The French 'come on in the same old way...' |
KEITH'S WARGAMING BLOG. This blog has been created to share my exploits in the hobby of wargaming. I game in the WW2, Seven Years War, Napoleonic and Ancient periods. The blog also contains a few details of my book 'Airborne Armour'. Please don't quit the site without leaving a comment, even if not related to a specific post. Most wargamers have something interesting to say about the hobby!
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Tuesday 26 March 2024
In Which I Try Out Valour & Fortitude
Saturday 16 March 2024
The Attack On Wurstburg 1758
The Prussians have crossed the river in force and are building the pressure against Wurstburg. Austrian reserve infantry are arriving on the left of the photo. |
A bettter view of the Austrain infantry reserves arriving in Wurstburg. |
The Austrain reserve cuirassiers hover behind Trommler Farm waiting for a suitable time and place to intervene (bottom right), as von Kleist's advance continues. |
The Austrian Grenadier detachment bravely continue to dispute control of Trommler Farm, but have been bypassed by the Prussian cavalry on their right, and Freikorps on their left. |
The concluding positions around Wurstburg. |
The north of the town is lost to the Austrians, whilst the Austrian grenadiers have their bases firmly planted on the southern town objective marker. But the game is up. |
Friday 23 February 2024
The Cotswold Wargaming Day 2024 - And Facebook
Well, it's that time of year again, and I'm planning my annual wargaming event. This year, I am having a change of venue from Northleach to Cirencester.
Sunday 28 January 2024
Ah Yes...Facebook
I have never really thought Facebook was a good place for wargaming sites. The Facebook pages or groups I visited seemed to lack focus and looked to me like a jumble of messages and posts with little order or organisation. So I set up 'proper' websites for Honours of War and Shadow of the Eagles, with forums, download sections, author content etc.
Well, the Honours of War site has worked pretty well for about 9 years, but activity is now limited to a few stalwart members. These guys post some great content, but for a set of rules published in 2015 a website was beginning to look like a luxury I couldn't afford.
The Shadow of the Eagles site had some interest at first, but this has faded recently and there is currently very little activity. The simple fact is that SotE sold less copies than HoW. This is pretty easy to explain - the Napoleonic rules market is much more competitive than the SYW one, and Osprey have a much higher profile than Partizan Press - particularly with their 'Blue Books'. With the annual renewal of the site coming up, at much increased cost, renewal just didn't seem worth it for a site generating almost zero posts on the forum. (As an aside, check out the Little Wars TV review of the Blue Book series HERE).
On the other hand, people kept telling me Facebook and Instagram were the places to be if one wanted to generate interest in your rules. Once you joined Facebook and your page or group got going, you became part of a significant online conversation, where people joined and posted on your little group, and you joined and posted on their groups. Interest might therefore flourish. This is the problem for small-time rules authors - once the initial publicity has faded, there is the danger that your rules will just sink without trace amongst all the other rule sets.
So there we are - I want to keep interest in my rules alive, and Facebook seems to be a good place to help that along. At least, that's the case according to my kids - and my wife. And a number of fellow gamers. And Dave Ryan at Partizan Press, who always wanted me to have a Facebook page. And recently, well-known military historian and Osprey author Angus Konstam also encouraged me along this route.
So, in a month or so, I will be saying goodbye to the HoW and SotE sites. To anyone who ever posted on those sites, or just joined to download free stuff, my sincere appreciation and thanks. I learned a lot from the questions asked and comments made, and this resulted in some rule amendments and errata corrections. All the errata and new or amended rules will continue to be available on Facebook, free to download.
The Facebook group is set up, and you can apply to join via the group page:
Monday 6 November 2023
STARTLINE - Wargaming World War Two
I have mentioned previously on this blog my work on a set of company-level WW2 rules inspired by the WRG 1973 set 'Armour and Infantry'. I have spent many pleasant hours working on these rules recently, and thought it was now time to open up the content to my fellow gamers.
Those of you on the CWD mailing list should have received an invitation email - if not, one will arrive in the next day ot two. Apologies if this represents unwanted junk mail - just ignore it and it will go away! Wargamers who have expressed an interest in my ongoing work via this site should also receive an invite - but if you want to just go straight to the group and sign up, that's fine.
Thursday 26 October 2023
Cotswold Wargaming Day 2023 - The Judges Scores Are In
And so, a slightly delayed report on CWD 2023. One or two non-wargaming parts of my life took up some time recently, and so I waited for a quiet moment to properly enjoy putting the report together. In fact, two fine AARs are already out there, from Chris Gregg and Steve Johnson. Both are well worth visiting.
This year we had 11 games scheduled at one point, but sadly unavoidable issues cut that down to eight in the end. One good result was that everyone was together in the main hall, with no games in the 'side room ghetto'. I counted 31 gamers present, or 33 if you count me and my long-suffering other half (more on that later). For the moment, here's a quick run-down on the 8 lovely games that were played on the day.