinese Gordon) fought a Ugandan tribe rather than the Arabs and Arab-influenced groups for which they are famous. Kabarega stuck around for decades like a thorn in the side of the white explorers and administrators, who I imagine traded campfire stories about him. 

Some elements of this campaign to add interest to a scenario:

• Canoes were used, and some boats were packed in pieces. 
• The fighting was in tall, stiff grass that blocked movement and line-of-sight, but provided no cover.
• Wild animals were a distinct danger, particularly crocodiles.
• Chiggers brought entire expeditions to a stop as men went lame. Wear your boots and puttees, folks!

From the chapter on the Azande comes a reversal of the normal sort of fight - the Mahdists on the defense behind a zariba from an attacking army of Belgian Askari (supported by the Azande, but still!).

Then a section on "Congo Arabs" - a slaving station in the "Heart of Africa." It sounds like the Arabs and Africans intermarried, and in fact nearly all the "Arabs" were African-born. Again, fodder for an atypical matchup. There was also significant contact and conflict between them and the Belgian Congo, with both sides plundering and slaving and neither side coming out of it looking good. Both also fought the pygmy tribes, while the other unhappy tribes were trapped between the outsiders. This is clearly the nucleus of many of the scenarios in TSIA.

The next chapter, a short one, is on the Masai and related Nandi, who have interesting similarities and differences with the Zulu and each other. Both, like the Zulu, formed military units from "age groups," but were not rigidly organized. The Nandi especially were in much smaller groups, because they were a smaller tribe and living in rougher terrain, but were more disciplined than the Masai seemingly out of small-group peer pressure. Like the Zulu, their cultures were based on cattle, which would seem to be good objectives in scenarios involving them. The Masai carried swords and throwing clubs (!) as well as the traditional stabbing spears and shields, which might make for an interesting small-scale skirmish. While more numerous and threatening, the Masai were more fragmented, making the Nandi the greatest native challenge to the British in Kenya, and the Masai seem to have never formally submitted to the British - an unusually mutual respect instead.

A chapter on the Hehe of Tanganyika also covers the foundation of the German Schutzetruppe. Peers comments that their 1871 rifles were modern when issued, unlike those given to British subjects (wary of another Indian Mutiny). The reason the 1871 weapons were still in use by WWI was that at 11mm they were more powerful than the standard 7.92mm and thus better suited to bush-fighting! Tom "von" Prince, a half-British officer who later served in 1914, is a prominent character in these early (1890s) battles.

The next part is on the the border of northern Kenya, a real smorgasbord of mixed Central African tribes, Somalis, Ethiopians, and Arabs that intermixed and fought each other as much as they fought the British. The "Mad Mullah," who I first encountered in a book on the history of air power, was encountered in this area. The British seem not to have taken the Somalis very seriously. At this point (around 1900), ex-Mahdists were allied with the British, again an unusual mix of troops for a small force. The explorer Burton, who fought the Somalis during his search for the Nile, was an expert on sword and bayonet drill!

There is a sense of tragedy in the conclusion; the fact is that the disasters that befell the natives of central Africa were external, and largely even environmental. The famous Zulu and Masai had themselves emigrated away from invaders, a first wave of catastrophe for the people who had dwelt in their new homelands. Like the American Indians, they - but more importantly the cattle on which their cultures depended - also fell prey to disease as the white man came in. By the time white explorers and soldiers arrived, it was easy to disparage and underestimate the often demoralized and shattered remnants. 

But some resisted, others fought over the spoils, and therein lies the interest for a wargamer. I have actually presented Belgian-on-German fights to players as "Do you want to play the slaving-and-cannibal-accepting colonialists, or the genocidal colonialists?" The last chapter adds a brief discussion of the Battle of Adowa, and the book ends with a series of atmospheric sketches and photographs.

It's almost as if Larry Brom read this book while preparing The Sword in Africa. It whets my appetite to try that variant of the game. An excellent read, recommended.

More Miscellaneous Rambling

 On the one hand, the last week at work has been INSANE.

On the other, my number of followers has doubled since I got featured on the Palouse Wargaming blog. (Thanks, Jon.) 22 followers may not mean much to the more accomplished bloggers out there, but now I feel obligated to write something.

The teens at work are becoming excited about trying Dungeons and Dragons. They're not following rules-as-written, but they are expressing a lot of creativity! I was so busy prepping for a Halloween event (successful despite a brief downpour!) that sadly I never had a chance to sit in and maybe even run a session. The interest level is high enough, though, that I have high hopes for next week.

The teen tech lab has a lot of cool things to teach;
this young man is using the tablet to sketch his character.

The Adventurer's Guides by Jim Zub have no rules,
but are attractively presented
and getting those creative juices flowing!

I did get a brief set of free-kriegspiel demonstrations in, sadly with no camera handy. 

• A roleplaying session. The player had already built a Paladin character. "So, your dragonborn Paladin comes upon a fat businessman-type beating a slave. What do you do?" He ended up buying the slave to set free, but spending the last of his coin to do it.
• An example of skirmish combat using cardboard standups from an ancient starter set. A kobold and a skeleton, using a book for cover, faced off against a knight on foot.
• And a quick wargame using 3x5 cards marked with NATO symbols for unit markers, again with free-kriegspiel "rules." A regiment of knights and another of footmen, ordered to march through a forest near a hill, were ambushed by goblins. The knights split into two units and tried to flank, while their infantry underlings were clobbered by a downhill charge.

The exhaustion from the Halloween event has also meant I'd rather rest with cats when I get home than play solo games. I've been working slowly on the US Regular Paperboys, and reading Chris Peers' The African Wars. There is a blogpost coming up on the latter, as I'm getting a lot of education and ideas from this book, and itching to run The Sword in Africa. Have been taking notes for possible scenarios.

Also have read three period US Army monographs on Vietnam, and currently a hundred pages into The Hunt for Red October, one of those "classics" I never got around to. Wargaming is actually mentioned here and there! I hope to try DBN soon, using my eraser ships.

Hopefully this whets a few appetites, and lights a fire under my butt. Wish me luck!

Design for Glory: 4th Battalion, 19th US Infantry

 At the rate I'm snipping and gluing, it'll be a while before I have a paper regiment ready to play Glory:1861. But that needn't stop me from designing it. Glory:1861 is deliberately similar to roleplaying games in that the "character" of the regiment is paramount. Its background, skills and experience all must be determined both beforehand and in the course of play. And character creation is a key part of any RPG; it is in fact a lead-in to play, because the mere act of rolling dice and writing down the results feels like play to newbies.

I chose to build a (fictional) US regular battalion because I recently read two volumes about the Regulars in the Civil War. These were That Body of Brave Men, on the Regular Brigade in the West, and Sykes' Regular Infantry Division 1861-1864, on the Regular Division in the East. 

These were both formed from newly raised infantry regiments, the 11th through 19th, authorized in 1861 to, in theory, triple the size of the US Army. This was because, instead of the ten-company, single-battalion organization of the first ten US Infantry regiments and the militia which became the US Volunteers, they were composed of three eight-company battalions. In practice, not only were 27 battalions never raised, but the ones that were rarely got up to eight companies or even full strength. Both books spend considerable pages on the extreme difficulty of recruiting for the regular army:

• Volunteer regiments had lighter discipline, better promotion prospects, and a commonality of culture as troops were from the same state.
• Volunteer regiments paid more, particularly from mid-war as bounties appeared and the draft encouraged more to enlist.
• Officers had to leave the battalion for extended periods to raise troops, train them and transport them back to the battalion, leading to a paucity of leadership in the active elements of the unit.

On the other hand, they had greater esprit de corps and experience based on their prewar officer and NCO corps, and (unlike most volunteer regiments) actively recruited and reinforced so that rookie troops were backed by stolid veterans. This made them somewhat more reliable than volunteers.

While normally regiments start off as green, there is an option to make regulars "competent" rather than poor or inexperienced. This appears to require nine months experience and five training bonuses. Initial upgrades may apply to the entire regiment, but future ones are purchased by company.

A battalion has eight companies, at four points per company. The field officers cost two points, and the standard bearer and drummer will cost two more, for a total of 36 points spent and 14 left over, which I'll spend on training bonuses and other characteristics, including rerolls. This will also come out to thirty-three eight-man bases (one of them a command base), and two individual officer bases. There is a free band available at helion.com, so I might build one and count it as the musician and the command base as the standard bearer.

Basically I'm losing two companies and one field officer (the battalion would not have a colonel), in exchange for better quality. The field officers (let's call them Lt. Col. Smith and Major Jones) begin with the following characteristics:

Command range of 18", Initiative of 4, and Combat Experience of 2. Since I only have the two officers, I'm going to roll to improve their command range. Smith's increases to 27". (Given my small figure scale and table, I'll probably reduce distances - perhaps to cm rather than inches.)

Each also receives one random characteristic on a D66 chart. I roll 45 for Smith and 15 for Jones. Smith is Humanitarian, meaning that no company may be Unrestrained, and Jones is Wheezy, meaning he must rest for one turn in every five. He must be pretty old, or maybe he got shot in the chest with an arrow during the Seminole Wars.

The battalion has eight companies, A through H, and of course eight Captains to command them. Each rolls on a quality table.

• A - Captain Able (Useless Slow)
• B - Captain Baker (Slow Overeager)
• C - Captain Carle (Overeager)
• D - Captain Doggett (Useless Heroic)
• E - Captain Easy (Useless Slow)
• F - Captain Fox (Tolerated)
• G - Captain Goff (Tolerated)
• H - Captain Howell (Tolerated)

Useless means a 1/3 chance of orders being ignored. Slow means an extra turn for orders to be followed. Tolerated means no bonus or detriment, and Overeager means that a unit taking a morale test may advance 2d6". Out of eight dice, I rolled a four or better once. I'll pay two points for four rerolls: 2, 6, 4 and 2. That upgrades Able and Easy to Slow, Baker to Overeager and Doggett becomes the only competent CO in the battalion, with a +1 to morale throws.

Next, I need to characterize the companies. Cowardly companies have -2 to morale throws, Reluctant ones require a field officer nearby to advance, Resolute has no effect, and Unrestrained, like Overeager, provides a chance of advancing further. As my CO is Humanitarian, I reroll Unrestrained. I also rerolled D Company's result, leaving me with ten points; out of twenty dice so far, I've rolled a single 5.

• A - Reluctant
• B - Unrestrained Resolute
• C - Resolute
• D - Cowardly Resolute
• E - Reluctant
• F - Reluctant
• G - Resolute
• H - Unrestrained Cowardly Fired Up

Now to training upgrades. Initial ones may apply to the entire regiment; after the first game they apply only to individual companies. So best use them now. Based on the sample regiments provided, I'll choose:

• Move - units always move at least 3" per die.
• Rally - unit can attempt to rally in one phase.
• Load - reloading takes one phase.
• Fire - bonus on firing modifier.
• Fix/remove bayonet - Unit can ... fix or remove bayonets.
• Skirmish Order - Unit can skirmish.
• Close Order - Unit can ... move in close order.

Out of points now.

The regiment, being US Regulars, is one of the only types that can choose rifled muskets, so gets the 1855 Springfield:

This provides greater range.

Beyond the Session Zero "character creation" phase, I've cut out twenty-one bases today to attach the paper figures to. Still inching forward... Even at 30mm wide, 32 bases will stretch the limits of my five-foot table. Need to think about increasing my table space.

Peter Dennis's ECW rules

 I've ordered several of Wofun's small "starter" collections. The English Civil War one, based on Peter Dennis's first Helion "Paperboys" book, is almost exactly the right size to play his two-page "Rules for Absolute Beginners." It's just missing two cavalry regiments, though I was given an extra sheet of New Army infantry; one of the nice things about Wofun is they sometimes toss in extra freebies.

The redcoats are of course the Parliamentarian New Model Army, while the yellow and blue regiments represent the Royalists.

Royalists left.

Royalists right.

 

Parliamentarian left.

Parliamentarian right.

In this introductory scenario, units start 60cm (24") apart. Moves are 16cm (6") for infantry and 32cm (12") for cavalry, while gun range is 72cm (27"), musketry 32cm (12") and close range for both 16cm (6"). Not having cm on my rulers, I'm using inches, and also reducing all distances by a third - partly because of the narrow width of my table, and partly because I went for the 18mm figures rather than the 28s.

Turn phases, in order, are Firing, Fighting and Fear Tests. Which side goes first is random each turn, and the Royalists fire first here. The only units in range are guns - both as shooters and as targets. Hits (both firing and CC) are usually 6 on a D6, often requiring a second roll of 4+ to "confirm." I score a hit on one New Army gun, who will have to take a Fear Test. Return fire misses.

During the first move, the Royalists head straight forward as fast as they can, while the New Army keeps in steady line and their left-hand cavalry charges the Cavaliers. I had to backstep because I'd forgotten to reduce the moves by a third (4" for infantry, 8" for cavalry). The Parliamentarian general took the wound off his gun - he has two abilities, the other being allowing the unit he's with to reroll all dice. The one combat (between two horse regiments on the right) is a draw.

During Turn 2, firing is inconclusive; the infantry shuffle to within 6" of each other (recall that movement and short-range fire are only 4"). The larger cavalry action on the Royalist left, however, has some serious fighting. 

One Royalist regiment is driven back, while the other draws but both units there fail their Fear Tests and are disordered. For a Fear test, a D6 is rolled, minus however many hits the unit has taken that turn. On a one or two, the unit is disordered and only receives 1 die in future combats (rather than one per base); on a zero or less, it breaks.

In Turn 3, firing starts to cause a few casualties, but it is in CC where we see how ongoing combats get worse for the losing side. The more hits you take, the more shots your opponent gets at you next turn and the more likely you are to disorder or break. I might have to risk the generals here to either turn things around, or ensure victory.

In this example, the Roundheads will get six dice in CC
and the Cavaliers only one.

In the Fear phase, a Roundhead infantry regiment finally broke, rolling a 1 after taking a single casualty. The Roundhead horse, however, rolling at -5, got a six and stayed in the game! 

In the next turn, both sides lost combats, and the Roundhead cavalry finally broke - not by failing a check but by taking six casualties which would force a failed check.

Scrums, scrums in the deep.

A Cavalier infantry regiment was eliminated, despite its commander's reroll. There is no rule for what happens to the general in this case, so I rolled as when the unit takes casualties. He survived, and will have to move next turn.

A Roundhead gun was eliminated by fire; the other has no line of sight due to combats. The Roundhead right is free to move and starts sweeping around to flank the Cavaliers.

Surrounded Roundheads are slowly beaten down,
as a Royalist unit led by its general defeats
another Roundhead regiment. But the
Roundheads are in position to take a gun.

After a couple more combats, both sides are down to four of their initial seven regiments. All shooting and fighting is inconclusive, except for the two flank horse regiments who have been going at it all game. They tie, but cause casualties, and both fail their Fear Tests (you only avoid taking one if you win). Mutual kill, and tie game.

Though a) the Roundheads were flanking the Cavaliers, and b) as I was putting the figures away I realized I had mistaken a Cavalier regiment for a Roundhead one:

Royalists left, Parliamentarians right.

Oops. I guess a unit turned traitor at some point during the game.

A good and fun set of basic rules, and attractively presented by Peter too! 

His illustrations (distinctly different from his usual realistic work on historical books) remind me very much of one of my favorite illustrators, Peter Spier. I would use this at work, if I could think of an excuse to run English Civil War in an American educational context. "This is what the colonists were fleeing," perhaps?

I've noticed that this, Test of Resolve and Field of Honor all have similarities to Donald Featherstone's later rules, in which casualties aren't removed from the board but each regiment effectively has a given number of hit points. Losses can effect the unit's abilities, but bases or figures are not removed from the table until the unit entire is destroyed. Black Powder has similar mechanisms too. This is a useful design since units can be presented on multi-bases and the game as a whole looks better, instead of having a unit ground down to a handful of men who, in reality, would not hang around to fight.

I enjoy shorter, simpler rules like this, and have become used to multibases now. They make it easier to line up units and thus create the "spectacle" of a tabletop battlefield that attracts players. I've been reading more of Paddy Griffith, who eventually "went off" miniatures on the grounds that they detract from the historical lessons that gaming can provide. I disagree, because I think there are still lessons to be learned from even a simple and "fun" game like this. Players can recognize the two sides, the basic unit types, and their abilities. From my perspective playing with beginners, that's as educational as it gets - games can teach facts perhaps better than they can teach skills. (Full disclosure: I got that from this essay by game designer Dr. Richard Bartle, and I'll probably return to it at some point.) Games don't have to be accurate and complex to be fun and teachable. I'll happily play this one again.

Brawner's Farm, Fields of Honor, and remote gaming

 I had the opportunity today to play a remote ACW game, representing the action of Brawner's Farm, August 28, 1862. It was against Ivan Edwards, and presented by Jon Freitag of the Palouse Wargaming Journal. 

I was particularly eager to try this for two reasons. 1) As a librarian, I want to learn about remote gaming, as live programming is off-limits at my workplace for the foreseeable future. 2) I got to play the Iron Brigade, which I am building in paper for a try at Glory: 1861. (They'll represent a US Regular battalion, being in the same uniform.) In between rolls, I was cutting out more strips; I seem to like doing something with my hands while conversing on Zoom.

In both cases, I was fully satisfied.

The American Civil War was the genesis of my interest in history; I visited Gettysburg at the age of six and bought my first copy (of three!) of the Golden Book History of the Civil War, which had these awesome maps in it:

I agree with another blogger that this is the most influential
book on the Civil War, and for the same reason.

But while I became an amateur authority on the Civil War in first grade, Brawner's Farm, a sort of prequel to Second Bull Run, was never on my radar. The first I learned about it was from A Brotherhood of Valor by Jeffry D. Wert, which I read last year and is a parallel history of the Stonewall and Iron Brigades. Brawner's Farm was the latter's baptism of fire.

It was also my baptism of fire into wargaming online, and the ruleset Fields of Honor, as ably gamemastered by Jon Freitag. I've been following Jon both on his own blog and on Wargaming for Grownups, where he also participates in remote games as well as running his own. He was concerned about this particular game because the figures are only 10mm, so this was a bit of an experiment for him as well as for us.

The field of battle.

I played the Union, which is why this view has them at the "bottom." The Iron Brigade (Gibbon's) is to the right, Doubleday's to the left, one battery in the center and three more to the right off-camera. It took a while before I got used to taking screenshots, and I'm sure Jon's own report will have much better pictures. He was taking closeups, and while he had a "floating" webcam for closeups we never actually used it. Which suggests that the overhead system worked well. Even at the small figure scale, the Union units are easily identifiable.

Union right flank, first turn,

Here the Iron Brigade has moved off the road (but still sheltered by the woods, which turned out to have the same light-cover designation as the fence lines). Artillery is also visible, and exchanging fire as the Rebels started with only artillery on the board. The small base behind an infantry regiment represents the brigade commander, while the guns have limbers. Each gun base represents a section of two cannon, with three making a battery with appropriate bonuses to rolls. The Rebels got bonuses for having two batteries in the same hex, as their standard size was four guns rather than six.

Doubleday's brigade on the left also moves off the road.

After turn two, the flank Rebel guns are eliminated,
but infantry reinforcements are coming on table.

Units are rated by weapon type (muskets, rifles, smoothbore or rifled guns, howitzers) and morale rating. This last provides bonuses to D10 rolls and saves. I had a Union-blue sparkly ten-sider (picked up at Supercon a couple weeks ago) which I ended up rolling for most everything and was remarkably lucky at shooting and saving throws, to the point that I wouldn't have blamed my opponent or the GM for being suspicious. It should be noted, however, that the "standard" throw in these rules is 5+, and the Iron Brigade all got +1.

"Rebels, Sir! Thousands of 'em!"

By turn three, I'd moved the Iron Brigade into the defensible position of the trees, and advanced Gibbons up the table, but my left-hand artillery were still out of position. I am easily torn by dilemmas, which can be frustrating for my opponents as I take forever to choose. Here I could leave my guns in the open, but masked by Gibbon's infantry. Or I could move them slowly into the woods, where they would be in cover but even less able to contribute.

The center holds, as an attack on Brawner's Farm develops.

As it turned out, it was possible for them to move through the woods and unlimber in a turn, so I moved them that way. It also turned out they were howitzers and could fire on the now-occupied farm, even though it was beyond the "military crest." Negatives to the roll, of course. As the two farms were the game objectives, and my guns held the one on the right, my intent was to bombard Brawner's, take it with infantry, and hold it against all comers.

Unfortunately, the Rebels had more troops, and they were closer to the farm than I was.

"Up and onward o'er the slope
Comrades lie around me slain"
-- Alasdair MacDonald

I also tried sending a regiment after the last guns on my right:

If it weren't for my lucky Union die, this would have been suicidal.

This turned out to be the Second Wisconsin, about to write a fictional page in history no less incredible than the one they actually wrote on the day.

They charged down the guns, and on the way took a charge of canister and the shared volleys of no less than five Confederate regiments. With their commander, they had a good saving throw - but they had to make around fifteen saves.

It helped that, in these rules, the firing side must effectively be behind its target to enfilade it. (Jon will change this for the next go-around.) The Second didn't make every save - but they didn't fail any either until the very last volley.

Gibbon's Brigade at this time was trying desperately to take Brawner's farm in the center-left. Both combats went on for another two phases, and still failed to dislodge the Rebels. In the end, I was driven back.

Charges on both flanks ultimately failed.

My Union-blue die was lucky only so long as I was rolling for firing and saves from firing. In melee, it choked every time.

I can't really blame the dice. I really did overextend myself. The end result:

My center is okay, but I hold nothing else save the farm.
And what's that to the upper right?...

We gave up at this point. The Rebs can be seen sweeping around my left. My right is still free, but the fresh Rebel brigade in the corner is in marching column. They will probably reach their second, winning, objective (my guns in the right-hand farm) before my battered Iron Brigade can get there. My gambles had failed.

I was way outnumbered, of course!

The game was a fine test of the rules, and of remotely playing a game on this scale. I certainly learned a bit. From my own perspective, hoping to GM games like this myself, I have greater understanding of what it takes to present the game to the players. By the end even my slow mind was internalizing the rules, but Jon's GMing practically made that unnecessary. He provided options and provided the targets for rolling. He also did some of the rolling himself; I might use something like rolldicewithfriends.com for a game like this. In an educational sense, this game worked because the players didn't need to think about the mechanisms, and could focus on our maneuvers.

Ivan commented that it felt more like a boardgame than a wargame, and I'm inclined to agree. This is mostly, I think, because of the top-down view and the fact we rarely used closeups; the units (each of three elements) look more like blocks than like groups of figures. Gamewise this is not a bad thing, but it's a bit cautionary for me; if I try something like this it will be with Paperboys, which I suspect from overhead will be virtually unidentifiable. A lower angle, something like my earlier FKR game may be better, especially because the figures are what I hope will most interest and attract my newbie players.

Closeups:

Iron Brigade at the fence.

The Confederate view.

It also felt like the divisional game it was, because from the player's view we couldn't identify our regiments - their names and stats were visible to Jon but not us. We saw them as brigades, and the simple game mechanisms supported this. At this scale, the commander cares less about his units' formation, range, cover, etc and more about the overall effect - Did I win or lose? How well or badly? (This is the same way I run simple roleplaying games - it works just as well on a small scale!) Paddy Griffith discusses this in his book Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun, which notably uses the same four elements to represent a regiment, brigade or division, and decreases the battle resolution as games grow "larger."

A good, fun game that wound up in around three hours. Well done to Jon, and congratulations to my opponent, Ivan! Jon gave the impression he will run this again with some modifications; maybe I'll try it again and see if I can do better. See you then.

Glory:1861, and slow progress

 I spotted a cartoon on Facebook today. It was of an inchworm. The caption was something along the lines of, "Even the smallest step forward ... is still a step forward."

I bring this up because that's how I tend to do wargaming projects. I force myself to do something. Anything, just to progress. Even if it's only one step towards the end.

I've been doing that lately.

These are "ACW18s" - 18mm Paperboys by Peter Dennis. They're smaller and more numerous than in his original 28mm Civil War book published by Helion, which I also have. Given the size of my gaming table, however, the 18s work well and don't need resizing (though there is some automatically, given that they are designed for A4 paper and I am in the US where the slightly-smaller 8.5x11 inch is standard).

I have several projects in mind for these chaps. One I am eager for is a version of Fort Wagner and the 54th Massachusetts as depicted in the film Glory. The ACW18 collection includes fortress elements that can be worked to resemble the fort, and it would be appropriate for Black History Month in February. Rules and even presentation are up in the air; at the rate we're going I might have to try running the game over Zoom, which is one reason I hope to join in on some of Jon Freitag's games at the Palouse Wargaming Journal blog. I've also been following online games at Wargaming For Grownups, which Jon has participated in.

Another project, and the point of this blog post, is Glory:1861.

I see an Uncanny Valley effect to this cover.
I think it's Stonewall Jackson, but vaguely disturbing.
Granted, TJ himself was vaguely disturbing...

Glory:1861 has strong overtones of a roleplaying game, because the pre-game phase of "building" your army (a ten-company-strong infantry regiment) is intricate and absorbing. The author recommends using singly-based figures: four per company, plus three field officers, two color-bearers and a musician, for 46 models. But the rules are model-agnostic, and it's entirely possible to use four multi-bases to represent a company - also more representative, as you could use 6mm figures in bases of twenty to represent every man in the unit. I've chosen a happy medium - four bases of eight men each, on 30x20mm bases. Peter Dennis' 18s are intended for groups of around 14 to a 40mm base; but I've become used to eight 18s on a 30mm base due to collecting many Wofun figures, which reduce Peter's 28mms nicely and are small enough to play an almost-normal battle on my small table. (I'll talk space and size when I get to trying Peter's English Civil War rules!)

This means that I need forty (count 'em) bases of troops. One strip of nine is enough to make one base.

Well, actually, I need thirty-two, as I am planning this first regiment to be US Regulars. Hence the choice of Iron Brigade figures. The "new" regiments formed by the US Army at the start of the Civil War were, unusually, of three battalions rather than one, and of eight companies each rather than ten. The 11th through 19th US Regulars thus were battalions. This means my "regiment" will be smaller than normal, but that also means I have more room to trick it out.

As a roleplayer, I can affirm that one of the best parts of RPGs is creating characters - even ones you never get to play. "Statting up" fictional characters - James T. Kirk, Indiana Jones, Gandalf - is practically a cottage industry, and arguments abound online about what feats and abilities this or that character should accurately have. Luckily, there weren't many famous regiment commanders during the American Civil War, at least early on as Glory:1861 is limited to. And the commanders don't have all that many bonuses - at the beginning.

So at least I'll be able to design the regiment before it ever takes to the field. Not to mention its opponent. 

I'll have to, because as I implied way back at the beginning of this post, my building rate is slow.

I have seventeen strips cut out. And most of the bases folded and glued.

I'm cutting out roughly one or two strips a day, mostly while watching Youtube.

And after that, I'll need to cut each in half (carefully trimming around the edges). Then attach each half to a base. Then paste each base to a 20x30mm bit of card. Then make a command base and two officers (major and lieutenant colonel).

And then go through the same process for a Confederate regiment.

See where I'm coming from?

And with Paperboys, this is lightning-fast compared to the traditional method of buying and assembling metal or plastic, undercoating, painting, basing... Even with Peter's lovely art to look at, and the relaxing process of assembly, there's a reason I purchase figures ready-to-play.

A decade ago, I'd probably have given up on a project like this. At the rate I'm going, it'll be the turn of the year before I have enough completed to try a game. But that's no longer the point.

I may never play. That's certainly my end goal, but if you've read this far you know I'm so easily distracted I can barely stick to one century, much less one game system. But that's alright, because the journey is the destination.

There are games where I do have a specific endgame (heh) planned, complete with deadline. My Picacho Pass scenario, for example; I would like to run it for my group in April of next year, exactly 160 years after the actual battle. A battle for Black History Month next February is another goal; at some point I'll need to pick either Olustee or Fort Wagner, buckle down and go at it.

Glory:1861 is different. While I might demo it for my adult group at some point, it's more of a solo project. And one of the nice things about solo projects is that you can take them at your own pace. The roleplaying aspect only accentuates this; design and planning is half the fun!

So, actually, is writing this blog post. I could have spent the last hour cutting out several more strips of paper soldiers, but instead I'm doing this. The gaming hobby is so much more than just throwing down on the tabletop. I relearned that today when I directed a boy to Dewey 793 on the library shelves, where I found him three books on Minecraft and two on Dungeons and Dragons. He may not be playing tonight, but I bet he's reading.

And dreaming of his next project.