Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group
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 […]
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 […]
(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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
As part of a longer article on making logistics systems both fun and integral to games (no, really) without dedicated and very bored players and/or access to computational engines, I thought I would share something I came across in my on-going reading of the ACW. Apparently, it was a rule of thumb for Quartermasters in […]
Altering supposedly ‘fixed’ criteria in games Given the difficulty of getting some players (and even umpires) to read rules with varying impacts, I have been experimenting in some of my system design models with adjusting the ‘big reality’ rather than adding loads more – sometimes occasional – factors. That may read as just gobbled-gook so […]
An interesting report about an interesting sounding game. If you’re thinking of doing any more with the game it may be worth taking a look at Send A Gunboat, a megagame I did with Jim back in 1995 and 1996. The handbook and gazetteer are available on the MM website: https://megagamemakers.uk/Makers/125/SAG2/ and may be of […]
Or “Wow, That Was Close Fred….Fred?….” I have been doing quite a lot of intense reading on the ACW over the last few years, and it has increasingly struck me that many accounts of combat describe units either “…trading destructive volleys for an hour or two…” (inflicting significant casualties), or suddenly breaking in surprise […]