2  Battlegames

OSPREYP U B L I S H I N G

SQUAD-LEVEL COMBAT: 1945 – PRESENT

Mil Wargames ad.qxd:Layout 1 10/1/11 15:56 Page 1

Battlegames  3

Battlegames magazine is a bimonthly publication of Battlegames Ltd, 17 Granville Road, Hove BN3 1TG, East Sussex. Company No. 5616568.

All content © Battlegames and its contributors. Strictly no reproduction without prior written consent. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the individual authors and reviewers concerned.

Editor: Henry Hyde

Email: henry@battlegames.co.uk

Phone: +44 (0)1273 323320.

Web: www.battlegames.co.uk

Blog: http://battlegames.wordpress.com/

FaceBook: www.facebook.com/battlegames

Twitter: http://twitter.com/battlegames

Podcasts: “View from the Veranda” with Neil Shuck can be

downloaded from www.meeplesandminiatures.co.uk/ “Letters from an Editor” www.battlegames.co.uk/podcasts/podcasts_intro.html

Design, layout and typesetting by Henry Hyde in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop on Apple Intel iMac running Mac OSX. Set in Adobe Warnock Pro and Helvetica Neue.

Copy editing and proofing by Henry Hyde and Steve Gill

Printed by Treetop on environmentally-friendly paper.

Photography by Henry Hyde using Fuji S7000 except where otherwise credited.

Advertisers, businesses wishing to send samples for photography and review should contact the Editor.

All event notifications for inclusion in our calendar should be sent to Richard Tyndall (Tricks) of the Newark Irregulars at richard.tyndall@ntlworld.com

TRADE PLEASE NOTE: Battlegames does NOT ask its

reviewers to contact companies direct unless by previous arrangement authorised by the Editor in writing. In all other cases, please send items for review to the address above

Subscription enquiries should be addressed to the Editor or you can subscribe online. For current rates see p.40 and the website at www.battlegames.co.uk

PLEASE KEEP US ADVISED OF ANY POSTAL OR EMAIL ADDRESS CHANGES. STAY IN TOUCH!

All submissions and articles should initially be sent to the Editor. We recommend submission of articles via email. Battlegames Ltd takes no responsibility for unsolicited articles. Please apply or see our website for submission guidelines.

Copy and advertising closing date for next edition: July 22nd 2011.

Many thanks to all of you who voted for the very first Terry Wise

Award, and let me put you out of your misery immediately by telling you that the first ever recipient of this honour is none other than Battlegames stalwart Mike Siggins. After a long career penning opinion pieces in Wargames Illustrated before he joined the ranks

here, I think it is most fitting that the award should go to a man to whose opinions many thousands of readers have turned first, whether they agreed with him or not. He has also gained a reputation as a bibliophile and a keen brushman, and it has been delightful to see some of his own work appearing in these very pages recently.

How sad, then, for me to have to report that this issue also sees the last of Mike’s ‘Forward Observer’ columns for the time being. The flipside of being the man whose ear is constantly to the ground, listening out for the hoofbeats of progress, is that what arrives can be a stampede of products and trends that can, quite simply, overwhelm a fellow and leave him feeling trampled on the battlefield of what should be a hobby. And so, the time has come for him to take a break, rest and recharge his batteries. What’s certain is that you cannot keep a good man down, and I predict that the much-loved Mr Siggins will be back in one form or another before long.

In the meantime, however, an Editor cannot sit still and, like a general replacing troops in the front line, reinforcements have been called up. Neil Shuck, who many of you will know from my adventures with him on the airwaves, introduces himself this issue with an overview of boardgaming, and next issue will sit himself in Mike’s very warm seat at Forward Observer. The best of luck to him as he dares to match Mike’s eagle eye for the hobby.

Now, those of you who have been keeping an eye on me will know that I spent an extended Royal Wedding weekend in Yorkshire not, in fact, paying homage to Their Highnesses, but instead in the marvellous company of a band of wargamers who, with a great deal of help, I managed to corral into a village hall in East Ayton for the climax of my imaginary 18th century mini-campaign, the Grenouissian Intermezzo, an extension, indeed, of my Wars of the Faltenian Succession. I know that some people hold that if you catch an Editor contributing

Editorial Contents

Cover: Tim Hall’s 1st Braunschweig Kürassiere (converted Perry Miniatures) crash into Mark Phillips’ West Ayton Musketeers as the 1st Braunschweig Musketeers, sculpted by the amazing John Ray, look on. A shot taken by the Editor at the East Ayton weekend climax of The Grenouissian Intermezzo.

Editorial  3

Meet the flockers  4Diane Sutherland, UK

Forward Observer  7Mike Siggins, UK

Rules and the eclipse of generalship  9Dave Brown, UK

DBA at 21  13Dan Mersey, UK

Command challenge  17Bill Protz, USA

Treading the boards  22Neil Shuck, UK

The Grenouissian Intermezzo part 1  26Henry Hyde with Andy McMaster et al, UK

Hidden Deployment for Warmaster  33Peter Andrew Jones, UK

Recce  36New goodies reviewed by our team

The Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal: update  41Our campaign to help support ex-service personnel continues

Competition and classified ads  42Another great competition

Events June-August  43Richard Tyndall, UK

to their own magazine, then it must mean he’s short of articles. Well, as those poor souls waiting their turn will testify, this is far from the case – but as umpire and overseer, it simply had to be me who provided the report that begins in this issue, which I hope you will enjoy.

Finally, Bob Barnetson’s piece about Napoleonic grand tactical rulesets caused some feathers to be ruffled, and apologies to Alex Testo & Bob Carter, authors of De Bellis Napoleonicis (DBN), because the version featured in the article was apparently out of date. Alex explains: “DBN is a stand-alone set of rules and is designed for grand tactical Napoleonic wargaming, with a one-base unit representing a brigade sized formation; however, the rules can easily represent battalion sized units. The rules follow the principles of the DBx system with one significant difference: there is a three-step unit attrition system.” Visit the website at http://www.dbnwargaming.co.uk/ for more details.

4  Battlegames

Meet the flockersThe continuing tales of a wargames widow

by Diane Sutherland

No, this article does not star Robert de Niro, Dustin Hoffman or Ben Stiller. Neither is there any connection with sheep, although the wargamer’s

paternal grandmother was Welsh. I googled ‘flock’ after hearing the wargamer utter it several times. Bizarrely, there is an entire industry related to all things flock-related. I came away with the notion it involved micro-particles, so there would be more work for Mr Dyson.

bOne of the wargamer’s favourite shops sells model

railway related bits and pieces. He’s always sneaking in bags of static grass, ballast (aka cat litter), clump foliage, whatever that is, and flock. For flock, read ‘dyed sawdust’. I just wish I hadn’t asked him why he was paying £2 for a small bag of discoloured wood shavings.

bHobbycraft had just opened in Norwich and the

wargamer had a voucher to spend. Amongst the paints, brushes, balsa and adhesives we found Dylon cold wash dyes. It was a great blessing; I had had visions of the wargamer wanting to fill my washing machine with sawdust! Dylon has an interesting range of greens and browns, but if you want a specific and bespoke flock colour, simply mix blue and yellow until you have the ideal shade.

We actually began with what was left of a large bucket of fence panel stain. It was marked up as ‘forest green’, it was cheap and cheerful and from a DIY store. Next came a visit to Pets World, although any pet shop will probably stock rodent bedding. Go for the sawdust rather than the coarser variety. From experience, the bulk of the sawdust is ‘blonde wood’, probably pine. The bigger particles not only seem to repel the stains and dyes, but look too unsightly for most wargaming uses. The hamster bedding sawdust is less than £2 a bag; believe me, you can make a lot of flock with one bag, as it is compacted into a tight little bale.

For our test dyeing we simply poured three quarters of a bale into the fence panel stain bucket. We then gave

it a vigorous stir; it is recommended that you leave it for a couple of days. You can churn the mixture, but after two days the majority of the stain will have been soaked up by the sawdust. Tip out the damp sawdust and leave to dry for a few days. You will need to turn it over to expose the damper patches at the bottom. The net result was very good – a nice, even colouring of dark green.

Now the wargamer wanted to try out the Dylon dyes. After a restock of hamster bedding, we were ready to go into mass production. Remember to get the cold water dye; it is designed to give a fast colour without having to boil the sawdust mix. You will need:• A large bucket, preferably at least 15 litres, with a lid• One sachet of Dylon cold water dye• A measuring jug• One bale of hamster bedding• A large seed tray, or similar, for the drying process• A stirring stick (the wargamer used one

of my wooden spoons for this!)

All you need to do is to boil a kettle and measure out half a litre (500ml) then pour the sachet into the bucket and add the boiling water. Mix thoroughly until all the powder has dissolved. Now top up the bucket to around a third or The key ingredients and tools to make your own flock.

Adding the cold water dye to the boiling water in the bucket.

Adding cold water to the dye mix determines the final shade of your flock.

1

2

3

Battlegames  5

half with cold water. The amount of water that you add at this stage will determine the depth of colour. You can add more water later if you feel that the mixture is too dry.

Pour the contents of the hamster bedding bale, bit by bit, into the bucket. Break up any big lumps and stir the mixture as you add it. You are looking to create a consistency rather like porridge. If the mixture is too wet, it will take days to dry, so just keep adding the sawdust and continue stirring.

We left the mixture in the bucket for two days, checking it from time to time to make sure there weren’t any lumps of sawdust that had failed to colour. We turned a mixture with a spoon so that the drier sawdust at the top was switched around with the wetter sawdust from the bottom of the bucket.

Adding the hamster bedding to the dyed water mixture.

Adding the last of the sawdust gives a moist but not overly wet final mixture.

Stirring is essential and you will begin to see the final colour that will be achieved, although be aware that it will lighten slightly as it dries.

The final result of the Dylon dyed hamster bedding is an ideal mid-green. If there are any clumps, these will break up between your fingers.

The results of the fence panel stain test; a far darker green, which can be achieved by mixing the correct proportions of Dylon dyes.

4

5

6

7

8

6  Battlegames

Assuming that you do not want your hands to look as if they belong to the Hulk, use a pair of latex gloves to begin the process of transferring the mixture onto a seed tray. You may want to gently squeeze each handful to reduce the liquid content. Previously, we have tried it with newspaper instead of a seed tray, but the newspaper gets too wet and breaks up. To speed things up, we left the seed tray in front of a dehumidifier; again, you will have to periodically turn the drying mixture. By the second day, the sawdust was dry and ready to use.

You can use the homemade flock for a host of wargame-related tasks. It is the vital ingredient for making trees, hedges and bocage and it sticks well to horsehair or clumps of sisal. I could see why the wargamer was so keen to get in a big stock of flock. He has been working on more bocage for Normandy and he had decided to make some camouflaged machinegun nests.

About two years ago, I bought something that looked like the most useless umbrella you had ever seen. It was made of white netting and actually designed to place over food or cakes to keep insects at bay. It had seen better days, but the wargamer clearly had a use for it. With my best dressmaking scissors in hand, he set about cutting it up into little oblongs and squares. I rolled my eyes in despair; a natural reaction, I am sure you will agree? He then squeezed

out paint onto his glass palette and then slightly watered it down and proceeded to dunk the netting into the paint. Once dry, I have to admit it did look like camouflage netting. Small twigs were then used to make basic frameworks over the machinegun teams, secured with Superglue.

Our old friend Mr Wood Glue was then deployed and brushed onto the camouflage netting. Whilst it was still wet, the wargamer sprinkled his new flock onto the netting. He left it to dry; the poor German soldiers were left buried up to their necks in sawdust. As the wood glue dried, a solid bond fixed the sawdust, and the excess was then tapped off and back into the container.

bA perusal of the photographs of the machine gun nests

below will reveal some rather splendid sandbags. I confess to having made them, a fact I am quite proud of. They were made by rolling out an extremely long, thin sausage of air drying clay and then, using a Stanley knife blade, cut into sandbag-sized chunks. I squidged each end of the sandbag to make it look like a pillow and then let it harden off. A word of warning if you intend to make these sandbags: do not rely on their inherent stickiness and assume that they will bond together to make a permanent structure. We tried this once but our gun emplacement collapsed overnight – and it wasn’t even under fire from the enemy!

Left – Two of the German machine gun nests, using twigs, dyed netting and the homemade flock.

Above – The two other camouflage machine gun nests, with the dyed netting clearly visible. Note the

handmade sandbags made from air-drying clay.