The Case of The Disappearing Underpants … is solved!

As regular blog readers will know, my father-in-law has got it into his mind that the person he refers to as 'That Thieving B*st*rd Cowson T*rr*' (or TTBCT for short) has been ‘stealing’ things from him. Recently this culminated in the apparent ‘theft’ of my father-in-law’s underpants.

After my wife and I had bought replacements for the ‘stolen’ garments, we had hoped that that would be end of the matter. Unfortunately it was not, and these new underpants were also reported ‘stolen’ … and the chief (and only) suspect was TTBCT. This was despite the fact that TTBCT had not even been in the country at the time of the alleged ‘theft’!

Last night, during a ‘phone call with my wife, my father-in-law announced that the ‘stolen’ underpants had been ‘found’ … in a plastic carrier bag on top of his wardrobe! The fact of the matter was that my father-in-law had ‘hidden’ them there so that they would not be ‘stolen’ … and promptly forgotten that he had done so. Because his eyesight is so poor, he had not noticed the orange-coloured carrier bag on top of his wardrobe when he had searched his bedroom earlier in the week.

Case solved.

As Holmes might has said, ‘When you have eliminated the possible, whatever remains – however improbable it may be – will be inside the orange-coloured carrier bag on top of the wardrobe.’

‘Internet, Internet, wherefore art thou, Internet?’

When I got up this morning, the Internet connection to my house was ‘down’. I checked that it was not any of the connections inside the house (we have both a wireless and cable network inside the house, the latter using the internal ring main power supply via special plugs that connect our computers and Internet modem data cables directly to the electrical ring main). The problem seems to be somewhere between my house and the local Internet junction box or between the junction box and the ISP.

This problem occurs every so often, usually after bad weather … and it seems to have been raining most of the night so that is probably the cause. I don’t know why the weather should affect our Internet access … but it does … and it may – in part – be due to constant battle the ISP’s engineers seem to wage with one or two local youths who like to ‘decorate’ the junction boxes with their ‘tags’. For some reason this sometimes involves opening up the junction box to expose the connections to the elements … with the end result that the Internet access in the local area is interrupted until the engineers can repair the damage.

It is interesting to note that one of the ways the ISP says that you can inform them that the Internet service they supply is not working is to send them an email.

I wonder how they expect you to do that?

Service was finally restored just before 9.00am this morning … which is how I managed to upload this blog entry!

The Portable Wargame 2: The latest draft

I have spent my day concentrating on three tasks.

Firstly I have taken the next step in my battle with the Planning Enforcement Department at Greenwich Council. It is now over two weeks since I wrote to them and requested that they contact me as soon as possible regarding the breach – by my neighbour – of the planning permission he was given. I have waited patiently ... but now my patience is at an end. I have therefore made an official complaint about the Planning Enforcement Department to the Chief Executive. I don't know if this will do any good, but it is the next step in the Council's own complaints procedure.

Secondly I have been doing some work on my new hills. After making a trip to buy some more glue (Why does one always run out in the middle of a project?), I have glued a 7.5cm x 7.5cm piece of thin basswood to each hill to ensure that they have one flat surface. This will be the bottom of the hill, and will ensure that the non-slip felt that I fix to each hill will have a nice flat surface to adhere to.

Finally I have done some redrafting of my PORTABLE WARGAME 2 rules in the light of my recent play-tests and feedback from other play-testers, especially Ross Mac. The main changes are:

• Unit quality is now included within the rules, and affects a Unit's ability to 'shrug off' hits received in both Fire and Close Combat.
• The impact of different types of cover (i.e. soft cover such as trees and hard cover such as entrenchments) is also factored into the Combat systems.
• Commanders are now more vulnerable in Close Combat but Artillery is slightly less vulnerable when attacked from the front.
• Commanders now have an impact on the Combat systems as their presence in an adjacent grid area improves a Unit's ability to fire or fight a Close Combat.

I hope to play-test these changes once the hills are completed so that I can use my 'new' terrain boards.

Making some hills to go with my 'new' terrain boards

Whilst I was searching through the small stock of pine, basswood, balsa wood, and plywood that I keep for modelling purposes, looking for something to make some hills from to go with my ‘new’ terrain boards, I knocked over a box containing an ASDA ‘Jumbling Tower’ game. This is an ‘own brand’ version of Jenga, and each box contains thirty nine wooden blocks.

The wooden blocks scattered all over the floor, and whilst I was picking them up I realised that if you laid three of the blocks side-by-side, they were the same size a square on my ‘new’ terrain boards. I quickly glued three blocks together and realised that I had the basis of a hill that I could use. I have now glued enough blocks together to form twelve 75mm x 75mm ‘hills’.

Because the edges of the blocks are slightly bevelled I intend to glue a thin sheet of either basswood or plywood onto what will be the top and bottom surfaces of the hill. This will ensure the hill lays flat on the terrain boards and will have a flat top so that figures will be able to stand on it. Once the hill has a flat top and bottom surface, I will paint it to seal the surface and then cover it in static grass flock. If everything goes to plan, I should have some completed hills by the end of the week.

So what terrain items do I need to produce to go with my 'new' terrain boards?

Now that I have decided to try to get some use out of the gridded and flocked terrain boards that I recently found in my toy/wargames room, I need to think about the terrain items I will have to make to go with it.

Trees are not a problem as I already have quite a few model coniferous and deciduous trees that are mounted in singles and groups on non-slip bases. Likewise I can use strips of suitably coloured felt for roads and rivers … and possibly use squares of felt for unbounded fields, marshes, and swamps.

I have no idea how many building I have in different scales, but suffice it to say that I have over fifty small (approximately 1:200th-scale) buildings I have bought in Croatia and various other European countries (including Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Norway), at least as many – if not more – from ‘Town in a bag’ sets, a dozen or so Hornby Lyddle End N-gauge buildings, and several storage crates full of assembled plastic HO-scale model railway buildings.

What I do seem to lack is any hills, and so I am looking at various ways in which I can construct suitable hills to go with the ‘new’ terrain boards. They will have to be built in multiples of 7.5cm x 7.5cm squares, and at the moment I am thinking about making a series of wooden boxes that, when painted and flocked, will make passable hills. They will have to be ‘stepped’ so that units can ‘stand’ on them without falling over. Another point that I must take into consideration is that the vertical height of each level should not be too tall – and therefore look ridiculous in comparison to the height of other terrain items on the terrain boards – or too short so that they convey the impression that they are unimportant.

I hope to start work on my first prototype hills later today … assuming that I can find the raw materials I need in my toy/wargames room!

The 'new' terrain boards

I decided to use a spare half hour today to put both the 'new' terrain boards I had 'found' onto my wargames table and then to 'dress' it with various items from my collection of trees, roads, and buildings to see what it looked like.

I then decided to add some figures and vehicles. In the first instance I used a mixture of 20mm-scale figures and 15mm-scale vehicles. (This is what Zvezda use in their ART OF TACTIC game, and I wanted to see if it 'worked' on a visual level.)

In the first three images, the German figures were all made by Raventhorpe (and are therefore large 20mm-scale figures), the Infantry Gun was made by Skytrex, and the Pzkpfw IV was made by Peter Pig. The Russian figures are a mixture of Britannia and Dixon Miniatures, and the T34s were made by Hasbro and are part of the AXIS & ALLIES range of miniatures. The trees were bought from various model railways shops, had additional flock added to them, and were then based by me. The building is from Hornby's Lyddle End range of N gauge buildings, the barricades were supplied by Hovels, and the barbed wire was bought in a Games Workshop store.

I then replaced the figures and artillery with items from my MEGABLITZ collection.

Finally I replaced the 20mm-scale figures with 15mm-scale figures from my Colonial wargames collection and the Hornby building with small-scale buildings I have bought during my visits to Croatia.

Having undertaken this exercise I think that:

• The boards look a lot better than my sheets of green felt with a grid drawn on them.
• I can easily use my existing collection of trees, roads, and buildings with these boards, especially as the felt roads and the based trees (which have felt sheet underneath them) grip the flocked surface of the boards and are thus less likely to move during a wargame.
• Small 20mm-scale figures do not look too out of place with 15mm-scale vehicles. (Perhaps Zvevda are on to something here? I tried a similar experiment myself some time ago, and this has reinforced my thoughts on the matter.)
• The fact that I can get two bases of 15mm-scale figures into a grid square might have implications for any future developments of my PORTABLE WARGAME rules.

This was an interesting exercise, and it has left me with several things to think about.

My newest Osprey book

I resisted the temptation to drive down to Herne Bay today to try to solve 'The Case of the Disappearing Underpants'. (The truth is that it was not difficult to resist the temptation, but ...) Instead my wife and I visited the nearby shopping centre, and this gave me the opportunity to buy a copy of ARMIES OF THE ADOWA CAMPAIGN 1896: THE ITALIAN DISASTER IN ETHIOPIA (written by Sean McLachlan, illustrated by Raffaele Ruggeri, and published by Osprey as part of their 'Men-at-Arms series' No. 471 [2011] ISBN 978 1 84908 457 4).

The Battle of Adowa was the greatest defeat suffered by any European Colonial power during latter part of the nineteenth century, and I hope that I will know more than I currently do about this disaster once I have read this book. The illustrations are excellent, and I have already been giving thought to creating a couple of small Italian and Ethiopian wargames armies that I could use with my PORTABLE WARGAME rules.

The Case of the Disappearing Underpants

The story you are about to read is true. No names have be changed to protect the innocent. It is not a coincidence if a real name has been used, and the facts, where stated, are verifiable ... I think.

My father-in-law is obsessed with the fact that some of his possessions are being stolen. The things that go 'missing' are not valuable. It is usually things like 2lb bags of sugar, yoghurts, biscuits, or health drinks. He 'knows' who the culprit is; it is a person he refers to as 'That Thieving B*st*rd Cowson T*rr*' (or TTBCT for short). Poor old TTBCT visits my father-in-law quite frequently and helps him with odd jobs like his shopping. He is well-meaning and tries to be helpful .... but his good intentions are not always appreciated.

About four weeks ago my father-in-law complained that almost all of his underpants had been 'stolen'. He immediately assumed that TTBCT was the culprit because he had just gone away on holiday and had probably taken them to use whilst he was away. Both my wife and I tried to reason with my father-in-law, and I made great efforts to get him to understand that no one would want to 'steal' his underpants. They were/are what I would describe as religious underpants ... very hol(e)y!

In order to put his mind at rest, my wife and I bought my father-in-law a whole new set of underpants ... and hoped that that would be an end to the problem.

It was not.

Today my wife and I went to buy a whole load of new linen and curtains for our bedroom. We got home at about 4.00pm, and within an hour my father-in-law had 'phoned to inform us that his new underpants were now missing, and the TTBCT must have been round and taken them. We asked when TTBCT had last visited him ... and were told that TTBCT had not been to see my father-in-law for at least four weeks. When we asked how TTBCT could have taken the underpants without entering the house, all my father-in-law would say was that he had searched high and low, but the underpants were missing ... and what were we going to do about it?

Our reply was ... we will search for them the next time we visit ... which will probably be later next week. In the meantime, if anyone has any ideas how to solve this classic 'locked room' mystery, please let me know. Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes are unavailable at the minute, so any assistance will be gratefully received.

PS. Yes, my life is this surreal at times. Sometimes I think that wargaming is the only thing that is keeping me reasonably sane ... and I have some doubts about how sane I actually am!

Nice terrain boards ... are now stored somewhere accessible!

Almost as soon as I had written my last blog entry I realised two things. Firstly, that the squares on the MDF terrain boards are not 5cm x 5cm squares; they are 7.5cm x 7.5cm squares. This means that each terrain board has a grid that is 12 squares x 8 squares, and when used together the boards have a grid that is 16 squares x 12 squares or 24 squares x 8 squares. They can even be laid out in the form of a ‘T’ or an ‘L’, which gives even more flexibility.

Secondly – and probably more importantly – I realised that by moving my wargames table two inches in one direction, I could create room for the boards to be rested against one end of the table, thus making them very accessible.

Problem solved … and I hope to use the terrain boards in the very near future.

Nice terrain boards ... shame about the weight*

This morning I got the terrain boards I found yesterday out from behind the Hexon II storage boxes … and then realised why I had stored them and not used them. They are very heavy, and if I use them for my PORTABLE WARGAME it will no longer be very portable!

The boards were each made of a 5mm-thick sheet of MDF that is fixed to a frame made of pine. They were then painted (to seal the MDF and to protect the frame) and covered in a layer of static grass flock. The grid was then drawn onto the flock. They are – therefore – very durable … and very heavy as well. At present the only place that I can store them in my toy/wargames room is behind the Hexon II storage boxes, and this means that every time that I want to use the terrain boards I am going to have to move all the Hexon II storage boxes out of the way first.

I therefore have a problem. I could completely rearrange all the storage in my toy/wargames room so that I can have easy access to the terrain boards or I could continue to store them where they are and only every use them on special occasions or I could get rid of them. None of these solutions are – from my point of view – very satisfactory.

For the time being the terrain boards are going back into storage, but I think that I am going to have to find a solution to this problem now that I have ‘rediscovered’ them.

It is something for me to think about over the coming days.

*The title of this blog entry refers to the title of a 1979 song by The Monks – 'Nice legs, shame about your face'.