The Portable Wargame: Two mentions in the latest issue of Miniature Wargames

I gave up subscribing to Miniature Wargames some months ago, but when I was told that the PORTABLE WARGAME got two mentions in the latest issue, I had to buy a copy.

The first reference to the rules is made in Conrad Kinch's column, 'Send three and fourpence'. In it he suggests several way in which wargamers can fight battles at a distance from one another, and he recommends the rules as being one of several that are ideal for this purpose.

This issue also contains a review of THE PORTABLE COLONIAL WARGAME written by Arthur Harman. A whole page is devoted to the review, and although not all the purchasing options are covered, I suspect that it has helped to maintain the tempo of sales of the various editions that are available.

Please click on the above image to read the review.

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Please note that the photographs featured above are © Miniature Wargames.

Some renovated 20mm-scale Russian World War Two anti-tank guns

The Russians were great believers in the use of artillery, and it is therefore not surprising that I have quite a few Russian guns in my 20mm-scale World War Two collection. I have just begun renovating them for my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War project, and so far, I have completed a number of anti-tank guns.

They are models of the M1937/53-K 45mm anti-tank gun that was developed from the licence-build copy of the German 37mm Pak36 and used by the Russians throughout the war. I think that majority of the models were manufactured by Skytrex, although one of them (which is slightly smaller than the rest and might actually be a 37mm M1930/1-K anti-tank gun) might have been made by Irregular Miniatures.

Soldiers of the Queen (SOTQ): Issue 177

Despite the current lockdown, the Victorian Military Society has managed to publish the latest issue of its journal, and a copy of SOTQ (Soldiers of the Queen) arrived in the post yesterday.

This issue was almost entirely devoted to the Zulu War, and the articles included are:

• Lifting the Purdah from Tirah: The Tirah Expedition 1897-1898 by David Snape
• A Letter to the Editor by Andrew Winrow
• Major James Franklin, FRS (1783-1834): 'No Satisfaction Except in Science by Richard Voss
• The Archive of the South African War veterans' Association
• The award of orders and medal to medical officers in the British Army during the Crimean Campaign by Dr Mike Hinton
• Book Reviews by Mike Hinton, Roger T Stearn, Rodney Atwood, Dan Allen, and Andy Smith
• Officers of the Victorian Military Society

I always enjoy reading this magazine, and the Victorian Military Society has done a magnificent job in managing to publish and distribute its journal at such a trying time.

Other people's Portable Wargame battle reports ... and some terrain!

There have been quite a few more PORTABLE WARGAME battles and related posts appearing on the PORTABLE WARGAME Facebook page, and here are a few examples of what people have been doing.

Alan Saunders has continued to fight a series of English Civil war battles ...

... and Jeff Butler has created a squared terrain board ...

... on which he has fought a fantasy battle using a variant of the basic PORTABLE WARGAME rules.

Whilst all this has been taking place, Barry Carter has fought a battle from the American War of Independence ...

... as well as one set during the American campaigns against the Plains Indians.

Martin Smith has not been idle, and has fought a battle set during the Anglo-Zulu War ...

... as well an Ancient battle involving Alexander the Great ...

... and a re-fight of the Battle of Marathon.

There are some great PORTABLE WARGAME battles being fought at present ... and I am hoping that as soon as my current crop of projects is completed, I can fight a few of my own!

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Please note that the photographs featured above are © Alan Saunders, Jeff Butler, Barry Carter, and Martin Smith.

Using Zoom: Some useful lessons learned

Last Friday evening, I took part in a short programme of Masonic talks that were delivered online via Zoom. We had over eighty attendees (the maximum we could accept was one hundred), and we learned some very useful lessons that will be applied when we run VCOW in July.

What happened on the night

• The presentations were scheduled to run from 8.15pm to 9.00pm, so we set up a virtual waiting room for attendees which opened at 7.45pm ... and we had people waiting to get into it when it did open!
• Well in advance we had nominated someone to chair the event. It was their responsibility to open the doors of the virtual waiting room at 8.00, and they muted everyone on entry to avoid a cacophony of talking and chatting.
• By 8.15pm we had 87 attendees, at which point the chair introduced the speakers, and then the first presentation (mine as it happens) took place.
• All the speakers used PowerPoint slides, which were set up before the sessions started so that when required, all they had to do was to select the ‘share screen’ option. (We had backed up the slides with the chair so that in event of a technical failure, they could still be shown.)
• Each of the presentations overran slightly, even though the presenters were all experienced speakers who had practised delivering their talks beforehand.
• We did not allow a Q&A session after each presentation because it would have been impossible to chair, although attendees could make comments or ask questions in real time using the 'comment' option on the bottom of the Zoom screen. We did ask that any questions be directed to the chair after the meeting, and these were then passed on to each speaker to answer.

Lessons learned

• You have to have someone in charge in order to ensure that things do not become chaotic.
• You have to be ready to start on time. To do otherwise is not only discourteous to the attendees, but also disruptive if you are putting on a number of presentations one after another.
• Having a waiting room enabled attendees to get ready to join the meeting prior to it starting, and allowed the chair to control the event.
• Attendees must be muted, otherwise the slightest unintentional noise could distract from what the speaker is saying and disrupt the enjoyment of the other attendees.
• A Q&A session would have been nice, but it would have been difficult to control. Perhaps we could have used the 'comment' option so that attendees could have posed questions or made comments during the presentations, and that these could have been dealt with by the chair after the speakers had each finished their presentations.

We will certainly be holding further such sessions of talks, and have plans to try a 'talking heads' session, where several people discuss a topic in front of a live but muted online audience.

I am now firmly convinced that this sort of session will have a prominent role to play at VCOW. I am not sure that you could use Zoom to stage a wargame involving such a large number of participants ... but I suspect that it might be possible if a number of online player 'cells' could be set up using Zoom's 'breakout room' facility. Whatever happens, I think that the use of electronic technology and its associated audio-visual programs/applications has a role to play in the future development of wargaming, not as a replacement for the more traditional face-to-face sessions and games, but as a very useful adjunct to them.

A map for my Barbarossa Campaign: Almost finished

I have been working on my campaign map as and when the mood has taken me, and I am well on the way to completing it.

Since my last blog entry, when the map looked like this ...

... I have added more marshland, forests, and roads, ...

... and the place names.

I am quite pleased with the results, especially when the various sections of the map are seen full size, as the following screenshots of a section of the map shows:

I have one or two changes that I want to make, but to all intents and purposes, the map is almost finished.

Facetime, Skype, and Zoom

One thing that the current lockdown has done is to introduce a lot of people to the possibilities of using their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs to communicate visually and verbally with other people in real time.

Over the last two months, I have begun to learn how to use FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom, and I am part of the group within Wargame Developments who are planning to use these and similar programs to stage a Virtual Conference of Wargamers (VCOW) in early July.

Tonight I will be using Zoom to present a short Masonic talk ... and learning how to do this has certainly opened up the possibilities for me to use this program to present a session at VCOW.

Rather than subject my audience to looking at my ugly mug and listening to my voice, I have prepared a PowerPoint slideshow that I can 'share' with the audience whilst I talk, and its title page looks like this:

Now, I am sure that a lot of you have been to sessions where the speaker has used such a slideshow, and the phenomena of 'death by PowerPoint' is well known. I have therefore been very careful to use as few words on my slides as possible (they are there to act as introductions to what I am going to say), and do NOT intend to insult my audience's intelligence by putting up a slide ... and then reading what is on the slide to them! (I'm sure that you've all seen and heard that done at some point!) I have also kept the transitions from one slide to another as simple as it can be (they will fade from one to another), and the text and illustrations will also fade in. (I absolutely HATE presentations where things spin in, whirl about, or do somersaults. I want information, NOT a circus show!)

The final slide of my presentation.

Assuming that everything goes well tonight, I will give serious thought to presenting a session at VCOW. If it goes badly ... then I will go back to the drawing board!

VCOW: An announcement

Yesterday, Tim Gow – who is the other COW coordinator – posted the following announcement on his blog:

VIRTUAL CONFERENCE OF WARGAMERS

What is it?

When is it?

Where is it?

What will it cost me?
The Conference of Wargamers is an extraordinary event. There can be very, very few, if any, conferences which charge a fee for entrance and then expect delegates to provide the entire program and write up the proceedings. Yet each year COW is a triumph of good will and collective endeavour over standard consumer practice. Each year, as the call goes out for sessions and the members of WD provide, and we all have a jolly good time at Knuston. Then your Editor eagerly awaits, and eventually receives, enough reports for 9 issues of The Nugget.

For obvious reasons this year is not the same. We must assume that we will not be meeting at Knuston this year and plan accordingly. We can however take this as an opportunity to develop our wargames and the way we engage with conflict simulation. Following a discussion with a handful of members, we have taken the decision to offer an alternative to COW – Virtual Conference of Wargamers (VCOW).

VCOW will take place over same weekend as physical COW, that is the weekend of the 10th to the 12th July. It will begin on Friday evening with two Plenary lectures, and there will be blocks of sessions over the Saturday and Sunday. These sessions will be a mixture of lectures, discussions and games, and attendees will be able to sign up to a range of different activities over the course of the VCOW. Sadly, you’ll have to provide your own food, but other than that, we hope to recreate the COW experience as far as possible for all attendees. We also hope that VCOW will provide us with some innovative new types of games and allow us all to explore the benefits and limitations of the virtual medium.

Details of sessions available are on the VCOW blog and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Attendance at VCOW is open to the following:

• Current members of WD
• Anyone who has been a member of WD in the past two years
• Guests invited by WD members

The cost to attend is a mere £5 – the Paypal link can be found on the VCOW blog.

Numbers will be limited, so book now to avoid disappointment.

If you have questions about VCOW please contact me or leave a comment on this post.

Ennui? It seemed to go as soon as I wrote about it!

Amazingly, almost as soon as I wrote last Monday’s blog entry, I suddenly seemed to get my second wind. Yesterday, I managed to do quite a bit of work done renovating some Russian World War Two artillery as well as more work on my Operation Barbarossa map.

We also managed to go shopping (something that takes at least twice as long as it did before the lockdown began), and this gave us the opportunity to try out our newly homemade face masks. We fully expect that they will become part of everyday outdoor wear once the lockdown begins to be eased, and Sue intends to make a batch of them using closely woven fabric, a layer of impermeable interfacing, and lengths of elastic. She is using a design that was published online, and they are supposed to be more effective that the vilene ones that are in sale in some shops.

I’m hoping to do some more renovation work later today as well as finishing my map. I then have a Masonic talk to go over and tidy up as well as write a scenario for an online PORTABLE WARGAME that I hope to fight next week.

I think that my period of ennui has passed... and hopefully I will not experience it again.

Ennui?

I have noticed that the writers of a number of the blogs that I follow have all recently mentioned that they have been suffering from a general feeling of lassitude. They have mentioned a gradual (or in some cases, quite sudden) lack of interest in the current wargame projects that are working on, coupled with a seeming inability to raise much enthusiasm for anything new. I know this feeling well, and have experienced myself. In fact, it is probably true to say that I have begun to notice the signs with regard to my current wargame projects.

There is a word for this feeling; it is ennui.

The dictionary defines ennui as being 'a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement', which certainly describes the way I am feeling.

The cause is not difficult to identify; it is the current lockdown, coupled with the recent spell of good weather. Who wants to sit indoors or potter around their garden (if they have one) for weeks on end, only going outside the confines of their living space to go to the shops to buy essential items or for daily exercise? In truth, no one wants to do that ... but we realise that if we are to stop the pandemic, we have to accept these limitations. We have been doing it for over six weeks, and after the initial feeling of 'Wow! I can get so much stuff done whilst the lockdown lasts!', our enthusiasm has waned quite a bit, and ennui has set in.

The good thing is that I know that this feeling will pass fairly quickly if I just go with the flow and don't try to fight it. I also know that I will then get my second wind, and my enthusiasm will return. Unlike the pandemic, where we are desperate to avoid a second wave of infection when the lockdown is eased, we are looking forward to our second wave of enthusiasm for all things wargaming. It will come ... but we've just got to be patient and wait for it to happen.