Over Memorial Day weekend, our group played a War of 1812 game using 28mm figures and a set of homebrew rules written by Dave Dalton.
The War of 1812 is a favorite period of our host, who when he’s not playing miniatures, does War of 1812 re-enactments. And in truth, it’s a fun period to game. The uniforms are colorful and varied—generally Napoleonic, with quite a bit of frontier American thrown in. And the battles, while not the epic clash of nations in the European wars, were often brutal skirmishes.
Dalton’s rules, I think, do a good job of capturing the unpredictability of frontier warfare. Each turn, the players draw from a deck one card for each unit on their side. The commander then assigns one of the cards to each unit. A joker or ace gives a unit three actions; a face card, two; any other card, one. Actions are move, fire or reload. Each side has the option of reshuffling at the end of any turn, or continuing to exhaust the deck.
Drawing and assigning cards gives the players a series of critical decisions each turn, regarding which units need to take multiple actions, and which can get by with just one. The cards also tend to result in short, unpredictable bursts of action. It’s not unusual for one side to get their high cards in bunches, allowing them to move energetically, only to be shut down by a series of low cards.
Combat is decided in a fashion reminiscent of the Warhammer rules. Ten disded dice are rolled to hit, and the hits are re-rolled to determine casualties. Melee is resolved on a stand-by-stand basis. Morale is checked as units take damage and are reduced in size.
Our particular battle was a generic meeting engagement as British and American forces were arrayed across a field in roughly equal numbers. The objective was simple: drive the enemy from the field.
Most of the games that we’ve played with this rules set have been near-run things, with the outcome not being decided until late in the game. This, however, wasn’t one of those times. The British players got a run of good cards early, and kept reshuffling to get those cards back in the deck, only to come up with another good run.. Their luck with cards continued throughout the night. The Americans (my side) on the other hand, had rotten luck with the cards, never drawing more than one face at a time. That simply wasn’t enough to get anything going.
Our luck with the dice was just bad as we did minimal damage to the enemy. Worse, we failed easy morale tests and watched nearly full strength units flee the field. First our left collapsed, then the right. As units were destroyed or driven from the field, the number of cards in the draw also were reduced, cutting back on the chances of getting multiple actions with any unit.
Even a deus ex gamemaster set of reinforcements couldn’t save the day. The Americans couldn’t get enough face cards to get them into combat before the the rest of the army was vaporized.
When I was a boy, I thrilled to the adventures of Thor Heyerdahl in books such as Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft and The RA Expeditions. I remember wanting to lead a life of adventure like Heyerdahl, was very disappointed when some other anthropologists debunked his theories.
Its fascinating stuff for anyone interested in history. But there’s a wargaming angle in this, of course. How about a skirmish game between Polynesians and Incas?
We recently played a game of Space Hulk, the excellent Games Workshop miniatures/board game that sadly went out of print a decade ago. The game’s basic premise has squads of Space Marines conducting operations on board huge space “hulks” that are unfortunately infested by an alien race of “Genestealers.”
The playing surface consists of a bunch of interchangeable, interlocking corridors and rooms, all of which are marked with a square grid. The pieces are plastic (and in some cases, lead) miniatures that represent individual Marines and GeneStealers.
Continued...
Malcolm Gladwell has a fascinating article on a different sort of war—the war against infectious diseases caused by the mosquito. Without the discovery and use of DDT, retaking the Pacific fromthe Japanese during World War II would have been much more difficult, as large portions of our troops would have been in sick bay.
Reflecting upon the heroic actions of 76-year-old Professor Liviu Librescu in the recent Virginia Tech shootings, writer Graeme Hamilton writes about courage in a recent article in Canada’s National Post.
It’s a thoughtful piece that I think wargamers would appreciate. A couple of highlights:
The professor’s heroism gives rise to some awkward questions: How could a single gunman kill 30 people in one building without being overpowered? Why are acts of courage like Prof. Librescu’s so uncommon?
The nature of courage has preoccupied thinkers since ancient times. Aristotle called courage “the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” The philosopher saw courage as a virtue lying between the two extremes of cowardice and fearlessness, a notion echoed by Plato, who wrote: “A man becomes perfect in courage by fighting against and conquering the cowardice within him.”
When considering a tragedy like Virginia Tech, people naturally wonder whether they would be “perfect in courage” if confronted with similar circumstances. Would they have reacted like Mr. Librescu? Would they have risked their lives to save others?
William I. Miller, author of an acclaimed book on the topic, The Mystery of Courage, believes that for most of us, the answer to those questions is no. “
Miller, a professor of law and history at the University of Michigan has researched American Civil War battles extensively and has found that it is nearly impossible to predict who will behave in a heroic fashion, and who will break.
Another interesting finding was that courage is not inexhaustible. Valiant soldiers can only be asked to go to the well so many times before cracking under pressure. But, by the same token, someone who fled battle in one instance could “deliver in spades in the next one because he was so ashamed,” Prof. Miller found.
As hard as it is to ask the question, the thought arises: How did a lone gunman manage to kill all of those people. Several have reported that they watched him reload before starting shooting again. If ten or twelve people had rushed him at such a moment, he almost certainly would have been taken down. A couple fo people might have been kileld in the process ... but if you’re going to die anyway ...
The article cites two instances in which people did just that. In 2002, an Australian professor disarmed a heavily armed gunman who entered his room. And in 1998, a 17-year-old disarmed a high school gunman as he was reloading.
Miller wonders
whether such acts will be come only rarer, whether Western society has become so risk-averse that we are increasingly incapable of heroism. He despairs when he sees kids in his Michigan neighbourhood wearing “armour at the level of a medieval knight” as they learn to ride a bicycle and hears that touch football has been banned at the local elementary school because the ball is pointed.
“We so shield our children and ourselves from any encounter where we’re called on to deliver,” he said.
Finally, the article brings up the issue of soldiers in places like Iraq, who every day face death and perform countless small acts of heroism, such as heading into places where they know there are terrorist waiting to kill them.
Danger 50,000 Volts: The Zombie Edition is a hysterical send up of both zombie movie culture and those second rate documentaries that show up on cable.
Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
Over Memorial Day weekend, our group played a War of 1812 game using 28mm figures and a set of homebrew rules written by Dave Dalton.
When I was a boy, I thrilled to the adventures of Thor Heyerdahl in books such as 
and 
. I remember wanting to lead a life of adventure like Heyerdahl, was very disappointed when some other anthropologists debunked his theories.
, believes that for most of us, the answer to those questions is no. “
