Historical Wargaming - Where do you get your supporting info?

I play a range of historical war-games that date from antiquity through to World War two. My war-gaming background, much like quite a few of you good people (and if you’re not a war-gamer you have weird reading tastes) is primarily Games Workshop. I started out on the now hallowed 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles (which is now revived by the Oldhammer movement) and continued on through to the current 8th edition (pfffft, yuck, argh!!!) so there was always a well delivered and tailored amount of “fluff” or background. As this was all created by GW it was easily accessible (for a price) and was only limited by the imaginings of the company.

However then along comes maturity and historical wargaming and the “fluff” aspect gets blown apart. You see there is no such thing as “fluff” when it comes to playing a WW2 war game or other period. These things actually happened, there are huge amounts of literature written about them, with many divergent themes and interpretations therefore it is not as though the game authors can control the story driven aspect of war-gaming for these periods.

So what’s the point of this post, well I thought I’d share some of my current sources of background information. The titles are all clickable links if you think they sound interesting, and I'd be interested in any recommendations you all may have.

The History of WWII Podcast - by Ray Harris Jr

Great podcast on the history of WW2 starting with the political shenanigans and going on to the battles as they happened. Episodes range in length from 30 mins to over an hour.

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major DickWinters

Gives so much more background to E Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne than Stephen Ambrose's book, covering the wider Normandy campaign that Easy company was involved in.

Osprey BattleOrders 25: US Airborne Divisions in the ETO 1944-45

Useful companion book for historic structure of the divisions and equipment. A little dry and sterile though.

Together We Stand - James Holland

The history of the war in North Africa 1942-43. It’s a great read and I’m currently three quarters of the way through it. Great if you want an insight into the weirdness that was the desert war in North Africa and some of the politics that went into it. Its not just politics though as it cleared up some of my misconceptions of both Rommel and Monty.

  

H.G.Wells - War of the Worlds

Tricky to read as the pacing and language is a little odd, although it was written some time ago. It does get me into the mood with my Victorian Science Fiction gaming and its a free download from Amazon, which is always nice

The Civil War in Yorkshire: FairfaxVersus Newcastle (Battlefield Britain)

Thoroughly interesting read and as it covers the English Civil War in the region around my home town it was easy to visualise events. Sadly it is very Parliamentarian in focus and I would prefer a more balanced viewpoint

The History of RomePodcast by Mike Duncan

The Grandaddy of all history podcasts this covers the full history starting from the founding of Rome. Well worth it, especially if you play anything from 600BC to 500AD

Xenophon - The Persian Expedition

First hand account of the March of the Ten Thousand that occurred between 401 B.C. and March 399 B.C. An interesting account of Greek warfare translated from the original text. I’m just dipping into this one now so am not sure whether it will help my burgeoning Greek project. I have an old paper copy although it is free over on project gutenberg.

IHMN - Inspector Johnson's Casebook Interlude - A Letter of Dark Intent

For all you good IHMN players out there in Bloggerland here's a further installment to the Casebook of Inspector Johnson. What with the lovely weather and summer holidays there's been a dearth of players available for gaming recently therefore this edition is a little bit of back story to set the scene for our next games.

Hope you enjoy.

simplebooklet.com

Antenocitis Workshop Burgled

Shared from sixdsix.co.uk blog

Bad news. Antenocitis Workshop, one of the best miniature companies around and a great bunch to deal with got hit by burglars last night. You can read the feed here - http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/news/shop-burgled/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

Please spread the word and if you know anything let them know.

Thanks

Slight Divergence (sort of)

So I’ve been playing and modelling quite a bit of 15mm WW2 recently (Flames of War) and thought I’d take a break and paint something different. This model has been sitting on my painting table for some time and is part of an idea I’ve had that hasn’t been realised because I bone idle…..er I mean very busy. I said that this is a slight divergence as the model in question is one of Revell’s Microwings Spifire’s.

They recently re-released this range and at between £1.50 and £2.50 its pretty good value. Not very detailed however at 1/144 it doesn’t need to be. The transfers included in the box are pretty good and easy to apply and I think the 1/144 size fits with the 15mm stuff I’ve got. I know that its pictured with some German infantry and armour however that is purely for scale purposes.

My reason for getting them is I fancy playing a little WW2 aerial combat to support both my FoW and Bolt Action games and add a little supplementary storytelling to our games (I’ve ordered some Me 109’s and Stuka’s). So with that in mind I downloaded a copy of the Wings of War WW2 rules (freely available online, I didn’t steal them !) to try out a few games with some proxy models (as the WoW ones are pricey and hard to come by). 

I’ll post some updates once I have a few more planes and have tried out the rules. My first review of them is that they’ll provide the kind of visual wargame that I enjoy rather than some of the other “hex” based games that are popular in this genre.

Laters!

Flames of War - Overlord

As part of my ongoing Flame of War revival I ordered the new Allied book for the D-Day theatre and it finally arrived. Woohoo.

Chunky Hardback

The RRP of the new D-Day book is £30 however I ordered it through an Amazon reseller for the princely sum of £19.14 including postage. Upon receipt I was very pleased to see that the book is both hardbacked and oversown. There have been criticisms in the past that FoW books fall to bits because it has been stitched through the fold (Smyth sewing I think its called) however it looks like this has been addressed.

300 pages!

Now I haven’t actually read through it yet other than to peruse the US Airborne lists and luckily it incorporates everything I expected so I’m happy. Comparing it to Games Workshop’s Codex Dark Angels which also retails for £30 you quickly see that Battlefront believe in more is better. Codex DA contains 104 pages whereas Overlord contains 301 pages of which the final page is printed on the inside of the back cover. I know that GW tailor each of their supplements to a specific race/faction however maybe they should revise this tactic considering the competition in the market

And page 301 is on the inside of the back cover. Maxing out the space!

All in all a very well spent £19.14 and I’m going to order Atlantik Wall as soon as I’ve some cash in the bank.

Flames of War - My Previous Outings

In one of my last posts I explained my current gaming and the fact that I was diving into the heady world of 15mm World War 2 in the form of Flames of War. Well just to highlight that this is not my first foray there are a few pics of my first attempt to get into this game

Panzers, Stugs and Gepanzerte Grenadiers (minus the SdKfz's)

AFV's. Note the lack of Schurzen!

Unfortunately I was completely incapable of achieving two things with this force.

1. I couldn’t for the life of me get the camo scheme to work. I’ve followed several different techniques, painted up many test models and yet have failed completely to make it work. I don’t know why, so please don’t offer up any painting advice as I may lose my mind over so simple a thing. Luckily I do quite like the final scheme that I’ve got. Unfortunately I can only find evidence of Panzer IV H’s being deployed in factory finish Dunkelgelb in one theatre and that’s in the final stages of the war in The Netherlands and the defence of the Reich. Also you may note that I’ve both the Stugs and the Panzers modelled them without Schurzen. Why, well I think they look better like this.
2. I mentioned two things. Well the second one was quite simple - I couldn’t connect with the force. Maybe its my childhood obsession with Commando comics, war films and anything WW2 but I always saw myself as the brave Tommy or gung ho Yank fighting the dastardly Hun. So playing the “bad guy” never felt right, anyone of my age group (childhood in the late 70’s and early 80’s) will probably understand where I’m coming from. My friends and I always argued over which one of us was the “Indians” or “Jerry”, which I guess is now a ridiculous and totally non-pc thing to say

Anyway here’s some more lovely pics of my German late war force (without SdKfz as they’re still on the painting table next to my M4A1’s).

Panzer IV H

HQ Panzer

Stug G's

StuH 42 - I like the increased FP on the 10.5cm gun. Seems to panic my opponent!

What's on the table now!

Why is it that life takes over and ruins your well laid plans. I had this idea to focus myself on my Lord of The Rings project, getting my Rohan and Isengard forces organised and playing out the scenarios I’d planned. Then my planned opponents drift over to other things, problems arise in my real-world life and I have to re-task myself there and to top it all it turns out that the Games Workshop LoTR plastics have the tensile strength of a wet tissue and break if you sneeze near them.

Let me explain. I decided on Rohan because I love the imagery of the Rohirrim, both in the Peter Jackson films but also in literature and art. Obviously the iconic opponents to the noble horselords would be the Fighting Uruk Hai and as both these ranges are covered by GW plastics I started there. Now the Uruk Hai equipped with pikes are great looking and simple to paint however that’s where the good stuff ends. A pike is typically from 3 to 7.5 metres (10 to 25 feet) long and to ensure that this does not break when made in plastic it is relatively thick in comparison to the hands of the model. Not a problem as most of scale at 28mm is skewed anyway. The problem arises when GW use plastic with the consistency of cheese and no matter what I do the damn things keep breaking. Then there’s the Rohan cavalry. A Rohan force should predominantly be made of cavalry, in fact the force defeated at the Fords of Isen was all cavalry, some of which was dismounted. As a consequence I’ve managed to source 30 Rohirrim which should do nicely. However when you model dynamic cavalry with the aforementioned cheese plastic the result is lots of horseless bases and broken legs.

Now I could wax lyrical about my thoughts on the reasoning behind GW’s “best fantasy models in the world” and why they’re pants (acquiring a licence to produce models and then using cheap crappy plastic for the molds to maximise on profits), but that’s been done by many other blogs of a more intellectual nature than mine. The one thing I will say is that my Lord of The Rings project is going on the back burner so that I don’t lose my mind with the quantity of broken spears, legs, swords, scabbards etc.

So where does that leave my hobbying?

Well I’m going back to something that I started a little half heartedly about 5 years ago - Flames of War. I know there are plenty of things wrong with the game however there is also so much right with it too. And it allows me to do something that I’ve wanted to do for many a long year and that is to wargame with E Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. Yes that’s right I’ve started on Band of Brothers!

So here’s my current haul to get me started, this should set me up with first and second platoon and some relevant supports. I’m basing it on the first combat experiences of the company in Normandy rather than their more famous exploits as part of the defence of Bastogne, mainly because I don’t like the winter bases.

I’ve ordered the new allied D-Day book Overlord and should have my first game this week so I’ll pop up a review later.

Oh and never fear the LoTR project is still alive, its just going slowly. Current model count is 4 cavalry painted so only 26 to go (along with 50 Uruks and 6 Warg riders!)