editorial contents - wargame vaultwatermark.wargamevault.com/pdf_previews/65209-sample.pdfnow,...

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Battlegames 3 Battlegames magazine is a bi-monthly publication of Battlegames Ltd, 17 Granville Road, Hove BN3 1TG, East Sussex. Company No. 5616568. All content © Battlegames and its contributors. Strictly no reproduction without prior written consent. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the individual authors concerned. Editor: Henry Hyde, email [email protected], tel. 01273 323320 Fantasy & Sci-Fi Editor: Roger Smith, [email protected], 07711 556296. Web: www.battlegames.co.uk Design, layout and typesetting by Henry Hyde in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop on Apple Mac G5 and G4. Set in Adobe Warnock Pro and Helvetica Neue. Photography by Henry Hyde using Fuji S7000 except where otherwise credited. Copy editing and proofing by Henry Hyde and Steve Gill Printed by Litho Direct, Brighton on environmentally-friendly paper. Special thanks to all the team. Advertisers, contributors and businesses wishing to send samples for photography and review should contact the Editor. TRADE PLEASE NOTE: Battlegames does NOT ask its reviewers to contact companies direct unless by previous arrangement authorised by the Editor in writing. Subscription enquiries should be addressed to the Editor or you can subscribe online. Current rates (as at January 2007) are £22.50 per annum post-free in the UK; EU Airmail £27.50; Rest of the World Economy Airmail £34.50. All items relating to fantasy or sci-fi should be sent to our Fantasy & Sci-Fi Editor at 58 Parklands Road, Hassocks, West Sussex BN6 8JZ. All submissions and articles should initially be sent to the Editor and must be accompanied by an SAE if posted. We recommend submission of articles via email. Battlegames Ltd takes no responsibility for unsolicited articles. Please apply for submission guidelines. We like to discuss your proposal so that we can ensure your piece is suitable for inclusion. Submission guidelines and technical specifications are also given on our website. Copy and advertising closing date for next edition: October 19th 2007 A pologies for the problems we had getting issue 8 out to you. Not only was it late going to press, but a combination of the worst floods in living memory and a series of postal strikes was compounded by a label-printing error at our distributors, so that an unknown number of people recieved two copies, whilst an alarming proportion of our subscribers received nothing at all! If you didn’t receive your copy of issue 8, to please get in touch immediately so that we can send a replacement. I publicised the problem online using e Miniatures Page and Old School Wargaming, as well as the Battlegames website itself, but despite this, people are still emerging from the woodwork to announce that they never got their copy. Short of sending a letter to each and every subscriber, which would be both time-consuming and extremely expensive, I can do no more. I would always urge you to get in touch by the end of the second month shown on the cover if your magazine has not arrived, since it rarely takes longer than this to battle its way through the postal mire. My thanks to those few honest fellows who contacted me to say that they had received more than one. Now, on to jollier things, such as this errata concerning the note at the end of Stuart’s Kirbekan article in issue 8. e way it should have read is as follows: “Readers may be interested to know that this scenario is taken from the forthcoming publication Warfare in Egypt and the Sudan (working title) which will feature wargame scenarios for the Nile Campaign 1882, the Gordon Relief Expedition 1884-1885 and the Re- conquest of the Sudan 1895-1898. e book will be published by Partizan Press/Caliver Books in 2007.” Right, that done, time for another apology, this time for playing such a prominent part in the writing for this issue! Most of the time, I do try my best to remain in the background, but on this occasion, I’m involved in at least three of the pieces here, two by design and one because, well, once I started fiddling, it just sort of snowballed. is can happen when someone sends in a great idea, and I just hope that Andy Sykes forgives me! But in the end, I think you’ll agree that we’ve provided you with a terrific way in to Wild West gaming. Now, contrary to what you might think, wargames magazine editors tend not to be at each other’s throats, Editorial Contents Cover: Draw, pardner! A couple of the Editor’s Black Scorpion 32mm Tombstone characters shoot it out on Main Street of Whitewash City, using Eric Hotz’s PDF buildings that are mounted on card, cut out and assembled. Also present are lots of barrels and crates from Frontline Wargaming. Photo by HH. Editorial 3 e Empire strikes back 4 Henry Hyde and Dan Mersey, UK e Wars of the Faltenian Succession 8 Henry Hyde, UK Forward Observer 12 Mike Siggins, UK Race for the Rhine part II 14 Barry Hilton, UK Figure sculpting masterclass 18 John Ray, UK Quickdraw 22 Andy Sykes and Henry Hyde, UK To boldly go 28 Roger Smith, UK Larry Leadhead 29 Eric Hotz and Douglas Hamm, Canada Table top teaser 30 C.S. Grant, UK Battles for wargamers: Lundy’s Lane 1814 33 Stuart Asquith, UK Recce 37 Stuart Asquith, Mike Siggins, Richard Baber, Steve Gill, Dan Mersey & John Kersey, all UK Competition 45 Win a pro-painted ECW gun emplacement! aiming to do each other down. You’ll notice that I exchange ads with the folks at Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy, and indeed their UK manager John Kersey is a regular contributor to this very magazine and I, for my sins, am about to have a piece on Old School Wargaming published in WSS. I’m on cordial terms with Iain Dickie of Miniature Wargames, and I’m happy to say that Duncan Macfarlane of Wargames Illustrated is not only an extremely nice chap with whom I shoot the breeze whenever I see him at Partizan, but is also soon to become an honoured gaming opponent if Aly Morrison of Shiny Toy Soldiers (oh, yes, and of Games Workshop too!) gets his way. Stay tuned! And finally, congratulations to War Torn Worlds, winners of our first Battlegames Green Star award for companies doing their best to apply green ideas to their business. eir prize is a free ¼ page ad. See our website for details. Sample file

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Page 1: Editorial Contents - Wargame Vaultwatermark.wargamevault.com/pdf_previews/65209-sample.pdfNow, contrary to what you might think, wargames magazine editors tend not to be at each other’s

Battlegames 3

Battlegames magazine is a bi-monthly publication of Battlegames Ltd, 17 Granville Road, Hove BN3 1TG, East Sussex. Company No. 5616568.

All content © Battlegames and its contributors. Strictly no reproduction without prior written consent. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the individual authors concerned.

Editor: Henry Hyde, email [email protected], tel. 01273 323320 Fantasy & Sci-Fi Editor: Roger Smith, [email protected], 07711 556296.

Web: www.battlegames.co.uk

Design, layout and typesetting by Henry Hyde in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop on Apple Mac G5 and G4.

Set in Adobe Warnock Pro and Helvetica Neue. Photography by Henry Hyde using Fuji S7000 except where otherwise credited. Copy editing and proofing by Henry Hyde and Steve Gill

Printed by Litho Direct, Brighton on environmentally-friendly paper. Special thanks to all the team.

Advertisers, contributors and businesses wishing to send samples for photography and review should contact the Editor.

TRADE PLEASE NOTE: Battlegames does NOT ask its reviewers to contact companies direct unless by previous arrangement authorised by the Editor in writing.

Subscription enquiries should be addressed to the Editor or you can subscribe online. Current rates (as at January 2007)

are £22.50 per annum post-free in the UK; EU Airmail £27.50; Rest of the World Economy Airmail £34.50.

All items relating to fantasy or sci-fi should be sent to our Fantasy & Sci-Fi Editor at 58 Parklands Road, Hassocks, West Sussex BN6 8JZ.

All submissions and articles should initially be sent to the Editor and must be accompanied by an SAE if posted. We recommend submission of articles via email. Battlegames Ltd takes no responsibility for unsolicited articles. Please apply for submission guidelines. We like to discuss your proposal so that we can ensure your piece is suitable for inclusion. Submission guidelines and technical specifications are also given on our website.

Copy and advertising closing date for next edition: October 19th 2007

Apologies for the problems we had getting issue 8 out to you. Not only

was it late going to press, but a combination of the worst floods in living memory and a series of postal strikes was compounded by a label-printing error at our distributors, so that an unknown number of people recieved two copies, whilst an alarming proportion of our subscribers

received nothing at all! If you didn’t receive your copy of issue 8, to please get in touch immediately so that we can send a replacement. I publicised the problem online using The Miniatures Page and Old School Wargaming, as well as the Battlegames website itself, but despite this, people are still emerging from the woodwork to announce that they never got their copy. Short of sending a letter to each and every subscriber, which would be both time-consuming and extremely expensive, I can do no more. I would always urge you to get in touch by the end of the second month shown on the cover if your magazine has not arrived, since it rarely takes longer than this to battle its way through the postal mire. My thanks to those few honest fellows who contacted me to say that they had received more than one.

Now, on to jollier things, such as this errata concerning the note at the end of Stuart’s Kirbekan article in issue 8. The way it should have read is as follows:“Readers may be interested to know that this scenario is taken from the forthcoming publication Warfare in Egypt and the Sudan (working title) which will feature wargame scenarios for the Nile Campaign 1882, the Gordon Relief Expedition 1884-1885 and the Re-conquest of the Sudan 1895-1898. The book will be published by Partizan Press/Caliver Books in 2007.”

Right, that done, time for another apology, this time for playing such a prominent part in the writing for this issue! Most of the time, I do try my best to remain in the background, but on this occasion, I’m involved in at least three of the pieces here, two by design and one because, well, once I started fiddling, it just sort of snowballed. This can happen when someone sends in a great idea, and I just hope that Andy Sykes forgives me! But in the end, I think you’ll agree that we’ve provided you with a terrific way in to Wild West gaming.

Now, contrary to what you might think, wargames magazine editors tend not to be at each other’s throats,

Editorial Contents

Cover: Draw, pardner! A couple of the Editor’s Black Scorpion 32mm Tombstone characters shoot it out on Main Street of Whitewash City, using Eric Hotz’s PDF buildings that are mounted on card, cut out and assembled. Also present are lots of barrels and crates from Frontline Wargaming. Photo by HH.

Editorial 3

The Empire strikes back 4Henry Hyde and Dan Mersey, UK

The Wars of the Faltenian Succession 8Henry Hyde, UK

Forward Observer 12Mike Siggins, UK

Race for the Rhine part II 14Barry Hilton, UK

Figure sculpting masterclass 18John Ray, UK

Quickdraw 22Andy Sykes and Henry Hyde, UK

To boldly go 28Roger Smith, UK

Larry Leadhead 29Eric Hotz and Douglas Hamm, Canada

Table top teaser 30C.S. Grant, UK

Battles for wargamers: Lundy’s Lane 1814 33Stuart Asquith, UK

Recce 37Stuart Asquith, Mike Siggins, Richard Baber, Steve Gill, Dan Mersey & John Kersey, all UKCompetition 45

Win a pro-painted ECW gun emplacement!

aiming to do each other down. You’ll notice that I exchange ads with the folks at Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy, and indeed their UK manager John Kersey is a regular contributor to this very magazine and I, for my sins, am about to have a piece on Old School Wargaming published in WSS. I’m on cordial terms with Iain Dickie of Miniature Wargames, and I’m happy to say that Duncan Macfarlane of Wargames Illustrated is not only an extremely nice chap with whom I shoot the breeze whenever I see him at Partizan, but is also soon to become an honoured gaming opponent if Aly Morrison of Shiny Toy Soldiers (oh, yes, and of Games Workshop too!) gets his way. Stay tuned!

And finally, congratulations to War Torn Worlds, winners of our first Battlegames Green Star award for companies doing their best to apply green ideas to their business. Their prize is a free ¼ page ad. See our website for details.

Sam

ple

file

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4 Battlegames

The Empire strikes backA recent visit to the HQ of hobby giant Games Workshop

by Daniel Mersey and Henry Hyde

INTRODUCTIONHenry

Rob Broom, who runs Warhammer Historical, kindly invited us to visit the headquarters of Games

Workshop in Nottingham. He has been very supportive of Battlegames since the magazine first entered the fray of wargames publications, and his colleagues at Games Workshop, including rule writer Rick Priestley and figure designer Aly Morrison, are avid readers of this magazine (and soon, I hope, will be contributors!)

I didn’t need to be convinced, therefore, that many of the key players involved with the design and production of the output from this industry giant were decent and intelligent people. I already knew that I was unlikely to find Darth Vader lurking beneath the mask of the Empire, but I was curious to find out how they felt about this view that a vocal minority of the hobby seems to have of them.

In addition, having previously visited Miniature Figurines and talked to a number of sculptors and historical figure manufacturers, I wanted to get some sense of the scale of operations at the hub of GW. As you’ll see in Dan’s part of this article, in case you’ve been in a coma for the last 20 years, the Games Workshop operation is of a completely different order to anything else in the hobby, and is more reminiscent of some of the high-tech clients I’ve dealt with in my previous business incarnations, but with the benefit that what they’re churning out at the other end isn’t radar components or vacuum pumps or other widgets, but toy soldiers. By the million.

And I think that this is what a lot of people have lost sight of. In the end, Games Workshop makes toys. Many of them are exquisite little creations in their own right, and they will be bought and collected and painted and based and organised and played with and cherished by millions of young – and not so young – children around the world. Is that a bad thing? Come on, surely not. I may have slight niggles as a consumer about some of their pricing and the unfortunate tendency of their publicity to make it sound like they ‘own’ the hobby, but my personal take is that I’m happier knowing that there is a Games Workshop store on thousands of high streets around the world, and that it would be a gloomier place if they disappeared. Surely, what we’re really upset about is the disappearance of the historical hobby’s equivalents.

Whilst there were so many things in a truly mid-boggling day that left me reeling from the sheer bigness of everything (see Dan’s recollections below of the time we spent under production czarina Alison Lister’s wing), it was actually the cumulation of many little things (and no, I don’t mean the miniatures!) that left the greatest

impression on me, the myriad human touches that evidently make GW a rewarding place to work and which give me faith that whilst the front of the building may have some chilling neo-Nuremberg overtones, with its vast Imperial Eagle logo, the philosophy at work inside is completely different.

They want to produce the best gaming products in the world. They want to listen to what we have to say, as long as it’s said rationally. They want to look after their customers and give them the best products and services that they can. They want to reduce their impact on the environment and cut waste. They want to look after their employees – the display in the reception lobby of photos of all the staff who have been there for ten years or more is very impressive.

But all these things stem from the fact that, first and foremost, they want to be a professional and thriving business, so that they can achieve all these things in the first place, provide salaries for thousands of employees

around the world, and make a profit so that they will still be around next year and the year after and the year after that.

And this, of course, is where all the heat gets generated in many of the spurious debates about Games Workshop. They get slated when they do make a profit, as if somehow profit were a dirty word in the hobby, and then slated again if they don’t. How stupid is that? Profit, in itself, is neither good nor evil: it depends on what you do with it. The problem we have in the historical side of the hobby seems to me, frankly, that not enough businesses seem to be making a decent profit at all, let alone a comfortable one that can provide a proper living.

I happen to like and collect GW products, but I also like the fact that I can walk into any of their shops and be greeted with a smile and a friendly and knowledgeable chat. Our American readers may not know that such a thing, sadly, can be rare indeed in the general UK retail trade. Many of our historical gaming shops have not always been run by the most welcoming individuals and have failed as a result. British attitudes often rail against what could be seen as the ‘McDonaldisation’ of the hobby, but the system generally works, and we would be better concentrating our energies on learning what we can from it, and controlling our nightmares of a monoculture hobby. Given the fact that getting historical wargamers to agree

Dan Mersey poses beneath the Space Marine statue in front of Games Workshop HQ.Sa

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Battlegames 5

is like herding cats anyway, I doubt that we’re in danger of becoming grey slaves to the industry leader any time soon.

Nobody we spoke to during our visit was at all defensive or coy when asked about the company’s recent performance difficulties. On the contrary, they were keen to talk about the effects that the Lord of the Rings trilogy has had on the business, and how they are coping with the inevitable market cooling as the movies become history rather than recent news, and the plans the business has for consolidation and re-invigoration.

But before I hand over to Dan, with whom I shared this extremely enjoyable trip to Nottingham, let me give the last words to Rick Priestley, who recounted this quotation that I think sums up everything I liked about the down-to-earth folks at GWHQ. “In the end,” he said, “we’re all wargamers here, and wargaming is all about getting together, drinking beer, rolling dice and talking bollocks.”

So say we all.

THE CONQUERING HEROES AT LARGE – NOT!Dan

Spend some time speaking to a variety of gamers – whether fantasy, sci-fi, or historical – and it’s almost certain that at some point the question will be raised

“How much do you hate Games Workshop?” I’m sure there are plenty of gamers who are ambivalent towards this giant of wargaming, but even the most cursory scan of popular Internet forums shows that there are plenty of pro-GW gamers prepared to defend the company to the death and at least an equal number queuing to put it to the sword.

Me? Well, let’s get this out of the way right at the start of the article – I fall into the ambivalent category. As a teenager I played many GW roleplaying games, dabbled with Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and the first Warhammer 40,000, but gradually I lost interest as I moved into historical gaming. What I did see was my teenage perception of ‘my’ hobby changing in front of me (I religiously read White Dwarf in the period when reviews of non-GW products and ‘generic roleplaying’ articles disappeared), but never saw the end result of these changes as I’d moved

on and just was no longer interested in the sort of games that GW offered. That all changed when Warhammer Ancient Battles came out and, later, when the (‘Peter Jackson style’) licensed Lord of the Rings figures appeared. My ears pricked up, I ventured into a GW store (shame there weren’t so many around when I was a kid!), and was pleasantly surprised at how the staff tried to help me, and I liked the idea of allowing people to pop by and play a game. Other gamers I know have spoken of their outrage at the staff asking ‘a player of their experience’ basic gaming questions, but personally, I didn’t feel affronted. I’m still not interested in GW products beyond Lord of the Rings and various Warhammer Historical games, but as I work in publishing, I can appreciate the quality of their published products, and marvel at a few of their miniatures (and

at the prices, unfortunately). In short, GW doesn’t feature heavily in my own take on wargaming, but I do appreciate its importance to the hobby as a whole and look on with interest and occasional amusement at the pro- and anti-arguments I see developing when opposing worlds collide.

So, when I was invited to travel up to Newark to take part in a day of gaming hosted by Steve Jones and James Morris (authors of the excellent Warhammer Ancients Age of Arthur supplement) and asked if Henry wanted to come along, I was pretty excited by his offer in turn to take me along to the GW headquarters during the same trip. Henry had been working with Rob Broom of Warhammer Historical to organise his own visit, and I jumped at the chance for a behind-the-scenes look at our hobby’s biggest player. Pictures of Henry and I stumbling to not-so-heroic defeat with our North Welsh army at Newark can be seen on the Battlegames website; not exactly the conquering heroes we hoped to be, so for now, let’s concentrate on the visit to GW HQ in Willow Road, Nottingham.

We arrived on a Friday morning so similar to most others I’ve spent it Nottingham – it was overcast and raining slightly. Our combined map-reading and time-management skills worked a little too well (for once) and we

Just one small corner of Warhammer World, surely the most spectacular setting for wargaming there has ever been. Just after we moved on, the doors opened and gamers appeared from nowhere, making

a bee-line for the mass of 6’ X 4’ tables.

Bugman’s Bar, a haven for thirsty gamers.

Sam

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6 Battlegames

arrived about half an hour before we were due to meet Rob Broom. We had a quick look around the site – comprising GW’s offices, factory, design studio, and Warhammer World – a huge hall kitted out like a (Hollywood) medieval great hall, complete with a shop, figure displays, and crammed wall to wall with gaming tables where you can pitch up with your army and play a game against a friend or any other gamer who’s around. Most impressive, and if this had been around when I was getting started in gaming, it would have been my Wargaming Mecca.

Bugman’s Bar (decorated to resemble the kind of place a Warhammer Dwarf would feel most at home, with over-sized furniture, big wooden tables and trestles and some very impressive wagon-wheel candelabras) was where we wandered in via an open back door (call it wargamer’s sixth sense, find your way into the bar), and a member of staff popped over for a chat. It turned out that Warhammer World hadn’t opened for the day yet, but we chatted away happily, explained what we were doing at GW, and received really helpful answers to our awestruck questions.

By now, we’d used up our spare time, so wandered over to the impressive reception lobby at the main office building, which resembles the interior of an elven castle, and Rob came down to meet us, accompanied by Rick Priestley, one of the big names behind GW game design over the years. Rob and Rick were kind enough to act as our guides for most of the day.

We trekked back through labyrinthine passageways to Bugman’s Bar and sat chatting to Rick and Rob over a coffee; both are lovely chaps with a keen interest in all things to do with gaming. Something that struck me throughout the day was that the key people we met at GW are all historical wargamers first and foremost, and grew up with the books of Donald Featherstone and Charles Grant, using Airfix and Spencer Smith miniatures, and taking the hobby from there. It was commented that I’m a mere stripling by comparison, with my fancy 1980s and 1990s ways, not knowing I was born, and so on. One takes this in one’s stride! Rick explained to us a little bit of the history behind the Warhammer rules

(based in part on the older Tabletop Games Reaper rules written by Rick with Richard Halliwell). Looking at the two sets of rules now, they could hardly be further apart in terms of production quality and availability, but it’s true folks. We learned about Bryan Ansell’s pivotal role in the early days of the company, and Rick also explained a little about his current role, looking at ways to build on the current GW canon of games and pull them back into line with gamers’ expectations; hopefully this bodes well for the future of GW.

Setting our empty mugs down on the table, we headed off to meet Alison Lister, who manages the production and distribution side of things. She guided us around the factory producing metal, plastic, and resin figures (the latter being the Forge World range), and the distribution centre from which these figures are dispatched to shops and individual customers around the world. I’ve been to plenty of factories in my time (mostly printers) but I was genuinely taken aback by the size and efficiency of the GW set-up. The numbers of metal and plastic figures cast in a year numbers in the many millions, and the speed at which they emerge from the moulds is

amazing. We were talked through some of the technology behind the process – for example, finding the right kind of metal alloy and silicon to make the mould affects the quality of the final castings, and the material used for the mould also affects the number of times it can be used before needing to be recut. The factory also has the capacity to set up a second production line if needed, meaning that output can be doubled with minimum effort. Considering that the Nottingham factory isn’t the only one in the world, the quantity of figures being produced is staggering – and explains why you can walk into plenty of high street shops and find GW products on sale.

After showing us the production line, Alison took us to The Hub, where orders are processed with the aid of a barcoded, wireless network,

Rick Priestley (left), GW veteran, and Rob Broom, Warhammer Historical supremo. “I wouldn’t take this if you value your camera lens!” quipped Rob.

The Empire starts here. The awe-inspiring interior of the Games Workshop factory in №ttingham where millions of toy soldiers are produced every year. №t exactly a bloke in a shed, is it?

Sam

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Battlegames 7

effectively allowing ‘intelligent’ boxes to stop at the right dumping bin to be packed by the human attendant. Since its introduction, this has massively boosted the speed and accuracy of sending out orders. The warehouse area of the distribution centre was vast and towered above us – I had the unnerving feeling of being a 6mm miniature placed on 28mm scenery.

With Alison’s help, Henry and I managed to avoid being boxed up and posted off to Peru, and headed for lunch with Rob and Rick. Over a sandwich, we met up with sculptors Aly Morrison and Michael Perry (we met his brother, Alan, the next day and I discovered that they were born just around the corner from me in north London – it’s a small world). Aly enthused about the old Airfix and ‘old school’ metal figures, and once more I got lost when conversation headed back to games played before I was born. Old timers, eh? [Watch your cheek, sonny! Ed.]

After lunch, Aly, Rob, and Rick escorted us through the design studio – the creative hub of GW. Aly talked us through the materials he sculpts from and showed us some of the historicals he keeps at his desk (I’ll swear there was a tear in Henry’s eye when Aly pulled out his Spencer Smith American Civil War figures) along with some of the Shiny Toy Soldiers he’s currently working on in his spare time. We met a few more of the ‘faces’, enjoyed a game of Airfix charades (I won: Henry was the running Confederate soldier with one arm up and one leg bent), and chatted through quality control, computer technology’s use in sculpting (very useful for plastic figures and vehicles, which can be designed using a CAD program), and the considerations of a sculptor when designing a new figure (right down to how many parts will fit on a plastic sprue). We met Alan Merrett, who heads GW’s quality and intellectual property control team – portrayed as the bad guys by some but, without someone doing this job, the GW figures you see might not be quite so well made.

Back in Bugman’s Bar towards the end of the day, we also spent some time chatting with the charming Caroline Law, marketing manager of Black Library (GW’s publishing wing), and I was surprised by the scale of the print runs they produce, in the tens of thousands per title, which makes them serious contenders in the

bestseller lists. It was news to us to discover that Black Library has a new imprint called Solaris, which is publishing a range of top quality fantasy and sci-fi titles by established authors completely outside the normal Warhammer remit we associate with BL.

By the end of the day, we were flagging. We’d met a lot of friendly people, genuinely interested in wargaming, and had relived many games we’d played in the distant past (more distant for Henry than for me, of course). To round the day off, Henry and I sat quietly with Rob Broom, who gave us the low down on running Warhammer Historical (he does it all himself, brave soul). If the plans he described come off, there will be some pretty interesting products coming out in the future, and you’ll no doubt be hearing about them in Battlegames, but we’ve been asked to say no more for now. The only thing we

can say for sure is that if you’ve ever speculated about there being ranges of plastic figures for Warhammer Historical, you can stop dreaming right now: it ain’t gonna happen.

Dave Andrews, master painter and modelmaker, dropped by to say hello, and talked us through his love of WWI games (see issue 7 of Battlegames for photos of a game staged by Dave with Aly Morrison), converting figures and scratchbuilding terrain. Dave’s a very modest and self-effacing chap and we would have liked to have

had more time with him.Something I kept coming

back to throughout the day was how friendly and down-to-earth everyone we met was. Now, the anti-GW brigade will probably suggest that the wool was well and truly drawn over our eyes and that we were kept away from those sinister rooms where the Dark Lords of the GW Empire sit counting their dragon’s hoard of coins. I hope that’s not the case, and it certainly didn’t feel like it was to me, but each to their own view. I wouldn’t say that I came away champing at the bit to try out some of the GW products I’d seen on our tour, as many of the offerings just don’t cover my own interests, but it’s heartening to see that the biggest wargaming company in the world is run by enthusiastic gamers with decades of experience and enjoyment in the hobby, and that they could speak to us with equal enthusiasm about what they do for a job and what they do in their spare time.

Your order is on its way... The stupefying scale of The Hub has to be seen to be believed. Drivers operating the

elevating fork-lifts get abseiling training! Yes, really!

The sharp end: a typical Games Night in a local GW store, this one in Brighton. These evenings bring kids of all ages into the shops, exposing them to the products, teaching them tactics and techniques and providing useful social

interaction. If only there were more shops selling historical stuff and doing this on a regular basis!

Sam

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8 Battlegames

These rules are intended to make it possible for two players to fight a campaign without resorting to an umpire, and so many aspects of 18th century

campaigning have necessarily been enormously simplified. To campaign without an umpire relies on the opponents behaving with the utmost honesty and integrity, working together in the interests of the game to achieve the proper outcomes in any given situation. Naturally, if you do have the luxury of an umpire who is willing to do all the hard work, then bless him regularly with libations and fine fare! On the other hand, it is also possible to adapt these rules for solo use should your situation demand it.

By all means add to or change the rules as you see fit to suit your own campaign scenario. I have lots more detail in my own archives, and it’s always possible to make rules more complex, but not so easy to simplify them.

The rules have been compiled and evolved over 20 years, using many different sources for research. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to those upon whose shoulders I stand, and also to apologise to anyone I may have overlooked. My thanks, therefore, to: Guy Hancock, lifelong opponent and collaborator; Steve Gill, for casting an expert editorial eye over these rules; the late Tony Bath for Setting up a Wargames Campaign; Phil Barker for Alexander the Great’s Campaigns; Bruce Quarrie for Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature; Don Featherstone for War Game Campaigns and Solo Wargaming; Charles Grant for The War Game and C S Grant for Wargame Campaigns; Martin van Creveld’s for Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton; and Christopher Duffy and David Chandler for just about everything they’ve ever written.

Good luck, have fun. I have!

1. Each campaign move represents one week of real time.

2. Each hex represents an area approximately five miles across. For campaign movement purposes, a hex’s terrain is simplified to a single terrain type. Since the individual hex’s map is only drawn up in detail once contact has been made, the cartographer should make the specified terrain type predominate when drawing the more detailed version. Even an apparently empty or remote hex is likely to have small tracks, a few farms or cottages, minor watercourses, small woods and so on.

3. Every unit acting independently should be given a coordinate and its movement tracked separately, including scouts, ADCs and generals if moving alone.

4. Every force acting independently should be given a designated commander, and his characteristics noted. These are his Intelligence, Initiative, Courage, Charisma, Strength and Health, each expressed as a percentage

(simply roll a pair of percentage dice). You will have seen this explained in previous issues of Battlegames.

5. At the end of each campaign week, opponents should declare their coordinates. No indication of the forces present in a hex should be given unless contact is made. These initial declarations simulate rumour, sightings by members of the local population, reports from intelligence and so on.

6. Movement is considered to be from hex centre to hex centre.

7. Movement is considered to be simultaneous, and a record must be made of the route taken by troops in case contact takes place part-way through a week. Should it become apparent that troops have had a ‘near miss’ and crossed each other’s paths during the week, then their movement should be tracked back to the point where they made, or nearly made, contact, and a fair decision taken about whether they would have seen each other and perhaps engaged. This will be determined by the terrain in the hex and the time of day.

8. Troops may move less than the specified distances, but will be adjudged to have been stationary for that proportion of the move less than the maximum distance permitted.

9. MOVEMENT POINTS (MP) Troop type Normal Forced

Close order infantry 2 3 Grenzer / Jäger 3 5 Heavy cavalry 4 6 Light/irregular cavalry 6 9 3-6pdr artillery 2 3 8-12pdr artillery 2 n/a Wagons / siege train 2 n/a Generals/ADCs/couriers 20 n/a Scouts add 50% according to type Boats Downriver 6 Upriver 4 On lakes 5 On canals 5

10. MOVEMENT FACTORS (MF) Terrain type Movement Factor

Cross country 1 On roads ½ On hills 2 In woods 2 To pass through a defile +1 On roads on hills 1 The above factors are cumulative. Defiles are defined as bridges, towns and gaps of one hex or less between obstacles.

The Wars of the Faltenian SuccessionPart IX: rules for fighting the campaign

by Henry Hyde

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