Battlechat with Henry Hyde

It's only taken most of lockdown (if you don't count the Virtual Hereward video post) but I'm on a podcast.

Not mine, I hasten to add, but the fabulous Henry Hyde's Battlechat episode 101, where you can find Henry and I discussing everything from my personal gaming (and non-gaming) history, through Southend, Fleetwood Mac, IABSM, Dux, the club to putting on mad crazy games at shows.

I had a fabulous time, even if I had arrange it round getting Dad to the opticians and thus bring up a holdall of podcasting kit to his living room. Thanks to Henry for a fabulous hour and a bit, and for generally reminding me how much I love this hobby and inspiring me to get off my arse and do stuff!

Available to Patreons of Henry now (and if you aren't, why not!) or for the general public in a couple of weeks.

Henry Hyde's Patreon

Definitely something to check out. Henry Hyde has started a Patreon campaign, in order that he can continue to spend time providing hobby-related content alongside other career options.

I've pledged, as I think Henry is a fabulous voice in and contributor to our hobby, and deserves our support.

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As for me, on a semi-related tack, today's the first day of officially working at various hobby projects full time, which means today's the first accountability update. 

Herewith a screen grab of OmniFocus, to prove I've been planning the next steps of the Dux Britanniarum Compendium. (Of course, this doesn't tell you how complete it was before that! Can't spoil all the surprise.)

Wargames-related tasks completed today:

• Club AGM prep (tonight!)
• planned what happens next for the Compendium
• tidied up some formatting standards
• Imported a whole chapter into the Compendium, edited it and formatted it properly
• had a chat with the talkwargaming.com folks
• (Also first day with the builders here since Xmas, which is sort of wargame-y)
• Blogged (well, duh!)

A new era for Miniature Wargames

Miniature Wargames has been a magazine I've picked up on a 'when I see it in the shops' basis. As I have digital subscriptions to both Battlegames and WSS, I've sort of toyed with adding it to the list, and decided that on the whole, two's kind of enough. Or maybe not.

Atlantic Publishing (who publish both Miniature Wargames and Battlegames) have very kindly taken the dilemma out of my hands, by asking Henry Hyde, editor of the latter and one-half of my favourite podcasting team, to take the editorial reins at MW. This means that Battlegames as a brand will cease to exist (except for specials and their Combat Stress appeal) but (according to Henry) his brief is to add a healthy dose of the Battlegames 'Spirit of Wargaming' to the MW editorial mix (as well as a good few more pages).

What do I think? Personally, I can't wait. Battlegames has always been my favourite mag of the Big Four (before you ask, Wargames Illustrated (aka the Battlefront House Mag) runs a distant fourth), and I've always liked the fact that as a magazine it makes me think at least as often as it makes me go 'oo, lookit da shiny figurez!'.

So... congratulations to Henry, who is an all around nice bloke, polymath and Renaissance Man! I'm hoping and assuming the remains of my digital subscription will transfer, and I'm only left to decide whether I want paper or digital for the new mag. Tough one.

Battle Report - 25-Nov-2012 - Bretwalda - WAB Age of Arthur day

Sunday saw our club put on a WAB Age of Arthur day at our venue. In the end, we had 14 players turn up, a mix of our members and folks from further afield - the venue could, with a bit of a squeeze, hold 24, so there was a reasonable amount of room.

The players were split into two factions, the British (with mercenary allies) under Vortigen, and the Saxon invaders under Hengest: we diced for leaders, and issued them with crowns. Format was three rounds, the first being three sets of doubles plus the leaders (Scrivs as Vortigern and Phil from the Halifax club (the Pennine Raiders) admirably cast as Hengest) in single battle. I paired up with Stephen (also from the Pennine Raiders) to take on the worst Britian could throw at us (which turned out to be Reuben and AndyB from our club!).

It all went OK (ish) for the first three turns, but turn four saw an awful lot of damage done to the combined might of the Saxons and a lot of failed tests, despite our best efforts, and we wound up on the receiving end of a Mighty Victory to Britain. Which rather set the pattern for my day, sadly.

After a quick dash home for the scenery I'd forgotten, we set up the tables for two rounds of singles for the afternoon. The plan here was that each leader was given the scenario sheets for the seven different tables, and had to allocate a player to each table for the second round, and then a different one for the third round. Most of the scenarios were out of the Age of Arthur rulebook, but we added a couple of Andy Hawes and my devising (The Old Roman Signal Station and Our Lady of Wansford) and James Morris' Battle of Chester scenario.

For the second round I got assigned Cat Coit Celedon against Vortigern himself, Scrivs. This basically requires the attacker to punch a hole or two in the defender's formation and make it off the table. I almost managed it: my cavalry vapourised in the face of some remarkably unpleasant double-shotted sling fire, but I did get two units of Duguth headed in the right direction. Except that, due to a complete bit of tactical idiocy on my part, I'd got my hearthguard rather firmly stuck behind some fleeing Geoguth, and in no position to charge. So when Scrivs charged them and they broke, fled and died, my army proceeded to fail its tests, and ... yup, another Mighty Victory to the British.

Last up I got Grahame from our club's Franks in the Mount Badon scenario, which I picked largely because it was the only one of the seven I'd never played. Looking at his forces, and really not wanting to attack uphill against thrusting-spear armed Franks, I decided I'd defend the hill: at this point (in order to make the 2000pts vs 1500 pts the scenario calls for) my cavalry defected to Grahame.

It so nearly worked. I spent four turns resisting the temptation to leave the hill. My reinforcements obligingly turned up on turn four, and proceeded to charge what used to be my cavalry... which actually worked out quite well, as they fled, causing a bit of a logjam for Grahame. By turn 5 I'd lost a unit of Duguth and both my skirmishers, and was poised to charge my Gedriht off the hill and hopefully turn a close-fought victory... except that Grahame unloaded on my Gedriht with every missle troop he had, and did 6 out of 24 casualties. A panic test. They failed. And fled. 11", which was about 3/4" too far for them to stay on the table... You can guess the rest :D

All in all, though? It was a brilliant day - I had a blast, and it certainly seems that everyone else did. The British won the most territory, despite some sterling efforts in the final round after a pep talk from Hengest, and there was a three way tie for the mightiest warrior, resolved in favour of Andy Beer who actually managed three Mighty Victories. Thanks to everyone who came, to Andy Hawes for being organiser in chief and MC ("Yet more interesting NEWS, gentlemen, from the Land of Britannia!"), and to everyone else who helped.

I'm also very pleased to report that the dice-off for various goodies, including a bottle of mead and some of the very nice new Musketeer character figures, raised £65 for the Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal.

Oh, and, P.S.: Scrivs? I win :D

Battlegames issue 28

When I fired up the reader app on the iPad yesterday, it downloaded me the new issue of Battlegames, so, in a break from painting horses (I've been temporarily banished from the kitchen table and it's too cold out in the workshop), herewith a review.

My comments on layout and look of the previous issue still hold - Henry does a great job in producing a clean, readable magazine with no unnecessary colour and font tricks that make some rival magazines harder to read. Several great articles - the introduction to A Very British Civil War was something I've been rather hoping someone would write, the continuing story of the Grenoussian Intermezzo is a blast to read (and I'm working on a pass for this year's encore...), and the five-way colonial scenario looks like it has the potential to be a real blast on a club night.

I did, though, find myself finishing the magazine with a slight sense of 'is that all?'. Turns out the reason for this is that all the articles this issue are actually quite long, and in fact (setting aside the review and Forward Observer columns) there were, in fact, only six, compared to eight last time and seven before that, so... quantity not quality this issue :D

Still a great read, not at all sorry I subscribed.

[Folks with http://www.battlegames.co.uk/ bookmarked (like me) should note that the new site for the magazine is http://www.atlanticpublishers.com/magazines/battlegames/ and the reader is at http://www.exacteditions.com/]

Battlegames issue 27

So, to my considerable delight, as I was pondering what to do with the afternoon, an email dropped into my inbox from the new publishers of Battlegames Magazine with a link to my first subscription issue. [And, quite surprisingly, the previous half-dozen, which I wasn't expecting, and did cause me to double check when my subscription expired!]

Now, I've downloaded and devoured most of the freebies available on the site before, so I'm pretty familiar with the house style - having an entire afternoon's worth of reading after a week of madness at work was just what the doctor ordered, even if I probably should have been getting stuck in to the figure painting I have queued up.

Unlike previous issues of Battlegames, which were, I gather, available as PDFs, the new publisher makes them available via a web app or a similar iPad app. Being the happy owner of one of the late Mr. Jobs little babies (which, unsurprisingly, has a number of Battlegames' free PDFs on it!) I went for the latter approach. The app's OK - it did fall over on me a few times, but didn't lose my place on restart, which was nice - basically it's yet another digital document viewer. Pages are at print quality, zoomable in, with clickable links, which is definitely a plus - this includes contents page links, which is even better.

Content-wise? It's Battlegames - by now, I know what I'd be getting: nice production quality, nice photos, articles written by gamers with their heads screwed on right. High spots for issue 27 for me were the continuing narrative of the Grenoussian Intermezzo campaign (so itching to have been a part of this), and Neil Shuck's taking over of the Forward Observer column. Neil's Meeples and Miniatures podcast (see top right links section!) as well as his and Henry Hyde's View From The Verandah kept me sane during my long commutes to London (which thank goodness I don't do any more!), and I love his style. The I Ain't Been Shot Mum scenario intrigued me, and I was very impressed by Mike Stewart's "Wargaming Blind" piece - there but for the grace of God go I. The review of Saga has done nothing to dissuade me from buying it, either!

All in all? My kind of wargames magazine. And I really must get my thoughts about wargames campaigns vs leader-board "campaigns" down in an article for this blog sometime. So, in a nutshell - if you are into more than points-based tournament battles? get your credit card out and subscribe. Now!

Putting my money where my mouth is

Subscriptions to Battlegames magazine are back open.

So I did. One 6 issue digital sub, duly Paypal'ed.

Battlegames saved!

From the Battlegames homepage:

[...] Battlegames is in the process of being acquired by Atlantic Publishers and will therefore become a stable-mate to Miniature Wargames. Deals of this kind obviously take time, but negotiations are proceeding extremely well and we are aiming to complete the handover by early December.

After six years of hard work to establish Battlegames in a highly competitive market, I am delighted that the magazine will now have the backing of Atlantic's highly professional and experienced team to help ensure that it has a bright future.

Battlegames will remain a stand-alone, bi-monthly publication [...]

 Woot. Yay. If you're reading this, Henry, I'll be subscribing next month.

Battlegames magazine.

It would appear that the excellent Battlegames magazine is no more, at least as far as a print version goes.
Sad news, with a twinge of guilt, since a paper subscription was high on my list of things to purchase with my new extra disposable income.
Henry Hyde does seem to be an all-round decent chap, and it's a crying shame. Hopefully he can salvage what he needs to keep the financial wolf from the door from the wreckage.