Irregular Wars Wargaming

Playing out ancient naval warfare (ναυμαχία or naumachía in Greek) on the tabletop is a tricky biscuit (if ever there was such a thing…?). It is a niche within a niche; naval wargaming has always attracted a smaller crowd than land battles, and among naval players the Age of Sail and 20th century gaming are the most popular theatres. Why the lack of engagement with naval warfare from the ancient period (and here I speak of the ancient Mediterranean in particular)? I’m not sure there is a single answer, but I’ll posit a couple of suggestions. The 20th century is within living memory (some of us were even born in the late 1900s!) and the engagements of WWI and WWII are firmly entrenched in our collective memory – at least in the West. While the Age of Sail (and here I mean the broad sweep of the 16th-19th centuries) is slightly more distant, it heralds romantic notions of swashbucklers and empire builders. This is especially the case in the Anglophone world where the cultural psyche has ...

Andrew and I, supported by Jim as an impartial drinking companion, met for learning game of Burrows & Badgers on St Patrick's Day. As this was our first play through of B&B , we decided not to start a campaign, but just to run through the mechanics using my rogues vs Andrew's royalists. The two warbands played quite differently; at least at the start before I forgot to play to my strengths and just made a beeline for the developing scrum in the middle of the village. I tried a couple of ambushes - one working and one being foiled by an overly aware badger. Shooting from the mouse-archers on either side was quite effective, while my otter leader with the quick shot skill failed to do very much at all. We discovered that Andrew's mouse nun (read: magic user) was a very effective support unit, salving his big hairy beaver after the pounding it took. On the other hand, my badger healer was much less effective as a result of marching his right up to join the melee in t...

Another dispatch from the antipodes as Mark returns to his Galley's & Galleons narrative campaign: The price of dried trepang has shot up to unprecedented levels on the Canton Futures Market. It’s worth twice its weight in silver taels. Clearly this is no longer a resource that can be left for the local primitives to exploit. The Ming court orders An-te Hai (Admiral of the Tribute-Bearing Fleets) to intervene in strength to ensure Chinese control of the supply chain. Don Marco da Pattaya (Captain-General of the Indies) likewise decides to place the fishery under Portuguese protection. No-one knows what the Makassans and other traditional harvesters think about this. The two squadrons met in the Arafura Sea off the northern coast of Australia, the most productive source of trepang. The Ming Chinese (348) bring - 4 x War junks (3x42, 1 x72*) (Hakka Merchant*, Conch Shell, Green Eyebrows, Lucky Breeze) Q3 C3: Drilled soldiers, Flagship*, Lateen rigged, Reinforced hull 3 x Pirate (...

Finishing my dirty-pawed side quest into Burrows & Badgers , I now have the maximum ten members for my warband of furry rogues ready for a campaign. I wasn't planning on painting more than a starter warband just yet, but then things escalated... Here are the five newest members of the line up - this photo was supposed to be the header for this post, but I just couldn't get my phone to focus on everyone at once. The five original miniatures painted for the warband can be seen HERE . Robyn Longtooth, the fox Knut Twitchtail, the squirrel Edwin Lightweight, the happy stoat Dafydd mab Petroc, the mouse Seren Pipistrelle, the bat