Viticulture

I've been wanting to play this game for a while and when we had to postpone our Thursday game of Weimar, I had my chance.

Richard was yellow, Russell blue and I was purple.

Need 20 points to win.

Bit of an overachiever I'm afraid.

Purple vineyard

Cards still in hand

Delightful game.  Would play fast once techniques mastered.  I also expect lots of variety in play.

Napoleonic French Casualty Stands

This has been an ongoing saga to perfect casualty markers for Napoleon's Battles.  At this point I have reached the "this will do" stage.  Regardless, glad to have got these figures painted, based and ready to use.

I published this on the NWS Blog on 14 July 2014.  I should have also posted it on my blog.

https://napoleonicwargamingsociety.blogspot.com/2014/07/article-on-nws-from-some-time-ago.html

Article on the NWS from some time ago

This article was my first introduction to the NWS.

When I was living in Canberra, my partner very much wanted to move to Perth (her home city).  I was reluctant.  One of the reasons I put forward might have been associated with wargaming.  As if on cue this article turned up.  It would be ten years ago, maybe longer.  We would need to know Carlo’s current age to accurately date it. 

Anyway, this article gave me strength in the knowledge that there was wargaming on the other side of Australia, Napoleonic wargaming as well, although the picture accompanying the article didn’t look like any Napoleonic game I’d ever seen.

Weimar Take 3

This game allows for multiple endings and yesterday's game, our third, was no exception.  Richard was the DNVP (black), Peter Zentrum (blue), Russell SPD (a light red colour that is perhaps one of the few if not only flaws with this game) and I was the KPD (in pink, but too close to the light red colour).

I took notes, but as always heavily biased to the side was playing.

First agenda was Revolution Now!  Ha ha.  We tried a demonstration in Berlin, no one showed.  A coup attempt in Essen was a fail.  We lost our council in Munich and our operatives in Essen.

Operatives were introduced back into Munich, but a party base was lost in Breslau.  However a demonstration in Essen was successful and lead to an uprising.  A right-wing coup attempt was stopped in Berlin.

We debated.

We lost a party base in Essen but with three remaining, scored 1 VP, our first.

An offer to form Government with the SPD was rejected by them.  Boo hiss!

For the second round we chose Loyalty to Moscow.

We armed the workers and conducted demonstrations in Breslau, Hamburg and Frankfurt.  There was an uprising in Hamburg.  Yeah!

Berlin was taken over by a right-wing regime.  Oh dear.

We failed with a coup in Breslau and demonstrations in Essen and Koln.

But we had seven seats in Parliament and this time formed a coalition with the SPD, and a communist became Chancellor.

Round three and the DNVP (black shirts, right-wing, intent on making Germany great again) staged a successful coup in Leipzig, which added to their control of Berlin and a regime in Hamburg gave them an instant victory.

The Communist controlled Reichstag was very short-lived.

KPD party members after the right-wing coup.

The state of play after the sudden death.

Not that it matters, but the VP totals were:

• SPD 13
• Zentrum 12
• DNVP 10
• KPD 4

At least there were no nasty brown shirts this time.

And here is a press release from the DNVP (courtesy of Richard):

Die Welt

9th January 2025

Aufwiesdersehen Kamerad Reichskanzler!

German Patriots rejoice the fall of the November Criminals!

Photo Sourced from the Bundesarchiv

Weimar: The Fight for Democracy, News from our correspondent at the table’s edge

Taking advantage of being victorious in the Reichstag on the Reparations Issue, on Thursday 9^th January and before anyone could react, Freikorps Brigade Oberland lead a lightning DNVP Coup in Leipzig to topple the Weimar Republic and end the still born chancellorship of Comrade Haughey of the KPD. Comrade Haughey (henceforth known as the 2 minute chancellor) had barely warmed the seat in the chancellor’s office having been handed the reins of the Reich by former chancellor Poskitt of the SPD when he was arrested at KPD Party Headquarters during a rendition of the Internationale.

A lack of policy direction and infighting in the former SPD/Zentrum Weimar Coalition as well as their failure to co-ordinate the Police and Reichswehr to subdue paramilitary elements ultimately lead to the demise of the Republic which had lurched from crisis to crisis nearly resulting in a descent into anarchy.

DNVP Führer Richard announced that “Order had been restored” and that the November Criminals will be brought to justice along with plans to annex Greenland.

Elements of Freikorps Oberland guarding key locations:

Illyrians versus Huns

This time I took command of the Illyrians and Simon used my Huns.  A critical part of succeeding with Basic Impetus is to avoid rolling sixes on Cohesion Tests.  Simon repeatedly rolled sixes...

An atmospheric shot to set the scene

(actually smeary camera lens)

That's better.

Huns win the scouting and mass on one flank.

At least the Illyrians have some difficult terrain to help them.

Advance!

Advance some more!!

Shoot!!!

Illyrian javelins cripple two units of Hun light cavalry

Undeterred the Huns charge.

The result is bloody, but inconclusive

The Hun nobles make a clean sweep,

but their light cavalry is suffering.

And with a few more bad rolls the Huns call it a day.

Lost Berlin

My posts labelled "book review" ain't really book reviews, just me making a note of something I felt relevant to this blog and also to seek closure.  

I used to measure the success of a holiday by the number of books I finished reading (always in single digits, but that is beside the point).  A book read represents closure and nowadays that is more important to me, retirement having significantly reduced the import of holidays.

Also I am working through my accumulation of stuff while trying not to add to it.  

This book I bought for the price of $A4.95 in the early 1980s and carted it around ever since.  It is best described as a coffee table book, but the author. Susanne Everett, at least at the time of publication, was married to John Keegan, the military historian.  This book is about cultural history centred on Berlin between the wars.  Lots of names, most of which I didn't recognise, but enough to keep little sparks of recognition firing.

In playing Weimar I was reminded of this book and thought it would be a good time to read it.  Of course I couldn't find it. Searching was futile and I gave up.  Then it appeared!  Kind of a reverse Murphy's Law.

It is 200 pages, but about 100 pages of images, mostly photos but some posters.  

Of course it covers the Nazi's sublimation of the arts, either by causing talent to decamp or by simply imposing their own, which would be mostly horrid expect for perhaps two films Leni Riefenstahl: Triumph of the Will and Olympia, neither of which I have seen.  They also produced some striking posters, most if not all of which would be banned in these enlightened times for displaying swastikas (often in abundance) or for representing hate speech.  

Written before the fall of the Berlin Wall it makes for an interesting historical perspective.  I am sure the same book if written today would draw parallels between the rise of the fascism and what we are observing today.  The book is oblivious to this of course, but the parallels are plain to see, at least the seeds.

Book read and some interesting background provided for the next game of Weimar in which I will be playing the KPD - the Communists.

Weimar Take 2

We lined up for another go at this game. We went for a random allocation and I again was the SPD.  Peter also was the DNVP again while Russel was Zentrum and Richard the KPD.

Things to note:

Seven Brown Shirts are in Parliament

Communists have control of Essen and Hamburg,

they are close to taking Berlin which would give them the game.

The DNVP (black) have control of Koln and Königsberg,

they need Berlin or two other cities to win out right.

The Nazis are just two steps away from crashing the system.

Top left shows all the pressures on the state that tipped it into anarchy.

The following is adapted from comments provided by Richard.

It was a great game where everyone had chances to win.

The game ended when Mark deliberately pushed the Reich into anarchy to win the game. This cost
him  (and Russell) 8 VPs, but he was able to absorb the 8 VP penalty to finish in front. Mark has the totals. I believe Russell came second and Peter and I were tied for third.

SPD 26, Zentrum 23, KPD and DNVP 18 each.

It could still have gone to either myself as KPD with better die rolls in the last impulse. Pete did also roll for a 4th Regime marker and possible victory. On reflection, I'm not entirely sure the second
attempt at a Regime was allowed, as the rules state you can only make a single coup attempt per impulse, i.e. per card play. The card Pete used allowed him to do 2 sets of actions, but they all occurred in his "impulse". There was no net game effect to this, however, as the attempt failed.

It was certainly a valid way for Mark to win and ironically Mark was the major beneficiary of all the threat markers that appeared in the Deutsche Reich as a result of the NSDAP plays. Somewhat of a hollow victory as a government party plunging the country into anarchy, but a game victory nonetheless.

It is certainly an example of how careful you need to be in the choices made. There certainly was short term gain for the parties which took the NSDAP trade off, however, with a commanding lead in VPs this then allowed Mark to exploit the end of game anarchy rule.

It looks like this is a 7 hour game, if it goes the full 6 turns. We were playing quite briskly and it worked out to roughly 1 hour per turn which also included rules questions.

A lot of the moral dilemmas (although there didn't seem to be a lot of qualms on show) regarding the NSDAP only appear in turns 5 and 6 so there would be a lot of difficult and interesting choices to explore without the stress of tiredness and/or time constraints.

I have posted 2 questions on the BGG forum regarding what happens in the case of a tie on play of the Altona Bloody Sunday card (who suffers NSDAP penalty) and also the All Quiet on the Western Front card where we weren't sure on how many seats and VPs to award for a "majority".

To the two questions the consensus is the Chancellor decides ties and the All Quiet card just provides 1 VP and 1 seat (which is how we played it after initially distributing 7 VPs and seats and after a short delay saying "Wait a minute...")