First, an apology to my email subscribers. The notification for my most recent post (yesterday) never went out. I don’t think the one for the previous post to that (back in December) went out either. I think I’ve resolved the problem, but I’ll only know once I’ve posted this one.

What I announced yesterday was my plan to digress into WW2 gaming with my 1943 20mm project. Apart from that digression, my hope is to post more frequently, to provide a record of what I’m doing.

How is my original, Napoleonic, project going? My last game was Salamanca when I used a personally adapted version of Horse, Foot Guns rules. I will probably rerun this game later this year, amending the command rules a bit to address the problems faced in that game.

Meanwhile I have been plodding on with my new rules for big battles. I have had several false starts. The pattern is that I have several bright idea, but as I work them into a prototype, I realise that my creation is vastly over-engineered, and so I’m back to the drawing board. My basic concept now is to have units similar to Bloody Big Battles (BBB), but with more cavalry and artillery bases. The game will be divided into hourly “turns” but these may be subdivided into two or three moves by each side where there is interaction. That is quite a complicated idea, so it’s no wonder than I am struggling to turn it into simple mechanisms. But the show goes on – I think something very interesting will emerge eventually.

Meanwhile, I will give some serious thought to reviving BBB. There have been a couple of interesting articles in the wargames mags on adapting it to Napoleonic or near-Napoleonic, away from its original brief for Bismarck’s wars. This presents the best chance of getting my Napoleonic metal into a club night game. The rules are simple, and relatively easy to bring into a multi-player format.

But the focus for now will be 1943!

Matthew