A Return To The 18th Century

My 18th C diorama, somewhere in Prussia

 Historicon is now a thing of the past and so now I can start my New War Gaming Year. The idea is that the game project for the next Historicon/Little Wars convention starts at the conclusion of just ended Historicon. It is sort of like corporations opting to use a "financial year" rather than the "calendar year" to start measuring their annual revenue and income figures. For example, a company might decide that it wants to end its year on June 30th of each year. So their financial year starts on July 1st rather than January 1st. It is all a twelve month period no matter when you start it.

So War Game Project Year starts on August 1, 2024 this year and will end on July 31, 2025.

What kind of game or historical period should I focus on for next season's convention circuit? My initial thought was to do another 54mm showcase game featuring Hannibal of Carthage versus Republican Rome. After all, this project has 75% of the needed figures already painted and based and I can repurpose the Khartoum walls for those of a Roman or Carthaginian city. Thus a lot of the work for the project is already done. I can paint one more Roman legion, more cavalry for both sides, and build some Roman town buildings to enhance the look of the game.

Two Roman Republic era legions. 54mm Armies In Plastic figures

Were I to do a giant 54mm Hannibal game over three game tables I would want to arrange things so that there is action going on at all three tables at approximately the same time. Or, I might run two different game scenarios on the tables to attract more gamers. This year at both Little Wars and Historicon I noticed that the number of players signing up for the fourth game fell off from the attendance of the first three games. If a person has already played in my Hannibal game then it is unlikely that they would want to play in the same game again, unless I ran a different scenario on another day.

I could envision something like the Carthaginians laying siege to a Roman walled city on one or two tables while on the third table another Roman army is arriving to relieve the siege. Two different battles could be fought on the same tables in this manner. Think about it: we bring back walls, scaling ladders and lots of D6 dice. Add to that some siege equipment such as towers, battering rams, and rubber band catapults. I like the sound of that.

A provincial Roman city circa 2nd Punic War

For a brief nanosecond I gave thought to doing Napoleon in Spain or Waterloo with 54mm plastic figures. Mrs Fritz cuffed me across the back of my head when she heard me and said, "are you crazy!" Rather than answering that question in the affirmative I chose to nod my head up and down and say something like "of course Dear, you are right. What was I thinking?"

My mule thinks you're crazy. He doesn't like being around crazy people.

We are most certainly not amused.

On the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea to give the 3-table extravaganza in 54mm game format a rest for one year. After two years, the format is not the shiny new thing anymore. I don't want to turn it into a "been there, done that" format. I like gaming with 54mm figures but I don't want to over do it. Sometimes it is good to know when to switch things up and go in a different direction. Besides, I could return the following year with a 54mm Hannibal game and then it would seem fresh again.

I could present a 28mm game, on a smaller table or two, with lots of scratch built terrain models. The thing is, 28mm games and smaller don't have that pizzaz effect that 54mm figures provide the the first time that you see that game. One can't count on the 54mm figures to provide that "get" that will attract people to your convention game. A 28mm game needs to compensate for its smaller figures  with some visuals such as great looking terrain and well painted and based figures. A current example is some of the WW2 games put on by the Two Fat Lardies sector of the war game continuum. At Historicon this year I saw quite a few Normandy games with superb scenics - buildings, roads, you name it - and only a few figures. All of these games were sold out. That tells me something.

And you had better come up with an interesting scenario that is going to capture the imagination of the Public. One problem with running a Seven Years War game is that linear warfare is basically "line them up across from each other and fire away." That might have worked twenty years ago, maybe even ten years ago, but I don't think that it works for today's war gamers.

I think that smaller skirmish or grand skirmish style games are in the sweet spot of what convention goers are looking for. If I were to run a SYW skirmish game with my Croat Terror rules then that might fill the bill of what the public is looking for. Oh wait a minute, that didn't turn out very well for me three years ago. A French and Indian War game might have more appeal even though it is in the same time space of the mid 18th Century. With next year being the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution (ok, AWI for you foreigners) I might consider some kind of a Lexington and Concord scenario. Imagine, lots of individually mounted Fife and Drum Miniatures British soldiers marching down the length of the table as they try to make it back to safety in Boston. I would bet that there will be a lot of AWI games at Historicon next year. Darn it all, now you all have got me saying AWI instead of the American Revolutionary War. Sigh.... when in Rome, do like the Romans do.

OK, now quite a few of my readers right now are wondering what all of this has to do with the blog post title "A Return to the 18th Century?

Well it started out in the right direction, but then I got sidetracked more than a little bit.

A quiet Prussian farm village. Note the Prussian hussars lurking in the trees.

Cossacks!

That may be, but we will match them with our lancers.
Bosniaken lancers from Minden Miniatures

I'm still working through war gamers' burnout post-Historicon and I couldn't be bothered to lift a paint brush and paint figures or move little metal men around the table top. However, I do like to set up terrain on my game table and this is something that I never tire of. I decided to set up an 18th Century diorama on my two game tables in the basement.  I designed some small villages and placed these in the four corners of the overall pair of tables. The villages are populated with a fair number of civilians and over the next couple of weeks I might add some gubbins and other bric a brac to the diorama. The scene takes place somewhere in Prussian Silesia and one of the towns is a garrison town whose soldiers protect the area from those dastardly and barbaric Russians. Cossacks have been making raids on these towns and King Frederick II has had about enough of these raiders looting and burning his villages. There will be reprisals in the near future as a trap is being set to lure the Cossacks and other Russian cavalry into the territory where they will be set upon by a very large number of Prussian cavalrymen. This is the prelude to the larger all-cavalry SYW game that I was talking about a couple of months ago. 

More on this later.