COW2026: Some short session reports

The annual Wargame Developments Conference of Wargamers (COW) took place at the Cranfield Management Development Centre over the weekend 10th to 12th July 2026.

The main entrance,

The main hall. The various lecture rooms and break-out rooms all radiated off of this main hall.

The conference proper began after dinner on Friday when the conference organiser, Tim Gow, ...

... welcomed everyone in the venue's main lecture theatre.

This was followed by the plenary game.

THE PLENARY GAME: XERXES’ INVASION OF GREECE

In this game I took the part of Ezra the Scribe, a Jewish functionary in charge of protocol in the Persian court. I had to instruct the lesser members of the court and any military commanders in the correct way to approach and speak to the king, and to act as the eyes of the King's Ear ... his enforcer! I was also tasked with leading the ritual (and regular) praise of the King.

I had a great deal of fun and managed to take photographs of some of the participants which I then asked ChatGPT to turn into historical images.

King Xerxes of Persia ... in a beard that seems to have been borrowed from the film 'Gettysburg',

The serene Queen of Persia,

Two Persian officials. The one of the right was the King's Ear ... and would joyfully stab someone and smile whilst he did it,

The King of Sparta. He seems to be indicating that he's willing to take on anyone who thinks that they are hard enough.

A northern Greek. He seems totally bemused by events.

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During the next two days, I took presented or participated in the following sessions.

THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC: SINKING U-BOATS: A REACTION TO THE WATU ‘MYTH’

This lecture has been in preparation for some eighteen months, and I feel that I still have more to add before it will be in anyway complete.

I began by looking at the origins of the WATU (Western Approaches Tactical Unit) ...

... and the way that it has been described and depicted in the media, particularly over the last five years. I did this because I feel that its contribution to the eventual victory of the Battle of the Atlantic is not being assessed in context and is being misused to promote a particular agenda ... and that agenda is harming a proper and just assessment the unit's true impact.

I then described – in approximately chronological order – the weapons, technology, and tactical changes helped the Allies to win the war against the U-boats.

These included:

• Pre-war developments in anti-submarine warfare (e.g. depth charges and their throwers, hydrophones, and  ASDIC).
• The design, ordering, and commissioning of the Flower-class & Castle-class corvettes and the River-class & Loch-class frigates.
• The initial failure and later success of wolfpacks.
• The introduction of airborne and seaborne surface search radar.
• The importance of the seizure of the French ports on the Bay of Biscay.
• The roles of the Anti-Submarine Training School and the WATU training courses for escort ship officers.
• The introduction of Convoy Escort Groups and Escort Support Groups.
• The introduction and use of CAM (Catapult Aircraft Merchant) ships, MAC (Merchant Aircraft Carrier) ships, and escort carriers.
• The introduction and use of land-based and seaborne high-frequency direction-finding equipment (HF/DF) and the German counter-measures.
• The development of anti-submarine tactics (e.g. Operation Buttercup and the creeping attack).
• The development of ahead-throwing anti-submarine weapons (i.e. Hedgehog and Squid) and improved ASDIC.
• The role of the Bletchley Park codebreakers.
• Operation Drumbeat.
• The introduction of the Leigh Light on RAF Coastal Command aircraft and its impact on airborne attacks on U-boats.
• The publication of the Atlantic Convoy Instructions.
• The introduction of acoustic torpedoes by the Germans and Allies and their impact.
• The loss of the French ports after D-Day.
• Month-by-month and annual ship and U-boat losses.

I concluded with two graphics that showed the monthly total of U-boats sunk and ...

... and the numbers and tonnage of ship sunk by U-boats compared to the total number of U-boats sunk and destroyed by the Allies.

BATTLESHIP NOVOROSSIYSK

This was a committee game that looked at the events surrounding the sinking of the Russian battleship Novorossiysk (formerly the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare that was awarded to the USSR as a war prize) in Sebastopol on 29th October 1955. It is important to remember that this was less than two years after the death of Stalin on 5th June 1953 and Georgy Malenkov had replaced him.

The players represented the various officials charged with identifying the cause of the explosion that sank the ship and gathering the relevant documentation required to support the committee's conclusion.

My player briefing.

A map of Sebastopol harbour,

My role was a naval engineering Captain from the Baltic Fleet and my main concern – along with the other members of the committee – was to find out what had happened to the ship's engineering log. It had apparently been removed by the ship's engineering officer and I clashed with my opposite number in the Black Sea fleet ... who I regarded as incompetent and obstructive.

I ruled out an accidental explosion and felt that the ship was lost due to the actions of the ship's missing engineering officer coupled with the incompetence of the fleet's head naval engineer and his failure to imposed proper procedures.

It was great fun ... and I'd certain play this game again!

OPERATION JADE EMPEROR

This was a planning game about the re-integration of Taiwan into the People's Republic of China. The players were tasked with mounting an assault on the island that would replace the existing government as quickly as possible and before the United States could intervene.

The map of Taiwan and the forces available to each side. Each of the blocks represented a brigade-sized military unit. The blue ones were the Taiwanese ones, and the red ones were the People's Republic of China's units.,

We were extremely lucky to have a player who had personal experience of an amphibious landing on an enemy-occupied island, and once we had – as a group – decided on a surprise attack of Taipei to decapitate the Taiwanese government, we produced a plan that met the requirements of the supreme leadership.

THE DEVIL TO PAY – BUFORD'S CAVALRY AT GETTYSBURG

I observed this session rather than participated. It featured an extract from a contemporary map of the ridges that Buford occupied before the Confederate arrived, figures from Warlord Game Epic American Civil War range, and a modification of the DBX rules.

This is still a work in progress, but in my opinion it has lots of potential and I look forward to seeing finished rules. I particularly liked the use of a contemporary map and simply-painted figures. It gave the whole thing an antique look.

THE FIRST FANTASY GAME

This was another session where I was an observer rather than a participant.

Now, until recently I had very little interest in fantasy wargaming, but since joining the Dice of the Hill gaming group my interest has increased by leaps and bounds. The players were using the SEWG Middle Earth Wargame Rules ...

... and some very early fantasy wargame figures.

The session generated a lot of fun and laughter ... and I would have loved to have taken part if I could!

BERLIN NOCTURNE

The mid-1950s saw an increasing level of spying centred around the divided city of Berlin. In this game, the seven players represented the representatives of the KGB (the Russian Committee for State Security) and GRU (the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate) in Berlin and members of the security department of the Democratic People's Republic of Germany, the STASI (Ministry for State Security). This group sat as a committee that met regularly to co-ordinate intelligence operations in Berlin ... and in this game, they had a major leak to deal with.

I played the role of Colonel Kurt Hagens, one of the STASI's counter-intelligence experts. It became very apparent from the start that the KGB and GRU were looking for a scapegoat ... and that scapegoat was not going to be Russian! As a result, my STASI colleague and I attempted to run an operation of our own that would feed information to the KGB to see if it leaked and thus exposed where the leak was.

In order to do this, my colleague (Major Buchardt) fed some false information to the KGB about my personal life. He told one of the KGB officers that it was known that I had a 19-year-old mistress who lived in the Potsdam area and who had links to some dissidents. Furthermore, I also dropped hints to both the KGB and the GRU that I had served as a Communist undercover agent in the Gestapo during the late war. (As I walk with a stick, it was not difficult to persuade them that I had operated under the codename 'Flick' whilst serving in France!)

This turned out to be a big mistake as it made me the obvious candidate to take the blame for the leak ... and that is how the game ended.

(The game was based on Operation Gold/Operation Stopwatch, which was a joint CIA and SIS operation in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone of Berlin to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters. That was the source of the leak we were trying to find!)

ESSAI DE JEU DE GUERRE

I had hoped to sign up to participate in this session but didn't manage to. However, I did manage to observe ... and that was almost as good as actually playing the game.

The rules were written in France during the early part of the First World War and was intended to validate the French Army's aggressive tactics. The playing surface was a map divided up into squares and the playing pieces represented infantry, cavalry, machine guns, and artillery. Movement was orthogonal and the combat results were deterministic and dependent upon the circumstances the opposing units were in (e.g. the defending unit was in trenches, the attacking unit [or units] had charged and not engaged the enemy in a firefight) and NOT on dice throws. Of particular interest was the fact that artillery engaging a target could not hit it during its first turn as this was regarded as being merely ranging fire.

The tabletop battlefield,

The French attackers,

The German defenders,

During the game, a French force attacked a line of German trenches and after suffering some setbacks and considerable losses, they force the German to retreat. This obviously proved that the aggressive tactics employed by the French should work ... and we all know how true that turned out to be!

This session was of particular interest to me because it showed a French military wargame that was developed during a period when the French Army was not a devotee of wargaming. In many ways it reflected the sorts of designs that were prevent in the UK in the 1880s and 1890s, such as Dr David Charles Ballinger Griffith's POLEMOS.

THE GRIMNESS OF WAR

The Salonika Campaign is probably one of the least well-known operations undertaken during the Great War, and this talk did much to educate the attendees as to why its importance should not be ignored.

My particular interest in this campaign arises from two facts.

Firstly, the 2/20th Battalion, London Regiment (Blackheath and Woolwich) – which was recruited from the part of London where I live – was one of the units that formed part of 60th (2/2nd London) Infantry Division. It participated in the Battle of Doiran (24th to 25th April and 8th to 9th May 1917) before being sent to Palestine later that year.

Secondly, the 8th County of London Brigade, Royal Field Artillery – which had its headquarters at 'Oaklands', St Margaret's Road (later St Margaret's Grove), Plumstead – was also a locally-recruited unit and formed part of 60th (2/2nd London) Infantry Division. (I wrote a blog post about its war memorial on my blog.)

LE KRIEGSPIEL

I had very little idea about the history of wargaming in France before attending this session ... and I left very well informed! This is hardly surprising as the presenter wrote JOUER LA GUERRE: HISTOIRE DE WARGAME (PLAYING WAR: THE HISTORY OF WARGAMING).

It was interesting to note that one early French wargame designer used hexes made up of six equilateral triangles and that after the defeat of the Second Empire in 1870, one German innovation that wasn't emulated by the French Army was wargaming/kriegsspiel.

I enjoyed the aside about the reluctance of some military players to the use of dice ... but they were happy to use six-sided friction generators!

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This was a great conference and was the largest staged to date. It has already been agreed that Wargame Developments will be return to Cranfield Management Development Centre for next year's Conference of Wargamers (COW).

Wargame Map Tool: My first attempt to draw a map

Having recently downloaded the WARGAME MAP PROGRAM hex map drawing program, I have managed to start playing around with it. I decided that my starting point would be to produce the sort of map I used for the Operation Barbarossa Mini-campaign that I staged last year at my local game club, Dice on the Hill. It took me a couple of attempts to get it the way I wanted it to look, and the result looked like this:

It is by no means as detailed as I hoped it might be, but for a first attempt I was quite pleased with the result.

A glorious gift!

One of the people I met as a result of joining the Dice on the Hill games group at Shrewsbury House Community Centre was Richard Watson. He has been one of the duty managers of the community centre for some years and is both a wargamer and a model railway enthusiast. We have chatted about both hobbies and last year we managed to fight three wargames:

• Spartans vs. Athenians (March 2025)
• The Battle of the Falkland Islands (November 2025)
• The Battle of Scrobbesburh (December 2025)

Richard knows that I am particularly interested in 009/HO9 model railways and that I have a small layout ... the Mucking Flats & Fobbing Marsh Light Railway (MF&FMLR).

My Mucking Flats & Fobbing Marsh Light Railway (MF&FMLR) model railway layout.

Richard has been unwell for some time, and it was a great pleasure to see him at Shrewsbury House last week ... and not just because he had a bag full of bits and pieces for me!

Whilst he was off work, he had been having a bit of a clear out, and had selected some of his surplus 009/HO9 model railway locomotives and rolling stock that he thought that I would find useful. He was right ... and I am now the proud possessor of the following:

Two Liliput/Bachmann Fasslwagen Zillertalbahn (Barrel wagon, Zillertal Railway)

A Liliput/Bachmann Aussichtswagen Museumwagen (Observation carriage/museum carriage)

A Liliput/Bachmann Personnelwagen 2.Klasse (Second-class passenger carriage)

Two Playcraft open-sided passenger carriages (that were known as 'toast racks')

Four Minitrains dumper wagons

A Minitrains Diesel 0-4-0 Locomotive

A Liliput 0-4-0 Diesellokomotive Zillertalbahn (Diesel locomotive, Zillertal Railway)

A Minitrains 0-4-0 Fiddletown & Copperopolis tender locomotive with four different carriages plus

A Minitrains Fiddletown & Copperopolis baggage wagon

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The Fiddletown & Copperopolis railway was the fictional creation of cartoonist Carl Falberg. A compilation of his Fiddletown & Copperopolis cartoons was published as Fiddletown and Copperopolis - The life and times of an uncommon carrier in 1960, the cartoons having orignially appeared in issues of the RAILROAD magazine. The book was republished in 1985, 1998, 2003, and 2012.

Cutting one's coat according to one's cloth

Regular blog readers might find some of what follows covers things that I have previously written about on my blog, but for completeness – and to help me to clarify my own thinking – I have written about how I arrived at the situation I find myself in today.

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When I retired in 2014, I had visions of spending loads of time wargaming and doing wargame-related activities ... interspersed – of course – with going on cruises, doing the usual round of household chores, and fitting in all the other things that normal life demands.

In anticipation of this, during the early years of the new century we spent quite a lot on money converting our house's loft into an home office, a shower room, and what became my toy/wargame room, and for the first years on my retirement I was able to use the latter almost every day.

Then real life made itself felt. A simple test showed signs of blood in my faeces, and on investigation it was discovered that I had a small cancerous polyp in my intestines. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic I went into hospital to have a minor keyhole surgical procedure to remove it. The operation did not go according to plan and I ended up with what turned out to be an irreversible colostomy.

Two years later, what I thought was a minor problem with my urinary system turned out to be prostate cancer ... and since then I've undergone chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. The cancer is still there, but it is under control and does not seem to be getting any worse.

Now, these two cancers rather took the wind out of my wargaming sails, but I carried on as best I could. I found things a bit more difficult as I was spending lots of time either undergoing treatment or tests, but what time I was able to devote to my hobby was very enjoyable ... and then I broke my right leg, just above the ankle.

I had been experiencing problems with my legs for many years, but by 2024 they had become very weak and climbing the stairs to my toy/wargame room was sometimes very difficult. On the evening of 10th April, I stood up from a living room chair in order to go to bed, and as I walked forward, my right leg gave way and my fall broke my leg.

What followed was nearly three weeks in hospital and then twenty-two weeks confined to bed at home. For the first sixteen weeks, my axonal polyneuropathy – the cause of my weakness – had left me unable to walk, let alone climb the stairs up to my toy/wargame room. At the time, the prognosis was that I would probably be confined to a wheelchair and not walk again, but thanks to the Royal Greenwich Reablement Team and six weeks of intensive physiotherapy was not only able to stand again on my own two legs – with the aid of a walking frame and walking sticks – but actually begin to learn how to climb up a flight of stairs.

Twenty-five weeks after I had broken my leg, we had a stairlift installed, and on 2nd October I was able to use it to go up to bed the first time in nearly six months ... and a visit to my toy/wargame room soon followed.

It soon became apparent that it was very unlikely that I was going to be able to fulfill my dreams of wargaming as much as I had hoped when I retired. Just getting upstairs – even using the stairlift – was tedious and very restricting. If I went up there, I felt marooned ... and if I didn't go up, I felt cheated of the enjoyment I get from wargaming. This dilemma has hung around every since, and every attempt I have made to find a solution has not exactly been a failure but has proved unsatisfactory.

This is where I now find myself ... and until I can find a workable solution, I cannot seem to make significant progress. This is not to say that things have been in a state of limbo; I've been working on my Belle Époque project and I've been gaming on a regular basis at Dice on the Hill. I've also been playing around with a new version of my PORTABLE WARGAME rules for use with my Belle Époque project and trying to devise a set of campaign maps for this project.

So, what do I need to do? I need to create a truly portable wargame that is light and small enough so that I can either bring downstairs and set it up on our dining table or that I can set up on the worktable in my toy/wargame room. I have the figures, I have the draft of a set of rules that might be suitable, and I have loads of Hexon II terrain ... but the latter is not as portable as I need.

I’ve been playing around with possible alternatives to the Hexon II … and I am giving serious consideration to using either a square gridded cloth or board. The choice of squares makes sense for several reasons:

• Late nineteenth century warfare tended to be linear in nature, and using a square grid reflects this.
• It is easy to mark up a cloth or board with a square grid.
• It harks back to games like Joseph Morschauser's FRONTIER and Dr. David Charles Ballinger Griffith’s POLEMOS.

At present I am looking at using 5cm x 5cm (2-inch x 2-inch) squares. I've used this size of grid square in the past (e.g. The Attack on Morobad) ...

The Attack on Morobad. It used a 12 x 12 grid of 5cm x 5cm (2-inch x 2-inch) squares on a sand-coloured felt cloth. The Great Wall of Morobad was homemade from wooden Jenga blocks mounted on 5cm x 5xm MDF squares and the palm trees were mounted on bases made from Fimo.

... and an 8 x 8 grid would be 40cm x 40cm (16-inches x 16-inches) and a 12 x 12 grid would be 60cm x 60cm (24-inches x 24-inches). Both of these would be ideal for my requirements.

Another advantage of using this size of grid square is that my existing Belle Époque collection is mounted on 4cm-wide MDF bases (Infantry on 4cm x 2cm, cavalry on 4cm x 3cm, and artillery on 4cm x 4cm bases) that fit inside this size of grid square. In addition, I will be able to mount terrain on 5cm x 5cm MDF squares (or multiples thereof), of which I have a plentiful supply.

This is the current state-of-play with regard to my plans to create a truly portable wargame that I can easily carry up and down stairs from my toy/wargame room or fit on my worktable. Now all I have to do is to get hold of a suitably-sized piece of felt material or board ... and then I can start being creative.

Dolmenwood: The end of the game

I have been going to Dice on the Hill since February last year, and for most of that time I have been taking part in a fantasy role-playing game set in DOLMENWOOD. The game was published by Necrotic Gnome and created by Gavin Norman, and there are lots of free resources available, including downloadable character sheets.

An example of a blank character sheet.

My character – a friar called Father Crump – is one of the two characters who have survived since the very beginning ... and last Wednesday saw the end of our quest to successfully destroy the evil Naglord.

My character ... as envisaged by ChatGPT.

My character figure. It was 3D printed and painted for me by one of the other players.

Now, until I took part in this fantasy quest, I have never been particularly interested in role-playing games ... but I have so thoroughly enjoyed this that I am already signed up for another one that starts next week!

One of the major reasons why this has been such an enjoyable experience is the wonderful interplay between the various participants and the exemplary gamemaster (Jason) who directed the whole thing. He acted out all the non-player characters in a very convincing way and kept the tempo of the quest ticking alone at a great pace.

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.

The Battle of Scrobbesburh

Last Wesdnesday my usual game at Dice on the Hill was cancelled and I was therefore able to fight a 'proper' wargame with Richard Warson, who is usually the duty manager at Shrewsbury House on Wednesday evenings.

Richard has a large collection of 28mm Anglo-Saxon and Viking figures and so we chose to fight a wargame using them. He provided the figures and the terrain and I provided the rules ... which were heavily based on the Ancient rules in Donald Featherstone's book WAR GAMES.

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The Battle of Scrobbesburh

The local Anglo-Saxons thane had revived news that a large band of Vikings had landed nearby and so he gathered together the troops available to him and set off to intercepts the invaders. His force included his own household troops, two bands of local militia or Fyrd, a small group of archers, and an even smaller group of lightly armed skirmishers.

The Anglo-Saxons.

The Vikings - who were led by Ragnar Shortbeard - comprised three groups of Bondi and a small band of skirmishers. They had already laid waste a couple of small farms and were on their way towards their next target when they saw the Anglo-Saxon force coming towards them. Both side formed battle lines and prepared to fight!

The Vikings.

The battlefield at Scrobbesburh. The Vikings were on the left and the Anglo-Saxons were on the right.

The Vikings sent their skirmishers forward to seize the right-hand hill before the Anglo-Saxons reached it. Whilst they were doing this, the remainder of their force advanced in line towards the oncoming line of Anglo-Saxon troops.

The Viking skirmishers reached the right-hand hill just before the Anglo-Saxons did ... but they were somewhat isolated and the Anglo-Saxons were already closer to it than the main body of the Vikings were.

Anglo-Saxon skirmishers and archers moved towards the hill and threatened the Viking skirmishers.

The Viking skirmishers came under very effective attack by the Anglo-Saxon archers. At the same time, the Vikings began to advance en echelon towards the main body of Anglo-Saxon troops.

Further very effective Anglo-Saxon archery caused the morale of the Viking skirmishers to break and they fled. At the same time, the Anglo-Saxons formed a shieldwall and the main body of the Viking force continued to advance en echelon towards the Anglo-Saxon shieldwall.

Anglo-Saxon archers moved onto the hill whilst the Vikings prepared to assault the Anglo-Saxon shieldwall.

The left-hand group of Vikings smashed into the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd opposite them, and smashed their way through the shieldwall, causing the Fyrd's morale to collapse. The Anglo-Saxon right was now gone!

However, before the Vikings could exploit this advantage, the Anglo-Saxon shieldwall pivoted so that their right flank was no longer threatened. At the same time, the Anglo-Saxon skirmishers advanced onto the hill and threatened the Viking right wing.

The Vikings attacked the Anglo-Saxon shieldwall ... and it proved too strong! The left- and right-hand groups of Viking suffer significant casualties and when their morale failed, they fled. Whilst this was happening, the central Viking group continued to fight the Anglo-Saxon thane's household troops.

With most of his force already fleeing, Ragnar Shortbeard urged his remaining troops to break through the Anglo-Saxon shieldwall ... but it proved too strong a nut to crack, and as casualties mounted, their morale cracked and they joined the other fleeing Vikings. The Anglo-Saxons had won the Battle of Scrobbesburh!

This was a thoroughly enjoyable wargame and Richard and I hope to fight another in the very near future.

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Note: The choice of the name Scrobbesburh is a nod to the venue where this wargame took place, Shrewsbury House. The Anglo-Saxon name for Shrewsbury was Scrobbesburh.