Paint, paint, paint your boat...

As I've blogged recently, my current active project is writing war-game rules for ancient galley warfare and painting the wee ships to play them with. I have three ships completed with another six in progress.

My models of choice are the Xyston 1:600th scale range. Most ranges have a limited number of the larger Hellenistic giants and Xyston is no exception. The single large ship in the range is a hepteres, also called a septireme or "seven" because the rowing arrangement put seven men on a single file. The exact way this was done remains a mystery. It could be a single bank of oars with seven men on one oar, two banks with four men on the oars in one bank and three on the other, or three banks of oars with rowers arranged 3-3-1 or 3-2-2.

Most of the ships are quinqueremes, also called penteres, or "fives" because they have five men per file. This is mostly thought to be two banks of oars arranged 3-2, although it could be three banks arranged 2-2-1, or a single bank with five rowers per oar. Xyston makes Greek, Phoenician, Hellenistic, and Roman versions of the quinquereme. These really amount to different styles for the bow and stern. The styles are somewhat fanciful and I assume that I can mix 'n' match in how I compose ships to use in a game. The only real differences are that the Hellenistic quinqueremes come with towers and bolt shooters and the Roman quinqueremes come with a corvus.

The second largest group of Xyston ships are triremes that features three banks of oars with a single rower on each oar. This is the warship of the classical era and was the mainstay of the fleets in the Greco-Persian wars and the Peloponnesian War. It's unclear whether it was completely superseded by the quinquereme in the Hellenistic era; however, the later trireme was heavier than the type Themistocles had built for the Athenian navy, which was light, fast, and highly maneuverable. When the fight on the seas during the Peloponnesian War devolved to the ugly slugfests in Syracuse harbor, the Athenians, who were the masters of battle in open waters, were at a disadvantage against the heavier Syracusian triremes and the newly-developed quinquereme.

Finally, Xyston makes a hemiola and trihemiola, which are light ships that were mostly used for dispatch duty, piracy, or anti-piracy.

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

The Xyston models come with lots of bits. I'm not a fan of lots of bits on the models I use for gaming. This is one reason why I eschew plastic figures—too many parts to glue on and break off. (Although the main reason I eschew them is that they're plastic.)

Xyston ships come with masts and sails that can be furled or unfurled. The unfurled sail uses more lead than the main hull of the ship model. The furled sails look better, but the mast is cast metal and I fear it will bend or break with the kind of handling miniatures go through. After playing around with replacing the cast mast with brass rod, I decided to forego the masts and sails. This look probably isn't right for Hellenistic navies. The classical navies generally stowed their masts and rigging before battle, but the later navies may have kept them up, even though motive power in a naval battle was always by oars. Cleopatra's rapid departure from the debacle of Actium was facilitated by readily unfurled sails.

The models also come with some kind of railing or gunwale with shields on it that looks more like it belongs on a viking longboat. I haven't seen anything like this kind of gunwale on drawings I've seen of ancient galleys and I suspect that Xyston made it up. What I have seen in drawings is a very flimsy railing that looked like it served no other purpose than being a convenient thing to grab when a seasick crewman leaned over and heaved ho. Like the masts and sails, I left these off the model. Too fiddly to put on and I didn't like the look. Of course not using these bits means having a lot of lead jetsam (that I paid for) going unused.

Where Knelt the Vanquished Foe...

Apart from leaving things off, I did make one addition to the models. The Xyston ships are finely cast with some nice detail, but they don't have decking that looks right. The models just have a flat slab of metal for the deck. After looking at that for a while, I decided it just wouldn't do.

To remedy this I cover the deck part with thin styrene plastic card that comes scored at 1mm intervals. The result is something that looks like deck planking.

Basing and Assembly

The quinquereme hulls come in one piece, not counting any towers and artillery I might put on. The hepteres comes with a center section and two ends that have to be butt-joined, but on the one models I completed, they went together nicely with no visible seam. The triremes have the rowers' boxes separate. The space cut into the hull for these parts is bigger than the part itself, so there's a bit of a gap that has to be filled with Testor's green putty.

The oars don't actually attach to the hull. The oars should be coming out of the outrigger, but the area where they connect is minimal. What I wound up doing is priming the oars separate from the hull. I glue the hull to the base and then glue the oars to the base positioned correctly in relation to the hull.

The steering oars come separate and are kind of fiddly to attach. I prime them separately and glue them on to the ship and base at the same time. The steering oars are one size "fits" all. The hepteres is a tall model and the steering oars fit just right. For the other ships, I had to cut down the paddle end to get it to fit right. I normally loathe dealing with fiddly bits, but these turned out OK.

For bases, I use .030 sheet styrene with Litko magnetic sheet on the bottom. The bases are just big enough to fit the model, I don't leave a lot of space for seascape. The fit on the hex map is tight enough, that I can't spare any room for aesthetics.

Painting

The models paint easily. I paint the decks with Vallejo Iraqi Sand and then give then a wash of burnt umber (or is it raw umber or burnt sienna?). I paint the hull and oars overall in Vallejo Light Brown. All the paintings I've seen show the ships to be mostly in natural wood.

The detail is in the strakes that stand out from the hull. I paint these in somewhat muted colors: browish-yellow rather than fully saturated yellow, gray-blues, olive greens, dull reds. Ancient pigments didn't allow for the kind of deep, rich colors we have now, so the colors I use make a subtler contrast. It also helps to mask the errors.

I've been building and painting these models down on my dining room table because I can spread out a little more (put another way, my painting table upstairs in the den is too cluttered). This appeals to Rhiannon who likes to sit in the chair next to me and cuddle—when she hasn't simply stolen my chair and prevented me from sitting at all. However nice an arrangement it is, she insists on my petting her and if I am remiss, she head-butts my painting arm to remind me of my duty.

If I'm not looking out for the head-butt, I can easily get a streak of gray-blue across a deck or into the oars. Six years of life with cats has already made me adept at predicting feline behaviors and getting out of the way. For the few times I'm too slow, I have become adept at touch-up.

I dry-brush Iraqi Sand over the oars after I've painted everything else in order to call them out a lithe more. The rams are painted antique bronze and other highlights are painted however I feel. For example, the Carthaginian quinqueremes come with tent-like thingummies at the stern. I thought about making them look circus-tenty with stripes and doodles, but opted for more military-looking solid colors like deep red and olive green.

I painted the towers on the hepteres and Hellenistic quinquereme I've finished so far in red and green. Although I have read that they were often painted gray to look like a stone tower. I have more towered ships to paint and I'll probably stick with gray for the rest. If I want variety, I'll use different shades of gray.

I paint the bases a solid turquoise color and then go over that with the same color lightened and thinned. I daub this on to make puddles that give a mottled appearance when dry.

At this point I give the ships two coats of Krylon Matte Finish. Despite it's name, it leaves a very slight satin effect, which I find more attractive than the lusterless look of the Testor's dullcote.

When the matte finish is dry (I usually allow 24 hours between coats and after), I go over the base with heavy gloss gel medium that I get at Michael's. I glop it on with a brush and it's semi-opaque when first applied, almost like white glue.

The glop dries glossy and transparent with a texture that looks like a gently rolling sea. I finish up on that by applying a watered-down off-white around where the model meets the base to represent the foam stirred up by the ship and oars.

Ready to Play

I have three ships ready to go and another six almost there (just the basing left to do). The rules aren't complete, but I'll have something to play-test with.

I've only got the 1.5" hex mat for now. Monday Knight Productions has to do a production run of the 2" hex mats before they send mine to me. The ships are a little tight on the smaller hexes, especially the heptereme, but it works until the larger hex grid is available.

I plan to male some terrain in the form of coastline and little islands and rocks that will break up the playing area. I'll base the land pieces off the 2" hexes so that they conform to the hex grid.

Storage

In the song "I'm So Tired" John Lennon calls Sir Walter Raleigh "such a stupid git." However, the popularization of tobacco products over the intervening centuries has produced one highly beneficial result: cigar boxes, which are just perfect for storing a miniature navy.

For these models I used a wooden Padron 1964 Anniversary Series Imperial box. Apart from the cigar getting a respectable "95" rating from Cigar Aficionado, the box is just the right size for my need. Wide and short, I can fit several ships inside. I line the bottom with Litko Aero Systems flexible sheet steel, so that the ships' magnetic bases stick like glue for disaster-free storage and transport. (Thanks, Wally.)

I only have the one box, so I'll need to scour the cigar stores looking for at least one more. I'm not sure how many they'll hold, but I foresee having one more model than I can fit in the box. It always happens.

Hot Rats! (le rats á chaud)

I am almost giddy with glee.

I occasionally check the North Star website to see if they have any new releases in the North Star 1672 range. This afternoon I discovered to my great joy, that they're releasing Swiss for service in l'armée du Roi-Soleil. They look very nice in the picture with their distinctive armor and frilly-bottomed trousers. I can almost smell chocolate and fondue just looking at them.

I'd been planning to paint a few Swiss units, but I figured I'd make do with painting the standard French figures in red coats. These figures are a pleasant surprise. I have some Swiss standards from GMB Designs that are circa Seven Years War. Many French standards didn't change since the Thirty Years War, but I suspect these Swiss standards are anachronistic to the Dutch War period I'm doing. Nevertheless, they look good and the pattern is at least similar to what was used in the 1670s.

Only the pikemen are available now. The musketeers are coming. Do I wait until I can order both together or get the pikemen now? Dilemma.

North Star also released dragoon horse holders for standard dragoons, dragoons in fur caps, and French dragoons. The packs come with one horse holder and three standing horses. I have some standing horses in production now that I got from The Assault Group. I was going to make do with just the horse to mark where the horses are tethered (as specified in my rules), so this is a another nice surprise from North Star.

My Pike & Periwig rules are on hiatus while I work on Row Well and Live!, but I am working on gunners,two battalions of Régiment Picardie, and a dragoon squadron. When those units are done, I'll do Swiss.

Adventures Real and Imagined

Since my Enfilade! posting in May, my life has not been a formless, airless void apart from writing galley rules. There have been a few adventures:

I Do Know the Way to San Jose

In mid-June, I made an impromtu visit to the town where I grew up. I spent 21 years in San Jose  (1965–1986), which ties my current sojourn in Seattle (1991–2012) for the longest place I've lived. I breakfast most Saturdays with Rick Martinez, whom I've known for 35 years (since 1977!). Rick has been up here for about 10 years or so, but he makes regular trips down to San Jose. With another trip pending, he suggested I go down too and join in a gaming weekend with old friends. It took me just a second to ask myself, "Why not?" I booked my travel the next day (through Expedia.com of course) and champed at the bit waiting for the weekend to come.

The last time I was in San Jose was 2009 when I drove down in my 350z with my then-GF Lorrin for a birthday week trip. It was 107 degrees. This time it was much cooler at a mere 97 degrees. I alway enjoy my trips to San Jose, but it's a strange feeling to "come home" to a place that has changed so much in the intervening years—and keeps changing. I have fond memories of my life in San Jose and more than a few places with which I have happy associations just don't exist any more.

The gaming group included old friends Wolfgang Blum and Al Tilley. I had seen Wolf more recently when he came up here to visit Rick a few years back. I hadn't seen Al since maybe 1981. We used to game Judge Fernandez' square ancients in Al's garage every Wednesday for years. I met Al through Rick who dragged me to the game back when I was 17. For a man of 80+ years, he was as sharp and amusing as ever. Seeing him again reminded me of how much I enjoyed his company.  Several other people were there, a few of whom I'd met perhaps once many years ago when Rick still lived in San Jose and I was visiting. Their names were familiar to me, however, because Rick often talks about them (and one cannot forget a name like Ix Nixon). After several hours of gaming on Saturday, we had dinner at By-Th'-Bucket on Stevens Creek. It's odd that as old as it is, I still think of it as the "new" By-Th'-Bucket since I recall the old one so well from former days. I had an amazing Kobe flat iron steak with a brandy creme sauce. I wanted to lick the plate.

The trip ended all too soon. Rick was staying another day, so on Sunday we had breakfast at the Original Pancake House. It was crowded (Father's Day), had no air-conditioning, and our order took forever. I ordered Swedish pancakes, which faithful readers of this blog will know I love. However, these ones came unrolled, so I had to dish out my lingonberries onto the crepe and roll my own like a blunt. But the taste was great.

I made a last stop at Game Kastle near the airport to buy out the last of their Xyston 1:600th scale galleys. Next stop: drop of the rental car and grind through the misery of airport security and check-in. I managed to upgrade to first class on the way down, but the return flight had no availability, so I was stuck in coach, way back at the the butt-end of the plane. While waiting for my flight, I had lunch at Original Joe's in the airport. It's not the same at eating at OJ's downtown. For one thing, the menu is truncated, but the ambiance is also lacking. Next time I'm in San Jose, I'll manage to make it downtown and get the delicious veal piccata—even though I feel a little guilty eating baby cow; maybe I'll have the chicken piccata instead.

Even though I was sick the entire time, I loved every minute of being "home." San Jose in the 60s and 70s was a fantastic place to grow up. Even now, in its bustling Silicon Valley incarnation, I would love to return to live there. I could use a little endless sunshine. Perhaps some day...

More Sidebottom

I preordered Harry Sidebottom's latest Warrior of Rome book, The Wolves of the North, from Amazon UK earlier this year. It arrived last weekend and I pitched right into it. Sidebottom's books are rich with the culture and history of the classical world. The narrative is fast-paced and suspenseful.

Sidebottom's last few novels have taken the main character, Ballista, out of the mainstream of the Roman world and into its backwaters. The previous volume, The Caspian Gates, was set in the remotest part of Asia Minor. The Wolves of the North is set in the Russian steppe where Ballista, in disgrace because of an action—briefly assuming the purple—that should have cost him his life, is sent by the emperor Gallienus, an otherwise old friend from before Gallienus was emperor, to coax the nomadic Herul to ally themselves with Rome. All the while, a psychotic murderer among Ballista's traveling companions is leaving a trail of the mutilated corpses of slaves and eunuchs (who've already been mutilated enough, one would think).

I'm about half-way through. I would be farther along if I wasn't reading so much about ancient galleys these days.

The Mac and i

I've been a Mac user since I started writing papers at school using Tim Cole's Macintosh 128k with its hifalutin' external floppy disk drive (one-sided). I bought my own Mac, a Mac Plus with a 20 MB external hard drive, in 1988. I couldn't imagine then using 20 MB of disk space for anything.

When I started working at Aldus in 1991, I used my lighting-fast Macintosh II at work for my computing needs, mostly publishing The Citadel, our NHMGS newsletter, and the NHMGS web site. That arrangement lasted until 1998 when I bought an iMac G3 so I could fiddle around at home and access this newfangled Internet thing from my living room.

Two years later, I went wild and got a PowerMac G4 with a massive two-ton 21-inch Apple Studio Display CRT monitor as my main screen and a 17-inch Apple Studio Display CRT monitor as a secondary for the innumerable palettes in Photoshop and other graphic tools. I felt like the ultimate power user.

Six years later, the 17-inch monitor had gone poof, so I was down to one monitor (the BIG one) and the once-powerful G4 was limping along barely running the newest software. So I bought a white polycarbonate Intel Core 2 Duo 24-inch iMac in 2006. It, too, made me feel like I needed a license to fly just to use it. By now, software applications with lots of palettes had settled down into a more manageable UI so that you didn't need a second monitor to accommodate them. The 24-inch flat panel screen of the iMac was spacious enough to accommodate any application's interface and all the clutter from a separate CPU and monitor was gone. The gleaming white all-in-one iMac seemed almost futuristic with its non-intrusive presence in my workspace—like something out of the Jetsons. I felt that at any minute Rosey the robot maid would roll in and ask me if I wanted tea.

But time marches on and the future is always ahead. After six years, my beloved iMac was showing its age. I had to upgrade to its maximum RAM configuration of 4 GB just to run OS X Lion. I had been using the Adobe CS3 suite, but last year I started a subscription to CS5.5, which has now transformed to an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. After installing the CS6 applications, I discovered to my chagrin that they don't run well on my iMac.

So this weekend I resolved to replace my beloved iMac with a new iMac. I'd seen the 27-inch iMac in various Apple Stores around town and wanted one (Look! A shiny thing!). I just couldn't justify it until recently. Perhaps seeking a justification was a subliminal impulse to upgrade to CS6. I walked into the Apple Store on Saturday afternoon and 20 minutes later was stuffing a HUGE box into the back of my 350z, which Nissan never intended for haulage beyond a few groceries. I couldn't close the hatch all the way, but by driving slowly (hard for me to do) I made the few blocks to my house without incident.

I bought the top of the line stock configuration for the 27-inch iMac. I seem to get a good six years out of computers and getting more than I need now means having as much as I need later when OS X Sabre-tooth Tiger (or whatever Apple calls their OS version in four years—even now OS X Mountain Lion is pending release—they must eventually run out of eponymous felidae, mustn't they?) and Adobe CS12 are the current versions. I also had the store install an additional 8 GB of RAM for a total of 12. That's enough to be getting on with. If I really need it, I can upgrade to a total 32 GB. (It's unsettling, though, to think that years from now we'll look back and laugh at 32 GB of RAM the way I look back and laugh at 20 MB of disk space.)

Once I got the new iMac home and out of the box, the fun started. The apple migration assistant let me wirelessly transfer everything from my old iMac to the new one, but it took 10+ hours. I was asleep in bed when it finished. However, I was thoroughly impressed with the result. I had to reinstall Office 2011 for Mac and run an upgrade patch on the reinstalled Outlook, but otherwise it was as if I were on the old computer, except faster and with a bigger screen.

Then came the tangle of readjusting peripherals. Why are there so many cords and cables? When someone invents wireless electricity (apart from lightning) I'll be over the moon. The migration didn't migrate the content on my LaCie 500 GB external drive, which contains all the files for my projects like Pike & Periwig and Row Well and Live! I thought I'd just hook it up, pull its contents onto my capacious 1 TB internal drive and presto! However, the Firewire connection that worked with the old iMac doesn't work with the new. The new iMac has Firewire 800 and two slots for Thunderbolt. Fortunately, it also has four USB 2.0 slots. I had to rummage around in the garage to find a USB cable from my bag of forgotten 'puter bits, but I was able to get everything transferred.

It seemed like a bit of fuss to go to the new from the old, but I'm back in business for at least six years.

The Great Couscous Caper

Incredible as it seems, I had a five-pound bag of Israeli couscous stolen from my doorstep. I like the large grain style of couscous much better than the more common Moroccan style. I used to be able to buy it in bulk from Whole Foods, but they discontinued it. They have a dozen variations of the Moroccan style in bulk, but no Israeli. You can buy it in smaller packages at a lot of places, including Whole Foods, but because I eat it in bulk, I want to buy it in bulk.

I found that Amazon.com sells it in five-pound bags for $12.00. I bought a bag a while ago, but now I'm out. I ordered another bag last weekend and it should have come by now. I checked my order on Amazon.com and the tracking showed it to have been delivered on Wednesday and left by Fed Ex on my doorstep. Only it wasn't there. I didn't get home until about 9:00 PM that night, so I can only assume that some ass in my neighborhood took it. They probably thought that a package from Amazon was something cool. A Kindle maybe. They probably feel foolish for having stolen a big bag of Middle Eastern pasta pellets. Serves 'em right. But it doesn't get my couscous back.

Fed Ex isn't going to replace it for me. I could order another, but I'm more than a little put off by the fact that someone stole a package from my front doorstep. I think instead that I'll look around beautiful bucolic suburban Lynnwood for someplace that sells it in bulk.

Another thought is to save up a week's worth of cat box scoopings, box them, Fed-Ex it to myself, and then wait for the same jerk to steal it. He might find getting desiccated cat poo even more disappointing than the couscous he scored in his last crime.

Pneumatic Woes

I've had the desk chair in my office for probably 10 years. It's high-backed, black leather-ish with arm rests. Like all chairs of its type, it has a pneumatic column coming up from the wheeled base that lets you adjust the seat height. I normally keep it jacked up all the way. Suddenly today the chair keeps popping down a bit as I'm sitting on it. I'm now about eight inches lower than when I started writing this section and I have to reach up to type.

I think it's time for a new chair.

Row Well and Live!

I got my start with ancient naval wargaming 30+ years ago when I found a copy of Richard Nelson's Naval Wargames Rules Fleet Action 1000 B.C. to 500 A.D. at a long, long out of business toy store in Los Gatos, CA. I also got a copy of Fantasy Games Unlimited's Bireme and Galley, which covers combat between oared warships from the earliest times to the 16th century. C-in-C miniatures had a range of ancient galleys in 1:1200th scale. They came in boxes of five models for the ridiculously cheap price of $3.00 a box and I bought and painted several. Years later I sold everything in a random, senseless act of de-cluttering, but I later reacquired both sets of rules.

When my interest in ancient naval gaming reignited, I looked in vain for the C-in-C ships. C-in-C went through a collapse and recovery some years ago and most of their original range has crept back into production. Not so with the galleys. I contacted C-in-C about six years ago and inquired about the re-release of the ships. Their website still lists the models, but they all show as "out of stock/out of production" when you click for details or to order. For some time the story from C-in-C was, "Soon." Most recently they finally confessed that, no, they will not be re-introducing the line. Ever. And don't call again. Ever.

Needless to say, I am disappointed.

I flirted another time with the Langton line of 1:1200th ships and got a few of their ships—and even got one of their 1:300th models (a Roman decere), which is sitting somewhere unbuilt in a box in my garage along with the other ships. The 1200th scale ships are very nice but too spendy for the size of fleets you need to build for Nelson's rules (I'd say about 20 ships per side minimum). I also looked at Valiant Enterprises' Ramming Speed line of 1:900th scale ships. These are roughly the same price per ship as Langton. They're nice models, though not as nice as Langton. For some reason I've just never taken the plunge and bought any, although I do recall ogling them way back when they first appeared in the late 70s (I think).

Enter Xyston
Xyston put out a range of 1:600th scale ships as an adjunct to their excellent 15mm ancients line. I spent a lot of time ogling pictures of the models on their website (more war pr0n), but was a bit put off by the price. At $11.00 per ship (for the standard sizes, the bigger hepteres are $17.00!) they're not for fleet actions.

I've never ordered any ships from Xyston (now owned by Scotia Grendel in Scotland), but The Game Matrix in Tacoma had several in stock looking lonely and wanting an owner. I bought two ships from them a few years back at Enfilade!, our annual convention. I bought several others from the store later until, I'm fairly certain, I bought everything they had. On a recent trip to my old home town, San Jose, CA, I stopped by Game Kastle and found a fresh source of Xyston galleys. As I did at The Game Matrix, I bought every model that Game Kastle had, which means about 10 of various types. All told, I have about 16 ships.

Now that I have a lot of big ship models, what do I do with them? Being much more expensive that Langton's 1:1200th, I'll beggar myself buying enough to play fleet action rules with them. Bireme and Galley are more detailed and so suitable for actions between a few ships, but the rules are awfully detailed. One user on BGG described them as "anal retentive." So, not what I want to pursue.

I, Rulewright
Instead, encouraged by my experience writing Pike & Periwig, I've hit on the expedient of writing my own galley rules, which I've named Row Well and Live! as an homage to Quintus Arrius' immortal words in Ben Hur.

I find with rules writing that I start with some big ideas that I quickly get down into useable form—and then the details (in which the devil invariably is). 

So far, I've banged out about 80%. They are much easier to write than Pike & Periwig due to the subject matter. Rules for ancient naval warfare are less complex than 17th c. ground combat. Thankfully.

The rules focus more on running an individual ship than on a squadron or fleet. The detail isn't overwhelming, so players could run multiple ships, but I always like the idea of getting more bang from my miniatures buck. Expensive ships means fewer models, so make the models count for more.

I use a hex grid where each model occupies two hexes, which is less a brilliant idea than an accommodation to the realities of fitting big ship models into a hex grid. 

My current seascape hex mat came from Geo-Hex many years ago and has 1.5" hexes. This is a very tight fit for the big hepteremes, so I've ordered a 2" hex seascape mat from Monday Knight Productions that will provide a little more space for the models.

I started out by having discrete phases for things like shooting and movement, but as I read more about ancient naval combat, I wanted something that flowed better. So movement includes all kinds of combat resolution, including shooting from marines and from bolt-shooters and stone-throwers. Basically, anyone can shoot at ships in range, whether they are the active player or not. It takes away the phenomenon of a player moving straight past a ship full of javelin-hurling, bow-shooting, or sling-slinging marines without taking a shot because it isn't the shooting phase. It's workable because there won't be a lot of ships on the board. Also, shooting attenuates the more you do it. So a player can shoot as many times as possible, but there is a cumulative -1 for every shot after the first. I've made up some counter sheets to track shooting modifiers:

I also have cumulative fatigue for rowing. There are four basic speed bands: Crusing speed, battle speed, attack speed, and ramming speed (picture that scene from Ben-Hur). The faster ships move, the more fatigue incurred by the rowers until they just poop out. However, there is a rule for resting that recovers lost fatigue.

I hope to play a game test this month. I have a few ships completed and more under way. I also made an order to Xyston/Scotia Grendel for more wee ships.

I have had one recent hitch. I upgraded to Adobe CS6 only to find that the software overwhelmed my old polycarbonate iMac from 2006. It's been a faithful machine, but Photoshop displayed a warning that my graphics card was incompatible and running InDesign or Illustrator caused awful screen redraw problems and artifacts. I finally talked myself out of reverting to CS3 and instead bought a new 27" iMac with gobs of RAM. Lots of delay (and money) later, I'm back to writing and graphicking again. (Yes, I made up that word.)

Enfilade! 2012 Up Down and Sideways

NHMGS just completed our 21st running of the Enfilade! historical miniature gaming convention this weekend. I wasn't around for Enfilade! I, but I've been to the last 20, although with diminished enthusiasm these last few years.

For a number of years, I hosted several games each convention, ran the painting competition, and for several years straight, I was the convention director. I think I'm just tired, but all my experience has taught me a few things about gaming that affect my outlook on conventions—which I'll return to below.

I managed to psych myself into hosting one game together with Kevin Smyth for Sunday morning. Otherwise, I wasn't sure if I would come at all on Friday and Saturday, or maybe just one of those days plus Sunday. As it turns out, I went all three but drove about 85 miles each way every day to do it.

Friday - reconnaissance

I took the week prior to Enfilade! off, as I have often done in the past in order to focus on all the last-minute tasks needed for running games, organizing things, etc. None of which I did this year. I just relaxed at home enjoying a staycation away from work for the first time in more than a year. So when Friday came around I was raring to go. It was great to see a lot of gamers from all around the Pacific Northwest whom I either rarely or never see during the rest of the year.

As each year passes we are older, fatter, balder, and-—sadly—fewer. Attendance has hovered at about 220 for several years now, but a lot of the grognards are scarcer every year. The reason for that varies from moved away, other family plans for Memorial Day weekend, loss of interest, or sickness and death (we're all getting older). There's also the legendary "lost tribes" of the Seattle area who eschew Enfilade! out of some principle or another.

Friday gave me a good chance to scope out who was there, who was doing what, and what neat new things I could buy.

Saturday - no pancakes for me!

I wanted to come on Saturday because Sven Luger was running a 28mm game using the new Pike & Shotte rules to game one the the battles (Lystra Mouth) from the excellent sci-fi novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. I had missed out on pre-registering for the game. The website to do that was not working... not working... not working...  CLOSED! I blinked during the brief window when I could pre-register and was unsure if I'd make it into the game.

I got up as early as I normally do, i.e., as soon as the cats become too obstreperous to ignore. I thought I'd get on the road and stop for breakfast at Elmer's in Tacoma on the way down. We used to have an Elmer's here in Lynnwood. They had the BEST Swedish pancakes ever. I missed them for a long time and looked forward to having them again. However, when I got to the restaurant, I discovered to my great dismay that they no longer had the Swedish pancakes on the menu. Apparently, lingonberry is hard to come by. I made do with French toast and bacon—but the magic had been lost.

I arrived at the convention at about 8:15, just in time to miss signing up for the last available slot in the Lord Kalvan game. Ironically, if I hadn't stopped to not eat Swedish pancakes, I would have made it in. While disappointing, not getting into the game allowed me to maintain my perfect record of never managing to get into a game I wanted to play at Enfilade! that I wasn't running myself.

I stayed around for a while chatting and shopping, but decided to head home and putter around on various projects for the day instead. On the way home, I stopped by The Panzer Depot (the "lost tribe" HQ) in Kirkland only to find "lost tribesmen" Bill Stewart and Dick Larsen unloading boxes of English Civil War figures for an impromptu game of Pike & Shotte. All the usual suspects were there including Phil Bardsley who games once every blue moon.

Between them, Bill and Dick have a lot of ECW and our first taste of the rules wound up being a fairly big game. Bill, Phil, Mike Lombardy, and I were the Royalists. John Kennedy, Pat Clifford, Steve Puffenberger, and Dick were the Roundheads.

The game went well for a first play. It's enough like Black Powder to pick up the differences easily (plus we had a "these are the differences" cheat-sheet). Nevertheless, we still managed to fumble at several points and muddle through by recalling "rules" from other games or just making things up (until someone said, "No you can't do that; you're just making it up.")

Phil left early, but managed to win in absentia. His battalia of foote had been heavily engaged in a grand clusterf*** with Steve's battalia. Phil kept winning the melee, but Steve's troops refused to break. By this time the fight was on autopilot and shortly after Phil left, Steve's battalia broke and we called the game a Royalist win.

It was a nice kind of serendipity to go from missing out on the Lord Kalvan game (and Swedish pancakes) to gaming Pike & Shotte with the grumbliest of the grognards—which is what I had wanted to do anyway, I just didn't know they were playing until I showed up.

After that I went home to feed the ravenous cats and prepare for my game Sunday.

Sunday - pancakes and iron

After being roused out of bed by the cats, I got going Sunday morning by heading to Kinko's to print and laminate a few more ship charts for the Sail and Steam Navies game I was hosting that morning. That being done, I stopped off at the Family Pancake House in Shoreline for some Swedish pancakes. While quite good, they're not to scratch with the former Elmer's version, but I had to get my fix in any case.

I got to Enfilade! just after 9:00 AM and got everything set up. Naval games are easy that way. Kevin already had a big blue felt mat out. All I needed to do was position some shoals and set out the ships and ship cards.

The game pitted a Confederate force of three ironclad rams against a Union force of mostly wooden ships with a stiffening of a couple river monitors. The Confederate force included the CSS Tennessee, which is a nasty, brutal kind of ship. Good armor, good guns, and a deadly ram. However, like all Confederate ironclads, its motive power was weak and so the ship's best speed was much slower than the slowest Union ship.

I thought the Confederates would tear up the Union, but they succumbed to the dreaded stack hits, which left them dead in the water. I begin to think that it's a bit of a glitch in the rules. Hit locations are determined by a random D10 roll, so there is a 1:10 chance of hitting the stack. Stacks are unarmored, so even pop-guns can score big against them. When the really big guns come into play, they can blow away the stack in a single roll. I'd rather see the stack being a critical hit, rather than a main target location. That way there would be fewer stack hits in the game and ships wouldn't be immobilized so easily. The last S&SN game we played also saw the Confederates done in by getting their stacks shot away.

The Tennessee did manage to sink one river monitor by ramming and disable a 90-day gunboat by blowing up its steam drum. However, it wasn't enough. CSS Baltic had surrendered, CSS Nashville had its stack and paddle wheels shot away, and when the Tennessee's stack went away it was all over but for swimming to shore.

After the game, a bit more chatting and shopping then off to home. The drive up and back each day was a bit much. 170-mile round trips three days in a row will take it out of you in a hurry. I'm happy to have one more day off to recover before I'm back to the grind.

Swag - the goal of every convention

I managed to pick up a lot of neat new things at the convention. There are a few sellers that I only see once a year, so I maximize my purchases, and there's always a few surprises elsewhere—especially at the bring and buy.

Books - I picked up several books from the bring and buy. One two-volume set was a memoir of a French officer who had served from 1672 to 1710, just the exact period for my Pike & Periwig project. I've read through a bit already and it's fascinating stuff. I also found a copy of GDW's out-of-print Combined Arms "modern" rules (i.e., circa 1980s). These are mostly valuable for the TO&Es that cover all the NATO and WARPAC forces. It's good to have as I plan to expand my "modern" micro armor collection to include more Soviets. I also got Kevin Smyth's copy of FGU's Blue Light Manual from the 70s. I'll probably never play them, but I had a copy way back in the day and you never know what insights you may glean from a rule set.

Terrain - Both Monday Knight Productions and Wizard Kraft were at Enfilade! again. MKP has a line of 6mm buildings that I thought about when we started our modern micro armor project last summer. I was determined to get enough for a several town blocks and did. I hope by our next game to have them all done. I'll opt for a quicker and dirtier paint job than usual, which I can get away with because it's 6mm scale. I figure If I can't see anything that small to pick out the flaws nobody else can.

MKP also had some 40mm scale stone walls at 50¢ for an 8" section or corner piece. End pieces were 25¢. I came away with $15.00 worth, but now think I should have gone the full Jackson's worth. Still it's plenty of stone protection for the ACW figures I'm working on.

I got several fields from Wizard Kraft. William is using a new style for his fields and he only had partially finished versions with him. I got these at $8.00 per square foot rather than $14.00 and all I need to do is finished off the rows of crops on them with some Tacky glue and Woodland Scenics flocking.

Ships 'n' stuff - MKP also had on hand a bunch of items from Bay Area Yards. I had tried getting some of these from the BAY website, but several of what I wanted were unavailable. I picked up several models of smaller river gunboats as well as the initial armored version of the USS Galena. Unable to help myself, I also bought their Fort St. Philip model (Kevin snagged the Fort Jackson). It's very nicely cast in resin with metal guns. I can use it as a generic fort. We don't do a lot of ship vs. shore actions because they're mostly just about shooting.

Thoughts on convention gaming

As promised, here are my few coherent thoughts on convention gaming, which generally run from negative to ambivalent:

A crowd's a crowd - I prefer gaming between friends because the camaraderie is always better and there is some communal commitment to the game we're playing. The atmosphere is also less hectic. Conventions draw a lot of gamers who want to participate in a lot of games. While the gamers truly appreciate the work that game hosts do to put on a game, as a game host, I find it frustrating to try to teach people a game they will likely never play again in a single gaming period so that they (or I) can find something enjoyable or meaningful in the experience. All the while the convention hall is teeming with humanity making a dull, yet sustained, hubbub that renders actual communication to an audience of more than one other gamer impossible.

It's the simplicity, stupid - I like games that provide more complexity and depth in the rules. Whenever someone gushes to me about the sheer genius of a two-page rules set, I have to smile politely and back away slowly. However, that's what a convention game really calls for. To me, the idea of developing a set of rules that can be learned in minutes and then working for months on a project to host a game for other people that I wouldn't want to play myself is crazy. The alternative is to host a game of what I'm currently playing and hope people pick it up; but having done that on more than one occasion, I'm no longer sanguine about the success of that endeavor. I've hosted too many games where I ran the charts for every combat action for every player. It's easy enough to do for small games, but games with more people are exhausting. Simple is better, but I just don't like simple.

Schlepp you much - Ever since I got my 350z, my ability to host an away game (and they're all away games) has been limited. My previous cars weren't big, but had much more storage room. The Z is an engine with two seats. The very limited storage space is rendered even more limited by the stabilizer bar that runs across it. I used to be able to load a lot of stuff into tote boxes, but I can't fit the tote boxes in the car. This means that until I get a new (practical) car, which I don't see happening soon, I'm limited to hosting one game that doesn't require too much in the way of terrain, figures, etc. The only alternative would be to rent an SUV for the weekend.

Doctors are the worst patients - Having hosted so many games at conventions, I find that I don't actually like playing them when I'm not hosting. Being one of the crowd of gamers I don't know being taught a set of rules I don't know by someone I don't know just doesn't make for the best experience. I either pick up a set of rules instantly or get dazed and confused immediately. An hour into a three-hour game and I want to be anywhere else. (Sometimes I feel that way when I'm hosting.)

All that aside, I will surely continue to host games at Enfilade! and may even rent the SUV to schlepp more stuff for multiple games.

Bits and pieces

I have longer blogs to write, but I'm too lazy, so just some dashed off tripe will have to do.

Research, research, research

Writing the rules Pike & Periwig for my 1672 project is enjoyable torment. One of the nicer torments is all the books I've bought recently to research the warfare of the period. Among the nicer finds are the  photo reproductions of 17th c. drill manuals. I was very surprised not only to find them available, but cheap.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) is a scholarly service that gives suitably credentialed types access to a digital wonderland of old books. Being suitably credentialed is the rub. You have to be associated with a member academic institution. Individuals cannot become subscribers. However, EEBO Editions are a number of printed copies of the digital material. I haven't found a complete list of what EEBO Editions offers, but one-by-one I've come across the volumes I was looking for and feared I would never find. Among the treasures I've acquired so far are:

Sir James Turner. Pallas Armata, Military Essayes of the Ancient Grecian, Roman, and Modern art of War, Written in the Years 1670 and 1671. (1683)

John Cruso. The Arte of Warre, or Militarie Discourses of Levying, Marching, Encamping, and Embattling an Armie. (1639)

John Cruso. Militarie Instructions for the Cavalrie, Or, Rules and Directions for the Service of Horse Collected Out of Divers Forrein Authours, Ancient and Modern, and Rectified and Supplied According to the Present Practice of the Low Countrey Warres. (1644)

William Bariffe. Military Discipline: Or, The Young Artillery Man Wherein is Discoursed and Showne the Postures Both of Musket and Pike: The Exactest Way. Together with the Motions which are to be Used. (1635)

These are a bit much to plod through at times, but perseverance has its rewards and the books provide answers to the crucial questions about what, exactly, a unit could do. For writing rules about facings, formations changes, wheeling, etc. these are invaluable. Even though most of them date to the Thirty Years War period, they are based on the tactical reforms of Maurice of Nassau, which remained dominant into the 1690s.

Another great find was the two volumes of William Guthrie's Battles of the Thirty Years War: From White Mountain to Nordlingen 1618-1635 and The Later Thirty Years War: From the Battle of Wittstock to the Treaty of Westphalia. These are a terrific resource for the period and are the only source for detailed information about these battles. For each battle, Guthrie includes full orders of battle with unit strengths and clear maps of the deployments. There is nothing else like this in English. Guthrie also includes a lot of explanation of the tactics used. As with the drill manuals, it's a little anachronistic, but not much. From Maurice's reforms in the late 16th c. to the 1690s, the change was gradual. The biggest changes affected the way that Imperial armies fought. The giant tercios of Tilly and Wallenstein gave way to the smaller battalions of Maurice and the and tactical finesse introduced by Gustavus Adolphus. English military drill, which is reflected in the manuals, was based on the Dutch and Swedish models throughout the 17th c. Maurice had his battalions in eight ranks; Gustavus reduced infantry battalions to six ranks, which were widely adopted before the end of the Thirty Years War and remained the standard depth until the end of the century.

I have a few more books on the way about tactical aspects of the Dutch Wars (1568 to 1648) and am contemplating yet another I saw on Amazon. It's not cheap. These books never are.

Rules writing

I had a great brainstorm this weekend and got a lot of work done on the close combat rules for Pike & Periwig. I'm just polishing them now and creating the illustrations for them in Adobe Illustrator. I hope to get them in complete draft form soon so I can get some feedback (ridicule, scorn, contumely) from reviewers.

I have no intention of going commercial with these, so I feel free to indulge my own instincts rather than try to make a popular set—as if rules for the period 1660 to 1680 were going to set the wargaming hobby on fire anyway.

I'm hearing about some local interest in the rules, so I hope that getting them in a draft form will inspire a few people to paint units for the period. If I have to paint everything, I'll be 70 before I'm ready to play my first game.

Painting

I've got the horseflesh painted for my first cavalry unit in the 1672 project. I'm working on the horse furniture and uniforms of the riders now.

I've also got several guns painted or nearly so. Old Glory makes a nice falconet model. I recently got two of The Assault Group falconets which are a different style. I've painted the Old Glory falconets with red carriages for the French. I'll paint The Assault Group falconets for the Austrians, although I'm not sure what color their carriages were in this period. Yellow ochre,—or did that come later? I know that English carriages were light gray since the New Model Army and remained so. It's not unlikely that Austria would stick with one color from the start.

Even though the guns are ready, the gunners are yet to appear from North Star. I've heard since January that the gunners for the North Star 1672 range are just about ready, I fear I have longer to wait than I hoped. North Star did recently release two packs of flintlock musketeers for the range. I'm intrigued, of course, but the matchlock was still near-universal in my period.

Dullcote

There must be a conspiracy in the Pacific Northwest to deprive us of dullcote. It can't be found! Hobby stores that would sell it are getting rarer. Galaxy Hobby near me carries a lot of model paint. I've been able to get the Testor's Dullcote I crave from them before, but they've been out the last several times I've checked. I've also gone to craft stores that have a small model kit section with a smattering of Testor's paint. They would have some, but they've been out, too. I finally just ordered three cans direct from Testor's.  I can't believe that I couldn't just find it to buy off the shelf. It gave me cold shudders to think that this may be a portent of a dying world of hobby stores.

Pikes and periwigs

I finally completed my first battalion for my 1672 project. As I posted earlier, it's regiment Vivarais (with azure coats because that's what my Susane print shows). Also, at this time it was Regiment D'Albret. You never realize how much bloody detail is on these figures until you paint them. I finished and based the pike stands about two days before I completed the musketeers. Those bandoliers are tedious.

This is a good start to the project—along with the rules Pike & Periwig that are progressing along. What's nice about having the unit painted is that I get a better feel for how my ideas actually translate to figures and bases.

The possible formations for an infantry regiment are spelled out on page 11 of my rules:

My inspiration for the page was Bill Protz' set of English Civil War rules (Wargamers Guide to the English Civil War) where he used similar diagrams:

It's funny how those diagrams (and the letters PEP DOS) have stayed in my head for more than 30 years...

These diagrams also nicely represent the look of 17th c. drill manuals:

Which is the feel I'm going for with the rules. The formations, now that I can actually try them out, are Line:

Close Order:

Hedge-Hogge:

And March Order:

Next up is a squadron of cavalry and some guns. I will also clean and prime another unit of foot. I may get ambitious and get two ready. I think I'll go with two battalions of the Regiment Picardie (in actual gray coats). I have the flags coming from GMB Designs.

I also have two partially-painted Savoyard battalions that I started a long time back when Bill Stewart, Rich Knapton, Doug Hamm, and I were conspiring on an earlier version of this project. So far, only one stand of pikes is completed and based:

This is on a single 60mm x 60mm base, so I'll rebase them on two 60mm x 30mm bases. I also need to replace my home-brewed flag with one of the ones that I found recently.