Cotswold Wargames Day 2024 , thriving in Cirencester

 Another year passes and we are indebted to Keith Flint for leading a South-central England/ West Country eclectic wargaming community to hold another day of gaming together. This year we moved venue from the home of the This Country comedy/social commentary TV series on Cotswold life - Northleach, to the southern Cotswold  "capital", Cirencester. But not the attractive, characterful old town, instead to the bustling business hub of Love Lane Trading Estate! Since this is home away from home for me (I'm only 7 miles away from Cirencester, deep in the hills) the suitability of the venue is more important than the leafy, golden stone streets not far away.  And Big Battles custom-built wargames venue certainly has it. Add in two genial wargamer owners/hosts in Andy Cummings and Derek Whittenbury and you couldn't ask for more. (If you need a venue well located for South, Central/West of England with the resources for big games take a look at their website, and prices are  reasonable especially the more participants you have.)

CWD General

Started by the late, great Stuart Asquith and Keith, we've now been doing this for 6 years (with a break for COVID) and it's not a "show" but just word of mouth and blog type publicity whereby individuals, and usually groups, use Keith to coordinate the assembly, and everyone just gets on with it. If, like me, you are not part of a group, it pays to find out in advance what is on offer (some are restricted to named participants only) and "sign up" if you want to be assured of a game.  This year logistics and tables, some of the terrain items etc, were provided within the hire fee by Big Battles. The premises are too big  to take in one photo, these three might give some idea, but there is more out of view. 

We had 8 games on the go at once and must have been up to 40 people I would think - the biggest CWD yet.  There would have been one or two more games except the organisers had to drop out. Setting up took place from about 0830, prize giving around 3pm and I gather some were still playing around 5pm when it was time to pack up (I had to leave at 3.30)

Keith Flint's "Startline"
For the first time Keith now had the freedom to organise a game of his own. Most readers will know what a dedicated fan I am of "Honours of War" so I respect everything Keith tries his hand at even if I don't take them up personally. I was delighted to have the chance to be shown how his under-development World War Two set "Startline" works in person. I'll try to give a flavour through some pictures

Keith started off with a German recce force against my old mate Dillon Browne commanding a similar force of Poles in September 1939 (In the far distance I had a modest exhibition of military art in the "chill-out" area)

Early War Polish/British tanks brew up easily........

........as do German armoured cars, now joined by light armour and infantry platoons. The Poles have already reached the churchyard where an objective marker is in the road

My observer armoured car brought in some artillery fire on those reinforcements

We took it in turns to bring on a platoon from our 8 inch "startline" and it worked very well giving quite an air of anxiety and fog of war (well at least for me - Dillon is always calm)

Dillon has firm hold of one of the bridges so I direct maximum force towards the church/hamlet objective. Armour-infantry collaboration proves not to be as easy as I thought!

At the third objective (this bridge) the Germans first took it with a motorcycle recce section and observer a/c so I brought up all my heavier tanks to try to take the far end from the left bank while pushing up in support with an infantry platoon. The wood proved to be such an obstacle to vision that I don't think either of us knew how to proceed from here and Dillon's tanks had been mostly neutralised!

Luckily finalising victory was not down to me as I had to go, and passed, via one move's handover, to John, another CWD regular, and who was very enthusiastic to learn how "Startline" works in practice.

My impression of Keith's new rules is very favourable. He accepts there are areas for discussion and/or change. These are for fans of one-to-one scale WW2, and Keith made parallel in conversation to "Bolt Action" and "Flames of War". Like the latter we were using 15mm models and it felt appropriate, but my favoured 10/12mm would be just as good.  Even at 1:1 spotting your opponents is not easy and Keith has built in  a good feeling of difficulty and the favourability of making good use of cover. The firing mechanics, under Keith's direction, seemed very logical and straightforward. He's put a lot of effort into the balance between armour and anti-tank capability which feels as if it might be more nuanced than say "Rapid Fire", though that was difficult to judge with well matched early war weapons.

If 1:1 is your preferred WW2 game it's worth following these rules through Keith's Blog - Startline  or the Facebook Group for Keith's rule systems

We did have an extended lunch break so we could all enjoy the other games and talk to their hosts 

WW2 in 1/200 Scale

Next to us was a very attractive small scale later war Russian/German game using Blitzkrieg Commander II rules. Small trees were inserted into the board individually, rather like i do for a lot of mine.

I couldn't help but admire the realistically close-packed larger trees making a forest, and was shown the very neat idea of sticking them together in bunches without basing

It has the advantage of allowing you to put them on a slope without any ugly overhang from the base, as well as being versatile if you need to move them for troop placement.

ACW Imagi-Nations

Steve Johnson brought his "what-if" American Civil War game played on his usual highly professional and beautiful terrain for small scales. These are 10mm figures and an adaptation of Black Powder rules. There are Germans and Russians involved as Steve has taken some "colonies" on the West Coast and projected them a couple of thousand miles East! Lovely figures too.

I spent "too long" talking to the highly sociable Steve (is that possible?!!!) and so missed what lay beyond (where the tall trees are......). A crowd was round by the time I moved on so, to my eventual shame, I missed photographing this Franco Prussian War "old school" style game which won a prize as "Keith's Favourite Game".

Lots of superb photos of this game, and an explanation, together with a general report on CWD can be found on Steve's own light hearted blog post here Auld MacDonald's battle by Scidley Rott

Western Town and the Bad Guys

I moved round to chat to Ian Bailey, and Paul of Empress Miniatures, as they'd entertained me hugely at this event last year with an Indian Mutiny game. It emerged that Ian's intended game was not ready and so Paul had ridden to the rescue like John Wayne with a Western game. Forgive the little film star joke but Paul explained that the figures (approx 32mm) and game concept were more like a Hollywood western than history.  They were using "Dead Man's Hand" rules. 

Quite a number of photos of this game as I got a bit besotted by the detail. Paul had embellished MDF building basic shells with simulated clapboards or adobe mud brick, or whatever required,  to make a rugged Western town that just gelled for me visually. It was full of detail and the effort that must have been put into it was very evident, as I hope the photos show.

Riders with personalised dismounted versions

A converted toy train

A vulture lurks ready for a feast

Bed sheets drying on the washing line but those stains just will not shift (don't ask!!)

The Bad Guys about to ride into town

I don't think you will be surprised to learn that Paul won two prizes for this game. The Stuart Asquith Trophy for "Best Game" and the Chris Gregg prize (an original painting) for "Best Presented Game".

Renaissance - French Wars of Religion 

Next on my tour was a chat with Stuart C who runs the Cirencester club. What you see here is their second game just about to start. It's the Battle of Vergt Oct 1562. Stuart was using his own set of fast play rules called Risky Renaissance. He'd worked out two scenarios and the morning one was The Battle of Dreux, December 1562 (see pic Nr 3 in this post (above)). So, fast indeed and Stuart kindly sent me a set so I can play around with them and see if they might give a fast game for my family, using grandson Seb's classic 20/25mm Napoleonic collection (see Seb's Soldiers). 

I believe these wonderful figures are from one of Roy Boss' extensive collections.

You see much better pictures in Stuart's own report on CWD in his blog Cirencester Wargames

Crusades

This one was quite a spectacle - well, we all love a good fort don't we? The figures were lovely and lots of them. It was a contender for my prize but I'd have liked more terrain features for the visual effect and, as many know, I'm averse to lots of paper clutter actually on the table.

"Lion Rampant" was the rule set for this game

The knights looked absolutely great

Battle of St Gotthaart 1664

Tim Cull always puts on something different and visually interesting. This was an offshoot of the main battle between the Imperial armies and the Ottomans. Tim kindly put round some info before the day and it's worth giving a quote from it.

" The French contingent sent by Louis XIV were somewhat detached and undertook an action on their own against a detachment of the Ottomans who had been sent along the bank of the river to secure an escape route for the trapped soldiers. In the engagement that followed, the French pike and shot were

launched at the Ottomans by their commander (Jean de Coligny-Saligny) in a frenzied attack which

swept all before them, again resulting in most of the Ottomans drowning.

This is the subject of the battle at the Wargames Day. It is significant as it is one of the earliest

instances of the French undertaking a mass attack, in an early form of the famous “furia Francaise”.

A legend of French invincibility when attacking that persisted right until the end of the First World War,

no matter how many times it was disproved."

He was also using a fast play set and this was their second game of the day of intense action. But Tim took time out to talk to me and even showed me his Albanian Ottoman figures and their double-headed eagle flag (near the centre in this photo). Roy seemed back to much better health and can be seen behind those French in his second game of the day -  stamina eh, he's even older than me.

Just to round off I'd like to reiterate what so many have said already. It's great of Keith to organise this event every year, anything goes, and it is a very relaxed and friendly feel.  As usual I sold a few military paintings, so that is always lovely - thanks to the clients and those who just stopped to chat about art.

So far there have always been games with spaces for the casual visitors/guests, though it is helpful to know in advance, and you can contact Keith via his blog and see updates in the year of how the next CWD is shaping up. Here is link to his account of our day, with some nice photos.

Keith Flint's Blog