My Colonial Collection, Part Five: Northwest Frontier

 I've been following for a while the blog of a friend who goes by the online handle Sgt. Guinness, and runs the South Florida Miniatures Gamers group here in ... south Florida. His favorite ruleset is The Sword and the Flame, and we have had many a fine game at the clubhouse here. Since the pandemic, he's focused on an online, semi-solo Northwest Frontier campaign. That in turn has caused me to get my butt in gear re: collecting Northwest Frontier minis; I've never had Pathans of my own, and very little in the way of Indian Army. This despite the locale and period being a popular one for gaming; there is an attractive sample battle report in The Sword and the Flame I've always wanted to reenact.

Having bought a lot of the Wofun fiberglass versions of Peter Dennis' Paperboys, I inclined towards some of their other collections. The one that caught my eye was The Great Game, an 1880s-ish set of individual figures (as opposed to Peter's multiple-troops-in-a-strip). These will work for TSATF, or possibly The Men Who Would Be Kings (which uses smaller units - handy since few of these are twenty strong). They are side-on flats, rather than front-and-back, which makes them easier to "point" at opponents.

Designed by Vyacheslav Batalov, these appear to be a "Great Game Gone Hot" series, as they include Russians, Central Asians, British Indians and Afghans (both tribal and regular army). The Russian frontier is not something I know much about, nor for that matter the redcoated Afghan Army that fought in the second Anglo-Afghan War. I've started reading the well-regarded The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, but I don't know how much Russian background it'll provide.

I can't take a photo of every single unit in the collection. Most range from 15-20 infantry figures or 8-10 cavalry, plus small command/character elements and plenty of artillery. The figures are delightfully characterful; however, the sides are mirrored, unlike Dennis' which are front and back. A couple favorites are Gurkhas in rifle green, and imitative Afghans in helmets and kilts!

There are three basic factions - Afghans, Indian Army and Russian, each split into a handful of types and most in separate infantry, cavalry, artillery and character/command groups. The tribal types can easily fight the regulars as well as being on the same side, thus making for wider campaigns.

• Russian:
• Russian regulars
• Cossacks
• "Middle Asian" militia (presumably equivalent to Indian auxiliaries).
• British:
• Bengal Army (lancers, etc)
• Gurkhas
• Afghan:
• Regulars
• Tribesmen

I've obtained a bottle of Agrax Earthshade Contrast paint, which is popular among Wofun owners for dulling the wide white edges of these figures. I'll try it on them - it'll also match the brown-gray terrain. I'll probably build some vertical cardboard terrain to fight among, as depicted on the classic Tremorden Rederring website.

As for what scenarios I'll use? I'd like to do some sort of campaign. There are a few ways of doing it that I'd like to try: Grid-Based Wargaming's Snakes and Ladders campaign and a series of solo scenarios from Charles Grant's book, laid out as an "expedition."

That's enough for today, and possibly this month. I'm surprised to find I've published ten blogposts this month alone! Probably due to finally getting some library gaming in...

XD20 Session Two

 I had three players yesterday to run another session of XD20.

Bet you didn't know you could game AND snack
at the library.

My previous players returned, as well as a new one and a fourth kid who listened in for a while. A warrior (scared of bugs), a frog (scared of pointy things) and a magic-user (scared of heights). The new player developed her abilities and sense of self over the course of the session - read on.

Today's mission: "The Queen's pet displacer beast has climbed the tallest tree in the hunting preserve. Get it down. No, you're not allowed to hurt it."

This was a challenge for all three, since there were jagged branches everywhere, bugs living under the bark, and the monster was fifty feet up. The magic user (we eventually settled on the term "witch") luckily had a cat with which she could psychically communicate, so was still able to participate through him.

They climbed the tree and eventually found the displacer beast sunning itself on a branch. The cat vaguely communicated with the displacer beast, which didn't want to come down but was starting to get hungry. A small cat and a large frog looked like tasty snacks. The players tried several methods to both  annoy and attack the beast (by throwing things at it), but kept rolling low - particularly the warrior, whose player had to switch out dice several times. Attacks and dodges required an extra 1-in-2 die roll to see if they recognized the beast, or its shadow-image instead. Eventually the cat got the beast to chase it down the tree - right over the warrior, frog and witch, who all took damage. 

Once it was down, a couple potions, a nervous and uncooperative tree guard (this was a special and holy tree, you see), and a hastily set trap served to stop the displacer beast from displacing itself to freedom. Job done. The adventurers took themselves off to the infirmary, while the Queen began to cement herself in my mind as a twit - this is the second time she's nearly gotten the party killed.

What will the party meet next week? No idea.

The Great Game, by GS Goraya

 Searching for Peter Hopkirk's classic history The Great Game, I happened upon this one instead. At first I mistook it for Hopkirk's. It is shorter, and appears to be a university thesis. So it's clear and well-organized, and I got a lot out of it - if not much in the way of history or wargaming inspiration! In particular, I realized that the conventional Western view of Afghanistan, which I share since I mostly got it from British sources, is simplistic and misses much subtlety and multiculturalism. Checking my preconceptions...

Takeaways:

• Afghanistan is not a "grave of empire," but has been conquered time and again, with many different ethnic groups meeting and coalescing in what was for long a "crossroads of empire." Ironically, the British were aware of this, since they looked for Alexandrian, classical and Semitic cultural features in the peoples of Afghanistan. The British and Russian "game," mostly the British, hemmed this crossroads in. (The analogy of hemming, the sewing term, is expressly used as a reference to clearing up "loose threads" - or borders - and bringing them under control). Once Afghanistan lost its ability to communicate by trade with the outside world, now held by nominal British political control, it became a poorer country. Landlocked countries always have economic difficulties, but ones that have their external relations controlled by another are even worse off. Some attention is paid to the creation of Pakistan, which controls much of what was once Afghan territory - including a route to the sea - and Goraya suggests that this is the root of Afghanistan's independent international relations. There are parallels here with the separation of "island" populations that lead to the endangerment and extinction of species.
• Afghanistan's nominal independence since the 19th century always has been that of a buffer state - first between British and Russian imperial states, then between Commonwealth and Communism. The purpose of the Wakhan corridor was to provide neutral ground between three spheres of influence - British, Chinese and Russian.
• Afghanistan is not an anarchic state, impossible to control (hence the "grave of empires" thing), but has a structure. This is not of provinces or states, but of kinship and kingship. This "anarchy" was seen as a romantic and almost democratic throwback by some explorers, but the structure is there, simply not formalized as in a so-called "modern" state.
• The colonial, and later national, conventional structure of "modern" Afghanistan was overlaid on this initial structure, but did not replace it. There are parallels here with the infamous "straight-line" borders of Africa and the Middle East, imposed by colonial overlords with no consideration of the underlying communities. Goraya refers repeatedly to the simplistic reduction and labeling of multicultural spaces as "frontiers," or "settled and unsettled" spaces. Other parallels come to mind, of America's Westward Expansion into an "empty" frontier.
• The kinship/kingship structure has a subtle religious component, and this is the root of what the British would have called "Ghazi fanaticism." When the king or chief was imposed on the group from without - as was done before the first war - this was, in effect, imposing a new link between God and man. Not a good idea. The imposed king actually told the British his people wouldn't accept a puppet!

A short volume, but punchy and clear in its summary of Afghanistan's relationship with the outside world. Recommended.

More XD20 at the Library

 One of the hilarious things about roleplaying games (and occasionally, wargames) is the non sequiturs overheard by non-gamers. As pictures are worth a thousand words:

My players were visual learners.

Not having squared paper or miniatures, this was the method I chose to clarify positioning to tonight's players as they hunted... a giant crab. (Get yer minds outta the gutter.)

0: Characters were designed and characterized. We had:

• A giant frog. Not kidding. She may have been thinking of something like a Bullywug, but my monster manual didn't list it. We decided she was an escaped lab experiment with a very long and sticky tongue. She was afraid of sharp things (problematic, given the genre) and randomly was good at cooking. She carried many cooking potions. How useful these would be in an adventure... well, we're about to see.
• A fairly generic fighter, armed with a trident. Frightened of bugs, but ready to fight for his friends and family.

That gave me some useful ideas. Both characters met in the break room of the Royal Guard barracks where they had obtained jobs. After introductions and descriptions, the Captain came in and announced that the Queen was hungry for giant crustacean tonight. Our two heroes were ordered to head through town to the nearby coast, kill and retrieve a monster crab.

Off they went to Murder Rocks. To get there, they had to pass through the Wizards' Quarter, and passed a potion-supply shop with open displays of colorful beetles outside. This enabled our first tests - fear for the fighter, and hunger for the frog. The frog was also wary of running into her former master, but they made it to the coast.

This was a steep, broken slope of black rock and coral (sharp, thus intimidating the frog), with a huge flat crab sunning itself at the bottom (intimidating the fighter).

Zoom in to follow along by the numbers.

1: Our heroes scrambled down the slope - the frog assisting the fighter by letting out her long tongue for him to slide down.

2: The fighter, terrified of the crab, thought it might help if he couldn't see it. We decided that one of the frog's many potions was one for blindness. He drank it, then using his innate sense of the space around him, leapt onto the crab.

3a: He rolled low, and ended up slipping off and lying under the monster. He stabbed it with his trident, but couldn't really move and was drenched in stinking black ichor. (Grossness brings kids to attention like nothing else.)

3b: So the frog dropped a "lightness" potion that caused the crab to levitate.

4: It drifted away towards the sea. Not a good thing, since their job was to capture it. The fighter, recovering from his blindness, followed it and batted it back until it crunched into the cliff.

5: At which point it flipped on its back and died.

Our heroes used the last of the levitation potion to move the crab up along the coast road, through the town and back to the palace, at which point the warrior took a shower and the frog joined the cooks. Adventure complete.

Let's just say I gamemaster by the seat of my pants, and XD20 is perfect for that. The teens enjoyed it, and I think it was a fair introduction to DnD. They seemed eager to try again. This was the first time I was able to get more than one player, which helped enormously; there is a distinct atmosphere in a group game where players can bounce ideas off each other, and it was great to see them cooperate in achieving the goal. Hopefully, more exposure will bring more players and more adventures!

Starting on the Spanish Civil War

 This weekend I was gifted with a handful of minis which may be very loosely interpreted to represent 1/72 Spanish Civil War troops. This is a war I know almost nothing about, other than a bit of literature, folk music and aviation. What I have now is basically WWII stuff, though with paint jobs and a little imagination it'll work.

Toy vehicles. I can identify the Daimler armored cars
(well past the period but fair stand-ins), but not the tank.

70-80 cheap toy soldiers. About a third have
rifles, a third bazookas, and a third pistols.
These can represent Russians or possibly Italians.

1945 Germans, so includes some Volksturm. The Wehrmacht
can represent Germans or Spanish line infantry, while the
armed civvies could make militia of either side.

Some nice lasercut wooden bases.

Since both rulesets I've found are "high-level", with single bases representing platoons or companies, even this small collection should be enough to experiment - Graham Evans' complex For Whom the Dice Rolls and Bob Cordery's three-page rules from Wargames Illustrated #13. Both have mechanisms to represent the conflicting relationships between troops of different political backgrounds, which seems to be the key element of any SCW ruleset.

DB Oops

 Participated in a small club tournament yesterday. De Bellis Antiquitatis was so popular last time that it went off swimmingly.

Game one was between Romans (me) and Carthaginians (my opponent). 

While he was new to DBA too, he had the advantage of familiarity with the troops and tactics. So, for example, he was sanguine when I assaulted light cavalry with my heavy, knowing they could just run away. Our generals met on the field, and mine was flanked and thus eliminated when he lost, ending the game quickly.

In my second game, the sides were reversed:

I discovered that light cavalry could move multiple times in a turn, and raced mine in an end-around hoping to reach my opponent's camp. Didn't go too well. Both of us being inexperienced, we asked for lots of help with the rules and ended the game without a decision.

My third game was nearly a repeat of one from last month, Playing Classical Indians with elephants again, I managed to avoid running them onto Alexandrian pikes this time, but was badly compressed by terrain and never got many of my troops into action.

In the meantime, my opponent's light cavalry took my camp, and I didn't realize I could try to take it back until near the end of the game.

So, having ended up with approximately three points over the course of the tourney (the winner amassed 25), I received the coveted Snake Eyes award:

As usual, the conversation and food were the highlight of the day. We had a potluck, and there were favorable comments on the overstuffed sandwiches I brought from my favorite deli. I picked up a copy of DBA 3.0, some more terrain (including a sandy sheet I will use for the Fort Wagner scenario), and was gifted with a small selection of Spanish Civil War figures by one of the members. Post to follow. Happy gaming!

Building Battery Wagner, Part Three

Technically, Battery Wagner itself is done. Maybe I'll lengthen the southwestern corner, but it's pretty much ready and doesn't have to be perfect. The next step is populating it. I'm too late to run the game this week, but I might (given how little interest I've raised among the teens) try it next week. Today's task was to assemble and label the troops that will face off on the tabletop. I did it in YouMedia, hoping to draw attention from the teens who were mostly doing art on tablets. (I pointed out that making art is worthy of experience points in-game.)

While my DnD materials gathered dust on one table...

I assembled some troops on the other.

These are Black Powder Epic figures. Heresy, I know, but under the circumstances I'm fine with just labeling regiments and allowing flags and base colors to tell them apart. I'm also using white glue to assemble them. After I played the charge scene from Glory, one of the students helped; we got into a good rhythm and had an assembly line going as I added glue and she stuck them on the bases. I also cut out flags from the sheets provided in the Black Powder box - annoyingly there was only one North Carolina flag, yet four Florida ones though the latter fielded far fewer troops!

As we worked, I regaled her with trivia about the Civil War and answered a few questions; she learned to identify regiments by their number and state abbreviation, the significance of the Juneteenth holiday, why the uniform colors were chosen, and why troops sickened and died in camps with bad hygiene. I also showed off my Merrimac and Monitor models and explained the basics of how ironclads worked. It kept us both interested. 

Six regiments, including the 54th Massachusetts.

Sometimes you just have to do what you can in this hobby; I'm not discouraged yet, and there's always the younger kids too (they had a craft project and a juggling act this afternoon, though). The hours I spent today were at least relaxing, and that's a good thing too. Enjoy your hobby.

Building Battery Wagner, Part Two

 My next step is to put the paper pieces of Wagner together.

Prospective field of battle. Sadly, I don't think the screen's
hooked up yet, or I could play scenes from Glory on it.

Subassemblies, tentatively arranged on a sheet of cardboard.

Final arrangement taped down, with six guns and
three regiments of Confederates.

The arrangement took a little work - I realized partway through that there wasn't enough room behind the walls to hold all the troops needed (six 60mm bases apiece), and moved everything forward on the card. Also, one of the units (31st North Carolina) had been recently paroled and was avoiding combat in a bombproof shelter; I'm thinking of placing a box in that position (on the right of the fort from this angle), and rolling to see if they come out. If not a box, I'll draw a rectangle. There will be a fourth regiment (32nd Georgia) as reinforcements if needed (though I doubt it). I may have to run the Rebs as GM, since I wouldn't blame my players for not wanting to run the bad guys, and it also wouldn't really be fair on one side given the carnage I expect. The Union will get six regiments, and possibly some bombardment assistance from the US Navy.

Next Monday is Juneteenth, as of last year a Federal holiday. If I can ready the troops and board fast enough I'll run it this week or next. Alternatively, I could run it next month near the July 18 anniversary of the battle.

Aside from this, I had a teen start building his first RPG character (to play Thursday if I don't run Wagner instead), and my library system is about to start a pilot program of circulating board games, which we received this week:

I also hope to visit the club this Saturday for some more DBA. So there's plenty to look forward to!

Painting and DMing

 The last couple days were extremely busy. Managing a library is far more than just dealing with books (which isn't as easy as it sounds, either). Preparing for programs, preparing for outreaches, scheduling programs and staff, catching up on training... let's just say I don't get to do much of what I got into librarianship to do anymore.

I'm still the teen librarian, though, so I can (ahem) use some of my interests in programming.

Despite some advertising and actively reminding the teens, though, I got only one taker for each event this week. And one of them was a fellow staff member.

It was still at least mildly relaxing. Between the interruptions, at least.

Wednesday was mini-painting day:

Painting started with lots of paper, about a dozen GW paints,
and a handful of 3D-printed sea-life models, undercoated with
Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray.

I'd tried to get the teens to design and print their own models.
This is Luffy, from the popular comic and anime One Piece.

This is my model for the day - a goldfish, now basecoated with
Averland Sunset.

My guinea-pig working on his figure. He was impressed
by the Contrast paints.

Not using Contrast, or having a wide selection, I tried
shading with Agrax Earthshade, then highlighting with a
little more Averland Sunset. I got a very dirty-looking goldfish.

This bottle of GW white was in pretty horrid shape,
even though I'd only just opened it,
so we used some craft Titanium White instead.

The finished Luffy - red shirt and hatband, blue pants,
white cuffs, black sandal straps and a little Agrax Earthshade
on the hat and sandals. We'll try touching it up next week,
but not bad for a first-timer!

Thursday was roleplaying day. One of my co-workers was excited to try, which was a good thing as I got no takers among the teens. (This is why, in the past, I resorted to playing with younger kids - but I was a children's librarian at the time.)

I used XD20, the same rules-on-a-postcard set (recently upgraded to Second Edition) I started with about five years ago. Building a character is lightning-quick - three rolls, one calculation, and answering a series of questions. My fellow librarian had had her character in her head for a long time, just never having a chance to play it. (This was not the first time this has happened; some of my best players have been ones who have always been on the outside of the game looking in!) What she had in mind was a magical type with a Quantum Leap background. Like Scott Bakula, she'd been separated from her own universe and her children, and was trying to get back, every so often falling through another hole in reality.

You'd think this would make it hard to fit her into a party, but it's what my proprietary campaign was made for. The city of Redwater is a large, cosmopolitan port with many immigrants and passers-through - some of them quite odd. (This is not the strangest character concept I've seen.) The Queen's Own Troubleshooters (think fantastic SWAT team) take anyone, partly for the breadth of ability and experience and partly for expendability. Even though I only had one Player Character, I could and did give her a couple non-player guards and a library acolyte to help her with her task - chase down and stop the city library, which had just stood up and started walking away on giant chicken legs.

This made the first challenge a basic roll - can the party keep up with the library, weaving through crowds of confused and alarmed citizens?

Well, no. She kept rolling low. She suggested a magic spell that would essentially reduce friction, enabling her to slip between obstacles, but it failed. The library was getting away. At this point I had one of the NPCs (being natives and thus more aware of options) suggest an air taxi. They flagged down a small dirigible.

As we were at the reference desk, I turned to the computer
and looked for a picture of the first (1852) dirigible.
I instead found photos of pre-WWI types like this one.

The party hitched a ride and raced off ("Follow that library!"). I left it up to my coworker as to how they would get in - I assumed she would try to drop onto the roof from a hovering position, but her ultimate solution was a lasso. A fifty-foot rope and a bit of magic later, the encounter looked like this:

The wizard, the librarian and the two daring guards ziplined over to the tower, which was glowing from its windows and door. They hurried down the stairs, then picked their way through the stacks towards the high-security vault from which the light emanated. After an encounter with a glowing green tiger, they made it into the vault to find a glowing magical book open on a plinth.

The player crept up, stabbed it with her dagger and tried to close it. As usual for her physical checks, she rolled poorly, and instead it fell to the floor, face-down. At this point, the librarian moved in and closed it. The library now settled back to the ground, much closer to the harbor than it had previously been.

This was a hasty session, partly because I had to leave for an outreach event, and partly because we were forced to play at the reference desk. Surprisingly for the time of day, though, it was not busy and we weren't interrupted often. While I'd been basically running in place to keep the session going, my coworker seemed to enjoy herself, and felt it was a fair introduction to fantasy roleplaying. We'll try it again next week, and her (ahem) experience will help. One interesting thing she noted was that (being a neophyte) she'd needed help to think up solutions and actions that a larger group of players would have provided. She's absolutely right about that - Dungeons and Dragons is very much a social game. We'll have to try harder to get the teens' attention - either that or resort to the kids.

Ah, well, it was an enjoyable one-shot anyway, and a good test of the game mechanics. See you next time!

Building Battery Wagner, part one

Starting this week, I'll be running Dungeons and Dragons every week at work, and will also have a one-off basic miniature-painting class. The RPG is advertised as "Fantasy Adventure Gaming for Beginners" in part to avoid actually having to run DnD (too complex for my taste) and in part to allow for other types of game. I intend to also try wargaming, and if I call in sick other staff can provide board games or fill in as gamemaster.

One of the topics I've been itching to try at work - for years in fact - is the American Civil War. In particular, that part of it fought on the southern coasts, like where I happen to live. The patron population is overwhelmingly black, so the first thing that springs to mind is the 1989 film Glory, starring Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick, et al. It's popular in the United States if only because a PG-13 nature makes it a go-to to show in high school history courses. Which means most of the kids who attend my games will have seen it. The 54th Massachusetts also participated in a significant battle in our state, Olustee in February 1864. (I'd like to run it in February, as that is Black History Month.)

So as July is coming up, the 159th anniversary of the 54th's assault on Battery Wagner, I am considering turning that into a scenario. Not a fair scenario, mind you, but the emphasis will be on "this is what they had to deal with; do you think you could do better?"

And the first step to playing such a scenario is that I actually have to build Battery Wagner. Though even if I don't run it, I'll still be able to use the pieces for other games.

Lucky the 18mm Paperboys include some earthworks. I couldn't find a 3d print on Thingiverse. If anyone has directions to either a full model or buildable period earthwork "parts," please let me know, but for now I'll try paper.

Here's the original. A complex shape, but maybe I can
stick to just the southern portion, as that was the direction
of the assault.

Center battery emplacement, yet unglued, with entrenchment
pieces used for a glacis in front.

I'm using regular paper, so this isn't very stable. Gluing the trench lengths is tricky; I may use tape instead. I've experimented with Peter Dennis' "edge-on" technique for assembling the figures, and it may work for assembling the fort. I may also need a large base for the entire fort.

Left: The usual way with larger Paperboys is to have an
accordion-folded "panel" to stick the figures to. 
Right: The method with smaller is to stick the feet directly
to the base, perhaps kinking or cutting out the legs to assist.

Another thing to consider is the scale of regiments. At six inches to a regiment, the unit barely fits in front of this four-gun emplacement, but:

I've been reading A Brave Black Regiment, the 1891 history of the 54th Massachusetts by Captain Luis F. Emilio. He states that the regiment was in two rows of companies all the way up the island, and compressed to three as it passed the swamp in the center. That basically means that the entire unit, in line, would have stretched across the face of Wagner. I don't know how large the fort model will be yet, but it looks like I'll need fairly large units to represent the regiments. I hope to use the kid-friendly Junior General rules, which use six bases per regiment.

The 60x20mm Black Powder bases would fit the bill. Can I get away with not painting them, just adding labels and flags? One of the reasons I like the Paperboys is that they are colorful and individual - in addition to the white troops there are black ones for the 54th and Zouaves for the 76th Pennsylvania which also participated.

A rough layout, which will require some conversion to match
the model seen above. But it does seem to fit across a four-foot table.

 

The Black Powder figures fit pretty well!

Questions, questions...