The Notitia Dignitatum -

Work-wise (as in "real" work), this is the busiest time of the year for me, so I've not being doing much in terms of modelling, to say nothing of gaming.  But I have spent a while pottering about in one of the dim corners of my long-neglected website - updating some of my Notitia Dignitatum pages.  The so-called Notitia Dignitatum (Latin for "Register of Dignitaries") is a unique document dating from ca. 400 AD (albeit only in various copies made a bit over 1000 years later) that describes the bureaucracy of the late Roman Empire.

And why is this of interest?  Because a great deal of that bureaucracy involved the army - by far the most important component of the Imperial machinery.  And more specifically, the document records not only the names and stations of all the many hundreds of units in the army, both East and West, but also their shield patterns.  In colour no less!  Not all of them, alas, for some units' patterns are missing for reasons still unexplained, particularly for the Eastern cavalry, but there are still quite a few illustrated.  Over 280 in fact...

Click to see the page enlarged and read the unit names.

Here, for example, is a page from the manuscript copy currently lying in the French national library in Paris, showing the shield patterns of 12 legionary units assigned to one of the Eastern central field armies, that under the command of the "Magister Militum per Thracias" - the Commander of the Soldiers in Thrace (you can also make out images showing through from the other side of the page, most notably against shields with white backgrounds).

So this truly is a unique document.  If you own a late Imperial Roman army, you don't have to make an educated guess as to which units carried what kind of shields - this thing tells you!  (Let's just ignore for the moment the almost endless possibilities of manuscript corruption over the long centuries...)

And I've been slowly adding images taken from the various manuscript versions of the document to my website, so people can compare and contrast the various versions (some are clearly better than others - but what constitutes "better" is often in the eye of the beholder...).  I'll probably never "finish" the job - because with hundreds of units, each shown in multiple manuscripts - the task I have undertaken is truly vast in scope.  But I'm clearly an obsessive idiot at times, so why not?

OT-62s -

I've just received some print-outs of the TOPAS and OT-62 models I described in my post of December 12.  They've come out quite well, given I ordered them in the cheapest ("white soft & flexible") plastic, although the wheels were really too finely sculpted to be very noticeable.

OT-62 variants...

If I'm bored one day I might make up some alternative versions with deeper wheel cut-outs purely for the WSF plastic - but this will necessitate making the tracks wider than scale.  It might also be a big job, time wise - I'll have to inspect the (virtual) model and see, because sometimes shifting a bunch of components laterally is a doddle; sometimes it is almost impossible, depending on how they are connected together.

...and Polish TOPAS variants.

I've also made up and printed out some bridges that I will use on my terrain boards - I want them to be removable in case they get blown in-game by engineers.  Bridges make excellent scenario objectives, because it doesn't matter how many amphibious vehicles you have in your attack force, the logistical train will be carried on trucks - lots of trucks - and they need bridges. 

Making terrain boards -

I've been asked to describe how I make my terrain boards - but since this required a lot of explanation, I've made it into a complete new new section: it can be accessed from the menu at the upper right.

The Macedonian War Machine -

I've always been interested in the Macedonian army, ever since my high school obtained copies of Peter Conolly's "The Roman Army", "The Greek Armies", and "Hannibal and the Enemies of "Rome" in the early 1980s, along with Phil Barker's "Alexander the Great's Campaigns" - just the kinds of thing to stir a budding wargamer's imagination (the one advantage of being at an all-boys school, I think, is these kinds of things can find their way into the library...).

Fast forward 30 years, and "The Macedonian War Machine" has just arrived at my door this evening, and a long time it has been in the receiving.  Not because of any delay in the dispatch from Pen & Sword Books, mind you; indeed, the book was only first published last September, and I didn't know it had been released until the end of the year.

Image from Pen & Sword

No, I've been waiting for this book for a long time because it's taken its author, David Karunanithy, 15-odd years to finally get it published, and I read a draught manuscript of it some 12 years ago! Which is actually somewhat comforting, in that it gives me hope that I may eventually bring out a book of my own, despite the ideas for it having languished for in the various computers I have gone through over the past decade...   David's already had some great contributions to make on the subject over the years, with many of them finding their way into Slingshot.

So far, I've only got through the preface, acknowledgements (and my ego is flattered by being there, I have to say), and the forward, so this is, despite the tag, hardly a book review, more of a shout-out: I know I will thoroughly enjoy the book itself. 

Action at Oberickelsheim - Part VIII - Conclusion

By the 9th turn, it was only 1100 in game terms, but 4 o'clock in real life, and both Aaron and Pat had to leave at 5-ish, so we determined this would be the last turn.  The Czechoslovakian traffic jam on the southern flank had still to be resolved - there was yet another motor rifle battalion waiting to come on right there, and several more tank battalions were also scheduled to arrive over the next few turns, although these were to thankfully enter now mostly vacant roads to the north.

On the opposite side of the board, the US 2/30 Infantry Battalion had now arrived to reinforce the 1st Brigade's central sector, creating what appeared to be an impenetrable mass of American might.  And while this certainly looks formidable, it has one great weakness.  This massive concentration of force created what is aptly termed a "target-rich environment".   One of the problems with MSH is that there is a great incentive to bunch your stands together (concentration of firepower) with precious little penalty - because artillery fire, like all other attacks in the game, is generally conducted on an element-to-element basis.  "Generally", however, does admit of one notable exception - multiple rocket launchers.  And the one thing a Czechoslovakian force has going for it is an abundance of multiple rocket launcher stands.  Because most of the ones in the 15th Division were very short-ranged, they had yet to play any part in the battle, since they spent most of it moving into position.  But by the 9th turn, the last had arrived, and they were now deployed just shy of the table edge, waiting for somebody to give them a target.  How many MRL stands does a Czechoslovakian Division have at its disposal?  Fourteen!  That's enough, should they all be called in at once (an impossibility to be sure) to target every single American stand in this picture in a single bound.  And while there was no way the whole lot were going to be let loose at once, it was inevitable that some were going to be called in successfully.  See that village just below the ridge with the smoke marker next to it?  Four elements, right there (3 in the village itself, plus a stand of infantry lurking in the rear outskirts) capable of calling in rockets, all with targets galore to monitor.  Sure they might need a six to succeed, but one's going to get lucky at some point...

So, as is the nature of large but unfinished games, things were looking quite interesting just at the point we had to call it a day.  At the close of the day, Aaron's Americans had earned more victory points than Pat in charge of the Czechoslovakians, essentially due to the unanswered combat losses the Americans had inflicted until then.  On the other hand, looking to the future, the Americans had little hope of securing much in the way of their positional victory conditions, while three Czechoslovakian battalions were currently crossing the river to their north with not much the Americans could do about it, (short of the rain stopping, followed by some particularly spectacular airstrikes...), so their victory point lead was about to disappear.

So, what was learned?  Personally, I was satisfied by how it went.  We didn't get through as many turns of play as I had hoped - but got through more than I had feared! Of course, a game this size really does demand more than one active player on the WarPac side, but I think we did OK in that regard, all told.  And I like the way neither player lined up against each other in the manner I had expected they would - so there was a real fog of war element there even without any hidden movement (which would be totally awesome, but... work, work, work!) or troops deployed in hidden ambush position.

One thing that did become clear to me was I really do need some sort of base labelling scheme.  While I know my troops well, and can tell them apart (assuming I don't start crossing their command arrows, that is!), that doesn't apply when somebody else is commanding them, because then I have no idea from moment to moment which stands came from where.  And the player borrowing them certainly has absolutely no idea which stand belongs to which unit!  The little white sticker dots you can see in the photos were added by Pat as play progressed because he couldn't tell the command stands from the grunts, to say nothing of one battalion from another.  Now I've been reluctant to do this, because I don't like the look.  But a more discrete colour coding system along the rear edge of the base would be unobtrusive enough, I've decided, and couldn't be seen from above or the front.  So now I just have to come up with a scheme to get all the information I want, and yet retain enough simplicity - it has to be easy enough for someone who isn't me to understand, after all!