Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

1814 And All That

Or, How to get rid of a tyrant in a big hat without really planning…   By Peter Merritt Introduction: I grew up with the usual fairly conservative histories of the Napoleonic Wars (and most wars in general), which were written in the ‘inevitable movements’ fashion, i.e. Napoleon/Hitler was doomed, we were bound to win […]

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Divided Land: a report on the game’s first outing in Sweden.

As a sort of pre-publicity for Divided Land next April (and as a quick fulfilment of my obligation to write at least one article for MilMud) I thought some of our members might be interested in my own view of what happened during the first playing of the megagame version, in Malmo earlier this year. […]

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A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese, Onside Review by Nick Luft

Game Synopsis The game is intended to be a club-sized game for between 4 to 10 people. The game is about medieval farming, the struggle to survive, the conflict between the villagers, and the conflict between the villagers and the manorial Lord. I was inspired to design this game after being slightly dissatisfied by other […]

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Quality v Quantity – onside report 

I ran a tryout of a set of rules that attempted to address the noticeable quality differences between some armies in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Design Intent What I was after was a set of rules that could be used in a mini campaign that had a reasonable speed of resolution but […]

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A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese

Synopsis This is a game that recreates the struggles of a medieval village to work together, to farm together, and to raise their families. It is a game about survival. Game Aims I wanted this game to achieve two things. The players had to have their own skin in the game. If they did not […]

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Megagame Design Debate – a new way of designing megagames

Onside Report on the Megagame Design session at CLWG on Sunday 6 August 2017 – By Tom Parry First, we would like to thank CLWG for inviting us to discuss megagame design. We had a very enlightening discussion, and we now have a much firmer grasp on the philosophy behind most megagame design. There is […]

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Programme for CLWG June 2017 Meeting

The CLWG June 2017 meeting is scheduled for Sunday 4th June from 12 at Anerley Methodist Chuch Hall (SE20 8QA). If you want to run a session then please let Jim Wallman know. The programme so far for the June 2017 meeting of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group is: “At the Gates” – the sack of […]

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Cobre, Vacas y Cucarachas: Mexican Revolution 1913

Onside report by Jonathan Pickles This was a follow up to my game design session from October. The game revisits the many games I ran on the 1913 Mexican Revolution culminating in the megagame in 2004 The aim of this revision is to try to use far simpler mechanisms to deal with the operational side […]

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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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Russian Civil War – Offside by James Kemp

Russian Civil War We were trying out a stripped down and streamlined resource allocation system for Bernie’s forthcoming megagame. We had the Siberian end of the game. A long thin strip of railway from just West of the Urals all the way to the Pacific Coast. There were four factions represented, the Whites, Reds, Greens […]

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