Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

The Hybrid Chestnut – A ‘Titanic’ Success!

by Jim Wallman Onside report on the second CLWG Hybrid session. So for the couple of people (Jaap, Peter and Terry) who tried to join us on Sunday 7th November, thank you for your patience and apologies for the loss of contact. Having been lulled into a false sense of security at the first effort […]

Full View →

Film review: The Forgotten Battle

I recently watched The Forgotten Battle on Netflix – a film about the Battle of the Scheldt in 1944, and we can certainly say that the title is well chosen – this battle could do with more attention, even in the Netherlands; so even if the film itself is rather forgettable (on which more later), […]

Full View →

Kämpfen wie Gott in Frankreich

In the continuing series of games dealing with the what-if scenario where the French don’t surrender in 1940, this was a committee game dealing with the German reaction to the French continuing the war. In preparing this game, I reread a large part of Karl-Heinz Friesers’ Blitzkrieg-Legende, and I was struck again by how much […]

Full View →

Milmud Editor’s Report 2021 [Admin]

Golden Chestnut

This is the Milmud Editor’s Report 2021, unfortunately I wasn’t able to prepare it in time for the CLWG Business Meeting. Editor’s Report 2021 Personally I’ve not actually managed to attend more than one CLWG session, and the only report I’ve written is this one, which was late. However on a work front I’ve helped […]

Full View →

The Scramble for Africa

This is the general briefing to all players.  There are also a very short individual brief for each player. THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA The Conference of Berlin November 1884 The reasons for the conference Following on from the Congress of Berlin in 1878 which resolved a number of issues in Europe, the German Chancellor Otto […]

Full View →

Wargaming with ‘present’ and ‘remote’ players by Brian Cameron

There are clearly good reasons to build on the ‘over-the-internet’ gaming that was around before the pandemic and which has grown enormously during the last 18 months.  Equally clearly there are problems about running games with a mix of players who are ‘present’ (a term I’ll use for those actually present in person at a […]

Full View →

Partir, c’est mourir un peu

(or how the French didn’t surrender after all, with a major twist at the end) The second game in what (spoilers?) now probably will be a series based on https://www.1940lafrancecontinue.org. An report of this game can be found at https://milmud.clwg.org/2020/06/france-fights-on-for-now. A quick recap of what went before: the French cabinet meets on June 16, 1940, […]

Full View →

STONK ONLINE – OPERATION BINGO V

Some our older readers will remember many WW2 battles fought on a tabletop with miniature tanks and, possibly, the origins of the wargame rules ‘STONK’. Over the years, these rules moved away from model terrain and toy tanks, and more towards a ‘real map’ and counter game, and from version 3 onwards was wholly designed […]

Full View →

Board games: The politics of play

This is a review of a radio broadcast and a musing on the ideas it deals with. Review The radio broadcast was on the BBC World Service and is part of the series: The Cultural Frontline. The episode: Board games: The politics of play It starts by looking at the boardgame Pandemic, and its happenstance […]

Full View →

Getting There Sometime-ish With The Quite-a-lot-really-est

Or Where The Hell Is 3rd Div…? A Suggested Mechanism for Reflecting Line of March Efficiency. We’ve all presumably read loads of stuff about campaigns which develop into clashes/battles in which a key feature is the arrival of units off the line(s) of march. How well this is managed over the centuries seems as much […]

Full View →