Tag archives for Wars and Conflicts - Page 6
Book Review – Field of Fire: Diary of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab
Field of Fire: Diary of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read the hardback version very shortly after it came out. I collect first hand accounts of the WW2 and unit histories of the 51st Highland Division in particular, so this one was a must buy. That said it is one of the best first hand accounts that I have read, and certainly the best from a gunner (it comparies favourably to George Blackburn's Guns of War series - he was also a Forward Observation Officer). You can have no doubt about the hardships of war, what the conditions were like for both the gunners on the gun line and the infantry on the front line. The book is very descriptive without becoming flowery and it avoids glossing over some of the less…
Charlie Company, Peter Cochrane
This is a history of C Company 2nd Bn Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders in the western desert, Sudan & Eritrea, Keren and then in Italy. They were part of 4th Indian Division. The author was an officer who did all his active service with the same infantry company and this covers his experiences and those of his company. Synopsis Of the many books about the last war, some offer the general's view of an entire battlefield, others have been individual experiences or divisional histories. "Charlie Company" is something original, the story of a rifle company of the Cameron Highlanders whose record of service in the Western Desert, Eritrea, and throughout the Italian campaign fully deserves this tribute to their courage and endurance. Peter Cochrane joined the company as a young platoon commander in 1940. He won an MC in their first action in Libya, and followed this with a DSO for…
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CLWG Games Weekend 2007 Reports
Siege of Yendor Tryout Jim put on a session to try out the mechanisms for the upcoming megagame. We spent some time trying to bring down a section of wall, and also seeing whether or not it was possible to directly assault the wall without first undermining or demolishing it. Jim's Breeding Idea This was a design session rather than a game, but we gave it a good go none the less. Jim had come away from the Light of the Trees megagame with an idea that it ought to be possible to do a sub-component of a game about breeding heroes using some real genetics theory. The main aim was that, like in real life, the players managing the breeding programme wouldn't actually know what the actual genetic make up of their characters were. Over time those players that were keeping an eye on things…
Hot Blood & Cold Steel – onside Report
This was a design session on how to do a WW1 skirmish game, focusing mainly delivering a participation game for Jerry Elsmore’s 50th Birthday con. I’d already done a first darft of the rules but wanted to talk through some of the principles about what I wanted to achieve. I found the discussion particularly useful in clarifying my methods for running a participation game at a show. Gone is the idea of having all the action in a static circle of squares that represented all that could be seen (I may do this at CLWG sometime as I still like the idea, although it would be too time-consuming for being run at a show). I did get some ideas for making changes to the terrain though so that it would only become clear when figures entered the square in question.…
Revolutionary Warfare – onside report
When I played Andy Grainger’s A Month in Country I immediately thought of some of the parallels with my Revolutionary Warfare game. I have run this at CLWG couple of times, although with only a few players. I would particularly like to re-do the Palestine game as one player in particular couldn’t cope with the concept of the role that they were given. (I won’t name names, but those that were there know who I am talking about – the British Governor wanted a PR power sharing assembly between the Palestinians and the Jews). Revolutionary Warfare The concept I was playing with was similar to Andy’s but on a slightly larger scale. At the time of design I was considering producing ‘Lion Comes Home’ as a megagame. So the Revolutionary Warfare module had to work very smoothly. It is essentially one sided. A small group of…