Rhodes

In 1996 the BBC made a mini-series about the life of Cecil Rhodes entitled – surprisingly – RHODES. It starred Martin Shaw as Cecil Rhodes (with his son, Joe Shaw, playing Cecil as a young man), Neil Pearson as Dr Leander Starr Jameson, Ken Stott as Barney Barnato, and Frances Barber as Princess Catherine Radziwill.

I saw the series when it was first transmitted, but as far as I know it has not been aired since then. Some years ago I managed to obtain a copy of the series on a couple of DVDs ... and this afternoon I watched the episodes that dealt with the First Matabele War.

This fictionalised account of the war starts with the advance of a 'Pioneer Column' (made up of men of the British South African Company's own private army, the British South African Police [BSAP]) into Matabeleland. The column stops a night-time attack by the use of a searchlight, which frightens off the Matabele warriors.

Next morning they expect the Matabele to attck them ... but nothing happens.

Later the column comes under attack by the bulk of the Matabele army ...

... but the superior firepower of European troops, which includes several Maxim machine guns and field guns, ...

... kills a large number of the attackers, and the surviving Matabele are forced to flee.

The column eventually reaches the capital of Matabeleland – Bulawayo – only to find that King Lobengula's kraal has been burnt to the ground.

A small section of the BSAP sets off in pursuit of Lobengula ...

... but it is ambushed near the Shangani River and wiped out.

The series does not play down the unpleasant aspects of this sort of colonial warfare, and after the main battle between the BSAP and the Matabele the European soldiers are shown killing off the seriously wounded warriors, despite the protests of the Bishop of Matabeleland, who is accompanying the column.

When the series was broadcast it was savaged by many TV critics, and the BBC was criticised for wasting money on the production. In truth it is not an outstanding piece of television ... but it never struck me as being as bad as its detractors made out, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in late nineteenth century British Colonial history.

Reorganising my collection of 25/28mm-scale Napoleonic figures: A progress report

I managed to finish reorganising my collection of painted 25/28mm-scale Napoleonic Waterloo-era figures, and after a bit of re-thinking, they Armies and Units are organised as follows:

French Army

• 16 Infantry Units: 2 x Guard Grenadiers; 7 x Line Infantry; 7 x Light Infantry
• 9 Cavalry Units: 4 x Cuirassiers; 2 x Carabiniers; 2 x Chasseurs; 1 x Lancers
• 6 Artillery Units: 2 x Horse Artillery; 4 x Foot Artillery
• 7 Generals

British Army

• 13 Infantry Units: 4 x Guard Infantry; 4 x Highland Infantry; 2 x Line Infantry; 2 x Rifles; 1 x King's German Legion Infantry
• 4 Cavalry Units: 1 x Life Guards; 1 x Scots Greys; 2 x Light Dragoons
• 4 Artillery Units: 1 x Horse Artillery; 3 x Foot Artillery
• 4 Generals

Prussian Army

• 4 Infantry Units: 4 x Line Infantry
• 3 Cavalry Units: 2 x Dragoons; 1 x Hussars
• 1 Artillery Units: 1 x Foot Artillery
• 2 Generals

Allied Army

• 3 Infantry Units: 2 x Belgian Chasseurs; 1 x Brunswick Infantry
• 1 Cavalry Unit: 1 x Dutch Carabiniers

It is my intention to organise these Units into Divisions, with each Infantry Division having two Infantry Brigades (each with two Infantry Units) plus a Cavalry Unit and an Artillery Unit. Cavalry Divisions would have two Cavalry Brigades (each with two Cavalry Units) plus an Artillery Unit

By adopting this Divisional organisation each of the national armies ends up looking like this:

French Army

• 4 Infantry Divisions (16 x Infantry Units, 4 x Cavalry Units, and 4 x Artillery Units)
• 1 Cavalry Division (4 x Cavalry Units and 1 x Artillery Unit)
• Plus the following unattached Units: 1 x Cavalry Unit and 1 x Artillery Unit.

British Army

• 3 Infantry Divisions (12 x Infantry Units, 3 x Cavalry Units, and 3 x Artillery Units)
• Plus the following unattached Units: 1 x Infantry Unit, 1 x Cavalry Unit and 1 x Artillery Unit.

Prussian Army

• 1 Infantry Division (4 x Infantry Units, 1 x Cavalry Unit, and 1 x Artillery Unit)
• Plus the following unattached Units: 2 x Cavalry Units

If the British can ally themselves with the Units from the Allied Army, between them they could field a further Infantry Division.

This has been both an interesting and a therapeutic exercise, and has made me realise what a hardly used wargaming asset I have available to me. Now that the Units are organised I will need to re-base them. I don’t intend to do this right away, but it is an ideal project to do in stages as and when I feel like it.

Reorganising my collection of 25/28mm-scale Napoleonic figures

This afternoon I decided to reorganise my collection of painted 25/28mm-scale Napoleonic Waterloo-era figures. (They were bought with a Del Prado part-work that was published some years ago.)

I began with my Prussian Army, and using a 4:4:2 ratio for figure strengths for Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery Units I ended up with:

• 4 Infantry Units: 4 x Line Infantry
• 3 Cavalry Units: 2 x Dragoons; 1 x Hussars
• 1 Artillery Units: 1 x Foot Artillery

I then applied the same rational to my Anglo/Dutch/Belgian Army, and found that I could field:

• 16 Infantry Units: 4 x Guard Infantry; 4 x Highland Infantry; 2 x Line Infantry; 2 x Rifles; 2 x Belgian Chasseurs; 1 x King's German Legion Infantry; 1 x Brunswick Infantry
• 5 Cavalry Units: 1 x Life Guards; 1 x Scots Greys; 1 x Dutch Carabiniers; 2 x Light Dragoons
• 4 Artillery Units: 1 x Horse Artillery; 3 x Foot Artillery

I hope to go through my French Army figures tomorrow to see how many Units it will yield up.

Miniature Wargames with Battlegames Issue 371

Whilst we were out visiting the WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? show today, the Post Office delivered the latest issue of MINIATURE WARGAMES WITH BATTLEGAMES magazine.

The articles included in this issue are:

• Briefing (i.e. the editorial) by Henry Hyde
• Forward observer by Neil Shuck
• No Christmas ceasefire: The continuing tales of a wargames widow by Diane Sutherland
• Fantasy Facts: The latest releases for genre fans by John Treadaway
• The gentle art of the Active Umpire: The use and abuse of your gaming buddies ... by Andy Copestake
• Send three and fourpence by Conrad Kinch
• Work in progress: A wargamer's toil is never-ending by Dillon Browne
• Videbo vos in litore: Roman sandals on the shores of ancient Britain by Chris Hahn
• Granddad's battle: The capture of Lingevres 14th June 1944 by Graham Burke
• Salamanca's siren call: Part 5: command, movement and shooting by Henry Hyde
• The rise of the Boxers: Rebellion in China against foreign powers by Dave Tuck
• Vivat 2013: The first ever Austrian tabletop show by Franz Ehart
• Well oil be!: add alkyd colours to your repertoire by Stokes Schwatrz
• Recce
• The Secret Eye Candy Pages: Vapnartak 2014 by Henry Hyde
• The Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal report by Henry Hyde

I particularly like Conrad Kinch's 'capsule armies' idea and the article about Chris Hahn's solo wargame without miniatures.

As usual there was plenty in this magazine for me to read and I am still of the opinion that – at £4.25 per copy – it is still great value for money.

I have been to ... the 'Who Do You Think You Are?' show ... yet again!

This morning my wife and I travelled across London to the Olympia Exhibition Centre in Kensington to pay our annual visit to the WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? show.

For some reason they used the same cerise coloured carpet as they had done on previous years. Although my wife quite likes the colour, even she thought that it was a bit too garish!

As it is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War – and the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy Landings – there were more military-related exhibitors than usual. In fact a whole section at one end of the Gallery was set aside for these exhibitors.

Our first port-of-call was to the Military Memorabilia Checkpoint, where we hoped to get some help trying to understand my father-in-law's Army Record. (He had been called-up in 1940 and done his basic training with the 50th Holding Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment. He was then posted the the Royal Signals, and remained in Scotland working as a linesman for some time. Whilst still serving with the Royal Signals he was trained to be a cook, and when the Army Catering Corps was founded, he was transferred to the new Corps.)

We were extremely lucky in that the current Curator/Manager of The Royal Logistic Corps Museum in Deepcut – Andy Robertshaw – was on hand to help us.

Andy Robertshaw Andy is a well-known military historian who has appeared in many TV programmes (including the BBC series TWO MEN IN A TRENCH, Channel 4's TIME TEAM, and The History Channel's BLOOD AND BULLETS) and who is also an expert on the history of the Army Catering Corps. He was able to 'fill in the gaps' for us, and gave us some vital information that helped us to date several photographs as well.

We spent the rest of our time looking around the show and buying one or two items that will be of help in my wife's genealogical researches.

This year the show seemed to be a bit less crowded (we had gone on a Thursday rather than on a Friday, and this might account for the fewer people around), and we found it much easier to walk around and to look at what was on show on the numerous exhibition stands.

An army (or two) in a box

Now that I have sorted out my toy/wargames room so that I can find things – for a change – I have begun the process of rearranging my various figure collections into the REALLY USEFUL BOXES they are going to be stored in.

I started with my 15mm-scale individually-based Colonial figures, and the first army that I dealt with was my Fezians.

As you can see, a whole army (in this case 56 Infantry, 14 Gunners, 6 Sailors, and 2 Generals/Commanders) easily fitted into a single 'hobby tray'. This is a large enough army for most the battles featuring the Fezians that I will fight ... and I still have enough room for another tray to fit into the box.

This set me thinking. If I can plan my future wargames armies so that they can fit into one or two of the 'hobby trays' produced by REALLY USEFUL BOXES, I will be setting myself achievable and sensible limits on the size and number of armies in my collections.

I have now rearranged more of my figures into ‘hobby trays’, including my 15mm-scale multi-figure-based Colonial figures, …

… my 20mm-scale individually-based Eastern Front figures. …

… and my 25/28mm-scale multi-figure-based Napoleonic figures.

I still have plenty of unbased 25/28mm-scale Napoleonic figures, and I am giving thought to whether I should rebased – and reorganise – the complete collection so that it will fit into a number of ‘hobby trays’ and REALLY USEFUL BOXES.

I have yet to sort out my Peter Laing 15mm-scale figures ... but that is going to take me quite some time. The one collection that I am not going to move into REALLY USEFUL BOXES as yet are my 20mm-scale MEGABLITZ Russian and German armies, but I may do so eventually.

Hitting the nail on the head!

In his most recent blog entry, Ross Macfarlane wrote something that summarises my own thoughts and feeling about gridded wargames and toy soldiers ... and expressed them with greater clarity and more succinctly than I ever could have done:

'Why I am so attracted to the combination of grid and toy soldiers (in a technical sense vs. miniatures) has been a bit of a mystery to me. I think partly that it is because a gridded game is so obviously a game rather than a form of diorama and toy soldier style figures are so obviously toys not serious models that the two complement each other, but that's not all of it. In some fashion the grid seems to enhance our ability to distance ourselves from the direct, literal interpretation of what we see and to accept a higher level of abstraction. In my own case that distance makes me more comfortable with smaller units and shorter ranges so that actually makes it ideal for larger figures.'

I think that in this paragraph, Ross has well and truly 'hit the nail on the head'!

Small is beautiful ... and fun!

Yesterday's play-test of Ross Macfarlane’s 20th Century Square Brigadier wargame rules reinforced my thinking that small wargames can both be beautiful and fun.

This was further born out by the most recent battle report on the Wargame Hermit blog. This was the latest in a number of battles fought by the blog's writer – jhnptrqn – as part of an ongoing campaign. All the battles have featured figures from the 15mm-scale Peter Laing ranges and Heroscape™ hexed terrain.

As far as I know, to date jhnptrqn‘s campaign has included the following battles:

• Minitrain Ambush
• The Battle of Beaverton

He has also fought a number of fantasy battles using armies based on those that appear on the pages of the CONAN THE BARBARIAN and HYBORIA stories as well as a number of historical battles. These have also featured 15mm-scale Peter Laing figures and Heroscape™ hexed terrain.

I do like taking part in large wargames (e.g. MEGABLITZ), but I am now coming to the opinion that as I get older I don't want the expense or effort of building, owning, and storing a small number of large armies, and that it would be better if I concentrated upon creating and using on a regular basis a larger number of small armies.

Furthermore, during the recent spring clean of my toy/wargames room, I re-discovered the storage boxes that contained the large collection of Heroscape™ terrain that I own ... and it seems a great waste not to use it.

It has given me something for me to think about over the next few days

(I have been through similar thought processes before, but never reached a definite conclusion. Perhaps I will this time because its appeal is much greater now.)

Attack on MacDonald’s Farm: A play-test

The following play-test was somewhat different from the usual ones that I set up because for once I was not using some of my own rules; I was play-testing the latest version of Ross Macfarlane’s 20th Century Square Brigadier rules. As the time available was quite limited – as was the space on my wargames table – I set up a small battle for a farm (MacDonald’s farm!) on my wooden chessboard.

The forces available were also limited. The defenders had:

• 2 Infantry Units
• 2 Machine Gun Units
• 1 Field Artillery Unit
• 1 Command Unit

The attackers had:

• 4 Infantry Units
• 1 Machine Gun Unit
• 1 Light Tank Unit
• 1 Command Unit

The opening dispositions looked like this:

Turn 1
The two sides threw for initiative. The Defenders won, but chose not to move. The Attackers were able to move one Infantry Unit and their Command Unit forward.

The Defenders fired at the Attackers ... and missed.

Turn 2
The two sides threw for initiative. The Attackers won, and moved three Infantry Units and their Light Tank Unit forward.

The Defenders fired at the advancing enemy. The Field Artillery Unit hit one of the Attacker's Infantry Units and scored a casualty, as did one of the Machine Gun Units and an Infantry Unit.

As the Defenders were not moving, the Attackers now fired ...

... and managed to inflict a casualty on one of the Defender's Infantry Units.

Turn 3
The two sides threw for initiative. The Attackers won, and moved all six of their Units forward.

The Defenders opened fire on the Attackers. The Field Artillery Unit hit and damaged the Attacker's Light Tank Unit and one of the Machine Gun Units inflicted a second casualty on one of the Attacker's Infantry Units. To the left of the Attacker's Command Unit, two of the Attacker's Infantry Units were forced to retreat.

In reply the Attackers returned fire on the non-moving Defenders. Despite being behind cover, one of the Machine Gun Units suffered a casualty as did the foremost of the defender's Infantry Units.

Turn 4
The two sides threw for initiative. The Attackers won, and moved forward their Light Tank Unit and an Infantry Unit (accompanied by the Command Unit).

The Defenders fired at the Light Tank Unit with their Field Artillery Unit and reduced its potency still further.

The Defenders were also able to force the Attacker's Infantry Unit to retreat.

The Attackers now fired at the Defenders, who had chosen – yet again – not to move.

Regrettably their fire was – to put it bluntly – awful, and they inflicted no damage whatsoever upon the Defenders!

At the end of the turn, the overall situation looked like this:

Turn 5
The two sides threw for initiative. The Attackers won, and moved forward their Light Tank Unit, two Infantry Units (including the one accompanied by the Command Unit), and their Machine Gun Unit.

The Defenders fired at the Attackers with devastating results. First the combined fire of the Defender's Field Artillery Unit and their reserve Infantry Unit destroyed the Attacker's Light Tank Unit.

Then one of the Defender's Machine Gun Units inflicted a further casualty on one of the Attacker's Infantry Units ... and wiped it out.

In the centre one of the Defender's Infantry Units inflicted a casualty on the Attacker's Infantry Unit that was accompanied by the Command Unit ...

... and the second of the Defender's Machine Gun Unit inflicted a casualty on yet another of the Attacker's Infantry Units.

At this point the Attacker decided that his attack had failed, and planned to pull his remaining Units back to their start-line. Their losses were mounting, and there was no possibility of victory.

The situation at the end of the battle – and before the retreat – looked like this:

Conclusions
These are a splendid set of wargame rules and are ideally suited for this sort of small action. What I particularly liked is the use of a dice throw to decide which side moves first ... and therefore fires second. This was a deciding factor in this battle and allowed the defenders to disrupt attacks before the attacker could exploit any advantage they might have gained.

I know that Ross Macfarlane is still developing these rules – and their 19th century equivalent – and I look forward to following their continued evolution via his blog.

Where have all the model shops gone?

One thing that I discovered during my recent spring clean was that almost all of my modelling and painting consumables were no longer useable. Paint had either dried out or the tops of the paint tins/pots were unable to be opened, and the liquid polystyrene glue had evaporated away. Having just completed HMS Thunderer I wanted to paint her ... so I set off for the local branch of Hobbycraft to buy some supplies.

It was an almost completely wasted journey.

The Crayford branch of Hobbycraft had no liquid polystyrene glue and only a small section of Humbrol enamel paints. They did have some Tamiya and Revell acrylic paints on a small display stand, but my past experience with Tamiya paint has left me unwilling to use it again and the Revell paint seemed rather expensive. There was also a very small selection of Citadel paints on sale, but it seemed to consist of all the colours I would not be able to use. I was left with the feeling that the store was either waiting for new stock to be delivered or it was ceasing to sell these products.

I did manage to buy some Humbrol enamel paints (black and white matt that I use for undercoating my vehicles and figures) and some gloss varnish ... but that was all. I am now left with the prospect of having to visit the Hobbycraft branch in Orpington and/or the branch of Games Workshop at Bluewater to buy what I need.

This set me thinking about the demise of the traditional model shop in the area where I live. I can remember being able to have a choice. There used to be a branch of Beatties in Lewisham as well as independent model shops in Eltham, Welling Models, and Bexley Village. I had a choice of four possible places to buy what I needed within a radius of five miles.

None of them still exists.

There is a specialist model shop in Bexleyheath, but it seems to concentrate on old, rare, and collectible models rather than the more run-of-the-mill stuff that I want to buy. Until recently there was a branch of Modelzone at Bluewater, but that shut when the company closed down.

So where have all the model shops gone? I suspect that part of the answer is commercial – they were just unable to generate sufficient turnover to remain viable in properties which were subject to continually rising rents, service charges, and business rates – and part is due to the changing leisure habits of teenage boys. The latter are far more likely to buy a pair of trainers or a computer game than to buy a model kit. The loss of local model shops can be made up in part by purchasing what you need via the Internet, but recent changes to Royal Mail regulations makes buying modelling paint online much more difficult.

I know that we are unlikely to see a resurgence of the local model shop, but it would help if their 'replacements' either carried a wide enough range of basic items in stock or were allowed to post them to you without worrying about breaking the law.