Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

Seize Warsaw! Offside Report – Andy Grainger

Many thanks to Nick Luft for putting on his game about a battlegroup of the 4th Panzer Div attacking Warsaw on 7 Sept 1939. I found it rather spooky in a couple of ways and they affect my initial impressions of the game as well as reflecting my status as an old person. Back in […]

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Summer Fling – A (half-remembered) debrief of Old World Order 1898

In the beginning, there was Watch the Skies 1898. This was a new variant of Jim Wallman’s tried-and-true Watch the Skies series of games, but set at the dawn of the 20th century and featuring aliens. By design, it was very high-level and strategic – counters representing entire fleets and armies, abstract economic abstractions and […]

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A Desperate Day – Offside Report by Andy Grainger

I enjoyed Jon Casey’s game about the Battle of Elouges in 1914, not least because I was able to visit the battlefield in March 2019. It took place the day after the Battle of Mons, one of those rearguard actions that would punctuate the retreat leading occasionally to the loss of almost a complete Battalion […]

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Each generation gets the games they deserve – Offside report by Nick Luft

Recently I went to the British Museum to see a small free exhibition – “Playing with Money.” It is about how money, coins and bank notes are used in boardgames and also how boardgames have broadly changed over the last two centuries. In the 19th Century boardgames were for children and their moral admonishment and […]

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2019 CLWG Games Weekend – Brian Cameron [onside & offside]

2019 CLWG Games Weekend Offside reports (and an onside report) from Brian Cameron about the 2019 CLWG Games Weekend. Peking Duck [onside] This was a re-run of my game on the Siege of the Peking Legations during the Boxer uprising in 1900.  You may well have seen the old film, 55 Days at Peking.  In […]

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Offside Report on Barwick Green

by Mukul Wow what a feeling, and a great big shout to John Rutherford. The scenario, the UK is imploding politically and economically, UN peacekeepers are arriving to the hotbed of revolution, but we going to a game but a rural little village in sleepy England, think the Archers radio show. ​ ​ Most players […]

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American Civil War Megagame [offside]

This session was hosted by a contingent of our friends from Europe (while we have any left) at the 2018 CLWG Conference. They had already run a game based on the ‘Seven Days Battles’ on the Virginian Peninsular in 1862. [Campaign note – The enormous Union Army of the Potomac had been rebuilt and (re?)trained […]

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Cyber Ops: A Game by Lt Col T. Gwyddon ‘data’ Owen

Offside Review by Nick Luft Data visited CLWG to play test his game about Cyber Ops. Data is a Lieutenant Colonel in the USAF and is in the UK in a secondment post with the RAF. Data asked all the players to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before taking part in this game. I […]

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CLWG Spring Conference 2017 – On & Offside notes

 Khalsa Ji! First Sikh War (1846) (Apologies about the late arrival of these notes – I only managed to send them in August…) Background After the fall of the Mughal empire and the later establishment of the Sikh Empire in the Punjab, the Khalsa was converted into a strong, multi-religious and multinational fighting force, the […]

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“Copper and Cows” by Pickles

Offside review by Nick Luft I have played earlier versions of this game. I was a table umpire in the original megagame, “Wind that Swept Mexico” (2004), and recently I took part in a play-test, at the 2016 CLWG Conference. Pickles’ newest offering, at the Games Weekend, April 2017, was an improvement on the first megagame […]

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