Hot Blood & Cold Steel

Category: CLWG

  • The 200 Foot General

    This is the third post on my Operational Research driven wargame rules (and it’s probably about time that I came up with a catchy name for them, ideas in the comments section most welcome). One of the most unrealistic things I find in most commercial wargames that I have read or played is that it…

  • 2D Morale Chart

    Further to the previous post Faith in Morale I’ve tried to synthesize the varioius readings on military psychology into a set of morale rules that might give a realistic ebb and flow to an engagement. I’ve not had a chance to test these yet, but here’s what the chart looks like. Reading through the various…

  • Faith in Morale

    Does having faith give soldiers an edge in dealing with combat?

  • Counterfeit Game Money

    At Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group we design and play a lot of games involving game money. We do this to the extent that we often joke that all you need for a game are CLWG members and some (play) money.  By definition none of this is real, but in game terms it is always genuine.…

  • Game Design Notes: World War One Strategic Battles

    This was originally written as a game design session prompt for a session at Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group back in April 2004. A discussion thread on about this excellent blog post http://sketchinggamedesigns.blogspot.com.es/2014/01/the-wrinkles-of-tactics-first-world-war.html lead me to dig it out and post it here. World War One Strategic Battles Turn structure Three turns per year, March – June…

  • CLWG December 2013 Meeting

    Alexander and I went along to today’s session of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group in Anerley. Despite the engineering works we still got there in time to take part in both sessions, although we nearly missed Brian Cameron’s Weird War Two. Weird War Two Captain America was the movie of this game, which has been played…

  • Games on COIN

    This post is prompted by an excellent post by the guys at On Violence. You should read Capturing Australia! COIN is Boring Pt.3 to which this was my belated comment. My apologies for coming late to this one, I’ve been on leave for a couple of weeks now and being spending time with the family. I’ve…

  • Trawling the Archives

    I’ve been looking through some of my early writing on my computer, most of which was written for publication in Chestnut Lodge‘s club magazine, known affectionately as MilMud (a contraction of Military Muddling). I found several articles from the mid 90s which I have cut and pasted into the blog with dates when they were…

  • CLWG July 2013 Game Reports

    There were five of us at July’s CLWG meeting, myself, Nick, Mukul, Dave & John. There were three game sessions presented: I went first with a two part committee game called “The High Ground” about the consequences of cheaper surface to orbit space travel; Nick presented an economics card game for educating people about markets…

  • Another side of the COIN

    I ran my game of being an Afghan farmer “The Other Side of the COIN” at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group’s (CLWG) annual conference yesterday afternoon. This was its second outing, you can see my onside report from the first run here. Since the last outing the game has developed further to address some of…

  • What you missed at CLWG in September 2011

    Three interesting games and a load of cake! We started with Peter Merritt’s 1814 political game which looked at how Napoleon’s Marshals dealt with the oncoming defeat of France and the transfer of power. Following that Andrew Hadley brought out his game about the Athenian invasion of Sicily. We then finished with Rob Cooper’s game about…

  • The Other Side of the COIN

    An on-side report of how the first run of ‘The Other Side of the COIN’ went. In all a fun day with a lot of useful positive feedback on how to make it better for the next time we play it, and there will be a next time.