The following is a quote from a South African who fought at Sidi Rezegh in November 1941.

“We headed straight for the enemy tanks. I glanced back. Behind me was a fan of our vehicles—a curious assortment of all types—spread out as far as the eye could see. There were armoured troop carriers, cars of various kinds, caterpillars hauling mobile guns, heavy trucks with infantry, and motorized anti-aircraft units. Thus we roared on towards the enemy ‘barricade.

I stared at the front fascinated. Right ahead was the erect figure of the Colonel commanding the regiment. On the left close by and slightly to the rear of him was the Major’s car. Tank shells were whizzing through the air. The defenders were firing from every muzzle of their 25-pounders and their little 2-pounder anti-tank guns. We raced on at a suicidal pace.”

At this point you're all asking yourselves why a South African was being fired at by 25-pounders. The reason is that Lieutenant Heinz Werner Schmidt was fighting for the Germans. Indeed, shortly after the battle he became an aide-de-camp to Rommel himself. He survived the war, went back to South Africa, where the National Party government elected in 1948 dropped all treason prosecutions against people such as Schmidt and concentrated their efforts on introducing Apartheid.

About 15 or so years ago, when James first said that he was going to put together the forces for Operation Crusader, I must confess that I didn't appreciate that the whole thing basically amounted to one battle. However, it did and so Sidi Rezegh gets a periodic outing in the legendary wargames room. One significant change since the last time we played it is that there are far fewer toys on the table, thereby creating a bit more space. It not only looks better, but - so far - seems to be playing better as well. We are using Blitzkrieg Commander 4, with various amendments around things like target priority and off-table artillery. I had a whole raft of issues with BK4, but I've completely forgotten what they were and  so they no longer seem to bother me. If only the rest of life was like that.

The view above is from my perspective as commander of whichever panzer division it is that is trying to seize the airfield just about visible about half-way down the table. At the end of the first evening things were going reasonably well for me, although slightly less well for the infantry in the top left with the thankless task of assaulting the escarpment. No change there then.

"Nowadays Roman numerals only exist for things which powerful people want to look permanent, but which are actually very impermanent indeed." - David Boyle

Firstly, I'm still getting twenty thousand hits a week, and it's still annoying me; much more so that if none were being registered at all, and that would be substantially closer to the truth. I saw a statistic yesterday that 80% of all website hits on the whole internet are currently being made by bots of one form or another. However, that figure came from an AI source, so who knows.

Secondly, there has been some wargaming, so hooray for that.

It was game of To the Strongest! using James's Crusades figures. He thinks it's his best painted collection, which means it's very, very good indeed. The plan is to switch next week to possibly his least colourful period - although they're still lovely models - with some early WWII North African action. Will it be Sidi Rezegh? Let's hope so.

Various cultural activities have started up after the longish, hottish summer. I went to the Proms, something I had never done before. Also uncharted territory was a visit to a Rugby League match. I went to see the Leeds Rhinos, courtesy of Leeds Building Society who are their main sponsor. The pre-match meal etc was all rather good; the game itself left me uninspired and I didn't come away with any regrets for having given it a miss over the decades during which I've lived in the North. The outcome wasn't in doubt once the legendary Leeds ex-player brought on before the start to tell the assembled corporate guests what he thought would happen forecast that Rhinos would win at a canter by thirty or forty points. Inevitably the Catalan Dragons took an early lead and pulled steadily away as the game progressed. 

 I've been away. of which more in due course. But some wargaming action awaited me on my return.

Firstly, the tanks advanced at Amiens once again. It's the only scenario in the Square Bashing book for which I have the forces, and so when short of time it's the one which gets put on. It was a victory for the British on this occasion. I obviously don't mean to criticise the good people of Peter Pig, but which side wins is entirely down to how high the die rolls the Germans make in their countdown phase at the end of their turn; nothing else actually matters at all. Still, it passed the time very pleasantly.

Then there is some Cruel Seas news. Not progress, you understand, just news. It would probably be impossible to overstate just how much wargaming crap Peter had accumulated and, while continuing with the task of sorting it out for his widow, James has turned up some more relevant bits and pieces. The most pertinent were a couple of freighters, shown above with the 3D printed one which I bought in an early burst of enthusiasm, that's the one at the back. Now I have a convoy worth sinking it almost seems churlish not to paint a couple of MTB's up and do so.

 And so to the opera. Regular readers will know that going to the opera is as close to my heart as indulging in a bit of toy soldier action. I was delighted therefore to attend a performance which included both. The figures - understandably impossible to see in any detail - were present in the opening scene of Britten's 'Owen Wingrave' when our 'hero' and his friend are being instructed in the strategic lessons to be learned from the battle of Austerlitz. Sadly, there is no room in the libretto to include what these lessons might be, but we do learn that Napoleon was delighted with the outcome.

Less delighted with things is Wingrave himself, who subsequently rejects his family's plan for him. This is that he kills and quite possibly dies for the glory of Queen, country and the honour of the Wingrave name as countless generations have done before him. That's the countless generations haunting him in the picture. 

I'd never seen it before - it's rarely performed - but rather liked it. Unlike many operas the plot is very straightforward with literally everyone else except the title character being an unsympathetic baddie including, oddly but effectively, the house in which they all live. The piece was originally commissioned by the BBC to be shown on television, something which would never now happen, thereby neatly encapsulating the level of cultural decline in the UK during the last half century.

Obviously pacifism is a more complex issue than as portrayed here. I have never read the Henry James story on which it based, but don't really expect to find subtlety there either. The name 'Owen' means 'young soldier' and 'Wingrave' is clearly, well, 'win grave'. Possibly if Britten had not run away to the US during the second world war, but had stayed in the UK and lived out his principles in the context of a society under attack he may have been able to add some more nuanced touches.

.

 AKA Cruel Seas the unboxing. I've had a look through the contents of the Cruel Seas starter box which I have inherited. It's all there (*), indeed there are a couple of extras: a metal casting of a U-boat conning tower breaking the waves and a couple of US PT boat sprues. I suspect the latter were free giveaways with a copy of Wargame Illustrated back when the game was launched. I shall not be using the PT boats however, I shall stick to the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine options, from which I shall be selecting the mid-to-late war options, for no better reason than they have bigger guns.

The rules don't seem especially innovative, but the gimmick which catches the eye (as it probably did when I saw the game demonstrated at Vapnartak 2019, although I can remember nothing whatever about it) is that torpedoes are not mediated solely through the rolling of dice, but instead actually set off across the table represented by their own little model and either hit their target or don't. I use the term 'gimmick' advisedly, because on the one hand it's the aspect which makes me really want to play the game, while on the other hand my instinct is that I shall tire of it fairly quickly.

If one is to fire torpedoes then one has to fire them at something. The starter box lives up to its name in that it contains everything one needs to play Scenario 1 in the rulebook, but sadly torpedoes don't make an appearance until Scenario 2, and that requires some sort of small coastal freighter or tanker to act as a target; said vessel is not in the box. Those from the official range - now interestingly available from Skytrex rather than Warlord Games - clock in at around £30 or so, but perfectly acceptable 3D printed alternatives are available on eBay for a fiver, and so I bought one. Notwithstanding the Christmas post, it arrived within a couple of days and there it is above. A halfway decent bloggist would have put one of the MTBs in for scale, but that's not how we roll around here.

(*) I have of course had to download a very unimpressive ten pages of Errata to the rule book.

 Haven't done this for a while. New-to-me and otherwise notable games only.

Age of War: OK, but no better. It's samurai themed, but fairly abstract.

Amerigo: Perfectly fine exploration and tile laying game.

Arkadia: Polyomino tile-laying game with some clever variable scoring rules. Good.

Clever Cubed: The third in the Ganz Schon Clever! series. The second remains my favourite so far.

Dead Man's Draw: Nice pirate themed filler.

Dogfight! Rule the Skies in Twenty Minutes!: Played this some more, this time including missions such as bombing and reconnaissance. It's not very good.

Dune Imperium - Uprising: According to those whose judgement I rate, this has replaced the original. I didn't see it as being that much better myself. What I did see was a scam, whereby people are lured into paying full whack again for a game that has a 90% overlap with one they already have.

Evacuation: I really did not enjoy this, indeed I failed to see the point. Other people claimed to like it, so what do I know?

Exit - The Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes: I'd never played an escape room game before, and this was much harder than I was anticipating. Fortunately the players included two of the sons of one of my regular companions, both of whom turned out be much smarter than either their mother or me, and so we managed to solve the puzzle. I'd certainly do others in the series, but only when surrounded by younger and more flexible minds than mine.

Faiyum: We gave this a go with four players and it was proved to be a very good game at that number.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal: A fine, fine game; highly recommended. There's loads of stuff in the base box which I still haven't played with, but enjoyed the circuit from the expansion which we tried.

The Hunt: A very enjoyable asymmetric two-player game about the Graf Spee raiding merchant ships in the South Atlantic at the outbreak of WWII and the Royal Navy's search for it.

Imperial: This is Diplomacy with added cash. We only played it because there were six of us, but it turned out to be well over the heads of most of those taking part. I'd like to give it a go with stronger players.

K2: Climb the world's most dangerous mountain and, if you're lucky, come back down again. I've always enjoyed this and snapped up a second-hand copy of the big box version containing the base game and all the expansions.

Kemet: Blood and Sand: This is an updated version of the original Kemet, which I had played and thought was OK. I was more enthusiastic this time, although whether that's changes in the game or changes in me I wouldn't like to say. 

Lancaster: Haven't played this for years, and ended up teaching it, which wasn't ideal. It's a good game, sort of about the Hundred Years War, but not really.

Magic Rabbit: Likeable, and short, cooperative game where rabbits have to be sorted into numerical order without any communication.

Mesopotamia: Did they carry stones on their heads in Mespotamia? Did they always execute messengers? Reasonably theme free, but nonetheless interesting, pick-up-and-deliver optimization game.

Modern Art: There are four types of auction in this, which was at least three types too many for my brain. I did very badly.

Nusfjord: Will it be wood or will it be fish? Either way money is scarce and the turns you will have throughout the game are even tighter. Difficult to do well against anyone who has played it before.

Obsession: Downton Abbey the board game. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time I played it. Worker placement with differentiated workers.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg: A popular game that I had never played before and enjoyed when I finally did. Involves push-your-luck and bag-building, both mechanisms which I enjoy.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: Don't worry, no spoilers here. I'd never played a legacy game before, but am enjoying this one. We have played four of the twelve sessions that will make up the whole thing and so far it has exceeded our expectations.

Vegetable Stock: Fun filler.

Wallenstein: Thirty Year War themed, but certainly not a wargame. The main gimmick is a tower into which your armies are poured to resolve combat, but my advice is not to fight if you can avoid it.

World Wonders: Yet another polyomino tile laying game, but with a neat money track concept. It also has nice wooden wonders of the world which get placed alongside your tiles. 

I went to Airecon, the large local boardgaming convention, for the first time this year. It was very good, I caught up with a lot more people than I ever do at wargames shows. The highlight was the bring-and-buy, which is also something that never happens at wargaming shows.

 I have played sufficient new-to-me boardgames in the last couple of months to make it worth writing them up. Here they are, plus a few others of note that have been revisited. Before anyone asks, I still haven't had another go at Scythe.

Black Fleet: A card driven game with ships on a map, where everyone plays all three of pirates, merchantmen and the navy. Good game.

Blueprints: Enjoyable dice drafting and arranging game in which everything I did turned out to have been done earlier and better by someone else.

Cascadia: If I describe this as pleasant it isn't meant to anything other than praise. It's an attractive tile-laying game about wildlife in the Pacific Northwest.

First Empires: I'd never heard of this, but liked it quite a lot. It's a like a roll and write, but without any writing; also involves tech trees.

For Sale: This is one of those games that I had been aware of, but had never played for some reason. It's reminiscent in some ways of High Society and I really liked it.

Hadara: Once again, a game I'd never come across which turned out to be a goodun. Card drafting, set collection, minimal theme.

Hanamikoji: Geisha's Road: A newish two player game. I've never played the original, but this variant is very good. Both players try to attract geishas to their tea house by taking the same four actions as each other, but choose the order in which they do them. It's thinky, but in a manageable way.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal: Now this one I had heard of, because it's been a bit of a hot favourite, no pun intended. It's a card driven Formula 1 game reminiscent of both Flamme Rouge and the Waddington's Formula-1 game I used to play with my cousins in the 1960s. Tremendous fun and highly recommended.

Ice Flow: Another game not seen for years. I love this game, was really pleased to get it to the table and I won as well, so all is right with the world.

K2: Broad Peak: K2 is an excellent game. I had never played this expansion, but it turned out to be every bit as good.

Lost Ruins of Arnak: A game from a coupe of years ago that had a lot of buzz. I finally got round to playing it and thought it deserved the praise it got. Amongst other mechanisms, it's a deck building game in which, for once, you stand a fair chance of getting to play any good cards you buy.

Quartermaster General: Cold War: This one hadn't been played for years, but I had two games of it in the last few weeks. Both times I played the West and both times I came last. It's not quite as good as the WWII version, but still excellent.

Quantum: The third game that hadn't been out for a yonk. It went down well, and I was informed that it's out of print and much sought after on the second-hand market. I'm rich. The game features dice as spaceships and might well appeal to wargamers.

Revolver: Once again it had been several years since Colonel Ned McReady tried to stop the Colty gang escaping to Mexico with the loot from their raid on the bank in Repentance Springs. I'd don't think I'd like to play this all that frequently - it runs on rails a little bit - but it's well worth bringing out from time to time.

TransAmerica: A railway building game you could play with those for whom even Ticket to Ride is a bit challenging ruleswise. The rules might be simple, but there's still quite a lot of game there, especially with six players. Apparently it's out of print and much sought after on the second-hand market. Having said that, I was so taken with it I bought a copy on eBay for £25 without any trouble at all. Perhaps my copy of Quantum hasn't made me rich after all.

Trekking Through History: More to do with history than trekking: there are lots of 'interesting' facts on the cards, but the time-travel theme is very pasted on. It's a drafting, set collection, push your luck game, and a good one.

Twilight Struggle: I'd wanted to play this game for years, and then it seemed like I was playing for years. It is very, very long. There's no denying that it's a really good game, a remarkable design in fact. But did I mention how long it takes? I won as the US, thereby redeeming my failure to win the cold war on either of my attempts using Quartermaster General; my success was almost entirely due to being able to play John Paul II immediately followed by Solidarność.

Village Rails: A very small box which contains a lot of game. It's more trains, with tile laying being the route building mechanism. I'd happily play it again.

Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs. York: No sooner had we got fed up with playing the period with miniatures than it turned up as a boardgame. Think Kingmaker, but with the mechanics occasionally not really matching the theme. I enjoyed it - I won by a distance both times we played it - but I'm not sure I'd recommend seeking it out specially. 

 Enough of things I've done before, here's something new: I've been to Partizan for the first time ever. I have to say, it was just as good as I was told it would be and I enjoyed it a lot. It's a nice venue, which didn't get too hot, plenty of traders and far more games than one gets at, for example, Vaprnartak. No doubt comprehensive, photo-replete reviews will appear elsewhere so I will cover the fact that I didn't take many pictures or write down the details behind anything by just concentrating on a couple of the highlights for me.

Inevitably perhaps, the first would be the refight of Möckern using C&C being displayed by the Old Guard from Bexley. The coincidence of us having played this exact same thing last week is perhaps lessened by the point I made in the last post that there aren't very many published scenarios for Epic C&C. They were using 28mm figures on, I think, 6" hexes and so had room for much more terrain and larger unit sizes than I use. I've seen elsewhere on someone's blog about the show that he found the players to be somewhat uninterested in speaking to punters. I have to say that I didn't find that to be the case and they passed on one or two tweaks to the scenario which they use to even it up a bit. I may well incorporate those into at least one of the two further reruns of this that I am planning for this week. (For those wondering why I would do that it's because I want to host two games and I don't really have the time to set up anything else. In an exciting development we shall be back in the Legendary Wargames Room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach for the following week.)

My only purchase of the day - although there may just possibly be a rather large follow up on-line order - was also C&C related. I bought some activation markers from Warbases. As readers may know from photos in previous posts I use a small marker behind each unit which shows type and strength. It has been our practice for many years now to rotate this by ninety degrees to indicate that a unit is activated for this turn. However, this has proven to be an increasingly complex concept for one player - an age related issue maybe? - so I thought I'd try a different tack to see if it was simpler. I believe the markers I bought are actually intended for Chain of Command, although I got involved in a demo game of the same and didn't see any such markers.

I say 'involved in' rather than 'played in' because it had finished before I had managed to remember anything much from my one previous play of the game. We - a British paratroop force - won from a losing position by rolling a double activation, which I believe is exactly what happened in my first game; another spooky coincidence. You may just be able to see towards the far end of the table a burning German AFV (possibly a Stug III) which, in my only real contribution, I had caused to be knocked out by the anti-tank gun at the bottom of the photo (possibly a 6 pdr) by rolling a shed load of 5s and 6s. The distinguished looking chap on the left is Don Avis, my first ever wargaming opponent, now acting as proof-reader, event-organiser and all round consigliere to Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies fame. I hadn't expected to see Don there and we hadn't been chatting for more than a minute or so before the subject of our failed career as rock musicians was raised; it was ever thus. Don also dragged me into a game of What a Cowboy, which I thought was great fun, enhanced perhaps by the fact that the boys from Boreham Wood cleaned up the town and took down the bad guys.

So, all in all, a good day out.

 A couple of posts ago this blog featured a very brief extract from Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'. I am fond of a thematic link so let's have a photo of the man himself standing larger than life outside Lincoln Cathedral.

The cathedral itself is, I am pleased to report, still looking very impressive after a thousand years or so. The view below is from the western wall of the castle, back across the bailey and over the east wall.

The imp is still there, although just as diminutive and unimpressive as always. I'm sorry to say that Magna Carta wasn't around, having gone for what the guide described as 'a rest in the dark'. We've all felt the need for that I'm sure.

One local attraction that has opened since I was last in the city is the somewhat strangely named 'International Bomber Command Centre'. Lincolnshire of course contained many bomber bases during WWII, but this isn't actually one of them. It's a new building on farmland just outside Lincoln, with an impressive view of the city. It's fairly close to RAF Waddington, current home of the Red Arrows, and they were much in evidence while we were there. The website describes it as 'a facility' and 'an experience', both of which make sense. It's not a museum as such, having very few historical artefacts, but instead it does two things rather well. Firstly, it uses technology rather effectively to cover both the activities of Bomber Command and the stories of those across Europe who suffered due to bombing. Secondly, it has a memorial to the more than 55,000 members of RAF Bomber Command who died during the war, with all their names inscribed thereon. I thought it was all very well done, and perhaps more pertinently so did my companion for the visit, who wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but ended up glad that she came. Indeed she seemed to be rather enjoying herself controlling a Lancaster on its bombing run over Peenemünde.

If I have one observation it's that whilst it didn't shy away from highlighting the moral debate about strategic bombing, I didn't spot anything related to whether in the end it turned out to be an effective use of the Allies' resources. Perhaps the memorial is intended to make us reflect on that for ourselves.

 The actor Daniel Craig featured in the previous post. Twenty years ago he played Guy Crouchback in Channel 4's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 'Sword of Honour' trilogy. The book documents Crouchback's war, which paralleled Waugh's own in many respects, and has a large cast who I've always assumed were modelled on, or amalgams of, real people. Indeed I have already written about one probable source for Brigadier Ritchie Hook. I have just come across another example.

I have been reading the second volume of the diaries of Henry 'Chips' Channon. Now, don't judge me. Channon was clearly an appalling human being: shallow, snobbish, hypocritical, anti-semitic, a Tory MP - I could go on. (By the way the child in the picture is Paul Channon, who went on to become a cabinet minister under Thatcher). However, I got the book very cheaply, and that's not to be sniffed at. And the years covered are 1938 to 1943, so I thought it would be interesting to see how the events of those years were viewed at the time. As with Charles Repington's diaries from the Great War which I read earlier this year it becomes clear that many of them aren't viewed as being worth mentioning. Repington never writes about the Easter Rising or the Russian Revolution and Channon doesn't regard the battle of Stalingrad as being worth even alluding to in passing. The main amusement in Channon's case is just how wrong he was about so many things. Not merely that he was an arch-appeaser (*), but that his tips for high political office - including himself - inevitably get sacked shortly afterwards, never to rise again. At one point he predicts the imminent restoration of the monarchy in Germany, which even without the benefit of hindsight does seem as if he's been smoking something.

Waugh's novel contains a character called Lieutenant Padfield, the 'Loot', an American social phenomenon who is everywhere and knows everyone. Channon's diaries feature the 'Sarge', one Stuart Preston, who is attached to Eisenhower's HQ in some unspecified capacity, knows everyone and is at every social function. The real Preston, who went on to be art critic of the New York Times, is now understood to have been working in counter-intelligence, with the task of infiltrating high society to identify sources of indiscreet gossip; if Channon is to be believed he did so in a very hands on manner. Waugh's 'Loot' turns out to be spying one of the major characters on behalf of a firm of US lawyers, so perhaps Waugh (**), and therefore presumably everyone else as well, was fully aware of what the 'Sarge' was up to.

* After the Germans occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia in contravention of the Munich agreement, he observes that Hitler doesn't make life easy for his friends.

** Who also appears in Channon's diaries; Chips is not a fan.

 I am not particularly a fan of counterfactual history, but have been reading 'The Armchair General' by John Buckley.

The premise of the book is not so much what if things had happened differently, but more specifically what if allied commanders had made different decisions at various stages during the Second World War. The structure is that for each of eight scenarios the reader is presented with binary options, then for each of those routes there is another binary option and so on, leading to a small number of alternative situations. The author claims these to be 'plausible rather than fantastical' and that seems a reasonable description to me.

The reality is that readers will go back and take all the alternative paths anyway, so it ends up being not so much one counterfactual history as a group of possible outcomes collectively illustrating why and how choices were made. The areas covered are all of a strategic nature with Market Garden being the most operational.

I don't think there are any huge surprises in it, especially for the sort of person who reads wargaming blogs, but it's well put together and I found it an enjoyable read.

 As planned, we reset the previous week's game and had another try of the Rommel rules. Not as planned, it descended into farce. 

The British commanders are caught out by a daring German attack on their HQ

We have been trying the rules at the behest of Mark, who wishes to rebase his existing collection of Western Desert models to suit this game (*). In the meantime we have been using James' stuff and his gridded desert cloth as originally made for Crusades and To the Strongest!. Unfortunately, Mark wasn't able to make the game, even more unfortunately the rulebook didn't make it either. We were left reliant on the quick play sheets and what James and I could remember from the previous week. It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.

I didn't really help by repeating my tactics of the previous week - I was once again the Axis commander - and making an armoured thrust straight for the British supply dump. I confess that I was partly doing this to demonstrate where I thought the game was a bit broken. If units can't be supplied then there are consequences. The problem was that without the rule book we weren't sure what those consequences were. In particular the reference sheet - and one of the action cards - differentiate between being 'isolated' and being in a state of 'low supply'. Handily we had the page references for the relevant rules, less handily we didn't have the pages. We carried on regardless, but the game rather drifted. The Panzergrenadiers on Hafid ridge were as indestructible as in the first week, but this time I moved the Panzer reinforcements into the centre to try a two pronged attack on the British armour. Unfortunately I had misread where the grid markings were and there wasn't actually a route for me to get through. It seemed to sum up the evening and so we gave up.

We're clearly going to put Rommel to one side for now and do something else. On the negative side, they are all a bit abstract. As James observed, Command & Colors is a board game that becomes a wargame if you use figures to play it, whereas this just stays a board game with clunky playing pieces. On the plus side, I think there are nuances within that board game. For example, after a few combats it becomes clear on which occasions you should play cards to try to improve your odds of causing casualties, and where you should be trying to reduce those of the enemy; you can rarely achieve both. 

Overall verdict: meh.

* One of the reasons that I like wargaming is that the hobby covers such a wide range of activities: military history, modelling, painting, rule writing, playing the games etc. We can all dabble in a bit of everything, but choose the one on which we wish to focus most of our attention. For reasons known only to him, Mark has chosen to specialise in rebasing, an activity he carries out pretty much continuously.

 I have had a couple of posts all planned out for a few days now, but disappointingly the Blogmaker's Elves have so far failed to come in and complete them for me. What did happen was that James posted this review of the second night of the peninsular Napoleonic game we were playing. As he wrote, it had been an excellent game so far and we were all looking forward to its resolution. Inevitably enough the third evening was a complete anti-climax. The French, with one interesting exception, rolled forward inexorably and the British crumbled away and then gave up. The odd men out, as it were, proved to be the French cavalry whose performance was so abject that I started to think that they had perhaps forgotten to bring their horses to Spain. Whether they took on artillery, infantry or other cavalry they not only lost, they vapourised immediately. 

"It says they made three unsuccessful attempts to deliver the horses and have returned them to the sender."

 It's at this time of the year that one likes to indulge in tradition, and sure enough one of my crowns has fallen out, just in time to cause me maximum inconvenience over the festive period. On the plus side, someone reading about my camera connection problems using Windows 11 has pointed out that my laptop would almost certainly have an SD card reader. And indeed it has, if one bothers to look for it, so I am now in a position to thrill you with beautiful photos from the annexe once again.

However, instead I think it's about time I posted another random photo of people you don't know or care about, with no explanation:

I lied about the no explanation; the chap in the middle is W.G. Boorer, whose exploits having been shot down over the North Sea were featured previously on this blog.

 I have mentioned before that I own a number of solo board games, and also that I virtually never play them; they didn't even get brought out very often during lockdown. Of course that is more to do with me than with any problems with the games themselves, which are mostly clever and challenging designs. That is certainly true of what I think is my favourite among them: Maquis. It's a game that thematically appeals to me as well, as one takes the part of the French Resistance and tries to complete various missions of sabotage, spying, infiltration, propaganda and the like without being caught by the collaborators of the Milice or by the occupying German forces. A second edition has just been published containing additional missions and associated playing pieces. The additional material was also made available as an expansion to those owning the first edition.

Obviously I don't need to explain to fellow wargamers why I would buy extra bits for something that never hits the table in the first place, and so I inevitably sent off for a copy. The missions in the original had their difficulty coded at one star (easier) or two stars (harder), whereas the new missions are given a rating of three stars. I never found any of the first lot of missions - you have to complete two within the allotted number of moves in order to win - to be easy, and these new ones are as difficult as you'd expect. I have so far failed badly to 'Destroy the AA Guns', the main problem as I see it being that the surest route to get weapons is via an air drop, you can't have an air drop if AA guns are present and you need weapons to get rid of the AA guns. In fairness, the resources available have improved including the availability of forged documents so one can bluff one's way past patrols instead of shooting it out with them. There's also now a 'Fixer' character, who can provide whatever you want, for a fee of course.

So, still highly recommended as long as you overlook the fact that I don't actually play it much myself. Having said that, I shall certainly be giving all of the new missions a go before I put it back in the cupboard. Next up is 'Free the Resistance Leader': 'A resistance leader has been captured and will be transported away from town soon. Free him from the occupiers...or make sure he at least can't tell them his secrets'.

The dull roots of face-to-face wargaming could soon be stirred by the spring rain of antibodies in the bloodstream; or, equally possibly, June may turn out to be the cruellest month. While we wait, the warm weather has meant that there has been nothing happening in the annexe. The newly expanded and manned fort still awaits the attacking force to form up outside it. I have however read another book.

The Imperial War Museum recently posted a short video on their YouTube channel about the sinking of the Scharnhorst, which understandably enough focussed on the role played by HMS Belfast. I didn't previously know much (anything at all really) about the action and a quick search showed that Osprey had published a book written by Angus Konstam on the subject late last year. The standard Osprey format actually suits WWII naval battles rather well: there are a limited number of participants doing a finite number of things over a short period, and the reader doesn't end up feeling that important information has had to be omitted for the sake of space.

I found it a good read and can recommend it should anyone else find themselves suddenly struck by this fairly niche interest. It is lavishly illustrated, as you would expect, with illustrations, photographs and maps. Regarding the last, I suffered my usual confusion when studying them, but strongly suspect that is due to my well-known problems with spatial awareness rather than any inherent fault in the book. The usual proof-reading problems that plague books on military history are present, but in a fairly small way. The Royal Navy divided the ships involved in the operation into two groups, rather imaginatively designated Force 1 and Force 2. On a number of occasions the text reads Force 1 when from the context it is quite clearly referring to Force 2; so clearly in fact that it doesn't present any real problems. And you would have thought that someone involved in the book's production would have known the difference between a baron and a baronet.

 I have been reading 'Sinking Force Z 1941', a recent release from Osprey. It was written by Angus Konstam, who as well as being a prolific author on a variety of subjects - I think the last of his books I read was on the Barbary Pirates - was also the winner of the largest wargame in which I have ever played. My interest in the events covered is mainly because my uncle was present as a crew member of one of the escorting destroyers.

Although understandably focussed on the events from December 8th to 10th 1941, it also provides extensive background on how and why Force Z came to be there, and on the design and capabilities of both the Royal Navy ships involved and the Japanese bombers which attacked them. There are lavish illustrations, by Adam Tooby, and plenty of maps, diagrams and photographs. It could possibly have done with another run through by a proof reader, but overall is an impressive publication.

It forms part of Osprey's 'Air Campaign' series, and the central premise is that it marks the point that naval supremacy definitively switched from battleship to aircraft carrier. Indeed the subtitle is 'The day the Imperial Japanese Navy killed the battleship'. The argument is well made, and it was apparently the first time that more than one capital ship had been sunk at sea by aircraft alone, although as so often with history one wonders about the counterfactuals. In any event, the battleship's time had at least begun to run out by then.

There was one other interesting point for me. I knew that Pearl Harbor took place on December 7th and the invasion of Malaya on December 8th. What I had never appreciated was that events in Malaya started an hour before those in Hawaii. The explanation is, of course, the International Date Line, which, despite me being renowned for my expertise on the rotation of the earth, is something that it had never occurred to me to consider before. I feel foolish.

 It has long been a self-indulgence of mine to write an extensive post at the end of each year outlining in completely unnecessary detail things, mainly cultural, that I have done. For reasons that I don't need to explain I find that this time around I can't be arsed. A year ago I summed up 2019 by saying that it had been, as I had predicted, worse than 2018. I make no claim that I extended that to forecast a miserable 2020 as well. Still, Trump lost - several times in fact - so it wasn't a complete wash out.

When I looked back at my diary I was rather surprised at how much  I had actually done in the circumstances, although oddly enough I seem to have read fewer books that the previous year. I played nine wargames - none since March 2nd - and traditionalists will be pleased to note that one of them was Sidi Rezegh.

Quite a few two player boardgames have hit the table at the Casa Epictetus. Conscious that I haven't suggested a boardgame in quite a while can I point you towards Targi, which I highly recommend to those whose bubble only includes only one other (*); and it's even better with the expansion.

Of course many people have left us this year. One to whose music I have been listening a lot since he died is John Prine. So let's wrap up the year by listening to him tell us just what he's doing right now:

Peace and love to you all.

* at a time