Another Belle Époque imagi-nation: The Kingdom of the Ashona

Having rediscovered the box of 15mm figures donated to me by Carl Luxford, I decided that I would use them to create another Belle Époque imagi-nation to my collection.

As the figures include several cavalry figures on wonderfully barded mounts, I decided to base my new imagi-nation on the Kanem-Bornu Empire. This existed from about the eighth to the end on the nineteenth century and was located in the area of Africa that incudes parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, and Chad.

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The Kingdom of the Ashona

The flag of the Kingdom of the Ashona.

The history of the Kingdom of the Ashona

The area now occupied by the Kingdom of the Ashona was originally ruled by the Harabian Empire, but when the empire collapsed, the former Harabian rulers remained in place and continued to administer the country. As a result, the Kingdom of the Ashona has more in common with modern Harabia than it has with the neighbouring Sultanate of Sahel and the Kingdom of the Obele.

The position of king is hereditary and is usually occupied by the eldest son of the previous king, although there have been occasions in the past where a younger son has inherited the throne. This has usually been due to the mental or physical incapacity of the eldest son.

The economy of the Kingdom of the Ashona

The economy of the Kingdom of the Ashona is based on a mixture of agriculture, fishing, trading, and mining and exporting precious metals and jewels. There are also some small-scale manufacturing industries in the country’s capital – mainly producing metal goods, including firearms – and the country is famous for the large number skilled craftsmen in wood and metal who can be found in its main towns.

The armed forces of the Kingdom of the Ashona

The country's army is composed of a small but well-equipped regular bodyguard which comprises infantry and cavalry units. This is supported in time of war by a tribal militia.

The army of the Kingdom of the Ashona has the following units:

• Infantry
• 1/1st Bodyguard Infantry Regiment
• 2/1st Bodyguard Infantry Regiment
• 1/2nd Bodyguard Infantry Regiment
• 2/2nd Bodyguard Infantry Regiment
• 1/1st Militia Infantry Regiment
• 2/1st Militia Infantry Regiment
• 1/2nd Militia Infantry Regiment
• 2/2nd Militia Infantry Regiment
• 1/3rd Militia Infantry Regiment
• 2/3rd Militia Infantry Regiment
• Cavalry
• 1/Bodyguard Cavalry Regiment
• 2/Bodyguard Cavalry Regiment

The army is organised into the following formations:

• Bodyguard
• 1st Bodyguard Infantry Regiment
• 2nd Bodyguard Infantry Regiment
• Bodyguard Cavalry Regiment
• Total bases = 6; Total SPs = 22 SPs
• Tribal Militia
• 1st Militia Infantry Regiment
• 2nd Militia Infantry Regiment
• 3rd Militia Infantry Regiment
• Total bases = 6; Total SPs = 24 SPs

Total bases = 12; Total SPs = 46 SPs

Units shown in italics are militia or reserve units.

The lyrics of the national anthem of the Soviet Union

I happened to be watching THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, and was struck by the sound of the crew of the submarine singing the Soviet Union's national anthem as the ship's silent drive was engaged ... and realised that I had no idea what lyrics were!

The crew of the Red October singing the Soviet Union's national anthem as the silect drive is engaged.

I resolved to rectify that and found that there are several translations of the original Russian lyrics, including an official 1944 CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) version.

The original Russian words are:

Союз нерушимый республик свободных
Сплотила навеки Великая Русь.
Да здравствует созданный волей народов
Единый, могучий Советский Союз!

Славься, Отечество наше свободное,
Дружбы народов надёжный оплот!
Знамя советское, знамя народное
Пусть от победы к победе ведёт!

Сквозь грозы сияло нам солнце свободы,
И Ленин великий нам путь озарил:
Нас вырастил Сталин — на верность народу,
На труд и на подвиги нас вдохновил!

Славься, Отечество наше свободное,
Счастья народов надёжный оплот!
Знамя советское, знамя народное
Пусть от победы к победе ведёт!

Мы армию нашу растили в сраженьях.
Захватчиков подлых с дороги сметём!
Мы в битвах решаем судьбу поколений,
Мы к славе Отчизну свою поведём!

Славься, Отечество наше свободное,
Славы народов надёжный оплот!
Знамя советское, знамя народное
Пусть от победы к победе ведёт!

In Romanised script, it reads as follows:

Soyúz nerushímyy respúblik svobódnykh
Splotíla navéki velíkaya Rus.
Da zdrávstvuyet sózdannyy vóley naródov
Yedínyy, mogúchiy Sovétskiy Soyúz!

Slávsya, Otéchestvo náshe svobódnoye,
Drúzhby naródov nadyózhnyy oplót!
Známya sovétskoye, známya naródnoye
Pust ot pobédy k pobéde vedyót!

Skvoz grózy siyálo nam sólnce svobódy,
I Lénin velíkiy nam put ozaríl
Nas výrastil Stálin — na vérnost naródu,
Na trud i na pódvigi nas vdokhnovíl!

Slávsya, Otéchestvo náshe svobódnoye,
Schástia naródov nadyózhnyy oplót!
Známya sovétskoye, známya naródnoye
Pust ot pobédy k pobéde vedyót!

My ármiyu náshu rastíli v srazhéniakh.
Zakhvátchikov pódlykh s dorógi smetyóm!
My v bítvakh resháyem sudbú pokoléniy,
My k sláve Otchíznu svoyú povedyóm!

Slávsya, Otéchestvo náshe svobódnoye,
Slávy naródov nadyózhnyy oplót!
Známya sovétskoye, známya naródnoye
Pust ot pobédy k pobéde vedyót!

The 1944 official CPSU translation of the lyrics are as follows:

Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics
Great Russia has welded forever to stand;
Created in struggle by will of the peoples,
United and mighty, our Soviet land!

Sing to our Motherland, glory undying,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong!
Flag of the Soviets, peoples' flag flying,
Lead us from victory to victory on!

Through tempests, the sunrays of freedom have cheered us,
Along the new path where great Lenin lead,
Be true to the people, thus Stalin has reared us,
Inspired us to labour and valorous deed!

Sing to our Motherland, glory undying,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong!
Flag of the Soviets, peoples' flag flying,
Lead us from victory to victory on!

Our army grew up in the heat of grim battle,
Barbarian invaders, we'll swiftly strike down.
In combat the fate of the future we'll settle,
Our country we'll lead to eternal renown!

Sing to our Motherland, glory undying,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong!
Flag of the Soviets, peoples' flag flying,
Lead us from victory to victory on!

The lyric were amended after the death of Stalin, and the line that reads 'Be true to the people, thus Stalin has reared us/i>' was changed to 'To a righteous cause, he raised the people'.

The flag of the Soviet Union.

Preparing for COW2026

Over the past week I have been preparing the PowerPoint presentation that will form part of the session I will be running at this year's Conference of Wargame (COW).

The session is entitled THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC: SINKING U-BOATS and was originally written after attending John Curry's presentation at the WD AVG (Wargame Developments Annual Virtual Gathering) in October 2024. It was about the role of the WATU (Western Approaches Training Unit) ...

One of the WATU training wargames in progress. The officers under training could only see the game board through holes in the screen. The WRENs plotted the positions of the escort ships in accordance with the orders issued by the officers. They also controlled the U-boats using the current tactics employed by the Kriegsmarine's U-boat service.

... and led me to create a timeline of technical and tactical innovations that were introduced before and during the Battle of the Atlantic.

The title slide of my PowerPoint presentation.

It turned out to be a very interesting piece of research ... and I hope to share it with a wider audience in due course.

A graph that shows the ratio of ships to U-boats sunk during the Second World War. It makes it very clear that 1942 was the turning point of the battle against the U-boat menace.

An audience with ... Abena Oppong-Asare MP

On most Mondays, Sue and I go to our local community centre – Shrewsbury House* - to take part in what is termed the Shrewsbury House Get-together Monday. It is usually attended by twenty to thirty people, most of whom are retired professionals like us. There is a programme of sessions, including Yoga, craft activities, quizzes, and talks. (I have done two talks to the group: One was about Woolwich and the Spanish Civil War and the other was about the history of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society.)

We have also had visits by our local councillors, the local Borough Police Commander, the local Ghurkha community, and the Commanding Officer of the King's Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery. Today, we were lucky to be visited by our local Member of Parliament, Abena Oppong-Asare.

She has been an MP since 2019, and became our local representative when the Shooters Hill ward was moved from its former constituency – Greenwich and Woolwich – into the Erith and Thamesmead constituency as a result of the Parliamentary boundary changes in 2024. Between 9th July 2024 and 6th September 2025, she was Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, but since then she has been Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister.

Abena Oppong-Asare MP addressing the Shrewsbury House Get-together meeting at Shrewsbury House.

Her new role makes her the Prime Ministers 'eyes and ears' with regard to the Labour Party's backbenchers and she acts as a communication conduit between the Prime Minister and the parliamentary Labour Party. She is also responsible for meeting with MPs when the Prime Minister is not available and to assist him in preparing for the regular PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions) sessions that take place at noon on each Wednesday that Parliament is sitting.

She joined us at 10.30am, and began by introducing herself and giving a brief but very useful verbal biography. It was great to realise that she is a local and therefore understands the specific needs of the area covered by her constituency.

She then explained the various roles she had performed as a Member of Parliament, as Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, and as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister. This was very informative, especially to those of us whose knowledge and understanding of the role of a Parliamentary Secretary was, at best, vague.

I was particularly impressed by how open she was and how unlike she was to some of the political 'hacks' I've had dealings with in the past. It was refreshing to hear a politician of any party admit that they do make mistakes and accept that they are not infallible.

She then took a question and answer session that ended at midday, and made notes about those topics for which she did not have an immediate answer. She also promised to send appropriate answers after she had looked into the matters that had been raised.

Overall, I left the meeting feeling that we are lucky to have a local MP who is willing to listen and to act and/or advise their constituents.

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* Shrewsbury House is where I also go to the weekly game session, Dice of the Hill.

Another couple of eBay purchases

I regularly trawl through eBay to see if there are any suitable items for sale that I can repurpose as armies that I can add to my Belle Époque collection … and recently I’ve had a couple of successes.

The first was described as a '15MM COLONIAL ARMY SUDAN CAMPAIGN CAVALRY INDIAN FOOT ARTILLERY HIGHLANDERS 100+' and I was particularly interested in the Indian infantry, cavalry, and artillery as they will enable me to create at least one more army to go alongside my Hyderaporean army.

The second was described '15MM 19TH CENTURY/CRIMEAN - RUSSIAN & FRENCH INFANTRY, 150 FIGURES WELL PAINTED' and will hopefully form the backbone of my Russian army ... and possibly several other small armies.

It looks as if I will be renovating, varnishing, and basing quite a few figures over the next couple of months!

Nugget 378: An apology

As regular blog readers will know, I recently posted out the latest issue on THE NUGGET to members of Wargame Developments. It was not until last Friday that I was made aware that it contained a major printing error that both the printer and I had missed; namely, that half the pages had been printed upside down and in the reverse order!

The printer is already re-printing the issue and I hope to collect it later today, and I will post it to members with the next issue – NUGGET 379 – during early April.

I apologise for this mistake. It was avoidable – I should have checked them before I posted them out – and I have learned my lesson … as has the printer!

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This is only the second time in forty-six years that there has been a problem with the production of THE NUGGET. The first time was back in the very early years when the then editor – the late Dr Paddy Griffith – sent me the original text by post … and the Royal Mail ‘lost’ it! Because he had not made a copy, he had to reproduce it entirely from scratch.

This was before the era of personal computers and THE NUGGET was put together using a typewriter to produce the text in columns which were then glued to sheets of paper that were photocopied and manually collated and stapled by me.

Wow! It was a very labour-intensive operation back then!

My top three blog posts

In light of the recent massive increase in hits my blog has achieved, I decided to see which are my three top blog posts. The results were somewhat surprising. They were (according to the blog's stats summary):

• Thursday, 16 July 2015: Le Chant L'Oignon (The Onion Song) lyrics (41.8k* or 50.6k*)

• Saturday, 20 February 2016: Simulating gunfire in naval wargames: Fred Jane and Fletcher Pratt (13.7k* or 18.4k*)

• Tuesday, 25 April 2017: Travel Battle: A review of the latest offering from Perry Miniatures (10.1k* or 20.9k*)

If the upsurge in hits was purely down to AI bots 'visiting' my blog, I would expect the peaks in the above graphs to all be towards the right-hand side (i.e. the past few months) ... but my second most read blog post peaked when it was written and has not experienced a recent spike.

Interesting ...

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As I write this blog post on Saturday evening, the number of hits are as follows:

• Today: 20,656 hits
• Yesterday: 56,694 hits
• This month: 194,457 hits ... which is a daily average of 27.780 hits
• Last month: 998,902 hits ... which is a daily average of 35,675 hits

This would seem to indicate that the recent upsurge in hits is beginning to tail off ... a bit.

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* What I do not understand is why each of the blog posts featured above seems to generate two different view totals. On the summary, each has a total that indicates the number of views it has generated ... but when one looks at each post separately, that figure is higher. I have looked on Blogger for a reason for this, but I could not find anything to help me resolve this conundrum.

I should not read other people's blog posts ...

I am waiting for the delivery of my final order from Irregular Miniatures before I can add a Russian-style nineteenth army to my Belle Époque project. In the interim, it was my intention to playtest the latest draft of my PORTABLE BELLE ÉPOQUE WARGAME rules with a Sahel Hadendowi vs. Oblele battle ... and then I read Tradgardmastare's THE DUCHY OF TRADGARDLAND blog.

The particular blog posts that engaged my attention were WONDERLAND OR THE JOY OF MODEL SHOPS, THE ARMY OF TRANSILVANIA, and OPPOSITION. These were about his recent purchase of a box of Strelets-R ROMANIAN INFANTRY figures ...

© Alan Gruber (AKA Tradgardmastare)

... and a box of their ITALIAN ARMY IN WINTER DRESS (STALINGRAD) figures.

© Alan Gruber (AKA Tradgardmastare)

He has painted up the former to be soldiers in the army of Transilvania – his early twentieth century imagi-nation – and the latter will be their opponents, the army of the Duchy of Volare Cantare.

Now, I have loads of painted 20mm World War II figures sitting in boxes in my toy/wargames room, I have a suitable set of simple rules already written, and I have enough Hexon II terrain to hand to fight a battle or two ... so why don't I use them?

It would be stupid not to ... wouldn't it?

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I finished writing this blog post and had uploaded it for publication before I went looking for the figures I was going to use. It was at this point that I found a box of painted 15mm figures that Carl Luxford gave me back in October 2022.

Inside the box were a number of Askaris and European officers, native and Arab troops (including cavalry), and native bearers.

I got the figures out ... and immediately realised that I had to assimilate them into my Belle Époque collection tout suite!

As a result, I have put my plans to fight a battle with my 20mm figures on hold for the time being.

It would be stupid not to ... wouldn't it?

I don’t believe it! A million hits in twenty-eight days!

I looked at my blog's hit counter this morning ... and suddenly realised that it had gone past eleven million hits! This means that my blog has had a million hits in twenty-eight days ... something that I find very, very difficult to believe!

Have those pesky bots been at it again? I certainly can’t find any evidence that they have, so why has my blog become so popular? All I can assume is that it might be down to AI in some way.

Whatever will happen next?

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11,000,000 hits!

It was only the at the beginning of February that my blog’s hit counter reached ten million hits … and it has now just passed eleven million!

• Ten million hits: 3rd February 2026
• Nine million hits: 16th December 2025
• Eight million hits: 4th October 2025
• Seven million hits: 26th July 2025
• Six million hits: 6th September 2024
• Five million hits: 20th January 2024
• Four million hits: 8th November 2021
• Three million hits: 6th December 2018
• Two million hits: Unsure
• One million hits: 25th December 2015

Yet again, I would like to say a very big THANK YOU to my regular blog readers. Without your interest and comments, I doubt that I would ever have reached anything like these many hits.

Here's to reaching twelve million hits … which at the present rate, could be very soon!

Thinking about the my Portable Belle Époque Wargame rules

In reply to a comment by Neil Patterson about his recent battle report entitled LITTLE GREAT WAR: KAVKAZ CAMPAIGN EPILOGUE, Archduke Piccolo stated that:

One change to the rule set I will make is to increase the machineguns 3 Strength Points. At 2SP, they are too brittle. ... I'm thinking of increasing the MG range, too, to 4 grid areas instead of 3, one more than rifle range.

It might not be such a bad idea to reduce to 2 grid areas the effective range of rifles (and MGs too maybe) whose targets are in any kind of cover. This on top of the existing penalties.

Part of the tabletop battlefield featured in Archduke Piccolo's recent battle report. © Archduke Piccolo.

Interestingly, I have been thinking about this very element of my draft PORTABLE BELLE ÉPOQUE WARGAME rules ... and although I had come to slightly different conclusions, I am now having a re-think.