What you missed at the January meeting of CLWG
The Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) January meeting (Sunday 9th January) was in Jim's office near Holborn. This one had 14 members in attendance. When I turned up there was a promotion board going on for one of the characters in our long-running Starship Marine campaign (details of the campaign and a history of the 130th Regiment). To make this more interesting for the players who were on the board ( the interviewers) there were a couple of candidates for promotion, including one marine Captain who brought a bomb in with him to prove how easy they were to defuse. A nice piece of live role-play from Jerry (who improvised the bombs immediately beforehand.) I was called upon to defuse the device which consisted of an ice-cream box with an anti-tilt device on it and a fuse inside which had…
CLWG December 1999 – Offside Report
What you missed at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) December meeting. In December we started from 12 at John Rutherford's house and played until after 9pm and chatted with the aid of several bottles of wine until almost midnight. In total we had 13 members at the meeting. It started with a fairly light-hearted game called 'Battling Druids' which was originally designed by Trevor Farrant as a participation game for wargames shows for another club that he is a member of. This involves four 100mm models of druids, four fountains, a cloud with a lighting bolt, hordes of hedges, magic spells and a whole lot of fun. A sergeant air-gunner mans his Vickers 'K' gun from the rear cockpit of a Fairey Battle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Next up was an RAF Aircrew RPG which I ran with the help…
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Invasion of the West – Onside Report
Invasion of the West was a Cold War turned hot alternative history game that I ran at the March meeting of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG). Having cast around for someone to do a plan for Invasion of the West Mukul volunteered, even though he wasn’t able to turn up on Saturday. Mukul’s plan is at the end of this report along with the umpire briefings, but in essence it was for a pre-emptive chemical strike on 1 British Corps near Hanover followed by a mad dash for Antwerp. Division of Europe during the Cold War. Blue = US led NATO, Red = USSR led Warsaw pact. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) On the day Andy Reeve, John Rutherford, Dave Boundy, Terry Martin and Brian Cameron turned up. Andy and John played the Soviets/Warsaw Pact forces with Dave Boundy as their LU.…
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Chaos, Confusion, Cowardice & Incompetence (C3I) – Onside Report
One of the things you missed was C3I which actually turned up and was played in the afternoon (because I always turn up at lunchtime and much prefer twice as many half-day meetings). Although this was a figure game it was scenery light and what was used was pretty abstract and flat, despite the original scenario being set on a hill. C3I is really a morale-based system for infantry combat which is intended to show how everything goes for a ball of chalk once the shooting starts. The outcomes it produced appeared to be reasonably realistic based on the reading I've done on infantry actions. My aim was to produce a very simple quick system that used morale as its key attribute and would give a realistic result for infantry actions. Most of the psychology of warfare stuff I've read…
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Cameronians
This was originally posted on the Command Decision mailing list (now defunct). The Cameronians, aka Poisoned Dwarfs. The 2ic of my UOTC carried the Regimental Colour in their disbandment parade. Our RQMS used to tell a story of his worst time on duty was when the Cameronians were taking over a barracks from the Highland Light Infantry (HLI) and he was on the rear party for the HLI. He was assigned to guard the armoury and the Cameronian officer told them that on no account were they to open the armoury for anyone, and if they broke in they were to shoot them. The officer then proceeded to issue them with several hundred rounds of belted ammo as well as two magazines worth for their sten guns. Our RQMS and his mates thought the officer was a bit touched and stowed…