Of Dice and (Tin) Men: The House of War

My plan all along was to return to Connecticut after I finished my Residency training. I figured that I would join an existing medical group. My wife (also from Connecticut) and I had pretty much decided that we wanted to settle either along the shore East of New Haven, or in the hills of Litchfield county. Rather unexpectedly, I wound up assuming the practice of an older physician who was relocating. Pretty much day 1 of my practice, I was admitting patients to the hospital, and using the full scope of my training (aside form obstetrics). I was also on call 24/7, seven days a week. That lead to very  little gaming or painting taking place for several years (although the condo we rented had a full basement and I had a ping pong table for gaming). One of the early viistors to the practice (on a social call, rather than medical!) was my old wargames freind from UConn and beyond, Joe Fish.

The newspaper covering the center of the ping pong table on this somewhat faded photo means that it was taken in the living room of the 4 bedroom condo I shared with three other students during my last three years of medical school; most likely in 1983 We didn't use the living room of the condo at all and had virtually no furniture in it, so I kept the table folded up in the corner, and took it down only for games. The opponent was likely either Joe Fish or Dave Sweet. 

A shot of my Minifigs Danes from circa 1983 deployed non the kitchen table of our appartment in NJ on one of the hex gridded 2 x 3 foot panels of Masonite with the self adhesive hex grid sheets (sold for use with the  Frappe! rules back in the early 1970's). 

    Within a few years we had added two daughters and moved to a house, and I finally had a call group to ease the workload some.  A full basement for gaming was of course an essential requirement for the house! My in-laws contributed a second, no longer used, ping pong table. In my down time I then constructed an unnecessarily massive tabletop to go over the ping pong tables and also raise the table height up another 5" to a more comfortable height for use while standing (I am 6'4" tall!). In  the process I also accommodated one inconveniently situated support column for the house.The final table was (and is) 20 feet long by 6 feet wide.

Probably one of the first wargames played in the basement of our new home, using the original (hex gridded) version of Legio Quarternarius. The back of the picture reads "Battle of the Adopted Dunes, March 16, 1985". Note the many red "death shrouds"!  The Adopted reference is probably to my friend Charlie and his wife having adopted their first child. Armies are Mauryan Indian and Carthage, I think.

Now having a 20 foot long wargames table, I did a "Grand Parade" of my entire Napoleonic Collection. Sadly, the pictures came out way too dark. Digital photography is much easier - you see the shots right away and re-do them if they come out poorly! 

Lots of troops even then!

Another shot, Allies to the left, French and their satelites to the right. 

Troops stretch as far as the eye can see, and beyond!  This was circa 1988.

This was the age of GeoHex (introduced circa 1984, I believe, and produced through circa 2003), so I gradually acquired almost all of the sets, and made some awesome looking miniature battlefields - the base level of the table was painted medium blue to use with the Geohex (streams/rivers/shoreline), as well as for Naval games.

Some of the many pieces in a GeoHex set

For those of you unfamiliar with GeoHex, it is based upon large rigid Styrofoam Hexagons, 12" across parallel sides, some with roads printed onto them geographically. The slope side pieces gave 1,2,3,4,5, or 6 vertices of the hexagon shape, with an additional long thin piece. Anyway, it is possible to make some really wonderful tabletops with this stuff. It is however, rather time consuming to plan out and execute a layout, especially when also using the supplemental sets that straighten the table edges, add steep slopes, and so on. 

My original Renaissance armies on GeoHex terrain.

Swiss pikes on the hill.

Two Spanish Tercios with supporting Organ guns.

Better shot of the Swiss.

Mounted crossbowmen and Arquebusiers; walls from the Hovels "Spanish Village" set. 

Artillery and foot Arquebusiers.

    Once we had the basement and table set, my house became the site for the 3 to four games a year that I could coordinate with the other 3 guys of my original warganes group all of whom were within about an hour's drive in various directions. We played a lot of Legio Quarternarius, including some round robin very informal tournament type actions, using various early (Assyria - Republican Rome - Macedonian - Carthage - Mauryan Indian)  or late (Sassanid Persia - Palmyra - Byzantium - Teutonic Knights) army groupings. 

    We continued to play Napoleonics, and tried out some of the "new" wargames rules, including Napoleon's Battles by Bob Coggins and Craig Taylor. While I liked some of the ideas in NB, overall it wasn't my cup of tea. Charlie liked the rules a lot, however. Since the table and almost all of the figures were mine, you can guess whose opinion won out! I had the pleasure of sitting opposite Bob Coggins and alongside Jim Getz (Empire, Napoleonique) and his wife at a Chevaliers de Neptune ("Don't ask!!") dinner hosted by Bob Jones at Historicon in  (Lancaster, PA) in 2003.  Quite lively conversation, most of it having little to do with either wargaming... or the Napoleonic Wars!

The original version of Napoleon's Battles (1st edition published 1989), the first attempt at really widespread marketing of a miniature wargame, distributed by The Avalon Hill Game Company, the giant of the military board games industry.  Sadly Craig passed away in 2012, and Bob passed away suddenly a few months ago. (Image from Boardgame Geek).

Meanwhile, we continued with our ever changing house Napoleonic wargames rules, which I termed "Code Napoleon". Those reached their final evolution with two developments. One was the publication of Don Featherstone's "new" wargames book, Featherstone's Complete Wargaming in 1989, and an article by Brent Oman in the Midewst Wargamer's Association Newsletter at about the same time.

This book of Don's holds an honored place in my collection, (along with several others), also published in 1989. Those only familiar with Don's much earlier rules will be surprised to see the evolution of his ideas in this one! I also had the pleasure of meeting Don in person at Historicon ? 2008, courtesy of an intro by Jim, Getz. At age 88

 From Don's chapter on the Napoleonic Wars came the idea of replacing many of the traditional modifiers for combat with a grid based upon the formations of the attacker and defender, one each for fire and one for melee, and rolling a D10 to determine the outcome. From Brent's article came the idea of using different Polyhedral dice for different troop quality - the bigger the die type, the better the troops... so Militia types would roll a D6, Conscripts/Raw troops a D8,  Regulars a D10, Crack troops a D12 and Guards a D20!  I'll present those rules, which I named Code Napoleon, in the next post of this series.