Episode 54
Interview With Jon Sutherland & Spycraft
The primary focus of this podcast episode is the intricate world of colonial and 19th-century wargaming, particularly through the lens of the hosts' experiences and insights. Throughout the discussion, we delve into the challenges faced during the production of the podcast, reflecting on personal setbacks and technical difficulties encountered along the way. We also explore the exciting new rule set, "Spycraft," which introduces espionage elements to wargaming, illustrating how these dynamics enhance gameplay. Additionally, we provide an in-depth review of miniatures from Old Glory, weighing their merits and potential drawbacks in the context of size and detail. Conclusively, the episode culminates in an engaging interview with John Sutherland, a distinguished figure in the wargaming community, who shares his extensive knowledge and upcoming projects, including the highly anticipated "Great Game: Tournament of Shadows."
In the Mega Packed, August '24 Episode of Shot and Shield, the Marquis De Scott is joined by Jon Sutherland to talk about Wargaming, Painting, Conventions, and his amazing work on the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Wargame Ruleset plus, Jon let's us in on his upcoming project "Great Game: Tournament of Shadows". Also, Scott will be giving away a rule addendum called "Spycraft" which you should be able to add to most any wargame rule system you use. The Grand Duke Scott will also review some Old Glory Miniatures, spill the beans on his latest OCD moment, present another Old Time Radio Story set in the 19th Century and answer a ton of emails that have been building up since his last podcast. As a British friend of Scott's once said about Shot and Shield, "Duke, You've Got Another Corker 'ere!"
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes the importance of communication in wargaming and the history behind it.
- Listeners are encouraged to participate in discussions via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
- The episode discusses the challenges faced in producing content and the patience required from listeners.
- John Sutherland's insights shed light on the complexities of historical wargaming and its intricacies.
- The introduction of the new rule set 'Spycraft' aims to enhance gameplay by incorporating espionage mechanics.
- Listeners are invited to explore various historical scenarios presented in the podcast, promoting engagement with the content.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Old Glory
- Shot and Shield
- CBS Radio Network
- Yorkshire Gamer
- Warlord
- Firelock Games
Mentioned in this episode:
NETWORK TAG
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Did you ever stop bullying and shouting.
Speaker B:At the lower orders?
Speaker A:Never.
Speaker A:There's only one way to win a campaign.
Speaker C:Shout.
Speaker C:Shout and shout again.
Speaker C:This is Shot and Shield listening in Victoria, Malta, in Riga, Latvia, in London, England, and in 76 different countries.
Speaker C:This is the Shot and Shield super, dedicated to colonial and 19th century war gaming, a podcast meant to be listened to while you are gaming, painting, or working on your amazing projects.
Speaker C:I am Scott, the Marquis of Middle Florida.
Speaker A:In tropical climates, there are certain times of day when all the citizens retire to take their clothes off and perspire.
Speaker A:It's one of those rules the greatest fools obey because the sun is far too sultry and one must avoid its ultra violet rain.
Speaker C:Now, you can refute anything you hear on the podcast by going to Twitter or X or whatever it's called now at Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:Or you can hit me up on the email shot and shield podcastmail.com or on Facebook in the Shot and Shield podcast War Gaming Group.
Speaker C:And before I get into the show, let me tell you something.
Speaker C:I am so sorry and I want to thank each and every one of you for your patience as I work this out.
Speaker C:So the last podcast was like, in February, right?
Speaker C:Or January, I can't even remember.
Speaker C:And it's been just a host of difficulties, one after another after another after another.
Speaker C:First, my system crashes.
Speaker C:My.
Speaker C:My computer hard drive crashes.
Speaker C:So I'm like, okay, so I get that fixed.
Speaker C:Then the mic crashes.
Speaker C:Now I have this.
Speaker C:This microphone is my microphone.
Speaker C:There's.
Speaker C:I'm.
Speaker C:I'm going to get it fixed.
Speaker C:I'm not going to get a new microphone.
Speaker C:I. I got this microphone and so I get it fixed.
Speaker C:Then I go to record and boom.
Speaker C: I use recording software from: Speaker C: ould laugh and you could say,: Speaker C:Lord, Scott, what are you doing?
Speaker C:It's a program that I've used forever.
Speaker C:It's never let me down.
Speaker C:And I had to go find a new copy of it because mine is shot.
Speaker C:So anyway, so I was able to find one in another country, so I had to get here.
Speaker C:Gets here.
Speaker C:I load it up.
Speaker C:I'm working on it.
Speaker C:It's taken now.
Speaker C:It's taken like a month and a half just on that.
Speaker C:And I'm a boss at work.
Speaker C:I'm like a store manager.
Speaker C:I'm head cheese.
Speaker C:And my requirements to work is 24 7.
Speaker C:The demands of the job are brutal.
Speaker C:It's a good job.
Speaker C:I'm not complaining.
Speaker C:But it's.
Speaker C:There's some long hours and you're on call.
Speaker C:So even in the middle of the night, I get called, boom, I gotta go.
Speaker C:Middle of the day, vacation, days off, doesn't matter.
Speaker C:But I finally have, like, my team all set.
Speaker C:We've gone through our inventory and, you know, everything's good.
Speaker C:So I'm able to take.
Speaker C:What you're hearing now is me recording on the second day of a week off.
Speaker C:Yes, I took a vacation because I'm about ready to go mental whenever I'm ready to kill people at work.
Speaker C:That's when I know it's time to take a vacay.
Speaker C:So I thought, oh cool, I'll go ahead and get, get the podcast going.
Speaker C:Get it rolled up, get it rolled up and crash, crash, crash.
Speaker C:So I spent yesterday working on this whole system.
Speaker C:I finally got it up and running.
Speaker C:You hear me recording now, so I'm excited about it.
Speaker C:So anyway, but I, I want to thank you for your patience.
Speaker C:And if you stopped going to the Facebook page or, or stop listening or stopped liking or subscribing to the podcast, I totally understand.
Speaker C:I totally get it.
Speaker C:I don't blame you at all.
Speaker C:I would do, I would have done the same.
Speaker C:But just know I'm still here.
Speaker C:Let me get into it.
Speaker C:This is going to be kind of a wonky show because I have a bunch of stuff prepared, stuff I've had prepared for like months and months and months.
Speaker C:Emails I haven't gotten to.
Speaker C:But in this episode of the Shot and Shield Supercast, I got a product review.
Speaker C:What I'm going to do is I'm going to be looking at a set of miniatures I picked up from Old Glory and digging into that company a little bit.
Speaker C:And also I'm going to share a cathartic issue I had that I noticed that's really bothering me.
Speaker C:So I'm going to talk about that.
Speaker C:I have a rule adaption for you.
Speaker C:During my hiatus, I came up with a game edition simply called Spycraft and that you'll be able to add to any war game rule set that you play.
Speaker C:And I'll explain that here a little bit.
Speaker C:And also I'm going to give you a copy of it free.
Speaker C:This.
Speaker C:I'm not going to ask for any payment on it.
Speaker C:I'm going to give it to you free.
Speaker C:You can use it, enjoy it.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker C:That's my, that's my peace offering to you for, for these, since seems like six months without doing a podcast.
Speaker C: find, the Dreyfus affair from: Speaker C:And finally, but not lastly, my interview with John Sutherland, who is one of Wargaming's elite.
Speaker C:He has written over 300 books.
Speaker C:He has written for miniature war games magazines.
Speaker C:He's done everything for over 50 years of war gaming.
Speaker C: Another War, the lace wars of: Speaker C: has another one called Glory: Speaker C:Plus Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
Speaker C:All everything that goes with that.
Speaker C: he War in India scenario from: Speaker C: War gaming in India from: Speaker C:Add on packs Australia and the East Indies, the Maori wars.
Speaker C:And he has a new one coming out called the Great Game Tournament of Shadows.
Speaker C:And we'll be talking about that, plus a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker C:But first, we are looking at your emails and communications right now.
Speaker C:Germany calling, London calling.
Speaker B:Moscow calling.
Speaker C:Washington D.C. calling Peking calling.
Speaker C:Sydney calling.
Speaker A:Message for you, sir.
Speaker C:It's time to answer some emails from all around the world now.
Speaker C:As always, you can email me at shotandshieldpodcast gmail.com or on Facebook in the Shot and Shield podcast War Gaming Group.
Speaker C:But let's get into it.
Speaker C:Okay, here we go.
Speaker C:This first one is from Derek, listening on the Spotify app.
Speaker C:My dear Duke, does my city show up in your analytics?
Speaker C:You start and end your show with the cities where you have listeners.
Speaker C:But I never hear my city.
Speaker C:My Lord, does San Antonio show up.
Speaker C:Love the show.
Speaker C:Can't wait till you get back up and running, Derek.
Speaker C:The answer is yes, San Antonio does show up in the analytics 544 times during the run of the show.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:This next one's from friend of the podcast, Jeremy Listening in New York, New York.
Speaker C:Scott, I listen to other gaming podcasts also, which is good.
Speaker C:You should.
Speaker C:You should support as many podcasts, gaming podcasts as you possibly can.
Speaker C:That's important to the game.
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker C:That's all I got anyway.
Speaker C:He continues.
Speaker C:One of my favorites outside of yours.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:Is the Yorkshire Gamer.
Speaker C:I had read from him that doing podcasts can be a struggle.
Speaker C:Sometimes it's hard to find guests, other times it's frustrating from hearing from guests that you booked, they canceled and then they're heard on another podcast.
Speaker C:Do you have the same issue?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:So first off, Ken, Ken Riley, Yorkshire gamer, does a fantastic podcast and he's a much braver person than I am because, you know, you get to see his face on the YouTube.
Speaker C:Me, no way.
Speaker C:I got the face for radio and I'm going to keep it that way.
Speaker C:But Ken also is a fantastic miniature painter.
Speaker C:He is, it's Matafique.
Speaker C:I am like enamored and jealous of his Italian unification project.
Speaker C:Total jealousy.
Speaker C:Now regards to regarding the question, the problem I have isn't getting guests because I program this show in sort of a magazine style.
Speaker C:So I try to, I try to give a little bit of history, I try to do a little bit of gaming, I try to do a little bit of miniature something physical and a little bit entertainment.
Speaker C:So I kind of do a lot of a little things.
Speaker C:So it's sort of a magazine style show.
Speaker C:Whereas other podcasts don't have that same sort of mentality.
Speaker C:Doesn't mean they're bad.
Speaker C:It just don't have that same mentality.
Speaker C:So I don't worry too much about whether I have a guest or not.
Speaker C:My problem with, with putting the show together is my schedule, scheduling guests.
Speaker C:So I have guests.
Speaker C:And I'll give you an example, the excellent Garender Singh Man.
Speaker C:He has been a guest a couple times on the program and he is extremely gracious.
Speaker C:The problem I had with Garinder Singh man wasn't Garinder, it was me because I would schedule the interview, we would be ready to go and then something would happen and I have to reschedule and then we would reschedule and then I, something would happen again and I have to reschedule.
Speaker C:So his patience is amazing and he's an outstanding man and I, I appreciate him so much.
Speaker C:When you hear the guests on the show, I've probably had to reschedule two or three times with each one of them.
Speaker C:So my problem isn't with them, it's with me.
Speaker C:I am very fortunate to have several folks ready to join me on the podcast, but there is such a demand on my time that I find it, I find that I'm disappointing more guests than having on, which isn't, isn't good.
Speaker C:I, I, I like to talk to people especially about gaming and about history and stuff like that.
Speaker C:Those are two passions I have.
Speaker C:To me, a podcast is very time consuming.
Speaker C:It really is.
Speaker C:So this is where I'm going to.
Speaker C:I'm a totally 100% agree with Ken and that it's, this is A beast to do.
Speaker C:And I used to do this for 15 years in radio.
Speaker C:When you hear every 15 minutes.
Speaker C:Every 15 minutes that you hear on a podcast, for me, it takes about 45 minutes of production time on top of that, because I have to adjust levels, timing.
Speaker C:There's just so much that goes into the editing process is a whole different deal, and that takes a lot of time.
Speaker C:However, this is a passion, right?
Speaker C:So we just plug away.
Speaker C:And also, every podcast is different.
Speaker C:Some podcasts that I have focus on gaming, some focus on history, some focus on just one game, some on different conflicts.
Speaker C:And that's what I like about Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:It's just meant to be a little bit of everything in these, in this audio magazine format.
Speaker C:So I hope that answers your question.
Speaker C:This next one is from Sir Gresham in Seattle, Washington.
Speaker C:And Sir Gresham writes Duke.
Speaker C:Scott, I would like to thank you for the episodes of Sharp on your YouTube page.
Speaker C:I am not sure how many times you've watched these episodes, but if you've watched these as much as I have, you sort of realize that the main character, Richard Sharp, kind of a jerk, especially in the later episodes.
Speaker C:By the fourth episode, his first wife is killed.
Speaker C:We find out that he has a daughter, and that's the last you hear about it.
Speaker C:By the end of the series, we find.
Speaker C:We find out that his third wife, who he stole from his friend Frederickson, died, and you still never hear of his daughter.
Speaker C:His best friend, Harper is kind of a jerk.
Speaker C:Also for 12 up, this is funny.
Speaker C:For 12 episodes, he can't even ask, how is your daughter?
Speaker C:In the last couple episodes, Harper leaves his wife to go to India.
Speaker C:What kind of show do you have us watching here?
Speaker C:Scott, by the way, I love the podcast.
Speaker C:Can't wait for its return.
Speaker C:Thank you, Sir Gresham.
Speaker C:Sir Gresham from Seattle, Washington.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:I actually realized that about a month ago.
Speaker C:I was literally thinking the same thing watching Sharp's Challenge after work.
Speaker C:I was thinking, whatever happened to his kid?
Speaker C:There's a scene where Sharp finds out the son of the man who killed his first wife is traveling with him.
Speaker C:He freaks out, beats the tar out of the guy, and at some point I'm thinking, yo, Richard, where's your daughter?
Speaker C:So, yeah, you know, I like the show, but Sharp, Sharp does seem to be kind of a bastard.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:Good, good observation, good observation.
Speaker C:Let's see.
Speaker C:Here's an email from Harry listening in Redditch, England.
Speaker C:Scott, if you don't mind, I like you, but I refuse to address you as my Lord, I am sick of the aristocracy.
Speaker C:But you are not that bad.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:Let's see.
Speaker C:He continues.
Speaker C:I was happy to see that you are finished with your Russian colonial Central Asian project.
Speaker C:I am curious, what did that project entail and what is your next project?
Speaker C:So what did it entail?
Speaker C:Man, it's like any other project.
Speaker C:You have to ask yourself a bunch of questions.
Speaker C:You know, what theater did I want to play?
Speaker C:What era, what kind of miniatures was I was going to get?
Speaker C:Where was I going to get the miniatures?
Speaker C:Am I going to have enough painting time to do the miniatures?
Speaker C:What kind of terrain am I working with?
Speaker C:What kind of rule system do I want to use?
Speaker C:Do I want to do big games?
Speaker C:Do I want to use skirmish games?
Speaker C:And then it's just once you figure it all out, then setting about the task to do it.
Speaker C:Now, obviously you've heard me comment about this several times in, I think every podcast I've done since I started is that this, this Silk Road wars project that I have is based in Central Asia during the great game time frame.
Speaker C:You know, I went with Russian colonials, Central Asian kingdoms, Qajar, Persians and Heratis, the Herats from Afghanistan.
Speaker C:I went with the terrain, and the terrain is like a desert steppe and then there's rolling hills of grassland and some rocky terrain, everything around the Silk Road.
Speaker C:And then the figures.
Speaker C:I went 28 millimeter skirmish series.
Speaker C:And then I ended up with Blood and Steel from Firelock Games and the fantastic Edgar Pabone and Damian McComber who both wrote that great, great rule set.
Speaker C:Before that, I was.
Speaker C:I tried to use the Men who Would Be Kings, and that was okay.
Speaker C:And I also tried to use a Sword in the Flame, Colonial Rules, and that was all right.
Speaker C:But I really like the way Blood and Steel worked with what I was trying to do with this project.
Speaker C:Now, I still have a few things to do for that project.
Speaker C:You know, I got a.
Speaker C:There's a couple, you know, couple terrain things I still want to do.
Speaker C:There's a couple of, couple buildings I want to make.
Speaker C:And I got this Russian gumboat that I'm making for the Caspian Sea and some Turkoman pirates, you know, so, I mean, but I could take everything I have right now and just take it to a convention, drop it down and boom, start.
Speaker C:And that's how I know that I'm done with the project, that I could take it to a convention right now and just roll with it, which I will, one of these centuries.
Speaker C:Now, as far as my next project, I'm kind of I'm just, I'm taking what, I'm doing what I have now.
Speaker C:I'm just moving west a little to the Caucasus.
Speaker C: rsians for sort of a caucuses: Speaker C:I have some British East India Company figures that are just kind of sitting there in my boxes ready for that little skirmish.
Speaker C:But outside of that, once, once that's all complete, I'm done in Asia.
Speaker C:I'm not coming back to Asia.
Speaker C:Absolutely 100% done in Asia.
Speaker C:Just exiting Asia altogether.
Speaker C:I'm going to another continent in the 19th century and I'm not going to tell you what it is.
Speaker C:I'm going to surprise you.
Speaker C:So you'll just have to keep, keep listening and I'll surprise you.
Speaker C:And yes, I have figured it out.
Speaker C:So don't sit there and look at, look at your phone or your computer or your tablet or whatever you're listening to Shot and Shield on and think to yourself, yeah, Scott, you don't know yet.
Speaker C:No, I do know.
Speaker C:I do know.
Speaker C:I'm very excited about it and I'll have to pay more red, but I'm excited about it.
Speaker C:This next email is from Kaiter Listening on the Ghana app in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Speaker C:I did have to put this in the translator, so it's going to be a little wonky to read, so bear with me.
Speaker C:Kiter says Mr. Scott, let me introduce myself.
Speaker C:I am known as Kiter.
Speaker C:I am from South Africa and living in India for work.
Speaker C:I came across your show by accident as it was one of the suggestions in the list.
Speaker C:I was interested in how soft, smooth and professional your show sounded when the topics you are talking about are stuff that other people talk about in their basements.
Speaker C:All right, he continues.
Speaker C:History has never seemed that interesting, but you and your guests seem to find the most profound joy in it.
Speaker C:And you Game History.
Speaker C:How do you do that?
Speaker C:I normally play Dungeons and Dragons with my friends after work.
Speaker C:So how should I proceed if my friends and I wanted to War Game History PS Are you still doing the show?
Speaker C:It's been a while since there's been a new download.
Speaker C:Yes, yes, I'm doing the show still.
Speaker C:I haven't given it up.
Speaker C:I'm sorry, the basement comment has kind of rattled around inside my head.
Speaker C:I'm not in my basement.
Speaker C:I don't have a basement.
Speaker C:It's Florida.
Speaker C:Every time you have a basement it floods.
Speaker C:So we don't do basements here in Florida.
Speaker C:So to answer your question, how do you start?
Speaker C:Look, I tell everybody this, everybody who wants to start war gaming, you have to just pick up, you got to pick up Risk, the board game Risk from Milton Bradley.
Speaker C:That's it.
Speaker C:You play that first.
Speaker C:You play it a bunch of times.
Speaker C:If you really start to love it, then you could take the leap to miniature war gaming, or at least historical miniature war gaming, I should say, since you already played Dungeons and Dragons, I don't know what else to say.
Speaker C:To enjoy historical war gaming, I think there's a lot you have to have passions for.
Speaker C:I think you have to have a passion for history.
Speaker C:I think you have to have a passion for art.
Speaker C:I think you have to have a passion for model building, I think you have to have a passion for strategy and tactics.
Speaker C:And I think you have to have a lot of patience.
Speaker C:And if you don't have a lot of patience, I will tell you this, that miniature war gaming does teach you patience for those who don't have patience.
Speaker C:I really believe that if you, if you want to get into historical war game and you got to play Risk first, it's cheap, it's easy, the rules are pretty clear cut, and then you and your friends can just do it.
Speaker C:And then after that, then you can decide where to go from there.
Speaker C:That's, that's my suggestion.
Speaker C:So, Kyter, thank you very much for the email.
Speaker C:Last email here from Old man river and he's listening to the podcast through the Captivate site.
Speaker C:Thank you very much.
Speaker C:And Old man river writes.
Speaker C:Scott, this is Old Man River.
Speaker C:I bet you that when you paint, you listen to this new fangled fairy music.
Speaker C:What's in your painting Playlist don't lie.
Speaker C:Normally I paint and I listen to Old time radio.
Speaker C:Normally I do.
Speaker C:But when I decide to listen to music, here's the list.
Speaker C:I'm going to give you the list.
Speaker C:I'm going to give you the list.
Speaker C:Here we go.
Speaker C:Ready?
Speaker C:Blue.
Speaker C:All right, Ready?
Speaker C:Here we go.
Speaker C:Blue Oyster Cult veteran of the Psychic War Pink Floyd, Wish you were here Led Zeppelin the Battle of Evermore Stairway and Fool in the Rain.
Speaker C: logue the Cure Boys Don't Cry: Speaker C:And finally, Midnight Oil.
Speaker C:Read about it.
Speaker C:Cold, Cold Change and Back on the Borderline.
Speaker C:There you go.
Speaker C:That is Old Man River.
Speaker C:I challenge you to find any Tinkerbell music there.
Speaker C:I challenge you.
Speaker C:You can't do it.
Speaker C:Once again.
Speaker C:You can email me at Shot and Shield podcast gmail.com or on Facebook in the Shot and Shield podcast, War Gaming Group.
Speaker C:If you have any question, a statement, hit me up, let me know.
Speaker C:Still ahead, a gift for you.
Speaker C:That's next on Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:This is Shot, Shot and Shield.
Speaker A:Honor is satisfied.
Speaker A:God clearly preserves you for greatness.
Speaker C:From the land of the audio to the world of the visual.
Speaker C:The Shot and Shield podcast is on YouTube.
Speaker C:I use YouTube for supplementary information such as watch along videos, documentaries of interest, movies that I find that best represent colonial or 19th century inspector inspirations or gaming, and eventually video from interviews that I've already done and that you've heard on the podcast.
Speaker C:Just search out in parentheses, Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:You got to put the parentheses in there.
Speaker C:Parentheses, shot and Shield, and parentheses.
Speaker C:And you'll find it on the YouTube.
Speaker C:There's also a link on the podcast info page, so check it out and subscribe to Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:On.
Speaker B:Sam,.
Speaker C:The Shot and Shield supercast rolls on.
Speaker C:Now make sure you check out and subscribe to the YouTube.
Speaker C:Sorry, the Shot and Shield YouTube page.
Speaker C:Just search out Shot and Shield or click on the link in the information section for this podcast.
Speaker C:Like, subscribe, share all that great stuff.
Speaker C:I appreciate it.
Speaker A:Our story is the built up case of what could happen if spies and international crooks successfully carried out their assignments.
Speaker C:Now I have a little gift for you.
Speaker C:It's a rule set called Spycraft.
Speaker C:I developed it myself.
Speaker C:Oh, watch out.
Speaker C:That's a little scary.
Speaker C:Should be.
Speaker C:But the reason I did this is I have a problem, a little bit of a problem with all the rule sets that are out except for the pulp miniature ones.
Speaker C:Because the pulp miniature ones seem to do a pretty good job with this.
Speaker C:It's Nobody has a spy rule.
Speaker C:There's no spy rule in anything.
Speaker C:Now that's not necessarily criticism that they're bad war game rules.
Speaker C:They're not.
Speaker C:But I don't know, it just makes sense to me.
Speaker C:So when designing this rule addendum, I was inspired by classic cinema as well as this lack of spy rules in most war game rulesets.
Speaker C:Also, if I'm playing the great game scenario, where are the spies?
Speaker C:The whole great game is about spying.
Speaker C:I mean, throughout real life and in the movies.
Speaker C:The need for intelligence about your opponent is one of the pillars needed for a good military strategy and tactics.
Speaker C:Right, so why do most war game rule sets not have a spiral?
Speaker C:I think that when we think about it, our minds fill with the ideas of like James Bond and all the complications which then become a daunting task for any war game designer.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:But for this addendum that I'm going to give to you, I stripped down the whole complication and asked one simple question.
Speaker C:What is the sole purpose of a military spy?
Speaker C:To make it easier for his side to win.
Speaker C:So with that premise, I present you this rule addendum called Spycraft.
Speaker C:Now at this point, you're gonna need one ten sided die or dice.
Speaker C:And I've run this rule addendum in Sword in the Flame, I've run it in the Men who Would Be Kings.
Speaker C:I've run this rule adaption in Blood and Steel.
Speaker C:I will tell you also that for World War II I have rapid fire in my back pocket.
Speaker C:And I ran this in a rapid fire game, a little mini game I did and it actually kind of worked out pretty good there too.
Speaker C:But like I said, you're going to need one ten sided die.
Speaker C:Look, I, I've designed this more for use in any horse and musket rule set.
Speaker C:Most of these rule sets employ a series of phases.
Speaker C:During a round, there's initiative, move, attack, morale.
Speaker C:Right, that's sort of the, the four basics.
Speaker C:This addendum is meant to take place after the initiative phase and before the move phase.
Speaker C:And if you adopt this, this addendum, then each side is given two chances to employ this rule.
Speaker C:Now for this addendum, one doesn't need to have secret plans to seal.
Speaker C:The idea is that whatever the stolen plans are, the result of the knowledge would result in a tactical advantage for the spy side troops.
Speaker C:Let me say that again, the result of the knowledge would result in a tactical advantage for the spy side troops.
Speaker C:And there is also an opportunity that spy would fail and in some cases get caught.
Speaker C:But either way, if the spy side has the information, couldn't you consider this an advantage?
Speaker C:I'm a player.
Speaker C:I now have this tactical advantage of information and it's meant to make it easier for my troops to hit the opposition.
Speaker C:And that's the premise.
Speaker C:You do the initiative phase.
Speaker C:Once the initiative phase is over, then you employ your spycraft addendum.
Speaker C:You roll a dice, a ten sided dice, that is, if you get a one, you fail.
Speaker C:The opposing side gets a plus one to hit your troops.
Speaker C:If you get a two, three or four.
Speaker C:Your spy fails to get any information at all.
Speaker C:A five, six, seven.
Speaker C:Nothing happens.
Speaker C:You just lose the roll.
Speaker C:An eight or nine is success and the spy gets a plus one.
Speaker C:There was a spy side I should say gets a plus one to hit on their next attack.
Speaker C:And if you get a 10 then you get another roll and plus two to hit on your next attack.
Speaker C:That's it.
Speaker C:It's simple.
Speaker C:You don't have to get any more complicated than that.
Speaker C:I have this for download in the Shot and Shield Podcast Wargaming group.
Speaker C:I'm going to tweet it out.
Speaker C:I'm going to share it to a bunch of our shared groups.
Speaker C:However, if you want this directly, just email me@shotandshieldmail.com and I'll send it to you.
Speaker C:I hope you try this.
Speaker C:Deaden them out.
Speaker C:I've tried it several times in little test games that I've been playing.
Speaker C:It actually works out pretty well, so I hope you give it a shot now.
Speaker C:Still ahead, I have a confession and I will take a look at Old Glory Miniatures.
Speaker C:This is Shot and Shield.
Speaker A:You don't think I too dream of peace?
Speaker A:You don't think I too yearn to end this damn dirty job we call soldiering?
Speaker B:Frankly, no.
Speaker C:It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of hello, you just caught me, famous podcaster and influencer Duke Scott reading in my study.
Speaker C:You know what, since you're here, let me tell you about a great way to connect with our Shot and Shield gaming community.
Speaker C:It's through social media on Facebook, the Shot and Shield Podcast War Gaming Group where you can find a lot of info about this podcast but also get war gaming and painting advice from our member experts.
Speaker C:You can even learn how to dress like a true 19th century hero from friend of the podcast, Claude Bailey.
Speaker C:If you have any questions or comments, you can also hit us up on Twitter Hot and Shield or email me atshot and shieldmail.com when you get to the Facebook group, the Twitter feed or even the YouTube page like subscribe and if you feel inclined, share what you like.
Speaker C:Now if you'll excuse me, Charles Dickens awaits.
Speaker C:Shot and Shield is a Production of the Experience 13 podcast network.
Speaker A:Foreign.
Speaker C:Thank you for listening to the Shot and Shield Supercast which can be heard on any of your favorite podcast apps, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Ghana, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and most any podcast app on the planet so what I'd like to do is I'd like to talk about Old Glory miniatures now.
Speaker C:For years I've been hesitant to pick up anything from them because I wasn't sure if they were a true 25 millimeter or maybe the smaller, maybe larger.
Speaker C:And the pictures on their website aren't the most detailed.
Speaker C:I have also, you know, and I've endeavored to look for size comparisons to help me before busting out the cash.
Speaker C:And the reason that I even considered Old Glory was because their line, their production line is huge.
Speaker C:Just for colonialism in 19th century alone, the lines are well represented.
Speaker C:I mean, just in their 25 millimeter historical line.
Speaker C:If I go to historical colonialism, all right, first and Second Sikh War, Indian Mutiny, French Foreign Legion, the Boer War, the Boxer Rising, the Maori Wars, Northwest Frontier, Spanish American War, the Sudan Campaign, Zulu wars, that's just in their historical colonialism.
Speaker C: f Cossacks, historical China,: Speaker C:There's so much going on with this company.
Speaker C:There's one called the American Experience, which is American Civil War, War of Independence, French Indian Wars, Mexican American War, Texas into War of Independence, Pancho Villa in Pershing, Mexico, Old West.
Speaker C:There's so much going on, and that's the only reason I would really think about going to Old Glory, because their line is so vast and it's vast in the areas that I like to game colonialism and 19th century.
Speaker C:Knowing that I already own a bunch of pieces in the smaller end of 28 millimeter, namely outpost war gaming services and some foundry lines, I felt pretty good.
Speaker C:I thought, you know, I'll go ahead and order a few pieces from Old Glory and check it out.
Speaker C:I picked up Vladimir the Turk slayer for like 26 bucks, which is an amazing piece consisting of eight Turkish slaves carrying Vladimir on a throne litter.
Speaker C:And I was going to take that piece is from their Cossack wars line.
Speaker C:And I was going to take that and put it in my Circassians, going to do a little painting on it, a little carving to kind of help help it out a little bit.
Speaker C: oman Empire, the Lawn Decline: Speaker C:And that was 41 bucks.
Speaker C:And I got like a 10 Calvary pieces.
Speaker C:Finance wise.
Speaker C:That's pretty good.
Speaker C:There was a pretty good turnaround.
Speaker C:They delivered it within about 10 days.
Speaker C:So they got it, they got it molded, packaged and out the door.
Speaker C:Pretty quick.
Speaker C:And then, like I said, I got it in 10 days.
Speaker C:So I was pretty happy about that.
Speaker C:I was really excited about the Vlad figure because I wanted to add the Turk Slayer to my Outpost War Gaming Services Cossacks that I've already repainted to represent Circassians.
Speaker C:I just needed a good sized cavalry pack for my growing Ottoman Empire troops of the same time frame.
Speaker C:The Vladimir piece was really nice.
Speaker C:Decent detail, just a little on the small side compared to the outpost wargaming services, which are also on this small side.
Speaker C:The Ottoman cavalry definitely is not pure 25 millimeter.
Speaker C:They're almost 20 millimeter.
Speaker C:Almost.
Speaker C:Almost 172nd scale.
Speaker C:There may be 22 millimeters to be exact.
Speaker C:And if I were to paint these up and put them in my collection, it looked like.
Speaker C:It looked like a clown show in size comparison to my larger pieces.
Speaker C:Taking this Ottoman cavalry piece and putting it next to, let's say one of my cobblestone figures or a Bob Murch figure or one of my Black Hustler figures, they would just.
Speaker C:They'd be giant.
Speaker C:It would look like a figure would be able to pick up the horse, put it on its shoulders, walk around.
Speaker C:It just.
Speaker C:It's insane.
Speaker C:The size.
Speaker C:So not even a true 25 millimeters.
Speaker C:Like.
Speaker C:Like I said, a little bit smaller.
Speaker C:I'll give you an example.
Speaker C:My Outpost Wargaming Service Cossacks in my collection are on the small side of 28 millimeter.
Speaker C:They're probably more like 26 millimeter.
Speaker C:And these are bigger than the Old Glory Ottomans, which I was kind of shocked because I saw some size comparisons online and everything looked pretty good.
Speaker C:It looked kind of in this, in the realm when I made my move from 1 72nd to 28 millimeter.
Speaker C:I got to tell you, I think I might have thought more about 25 millimeter if my one option or my a few options had been Old Glory.
Speaker C:They have a.
Speaker C:Like I said, they have a great line.
Speaker C:It's vast.
Speaker C:And I'm okay with the price.
Speaker C:The detail is not the sharpest and the size just really small.
Speaker C:I used to have raw Partha Colonials in 25 mm.
Speaker C:Very, very nice figures.
Speaker C:Classic.
Speaker C:These would have towered over the Ottomans for sure.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Which I have to tell you, this brings me to my confession.
Speaker C:I think my OCD is.
Speaker C:Is starting to overwhelm me.
Speaker C:I can't look at my collection any anymore without freaking out.
Speaker C:Oversize.
Speaker C:I really can't.
Speaker C:Like, I'm almost thinking about ditching my outpost.
Speaker C:The majority of my Outpost War game services Figures, because they're just smaller than my cobblestone.
Speaker C:I want bigger figures.
Speaker C:I want the 28 millimeter pure.
Speaker C:You know, that's what I like, that's what I, that's what I want to do.
Speaker C:That's what I want to get.
Speaker C:And so every time I go in and think, hey, these guys.
Speaker C:And I'm not picking on Old Glory here, I'm just saying, like, like Old Glory where I see that, I see what I need or I see what I want and I go ahead and pick it up and then it just turns out to be so not in the realm of the sizing.
Speaker C:And now you've paid that money and now you're sitting on these, these miniatures.
Speaker C:I have some miniatures that I'm sitting on, I'll never paint, I'll never do because I just, they're just the size, just out of this world.
Speaker C:This is not going to work for me.
Speaker C:And so you'll probably see something.
Speaker C:I'll probably put something on the Shot and Shield podcast, wargaming site or group on Facebook just offering these up for sale because I just, my OCD won't let me put these in this, won't let me put them into the collection.
Speaker C:Furthermore, I'm telling you, I probably put some other stuff on there that I already have done and redo it all together in some other, with some other company because the sizing is just nice figures, really nice figures.
Speaker C:Like, like I said, the Outpost War Game service is just so nice.
Speaker C:Well done, well, well sculpted.
Speaker C:Just so small.
Speaker C:Just small.
Speaker C:There was some figures that I, I released from my collection from Foundry that were just, just as small.
Speaker C:I just couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker C:It just couldn't do it.
Speaker C:But that, like I said, you know, that's, that's my, that's my cross to bear.
Speaker C:That's my cross to bear.
Speaker C:Anyway, so I hope this conversation, I hope this like one sided conversation here helps you a little bit when you're thinking about going to Old Glory.
Speaker C:I'm not gonna, I'm not dogging them at all just for my purposes.
Speaker C:It just doesn't.
Speaker C:Didn't happen, just didn't occur the way I wanted to.
Speaker C:I'm probably gonna keep the Vladimir piece just because it's really nice.
Speaker C:I'll do it up and I'll put it out there, but the rest of it probably go ahead and sell off or ditch or just hang out, you know, until something happens.
Speaker C:But, but like I said, that's, that's my cross to bear.
Speaker C:This is Shot and Shield.
Speaker B:I Hear the conditions in your army are appalling, man.
Speaker C:I'm sorry, but those are my conditions and you'll just have to accept them.
Speaker C:Hi, I'm famous podcaster and influencer Sir Scott.
Speaker C:And when I was young my analyst said that I had an overactive imagination.
Speaker C:I mean he was a financial analyst, but he was still right.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:Now as a kid I would always see my GI Joes capture tigers, excavate treasures or elude dangerous snakes and I would lose myself in adventures of Tarzan and Flash Gordon and Conan.
Speaker C:Old Time Radio always had that magic that could transport you to different times and transport you to different worlds.
Speaker C:And now I offer you a podcast filled exclusively with Adventures in Audio.
Speaker C:Search and subscribe to Vintage Radio Adventures found on most podcast apps.
Speaker C:That's Vintage Radio Adventures.
Speaker C:Thank you for continuing to listen into Shot and Shield the super cast.
Speaker C:Now I want to play for you the interview I did with John Sutherland.
Speaker C:Now John Sutherland is really one of war gaming's elites.
Speaker C:He has done it all, seen it all.
Speaker C:He is by far one of the most prolific writers of rules in war gaming.
Speaker C:He has over 300 plus titles that he's written.
Speaker C:He has done countless number of articles for war gaming magazines.
Speaker C: Foe War Gaming the Lace Wars: Speaker C: Next year around April: Speaker C:I'm very fortunate to have a chance to really spend some time speaking with John about all kinds of stuff including his amazing work, but also about wargaming and painting and everything in between.
Speaker C:A great conversation.
Speaker C:I'm going to start playing the conversation at this point right here.
Speaker C:We had dory talk for almost 10, 15 minutes just trying to.
Speaker C:I went, I had some information I wanted to get from him but we just started talking and it was such a great conversation.
Speaker C:Here it is, John Sutherland on Shot and Shoot.
Speaker C:There was something that was curious was I was doing a little bit of research here.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:When you came up with Mad Dogs and Englishmen, was it the Noel Coward?
Speaker B:Certainly was.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:For those who don't know Noel Coward, great actor, musician, bon vivant, he had a song called Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
Speaker C:Here's a clip.
Speaker A:In tropical climes there are certain times of day when all the sun citizens retire to take their clothes off and perspire.
Speaker A:It's one of those rules the greatest fools obey.
Speaker A:Because the sun is far too sultry and one must avoid its ultra violet rain.
Speaker A:The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts because they're obviously definitely nuts.
Speaker A:Mad dogs in English go out in the midday sun.
Speaker B:The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to.
Speaker A:Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from 12 to 1.
Speaker A:But Englishmen deter stars, yes.
Speaker A:In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare.
Speaker A:In the Malay States there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear.
Speaker B:At 12 noon the natives swoon and.
Speaker A:No further work is done.
Speaker A:But na dogs and Englishmen go work in the midday sun.
Speaker C:Was it?
Speaker B:Yeah, because.
Speaker B:Because I think it was just.
Speaker B:It was like, like a passing comment that, that me and some mates made over, over a war games table.
Speaker B:And, and just some.
Speaker B:Somebody had said, well, well, when, when was, when was this?
Speaker B:And I said, well, it was July in India.
Speaker B:And it was like, you know, at the height, at the height of the bat, you know, the really hot weather in the baking sun and no, there was no water.
Speaker B:They were exhausted.
Speaker B:So, you know, you sort of fill in all the background details and it was, it was just that, I mean, just.
Speaker B:I guess it's, I guess it's all those sort of remark.
Speaker B:I'm attracted to all those kind of remarkable feats of, well, bravery, stroke, stupidity that, that brought glory to, you know, to.
Speaker B:On the battlefield.
Speaker B:I've always been attracted to that in some way, shape or form, those sort of crazy things, you know.
Speaker B:Like, you've seen Young Winston, right?
Speaker B:The movie.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, Winston.
Speaker B:The bit.
Speaker B:I mean, I mean, he was desperate.
Speaker B:He was desperate to get medals on his chest, right?
Speaker B:So he would take any kind of risk imaginable as a young man.
Speaker B:He would take any kind of risk.
Speaker B:And you imagine galloping across a desert towards a handful of men firing muskets at you, not very well, and then all of a sudden you crest into this, this wadi and it's just full of dervishes, you know, and, and you don't turn your horse around and run, you just cut your way through them.
Speaker B:And that's what they, you know, and it, it.
Speaker B:That, that kind of, that kind of thing is.
Speaker B:There's something attractive in that kind of attitude, I think.
Speaker B:And, and I think that's why I like the American Civil War as well, because it's got very similar.
Speaker B:They're very Similar traits.
Speaker B:Officers leading from the front, huge officer casualties, I mean, ridiculously high proportions, you know, of young men who, you know, wanted to make a name for themselves.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's funny, it's funny you say that.
Speaker C:It's almost like there's a piece of the DNA that's lost.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So in my, in, in the DNA of Winston or, you know, Custer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Armstrong Custer, you know, Theodore Roosevelt, there's this trigger inside their DNA that doesn't exist that makes you think that something can't be possible to the point where anybody else other than just those three mentioned going into the wadi, going against, you know, going against a ford or going against, climbing up a hill or whatever under this barrage of lead coming at you.
Speaker C:What do you get is you get heroic.
Speaker C:You know what we call it?
Speaker C:Heroicism.
Speaker C:Other people with the DNA in their system would call it stupidity.
Speaker B:Yeah, I remember, I remember standing on Mary's Heights outside of Fredericksburg and looking down and thinking they were insane.
Speaker B:Coming up that, that coming up that.
Speaker B:I mean, I mean it's, it's a challenging climb with all that gear on and a musket and, and in the face of fire and all those sorts of things.
Speaker B:I just amazed, you know, amazed now because I, I've been lucky enough to see quite a lot of the American Civil War battle sites.
Speaker B:My, my long suffering wife actually, because she quite enjoys.
Speaker B:She, she's, she's very fond of Gettysburg and, and she likes, she likes Manassas and you know, places.
Speaker B:Because we, we've got, we've got, we've got family in Virginia and in Georgia and I've got mates that live in Arlington.
Speaker B:And another mate who lived, he lived in.
Speaker B:Just outside of Washington.
Speaker B:He lived in Frederick.
Speaker B:Outside of, Outside of Washington.
Speaker B:Outside of Washington.
Speaker B:It's one of, it's like sort of like a Washington commuter town now really, but it's, but yeah, but they lived there and, and so we, we got to see quite a lot of the battlefields.
Speaker B:Antietam and, you know, Richmond and Petersburg.
Speaker B:And my favorite is, my favorite's Chancellorsville.
Speaker B:That's, that's always been my favorite battlefield.
Speaker B:But so.
Speaker C:So John, so how do you get into war gaming then?
Speaker B: buying American comics in the: Speaker C:And you're talking the three.
Speaker C:There was three battle sets.
Speaker C:There was one for the World War II, there was one for ACW.
Speaker C:And there was one for Romans.
Speaker B:Yeah, I really wanted the American Civil War one.
Speaker B:I really, really.
Speaker B:I mean, of course you can't get them in America.
Speaker B:In the UK in the, in the 60s, you and the early 70s, you could not get them right.
Speaker B:What we didn't know, of course, is that they were cheap old Taiwanese knockoff stuff, right?
Speaker B:Dubbed in a box, you know, and all out of scale and what have you, but they just look fantastic.
Speaker B:And, and it's weird actually, because I, I had a very similar conversation ages ago with John Stallard, the, the Warlord, the guy who owns Warlord or part over of Warlord.
Speaker B:And, and that's one of his enduring memories as well.
Speaker B:And if you look at the stuff they've, they've brought out over the last few years, they are a modern version of that.
Speaker B: ne of those playsets from the: Speaker B:It's, you know, it's.
Speaker B:I think that's great.
Speaker B:I think it's a great idea, you know, and if it can infuse, you know, younger war gamers or, you know, kids that might be interested in it, that's fantastic.
Speaker B:Especially if you can buy it all in one shot, you know.
Speaker C:You know, it's interesting because you say about spurring on young war gamers, that's usually a question I wait till the end to ask, you know, is, you know, how do we grow war gaming?
Speaker C:Because the one thing that I've noticed, and this is, you know, when I, when I got into war gaming, it was late 70s, early 80s.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I just happened upon the game at a hobby shop.
Speaker C:You know, in America, hobby shops don't exist anymore.
Speaker C:They just don't exist.
Speaker C:How do we expand the people who join the game?
Speaker B:Yeah, sure, it was like that in the uk.
Speaker B:It was like that.
Speaker B:There was a time when all of the independent war game stores gradually disappeared, largely because of the dominance of Games Workshop.
Speaker B:And Games Workshop had built, you know, had opened stores in all of the main urban areas and they were soaking up all of the sales.
Speaker B:So these, these local, you know, these in, these independents couldn't, couldn't cope very much anymore.
Speaker B:Plus it was easier or was becoming easier to buy stuff online.
Speaker B:You know, websites weren't just a badly scanned copy of a paper catalog, you know, and you still had to ring them up and give them your MasterCard number.
Speaker B:So things.
Speaker B:So, so there was a hiatus when there was Very, very little about.
Speaker B:I mean, I remember, I remember that would have been in the late, late 80s.
Speaker B:We would do the Grand Tour around London.
Speaker B:We do, we do three or four war game shops in one day, you know, so we go to one shop in Peckham and buy Essex miniatures.
Speaker B:We go to another shop in Charing Cross and buy Dixon and Hinchcliffe, we got another one in Victoria and buy minifigs, you know, and we do that kind of thing.
Speaker B:And then we might go to Tradition in, in Shepherd's, in Shepherd's Walk or Shepherd's Market, you know, so we do all of those things and.
Speaker B:But after a while you, you know, they all disappeared or gradually disappeared.
Speaker B:But nowadays I have to tell you that they are.
Speaker B:I mean I, I live in a, I live in a seaside town, right, about 70,000 population, something like that.
Speaker B:There are three war game shops within 10 minutes drive of my house, you know, which is incredible.
Speaker C:That is incredible.
Speaker B:And I can get virtually anything I want from.
Speaker B:You know, I can get, I can get secondhand toy soldiers, I can get new rule sets, I can get paints, I can get everything.
Speaker B:And that doesn't even include the stuff that's 25 miles away in my nearest city.
Speaker B:And there's another three shops there that sell the same stuff, you know, so things are turning around a bit.
Speaker B:And to answer the other part of your question about sort of the graying of the hobby, I think that certainly was the case.
Speaker B:But what I've.
Speaker B:What I've seen because I've.
Speaker B:Because I've been to quite a few.
Speaker B:I like to go over to Belgium to a war games show in Antwerp called Crisis.
Speaker B:What I've seen there is certainly there is an enormous number of blokes in their 30s, I'd say, that are into what I.
Speaker B:It's kind of that they're into war games which are in between role playing and skirmish war gaming.
Speaker B:And they're being slowly kind of sucked into, into full scale war gaming.
Speaker C:Sort of the pulp type war gaming where it's, it is, it's is role playing as if it were like Dungeons and Dragons or something like that and being brought into that skirmish level game.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean stuff like Gangs of.
Speaker B:Gangs of Rome, Carnival, those sorts of things.
Speaker B:But, but there's some peculiarly European ones I'd never even seen before.
Speaker B:You know, there's a.
Speaker B:What I never, what I've never realized because.
Speaker B:Because in this country, in this country the, the American manufacturers tend to be associated with board games over here, board games and role playing games rather than Toy sold, you know, rather than model figures.
Speaker B:You know, you don't see, you don't see a lot of ralp, Arthur.
Speaker B:You, you can get Old Glory.
Speaker B:The chances are they haven't got them in stock and you've got to order them and all that, wait three, three, four, five months before they arrive or whatever.
Speaker B:So there's not a lot of that, there's not a lot of, of American made product over here.
Speaker B:Most of the figures are uk, most of the rules are uk.
Speaker B:But what I didn't realize is just how much stuff's being made in Europe.
Speaker B:You know, there's a massive market in Germany and in Italy and in Spain and France has got loads of shops as well and their own products and figure ranges and all that.
Speaker B:We're only beginning to see them now because a lot of them are being made available because they're resin, the resin products.
Speaker B:A lot of their figure ranges of resin products.
Speaker B:So you can buy the else dead easy.
Speaker B:I mean, I bought a load of STLs from a Frenchman for Napoleonics and they're lovely, you know, not something you would have encountered 10 years ago for sure.
Speaker B:And that's a new generation is what I'm saying.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:It's a refreshing generation.
Speaker C:I could do the same thing, just like you suggested.
Speaker C:You know, you could go, you could spend a day, me and a buddy, we'd hit a hobby shop in the morning, pick up some lead.
Speaker C:You know, Ral Partha.
Speaker C:Colonials are fanta.
Speaker C:Were fantastic.
Speaker B:Yeah, I love.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And then we could drive to another hobby shop 45 minutes away ESCI World War II and pick up a bunch of tanks and then we could drive to another one to pick up a rule set.
Speaker C:And then we could drive to another one.
Speaker C:That would be our day, that would be our day off together and just drive that whole gamut.
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm not, I mean, I, I didn't even mention the fact that Airfix was around, you know, I mean, when I was a kid, when I was a kid, the first figures I ever bought were obviously they were, they were affordable £1 and threepence or whatever it was in those days, you know, and you could buy yourself a box of Napoleonic Highlanders.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:And Smith painting them very, very badly with Dulux paint.
Speaker B:And it's just, you know, you know, and sticking them to pieces of cornflakes packets.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's funny, I, I remember my first one.
Speaker C:It was a, it was the Air fix.
Speaker C:It was Airfix.
Speaker C:Napoleonic, French Calvary.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I thought I'd go ahead and paint them up, make them look fantastic with the leopard skins and the whole deal using tester paints.
Speaker C:And they were horrendous, absolutely horrific.
Speaker B:Strangely, strangely enough, I, I, I, I use the word accidentally.
Speaker B:I accidentally bought 50 War Games Foundry Indian Mutiny figures about three or four months ago right off from ebay.
Speaker B:And, and they look, they look kind of rough in the pictures.
Speaker B:And I thought, okay, that's okay.
Speaker B:I, I can, I, I can over paint them or something.
Speaker B:And when I got them, it looked like somebody had sort of dunked them in some gloss paint tank, you know, about three quarters of an inch of paint on them, you know, and, and I, and it's the first time I've ever done it in probably 30 years is I got, I went out and bought a bottle of Dettol, stuck them in a bowl and then, you know, two days later I managed to get all the paint off, you know.
Speaker B:And, but, yeah, but, but, but we, but you know, 30 or 40 years ago we would have looked at them and thought, well, that's quite a nice paint job.
Speaker C:You know, that's true.
Speaker C:And you know what?
Speaker C:I gotta tell you, the, the, I think the advent of Facebook and Twitter and, and Instagram and these, these sites, I think they have, at least for me, that have, have made it possible to, I'll use the phrase up your game.
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker C:Because when I was painting prior to Facebook, I didn't really, I was like, I'll do this and this and this, you know.
Speaker C:And however it came out, I was pretty satisfied with because I didn't really have anything to compare it to other than, other than the war game magazines that you get at the bookstore.
Speaker C:But at the time you're thinking, well, it's a magazine, of course they got to be fantastic.
Speaker B:I mean, I'll pay up.
Speaker B:Tens of thousands of soldiers and there's just no way I could do anything like some of the guys, you know, like, I've got, Try to remember his name.
Speaker B:Pro, you know, proper pro painters that, that just got.
Speaker B:Who, who was the guy that you, that designed the war games foundry?
Speaker C:His, hey, whoever it is, his work stands pat.
Speaker B:But it's just fantastic, just fantastic job.
Speaker B:And there's no way I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't even after so much practice, I couldn't get anywhere near that.
Speaker B:But I think, I think I can paint to a reasonable standard these days.
Speaker B:You know, I'm neat and tidy and, and it's got a little bit of, a little bit of flair I guess here and there.
Speaker B:But I mean, in, when you look at stuff like, I think that does put a lot of kids off.
Speaker B:It puts a lot of kids off when they look at stuff and they, and, and they look at these soldiers not realizing that somebody has got a degree in fine art or graphic design or something like that.
Speaker B:And, and that's the only thing that these blokes have ever done in their entire life is to paint toy soldiers.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:You can, you think, well, you know, that's not fair.
Speaker B:Well, you should be thinking, that's not a fair comparison.
Speaker B:You know, I shouldn't be trying to get anywhere, but I shouldn't be thinking I can get anywhere near that yet, you know, because they don't even know what their style is.
Speaker B:They don't know what, what tricks and paints they like.
Speaker B:And I mean, I've tried loads of paint ranges and some of them are dreadful.
Speaker B:I painted with Tamiya paints for years.
Speaker B:And they're ghastly things.
Speaker B:They stink.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:They're hard to paint with.
Speaker B:Their coverage is rubbish, you know, and all of that.
Speaker B:And you struggle and struggle and struggle thinking it's you.
Speaker B:It's not, you know, I know.
Speaker B:You know, a bad workman shouldn't blame his tools, you know.
Speaker B:You should say that.
Speaker C:Well, but there's a point, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna see a fantastic drummer like Neil Per Stuart Copeland playing on, you know, a couple of tin cans.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:No, I mean, they could probably make it sound good.
Speaker C:Yeah, but it's still a couple of tin cans.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C:So, yeah, no, I'm with you on that because I've had, I've had paints.
Speaker C:When I sit down to paint, I, you know, I, I've, I've tried paints and I was like, ah, I hate this paint, and I just ditch it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, there's.
Speaker C:I, I think I've gone through 5, 000 paintbrushes and I'm trying to find the ones that don't split and tricks and everything else.
Speaker B:And you want, you want to get, get paint, get your paintbrushes from Rosemary and Company.
Speaker C:Rosemary, as I write this down.
Speaker C:Hold on.
Speaker C:Excuse me for a second, everybody.
Speaker C:Everybody, Everybody listening right now.
Speaker C:Just go ahead and just take a pause.
Speaker B:Rosemary and Company.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Wonderful brushes.
Speaker B:Absolutely wonderful.
Speaker B:And, and, and cheap, incredibly cheap.
Speaker B:I mean, compared to Winter and Newton.
Speaker B:I mean, I have a problem spending eight quid on a, on a, on a paintbrush.
Speaker B:You know, I don't mind spending two, but I'm not spending pound on a paintbrush.
Speaker C:You Know, it's fun.
Speaker C:It's funny as I. I had a. I've spent a dollar, so it'd be like, I don't know, maybe 50pmaybe.
Speaker C:Yeah, I guess, if I can.
Speaker B:I bought some.
Speaker B:Some sets of 10 or 12 paintbrushes from Teemu.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And they've been all right.
Speaker B:Yeah, they've actually been all right.
Speaker B:And, and, and you actually, you know, I use them for, I don't know, half a dozen sessions, and they begin to split, and you can't do anything with them.
Speaker B:You think, well, I'm just gonna bung them.
Speaker B:You know, she's got to throw them away.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker B:You know, there's no point in, you know, prolonging the agony and, you know, because you've only.
Speaker B:Because you've only spent a dollar on it.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker C:But, But I've gone.
Speaker C:I've gone that way, but then I've gone the other way.
Speaker C:Okay, well, you know what?
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:Maybe my problem is I'm not spending enough.
Speaker C:So then I go and I get a $30 paintbrush.
Speaker B:Yeah, I've done.
Speaker B:I've done the whole thing.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker C:And the same thing happens.
Speaker C:And I'm like, now I'm thinking it's me, but it really is just how it's done, designed.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, I, I don't.
Speaker B:I. I don't mind these, These contrast colors.
Speaker B:I think they're okay.
Speaker B:They're certainly okay for your undercoat.
Speaker B:You know, put, Put you.
Speaker B:You spray your white on or your gray or whatever.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Stick the contrast on and then over paint the contrast, because the contrast will give you a lot of definition that you can't see.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:You know, particularly, I mean, not.
Speaker B:Not the really dark ones.
Speaker B:I mean, there are some that are just so dark you can't see a damn thing once they've done.
Speaker B:But, but I mean, you know, and, and they, they don't contrast.
Speaker B:They just blacken the whole thing.
Speaker C:So while, While you're painting.
Speaker C:Let me ask you this.
Speaker C:As you, as you.
Speaker C:As you're painting, you're.
Speaker C:And you're growing in your painting, you're becoming a little bit better, a little bit better every time you.
Speaker C:And you're finding different techniques and you're.
Speaker C:And you're getting better, do you ever find yourself as I do?
Speaker C:And I do this.
Speaker C:I'm doing it now, is I.
Speaker C:Now go back and repaint everything that I've already painted?
Speaker B:I have.
Speaker B:I have.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But I'll tell you what the cure is.
Speaker B:The cure that is to rebase them instead.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So if you, so whip them off their old crappy bases, okay.
Speaker B:Because that, because if you, if you're unhappy with the paint job, you're almost certainly going to be unhappy with the basing too.
Speaker C:You're correct.
Speaker C:You're correct.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker B:So tear them off the bases, right.
Speaker B:If they've got chips and knocks and bends and stuff, sort that out.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:But it's, rebase them using your up to date basing preference.
Speaker B:And you look, you, you, I, I promise you, you look at them and you think, wow, they look great now.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And, and you, and you've saved yourself quite a lot of pain.
Speaker B:You know, I, I have done that.
Speaker B:I, I have reap, I have repainted from scratch and I, and, and, and I have the, the, the most soul destroying thing is actually buying what is inadverted commas pro painted figures from ebay or from some other right.
Speaker B:Sort.
Speaker B:You get, I mean you get them in your hands, you look at them and you think, you know, a chimp did these, you know, blind chip.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I, I can't, I, you know, I just, I can't, I can't do it.
Speaker C:I can't.
Speaker C:Like, I, I thought about it several times.
Speaker C:I, there's something in me that just won't allow me to buy something that's already painted or, or commission something to be painted.
Speaker C:I, and I'm not saying that though that that's not viable for some people.
Speaker C:I think that's fantastic and they have that option that's great, especially if they don't like to paint or that's not an option in their life.
Speaker B:But I think there's a lot, I think there's a lot of guys that are.
Speaker B:Time poor but money rich.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And they're the guy, they're the guys that, that are the, to do all the commissioning of stuff.
Speaker B:You know, they're the one, they're the ones who go out and find somebody who paint a load of soldiers for them, you know, and, and that's, and that's fine.
Speaker B:And maybe going back to what we were saying before about actually painting, maybe I'm gonna.
Speaker B:Because I'm sure there are, there are a number of people who genuinely cannot paint.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C:I'm sure there are.
Speaker B:You know that I mean, no matter what paint they have or brushes they use or whatever else it is, they just can't do it.
Speaker B:I mean, I remember, I mean for some years back I had, I had a medical problem and it was, I had afib.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And, and, and My hands used to shake.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I couldn't paint, you know, it was like, I don't know, it was like.
Speaker B:It's like somebody with Parkinson's trying to paint the Mona Lisa.
Speaker C:Right, right.
Speaker B:It's ridiculous.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and I mean, luckily, I mean I've had it treated and luckily, you know, I don't have that anymore.
Speaker B:But I mean, I mean people, people like that who, you know, maybe have, have some kind of, you know, medical issue.
Speaker B:I mean, eyesight, things I've seen, I've seen people painting with things, you know, then they're staring at things that look like the bottoms of bottles, wine bottles, you know, so they're so short sighted they can't see a damn thing.
Speaker B:They've got to bring the soldier up to about an inch in front of their eyes just to see what they're doing.
Speaker C:Me?
Speaker B:Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean I, I mean thank God, thank God for, for cheap reading glasses.
Speaker C:That's exactly right.
Speaker B:You know, you know, and I don't mind if I get them covered in paint, you know, when they cost me three pounds.
Speaker B:So I don't mind, you know.
Speaker B:But yeah, I, and it's, it's, it's all tricky though, isn't it?
Speaker B:You know, you.
Speaker B:We're all different.
Speaker B:We all, we've all got views about what, what it is that, that we want to get out of the hobby.
Speaker B:And some people just want to play, you know, so they're the ones that go out and find, find that they'll be buying soldiers off ebay.
Speaker B:Painted soldiers.
Speaker B:They'll be commissioning people to do stuff.
Speaker B:I've painted people suffer people for money, you know.
Speaker B:And yeah, and, and, and more.
Speaker B:More often than not, I've actually decided I don't want a particular army or a collection anymore and I'll.
Speaker B:And I've sold it.
Speaker B:I mean, yeah, I've done the same.
Speaker B:I don't know if you're aware.
Speaker B:I mean up until about five.
Speaker B:How long ago was that?
Speaker B:Might be even be 10 years ago.
Speaker B:Up until 10 years ago.
Speaker B:Four, five or six years.
Speaker B:We ran a war game holiday center in Crete, me and my wife and, and we used to, we had thousands of figures out there.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Out in Creek, you know, and, and people used to come from all over the world and play war games, you know, for a week or two, you know, Brazilians, Austrians.
Speaker B:I mean the weirdest week we ever had is we had Italians, Brazilians and Austrians in the same room all playing war games.
Speaker B:English was none of their first language, but war Games was their first language.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:You know, and you know, so, so that, that kind of, that's where Mad Dogs and Englishmen actually originally came from.
Speaker B:Because I, I was aware of the fact that if I was going to have foreign speaking war gamers come and play war games with me, then I couldn't present them with a set of rules that they couldn't fathom out.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:They had to be simple, quick, intuitive, logical, you know, and you know, literally on the back of a cigarette packet.
Speaker B:They've grown a lot since then, I have to admit.
Speaker B:But, but that, but that was the idea, you know, is.
Speaker B:And, and all of the games we used to run over there, whether it was American Civil war, World War II and, or whatever else it was, you know, they were all designed so that it was gaming and enjoyment first rules very much in the background because I was there to umpire anyway.
Speaker B:So, you know, but I think that's really important.
Speaker B:That's important because you don't want to put going back to bringing in young blood as again, a different way of doing that is not to put, don't put, you know, gates and posts in front of them to impede them from joining the club if you like.
Speaker B:You know, they've got to be able to get into it quickly, get infused with it quickly.
Speaker B:Not to be bogged down with, you know, how many modifiers I need to find my 75 millimeter shell.
Speaker B:And at this particular target they've got to be able to, I'm not saying dumb it down, I'm just saying, right.
Speaker C:You know, it's funny because when I was the, the, my projects that I've been working on lately, I have been, have been looking for rule sets to try to try to help me play the game.
Speaker C:Like if I wanted to drop it at a convention, I could just go to a convention, bam, put it down there, play the game and not spend.
Speaker C:If you have a three hour session, you not spend a half hour, 40 minutes explaining all the different rules so everybody has a chance to really enjoy their game.
Speaker B:That's another big difference between the US and the UK and to a lesser extent Europe, is that our conventions are nothing like yours.
Speaker B:90% Of them are one day, 90% of the games are demonstration games.
Speaker B:So you come and look and take photographs and ooh.
Speaker B:And are at them.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:There's a handful of games which are participation, but they're usually for new sets of rules and they're trying to kind of demonstrate how easy it is to play them and.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:So they've got A purpose.
Speaker B:So they usually, they're usually sponsored by a manufacturer or something like that.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:Our war game shows are spectacles.
Speaker B:Yes, they are in one way and, and they're also an enormous shop, you know, so, you know, they're the, they're the two kind of prongs of most war game shows in the uk so Salute and Partisan.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, I mean Salute is notorious for its appalling lighting, so it's actually quite hard to see.
Speaker B:It's like, it's like being in an enormous great cellar, you know, and it's.
Speaker B:But I mean there's some genuinely beautiful games and I have to say I'll put on some genuinely beautiful games there as well.
Speaker B:But I, that was the last outing of my two and a half thousand Greeks were absolute before I saw.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, but it's enormous.
Speaker B:Salute is enormous.
Speaker B:I mean it's, I don't know what, 8, 9, 10,000 people and that's crammed into between 10 and 4 on one Saturday.
Speaker C:So you're talking like literally 90%.
Speaker C:I just want to reiterate this 90%.
Speaker C:And I didn't know this, this, this was, this is new to me because every time I've seen pictures of like Partisan, for instance, and I see these games and I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's.
Speaker C:Yeah, they're incredible looking games.
Speaker C:And the fact that it's just a,.
Speaker B:It's really just a, it's a moving diorama.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, because I sit there and think to myself, that's what I want to bring when I go to a convention here.
Speaker C:But I'm like, how these guys doing this?
Speaker C:And now I, now when you say that, it's like I realize, well, in.
Speaker B:Extreme circumstances there are guys that are patrolling around the table or almost slapping hands if they touch, you know, it's kind of, you know, like, like with a school ruler kind of, you want the shoulder with it.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker C:Yeah, well, I, that, you know what I got to, I understand that though.
Speaker C:That's a lot of work.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:The real doyen of war gaming in those days was a guy called, called Peter Gilder.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And he, he was the guy who designed nearly all of the Hinchcliffe figures.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And he was a great painter for his years and, and he was very much involved when Miniature War Games first came out.
Speaker B:The original Miniature War games came out and I went up there because he used to do war game holidays, you see.
Speaker B:So we went up there to, to a place in Scarborough, ran a bed and breakfast in Scarborough and had a huge asbestos shed in his back garden with an, with an, an absolutely huge war games table.
Speaker B:And we went up there and we played war games with him for a week.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Just incredible, you know, those sorts of things.
Speaker B:Those sorts of things.
Speaker B:It's been like that.
Speaker B:You, you kind of had to best describe it.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:I've lost my train of thought, actually.
Speaker B:I was thinking.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:I beg your pardon.
Speaker C:No, you're fine.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, what, what, what I was trying to, what I was trying to say is, I mean, people, people like Peter Gilder, they, they, they push the hobby quite a long way forward, a long way away from lots and lots of ethics.
Speaker B:So soldiers and, you know, and painting, conversions of Confederate infantry and, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:They, they, they did a lot of stuff.
Speaker B:And, and to some extent, that's, that's what British war game has become.
Speaker B:It's become.
Speaker B:There are two prongs to it.
Speaker B:There's, there's the showy bit, you know, which is the, you know, which is the, the salute and the partisan and, and all of that kind of thing, you know, where everything is showing off what you, what you can do, you know, show.
Speaker B:Yeah, your paint jobs, the size of your armies and your, your terrain building skills and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:And then there's the reality, which is playing on a, on a, on a pool tape piece of pool table bays in a church hall somewhere on a Thursday night, you know, with half of your soldiers not painted.
Speaker B:You know, that's the club reality.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Of war, you know, and, and I shouldn't think it's much different in, in America either.
Speaker B:What the, the biggest difference, I think, in America between us and America is that most of you Americans are blessed with the, with having an enormous seller in your house.
Speaker B:Right, Right.
Speaker B:Well, because.
Speaker C:You're right outside of Florida.
Speaker C:You're correct.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, my mate's in Virginia.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And in Maryland and, and those sort of places, they've, you know, they've got like a, a regular kind of American.
Speaker B:It's like a, like a sort of like wooden bungalow kind of thing.
Speaker C:Right, right.
Speaker B:And then underneath that is another house and.
Speaker B:Yes, and it's full of soldiers and, you know, they've got a big table and everything else.
Speaker B:You're lucky enough to have that in.
Speaker C:Because, you know, it's funny about that, is the, one of the reasons for that is because the basement and the garage don't count in the square footage of your house.
Speaker B:Ah, so you don't pay tax on that bit.
Speaker C:That's right.
Speaker C:So you don't pay the.
Speaker C:So when you purchase the house, you're purchasing the house, you're not purchasing the basement, you're not purchasing the garage.
Speaker C:So, because all that.
Speaker C: So if you have a: Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:For living space.
Speaker B:It's, it's some, some old.
Speaker B:I mean, I've, I've had, I've lived in two, two houses that have had basements, you know, sellers.
Speaker B:But it's generally UK houses is much smaller, you know, and they're built on smaller plots of land as well.
Speaker B:I mean, I mean, bear in mind, you could drop the UK into, I.
Speaker C:Don't know, into Florida.
Speaker B:Yeah, probably.
Speaker C:You know, because I did a size comparison because I was trying to understand.
Speaker C:I, you know, I'm, I'm fascinated with British politics.
Speaker C:I really am.
Speaker C:And so watching this political season and the, the votes and everything and get to know it, it's much more interesting than ours.
Speaker C:And I was thinking, you know, how.
Speaker C:What's the size of this kind?
Speaker C:Like, really like trying to understand visually after driven through the United States, how if I wanted to get from the south to the north, how long would that take me?
Speaker C:And literally when I did the comparison, it's like, wow, this is, this is the size of the state I'm in now.
Speaker C:Give, give or take a few.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Maybe an extra 100 miles.
Speaker C:I could drive the state from top to bottom in 11 hours.
Speaker B:Well, but believe, believe me, I have made, I've made that dreadful mistake driving in America thinking that it's okay, right, to fly into Washington, drive from, drive from Washington through Virginia, south and north, north and South Carolina, into Georgia, back up the Shenandoah Valley and back into Washington again and thinking that's an okay drive.
Speaker C:You know, that's a brutal, that's brutal.
Speaker B:That is a long way.
Speaker B:Even in three weeks.
Speaker B:That's a long, That's a long.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Driving from when I drove from New York to Florida took us two days and that was a non.
Speaker C:It was almost nonstop.
Speaker C:We stopped for about four hours sleep and then got back in and, and drove down.
Speaker B:See where I am in five hours I could.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, probably about four and a half hours.
Speaker B:I could be in Paris from where I live here.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You know, that, that, that does sort of scale wise, that kind of puts everything into perspective.
Speaker B:And that's, and that's, that's why throughout the entire Cold War, we had our nuclear missiles pointing at Paris and Marseille.
Speaker B:We were more concerned about what the French were doing than the Russians.
Speaker B:But I mean, you know, I'm glad,.
Speaker C:I'm glad my wife doesn't listen to the, the Shot and Shield podcast because just hearing that right there, she's gonna, she, she's gonna push me even further to emigrate.
Speaker B:Well, we, we, we.
Speaker B:We're.
Speaker B:We're off to France in next month anyway for a road trip around Brittany.
Speaker B:So that'd be nice.
Speaker C:So if we can.
Speaker C:I, I want to talk about.
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker C:Some of.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, no, no, because you know what I love?
Speaker C:I love free.
Speaker C:You know, I've interviewed a lot of people in my life and the, the best, the best interviews are the ones where we just talk and that's it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:You know, usually I like to start off with a.
Speaker C:You know, here's a big intro which I'll do that when I.
Speaker C:In post production.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Because I'm gonna have this, this will be out today.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:Because I have the, the rest of the, of the show already pre produced.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:The.
Speaker C:I wanted to talk about Mad Dogs and Englishmen and I also wanted to talk about your, your new one great game, Tournament of Shadows.
Speaker C:The.
Speaker C:Yeah, so earlier you were saying that the Mad Dogs and Englishmen was an easy, simple rule set.
Speaker C:So could you walk through like the basics of the game?
Speaker C:I mean, I don't want to give.
Speaker B:Get.
Speaker C:Give away all the, all the, all the greatness to it.
Speaker C:I'm just saying just walk through some of the, the basics of a round, for instance.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, the, the armies are split up into separate commands and each, and each command.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Which is probably three to five units or something like, like that.
Speaker B:Each of those have a, have a graded commander.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And, and the commander can do better.
Speaker B:Commanders can do more stuff.
Speaker B:You know, so poor commanders might only be able to issue orders out to a couple of units and good ones to all of them, and he'd be able to run around and rally.
Speaker B:You know, we're sort of com.
Speaker B:Comparing somebody, you know, like Oliver Otis Howard to Jeb Stewart or, you know, is that kind of comparison, you know.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:And it, Whatever.
Speaker B:So you got that and you've also got.
Speaker B:And then you've got random Movement.
Speaker B:So everything's based on the roll of a dice.
Speaker B:So so many, you know, an infantry unit in March column might throw three six sided dice and that's the number of inches they move.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Okay, so it, so it's that kind of thing.
Speaker B:Also the move, also the order in which these commanders get to go in a turn is random because you pull a card.
Speaker B:So each commander has got a card.
Speaker B:So you pull the card and then that commander does all of his stuff and then you pull another card and the next commander does all of his stuff as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So you don't know which order stuff things are going to happen in a turn.
Speaker B:The other thing that people like a lot about Mad Dogs is that is the, is the card deck that comes with it.
Speaker B:Because the card deck, depending on how good your, your main commander is, you can hold so many cards in your hand and that, and some of them are cards that will allow say a cavalry unit to charge at full gallop and do the double amount of damage when they hit the enemy.
Speaker B:Or it might be an infantry unit that's allowed to volley and then charge or fix bayonets or whatever it might be.
Speaker B:There might be some weird thing like that, some peculiar thing or, or it's a card that you play against the enemy to slow him down or to mess with his firing or his morale or something like that.
Speaker B:So that's it, that's, that's the basic idea.
Speaker B:And it was built around, originally built around the idea around to do it with Indian Mutiny.
Speaker B:That was, that was the original impetus behind it.
Speaker B:But I broadened it out because, and then used it for, for the Anglo Zulu War and I've used it for Sudan and latterly I've broadened it out.
Speaker B:So with the Mad Dogs things, currently there are four scenario books out.
Speaker B:Two of them are based on India.
Speaker B:So there's one which takes you up to the eve of the, almost up to the eve of the India Mutiny.
Speaker B: So from about: Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:So that's all, so that's all the kind of the build up to the mutiny.
Speaker B:It's, you know, it takes in the Anglo Saek War and you know, various actions in Afghanistan and the Gurkhas and, and all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:And then there's, which is specifically Indian mutiny.
Speaker B:So that's, that's probably the most number of battles which been broken down with orders of battle, deployment, objectives, maps, everything ready for you to just to plonk your soldiers on the table, you know, where the trees have got to go and the villages have got to go and all that kind of thing and there's clear objectives and everything.
Speaker B:So I've done that.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:And then, but what I've been doing what I had a sort of, kind of a slight detour because I, I, I, I, I started talking to, to Paul Eagleston at Empress who's got a lovely range of Mari war figures.
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker B:You know marry wars is kind of, it's a weird, it's a weird kind of conflict because it, it's got that kind of, it's, it's got a bit of a political sting to it.
Speaker B:It's like the, like the Aboriginal wars in Australia as well.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Is that, that latterly revisionist historians have kind of seen it as more of a war of extinction rather than a, a colonial brush brush war, you know.
Speaker B:But anyway, regardless of that I did one which is firmly focused on, on the Maori wars, another scenario but similar kind of, you know, similar kind of format maps and, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:All just a battle and that kind of thing.
Speaker B:And I've done one on the, on Australia the, the Aboriginal wars which are fascinating I have to say as well.
Speaker B:And, and I'm grandiosely, I'm, I'm, I'm planning to cover everything related to India.
Speaker B: r which takes you up to about: Speaker B:But I think, I mean I'll.
Speaker B:Going back to a conversation you and I had some time ago is, is the other one which I'm working on as well is the Anglo Persian War almost forgotten?
Speaker B:Pretty much.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and, and it was fought on virtually on the eve of the Indian Mutiny and it was the East India Company troops primarily.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and, and it's, you know they landed on the south coast of, of Hersher as it was then and you know that there was some fairly nasty engagements short lived but you know a number of nasty engagements.
Speaker B:So, so that's the idea.
Speaker B:And then after that I, I do, I do want to move into Africa.
Speaker B:That's, that's so I, I want to.
Speaker B:One of my loves is, is the Zulu Anglo Zulu War.
Speaker B:I do like that a lot.
Speaker B:And also West Africa I'm not fascinated with west, you know, the, the Gold coast or the Ivory coast or whatever, that, that kind of thing.
Speaker B:So, So I mean, I, I will be doing scenario books for all of that and at some point also I've got.
Speaker B:I, I have, I've promised to do one on.
Speaker B:And, and you can't get much more obscure than this.
Speaker B:Apart from the War of Jenkinsia.
Speaker C:I love obscure.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:That's, that's my role.
Speaker B:It's the Anglo Dutch Spice Wars.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Which is in a.
Speaker B: In the early: Speaker B:And it involves a.
Speaker B:Basically a war over clothes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:Cloves and cinnamon and pepper and.
Speaker B:Yeah, all of that.
Speaker B:You know, so that's sort of Java and, you know, up around that kind of way and, and, you know, talk about.
Speaker B:I mean, that's almost like having a war on Mars in, you know, in.
Speaker B:By comparison.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, today, you know, I mean, you know, it's just so far away from anything.
Speaker C:And not only that, but you also, you know, to, to piggyback on what you're saying about that is you don't just have the Dutch and the, in the British, you, You have all of the different kingdoms and all the different islands.
Speaker C:Some islands have two or three kingdoms.
Speaker B:Were the Portuguese out there too?
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker C:Yep, the Portuguese were out there for a little while until the Dutch ran them off.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I want to say the Spanish were as well.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:I'm sure a lot, I mean, a lot of those places were found by, of the Spaniards.
Speaker B:Weren't they though?
Speaker C:Yeah, Spanish and Portuguese.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:But the.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's a huge, that's a huge.
Speaker C:You know, it's, it is very.
Speaker C:It's an, it's an.
Speaker C:It totally is obscure.
Speaker C:It totally is awkward.
Speaker C:It's totally right up my alley because that's what I like in war gaming.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Is.
Speaker C:But there's, there's a lot of play in that particular realm of history.
Speaker C:So that's, that's a, that's a good subject.
Speaker B:I think there's, I think there's a lot of scope for things like that because it does.
Speaker B:You don't need to have hundreds of soldiers to do it.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:You know, you can probably get away with, you know, 20 or 30 figures aside and have a really good skirmish, you know, on a, on a, on a very, very jungly island.
Speaker B:And that'd be quite fun, I think.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So that's the kind, that's the kind of thing that is all kind of mad dogs and Englishmen related.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:They're all from caliber.
Speaker B: r, I've known him since about: Speaker B:1982, 2.
Speaker B:When the pair of us worked in a war game shop in Oxford street in London.
Speaker B:And you know, I came out of university and he came out of university.
Speaker B:I think he had a.
Speaker B:A degree in librarianship or something and I had a degree in politics.
Speaker B:Neither of us knew what on earth we were going to do without with those degrees.
Speaker B:So we ended up working in the shop.
Speaker B:And much to his distaste, he was lumbered with general games on the ground floor.
Speaker B:So he was selling chess sets and Rubik's Cubes and I was downstairs selling war games, which was opposite.
Speaker B:Like a pig in heaven, you know, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker B:But so, yeah, so I've known him for, well, 45 or 40 odd years.
Speaker B:God, yes.
Speaker B:40 Odd years, yeah.
Speaker B:Which is.
Speaker B:And it was funny because that sort of time was.
Speaker B:It was very fertile in terms of ideas and things.
Speaker B:I mean, we worked with.
Speaker B:I worked with Joe Diva there, you know, the lone wolf writer sadly passed a few years ago now.
Speaker B:And you know, and Games Workshop as well around the same time.
Speaker B:All of the people that ended up doing good war game stuff, like Rick Priestley, Jervis Johnson, Brian, who, Who ran War Games Foundry for so long, who's.
Speaker B:Who only died last year, I think, you know, those, those kind of people, they were all.
Speaker B:And Gary Chalk and people like that, they were all, they were all of that generation, you know, and now, now we're the old guard, you know, we've, you know, those sort of people are now the Donald Featherstones of somebody else's, you know, generation.
Speaker B:It's quite weird if I can, because that's where warhammers come from and you know, War Master and heaven knows how many other gaming systems.
Speaker C:You know, if I can get back to something you said about, about Mad Dogs, Englishmen, about the, the scale, because I had a question from a member of the Shot and Shield podcast, War Gaming group, Jamie.
Speaker C:And this is the question.
Speaker C:Let me bring it up here.
Speaker C:And it was specifically about Mad Dogs.
Speaker C:First.
Speaker C:It was if I had played it yet, and I haven't as of yet, which I'm going to okay my copies in the mail.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker C:But Jamie asked.
Speaker C:I'm looking for something that I can solo and can scale up and down.
Speaker C:I haven't much table space, so I'd like 15 millimeter, but I also love 28 millimeter.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Can we scale these figures?
Speaker C:Can we scale these for high figure counts as well?
Speaker C:If it comes with supplements which it does because Jamie's new to war gaming.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:So the question, the question is one, can you do it solo?
Speaker C:And second, can you scale it so it.
Speaker C:Can we use 15 millimeter?
Speaker C:Does it have to be 28 millimeter?
Speaker C:Can you scale from skirmish to a larger skirmish game?
Speaker C:Maybe regimental?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I haven't specifically written anything, any rule outlines or guidelines for solo play, but the way the game is actually structured, it really does lend itself for solo play because it's, because you're playing because you're, you're, you're not moving all of your troops all of the time in one go.
Speaker B:You're, you're doing them in by brigade.
Speaker B:It's easy then to just switch across, particularly if you give them.
Speaker B:Particularly if you give each brigade commander a particular task to perform.
Speaker B:You know, so you can do that and when, when you, when you pull the card out, you can just switch sides over the only, the only.
Speaker B:I will do, I will do a set of solo specific rules for it.
Speaker B:And I have.
Speaker B:Because one of the other things that I do every month is I write an article for Miniature War Games magazine.
Speaker B:And in some of the issues that I've done, I've specifically focused on solo gaming and how to use simple mechanics to determine what your opponent's about to do.
Speaker B:So I'd certainly direct him to have a look at, because I think you can, I think you can certainly access them digitally online.
Speaker B:But I've certainly done sort of general guidelines for solo play.
Speaker B:I do have in mind to do a solo war gaming book, you know, with, with specific mechanics, but I haven't yet done that.
Speaker B:And as for scaling nominally, I guess the sizes of the units are.
Speaker B:The cavalry units are usually sort of 8 to 12, 8 to 15 figures.
Speaker B:The infantry units are kind of 10 to maybe 30.
Speaker B:And if you've got a bunch of bad mashes or you know, some really awful Levy Spearman or something, there might be 30 or 40 of them and they'll just kind of wander around and not really get very much involved in anything if, unless they absolutely have to.
Speaker B:But yeah, I mean, easily scalable.
Speaker B:I mean, I did it.
Speaker B:My units, my, my infantry units, my British infantry units are 20.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:My personal ones and my, my mutineer regiments are 30.
Speaker B:And, and the, the reason per.
Speaker B:For that was, is that the 20 was to take into account the fact that they'd fought loads of engagements and they had loads of attrition and they were rarely at full strength.
Speaker B:I mean, some of them were tiny units, you know, and they still performed quite well on the battlefield.
Speaker B:And whereas the mutineer ones were.
Speaker B:Tended to be pretty much a whole regiment or, you know, a whole company of ones that had deserted over and, and for a time they would stick together, you know, and generally they were sort of larger groups of men and.
Speaker C:Does it, does it matter whether it's 15 millimeter or 28 millimeter or 172nd or.
Speaker C:Doesn't matter.
Speaker B:No, no.
Speaker B:None whatsoever.
Speaker B:None whatsoever.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker C:I've saved the best for last.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:Because this is, this is my digs now.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:The great game.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So the rule set.
Speaker C:Great game.
Speaker C:Tournament of Shadows.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:We're looking at early next year, April.
Speaker C:You want to debut it?
Speaker C:You're, you're.
Speaker C:I guess the publisher's concerned debuting it at Salute.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, they will.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I'm going to put a game on there.
Speaker C:All right, hit.
Speaker C:Hit me with it.
Speaker C:What, what am I looking at?
Speaker C:Am I going to be, like, totally stoked?
Speaker B:Well, it's just, it's just the most weird and remarkable backdrop for a war game that you could possibly imagine.
Speaker B:You know, it's, it's about, it's Central Asia, Tibet, India, the Silk Road, you know, llamas and yetis and, you know, all that kind of stuff, you know, and, and it's a, a time when czarist Russia was expanding.
Speaker B:It was expanding south.
Speaker B:I mean, it was going, it was going hell for leather east all the way to Alaska and whatnot, heading in that direction.
Speaker B:But at the same time it had this soft underbelly and it was moving and, and full of what had been tribes that were part of the carnate of the Golden Horde and Mongols and heaven knows, you know, just a mishmash of, of tribal rivals all along in a, in a massive swathe of land above Egypt, above India and Nepal until you get to the Russian Steps, you know, and, and it was, it was ungovernable, you know, and, and dangerous.
Speaker B:And there were slavers and, you know, they, Nothing was safe, you know, so, so you've got the, you got the Russians sort of heading south, grabbing, you know, fabled cities, you know, like Samarkand and Tashkent and.
Speaker C:Yeah, and Kashgar.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:All of these places that, that are kind of almost semi legendary, you know, places, you know, and that they're grabbing these places and they're subjugating the, the locals and you've got Britain looking on and thinking they're getting mighty close to India.
Speaker B:You know, every single day these Russians have gone 20, 30 miles south, you know, and.
Speaker B:And all that.
Speaker B:So you've got this.
Speaker B:The sparks of.
Speaker B:Of a war that never ignited between Britain and Russia in that part of the world, and it's off the back of us having fought and beaten the Russians in the Crimea, you know, so.
Speaker B:So you've got.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's the period.
Speaker B: years from about the: Speaker B:So that takes in all of the Afghan wars, it takes in all of the.
Speaker B:The Russian colonization of.
Speaker B:Of Central Asia.
Speaker B:It takes in the changing of the guard in Russia and the arrival of Lenin and the Communists and the Reds and all that kind of stuff, who simply continued the process, you know, nothing much changed apart from the flag, you know, and it's just an incredible, incredible backdrop and the idea.
Speaker B:And I've.
Speaker B:I've been toying with it, trying to figure out how I do it, because at the back end of that story you've got a reasonably popular.
Speaker B:And you've probably seen them.
Speaker B:Copplestone does some lovely.
Speaker C:Oh, back of beyond.
Speaker B:Red Russians and Chinese warlords and Tibetans.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, back to beyond setting, you know, the Easter Blaze, all that kind of stuff, you know, so you've got the back end of that and then you've got.
Speaker B:And then of course, you've got the Russian Civil War, you know, where you've got Britons involved in.
Speaker B:In.
Speaker B:In you actually fighting, you know, alongside White Russians against the Reds, right, And all that stuff.
Speaker B:So you've got all of that at the back end of the story.
Speaker B:But my focus is.
Speaker B:Is.
Speaker B: y earlier part, which is that: Speaker B:To the turn of the century.
Speaker B:And I thought, what's the best way of being able to do that?
Speaker B:What's the best, you know, you can just plonk a load of soldiers on the table and fight a battle out.
Speaker B:But that's not how the combat.
Speaker B:That's not how the.
Speaker B:The conflict was actually for.
Speaker B:It was fought through exploration, map making, you know, forging alliances, thwarting the enemy, making sure that the.
Speaker B:The enemy ended up in the middle of nowhere with no water and surrounded by bandits.
Speaker B:You know, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:You know, it's.
Speaker B:It's Spies.
Speaker B:And the idea was some of the characters, the.
Speaker B:The historical characters are fascinating.
Speaker B:They did, you know, they're the first people to ride to Bukhara or they'd be the, you know, they.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker B:That they'd be the first ones to see the.
Speaker B:The enormous library in Tibet, you know, and meet.
Speaker B:Meet the Wang the librarian, all those sorts of things.
Speaker B:You know, there's all this kind of stuff going on.
Speaker B:So the idea is, is each player creates a character, can be a historical one and it's pretty much like a D and D character almost.
Speaker B:Okay, so he's your main man, he's got skills, he's got weapons, he's got.
Speaker B:There are very many things apart about that particular aspect which will be very familiar to role playing gamers.
Speaker B:You know though, you know, so you've got constitution, you've got body strength and all that kind of stuff, right?
Speaker B:And all of those things are going to be important when they do stuff like climb up mountains or get shot at or try and jump on a moving horse or you know, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker B:And then what you've got, what you haven't spent in points in making your character, you know, Captain America or whoever he might be, Right, right.
Speaker B:You spend on your, on your followers.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So a Brit character, you know, might be an officer in the East Anglia in the honorable East Angley East India Company.
Speaker B:And he'll of course have his half a dozen Sikhs with him.
Speaker B:He'll have an Indian pundit map make, you know, local, local man.
Speaker B:And he'll have, he'll have a couple of sepoys with him to look after the donkeys and the, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:And he'll go off and do his adventures.
Speaker B:And what I've done is I've created, in the, in the rule book there's 20 or more scenarios which are, it's a, it's a timeline of scenarios.
Speaker B:So it's, it's a mission.
Speaker B:So the idea is that I've created missions and within the missions are a number of scenarios that you can fight out, you know, and you can play them.
Speaker B:The whole idea was to make it as accessible to as many war games as possible.
Speaker B:And you don't even need an opponent.
Speaker B:So I've done single player solo, you've got two player cooperative, so you're both on the same side against a dummy enemy or you've got two player competitive.
Speaker B:So it's you as a British player against a Russian or an American against a Frenchman or whatever it might be.
Speaker B:So all three kind of strands of war of, of, of how you'd probably play it have been covered solo, competitive, you know, like a regular game or operating together to combine forces to deal with the enemy.
Speaker B:So you could both be too.
Speaker B:So like, because there was lots of, lots of circumstances where, where two British officers would go off together with you Know with a, with a band of followers and they'd.
Speaker B:One of them would be a great horseman and you know, he's be great, great with a rifle and the other one would be a fairly rubbish soldier.
Speaker B:But he was brilliant linguist, you know, so you've got those kind of.
Speaker B:The idea is, is to come to have two characters.
Speaker B:You know, if you play it cooperatively, you have two characters which.
Speaker B:You've got very diametrically opposed sets of skills.
Speaker B:So they're complementary rather than, you know, so that's the idea.
Speaker B:And so, so I've done.
Speaker B:There are 20 or more scenarios in the rule book and then that's going to be, that's, that's followed by this is what I'm working on next.
Speaker B:I've done one and I've got two more to do.
Speaker B:They're scenario books which are thematic missions set in a particular time period.
Speaker B:So the first one is, is, is set in Central Asia.
Speaker B:So it's what I was talking about talking about.
Speaker B:It's about that time when the borders were really fluid, you know.
Speaker B:You know, so, so one of the missions you've got to get to Bukhara, another one, you go to Tashkent and there's all, it's all of the events which take you on that journey.
Speaker B:The second one is, is based in Tibet and then you can.
Speaker B:Tibet's amazing because there are, there are some very, very odd historical characters.
Speaker B:Look up a guy called von Koch for example, absolutely mad German that was there at the time.
Speaker B:Lots of, lots of odd stuff going on there.
Speaker B:And then the third one is, is based all around the Silk Road, you know, so that's, you know, bandits and, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:But yeah, it's, it's a hybrid, It's a hybrid role play, skirmish, I guess the closest you could possibly think it might be.
Speaker B:It's a little bit like, scale wise, it's a bit like Silver Bay in it.
Speaker B:So a bit like Gangs of Rome in terms of scale.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:You know, you don't, you'd only need.
Speaker B:As a player, you'd probably only need 10 or 12 figures to begin with and you probably need about 30 or 40 bad guys, you know, bandits and whatnot.
Speaker B:You know, just random bandits that you can use for the scenarios.
Speaker B:But yeah, that's, that's, that's the idea.
Speaker B:I mean, and so, so I've got that.
Speaker B:So there'll be four books in the initial set of releases.
Speaker B:So the rule book and the first scenario book will be out first in the spring.
Speaker B:And then later on in the year, I think autumn probably, certainly before Christmas, there'll be the other two scenario books.
Speaker B:And then there's the.
Speaker B:The other project, which I've also finished for Helion as well, which is a Scottish.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The most dreadful title at the moment, Universal Scenarios for War Gamers, which is awful.
Speaker B:And please, anybody, contact Scott if they can come up with something which is even remotely better than that as an idea.
Speaker B:But what it is, it's.
Speaker B:It's a series of systems which allow you to.
Speaker B:Yeah, because one of my bugbears.
Speaker B:Sorry, I'll backtrack it a little bit.
Speaker B:One of my.
Speaker B:One of my bug bears about war games is we spent hours painting soldiers.
Speaker B:We spent hours reading rules.
Speaker B:We spent hours squinting at photographs and drawings and paintings of soldiers to make sure that we get the uniform right and we understand which.
Speaker B:Which mark of rifle they're carrying and.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Kind of.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:Then we pitch up to play a game somewhere and you say, well, we just stick half a dozen trees on a table in a building and.
Speaker B:And plonk your soldiers in a line either side of the table and charge one another.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And you think, okay, that's not.
Speaker B:You know, that's what I call plonk and play.
Speaker C:Right, Right.
Speaker B:So you've got to plonk everything on the table and you play it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You don't even think about it because we.
Speaker B:Because by the time you got to that stage, you've got no time to play the game anymore.
Speaker B:So you just.
Speaker B:Do you understand what I mean?
Speaker C:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker B:So the idea with this book is that it quickly gives you a scenario, right?
Speaker B:So I've got little geomorphic maps, right, which you choose.
Speaker B:There are different ways of choosing these geomorphic maps.
Speaker B:And then they make up your tabletop for you.
Speaker B:And then there's another part which then says what your objectives are, where you put your men to start with and what your objectives are on.
Speaker B:On in this scenario, right?
Speaker B:So in a flash, you've got an engaging, exciting, challenging game, and all you've had to do is chuck a couple of dice.
Speaker C:Okay?
Speaker B:That's the idea, you know, and so the rules.
Speaker C:So the rules in.
Speaker C:In this particular case are just rules.
Speaker B:Almost.
Speaker C:Almost a generic rule set.
Speaker C:But it.
Speaker C:But you have that.
Speaker C:Hence the universal.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I've done.
Speaker B:I've done.
Speaker B:I've done.
Speaker B:I've done one.
Speaker B:One.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's one set.
Speaker B:One strand for ancients in the broadest sense.
Speaker B:So it's kind of up to dark Ages.
Speaker B:Okay, so all of the maps and objectives and the terrain and everything else is geared towards Ancients.
Speaker B:There's another one which covers also musket.
Speaker B:And then there's the third one which covers post that.
Speaker B:So it's kind of like, yeah, very late colonial to modern, you know, so.
Speaker B:Yeah, because obviously you don't have tower blocks in, in, you know, Mesopotamia.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Or.
Speaker B:All mo, all motorways.
Speaker B:So you can get to Marathon really, really quickly.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:You're on your way to Thermopylae.
Speaker C:Let's take the i4.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so that's the idea.
Speaker B: going to be out in autumn of: Speaker B:But as I say, it needs a title, which it lacks pretty much.
Speaker C:You know, I could, I could see sitting around a boardroom and everybody trying to come up with a title.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:I've been part of those boardrooms to come up with the title for something.
Speaker C:And some of the weirdest titles come.
Speaker B:Out, I've done that and they've come up with a single word title for the book and then three lines of subtext underneath that.
Speaker C:Yeah, combat.
Speaker B:And then, you know, true, true, you know, accurate representations of true fighting men.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker C:You, you're prolific when it comes to, you know, doing this.
Speaker C:I mean, you, you're an offer of over 300 books.
Speaker C:You have these war games that I've just, that I mentioned earlier out, you know, how, how do you start, like at this time, when you sit back, you think, you know what?
Speaker C:We need a game for this.
Speaker C:You know, how do you start putting that together?
Speaker C:What's the first thing that comes to mind when you go to put together one of these war games?
Speaker B:Well, the first thing you do is you.
Speaker B:Probably when I get an interest in a new period to play, I invariably buy all of the rules that I can find and see if I can find a set I like.
Speaker B:And nine times out of ten I can't.
Speaker B:You know, nine times out of ten, I, I, I, I'll remember.
Speaker B:I mean, things have changed a lot in, in, in the way I, way I view things, because certainly in the 80s and, and so on, I would play WRG Ancients and I'd play Tercio and, and I play Rapid Fire and all, all of these.
Speaker B:You know, I'd even play, Heaven help Me, Newbury Rules, which were a bit like, a bit like having to deal with quantum physics every single time you wanted to, you know, fire a Bowman, you know, but, you know, just ridiculous.
Speaker B:But, you know, so, so, you know, I would stick with the.
Speaker B:Then purely because everybody else was playing them and everybody else was using them and it, and it was.
Speaker B:And if you had a WRG army, then you could sure enough find a game at the club because somebody else would have one, right?
Speaker B:So not being a member of a club anymore and wanting to create some of my own stuff, I started writing sets of rules in the 80s and that kind of snowball and, And I, and you, you.
Speaker B:You get home brew sets of rules, and they sort of grow and mutate and that kind of thing.
Speaker B:And that's usually what happens is you look at, you look at a period, you think, well, you know, I want it to be.
Speaker B:I want it to be fun.
Speaker B:I want it to be easy.
Speaker B:I want it to be quick.
Speaker B:I want it to be.
Speaker B:I want it to reflect what the warfare was actually like as, as best I can, you know, and for things like the American Civil War and, and, and, and colonial, you've really got no excuse about playing sets of rules that don't play the period because there's so much written about them.
Speaker B:You should know.
Speaker B:You should, you, you should be.
Speaker B:If you're into the Civil War, you should know pretty much.
Speaker B:You shouldn't be.
Speaker B:I don't know what.
Speaker B:I'll give you an example, right?
Speaker B:I used to play competition games years ago, ancient competition games.
Speaker B:And, you know, sets of rules have all got peculiarities, and they've all got ways in which you can kind of bend and twist them.
Speaker B:And the rules, lawyers and people who go through every line of rule, they always find a little claw or a little, A little trick that they can use, right?
Speaker B:And somebody.
Speaker B:And somebody.
Speaker B:I, I came up, I came up against this guy in a competition, right?
Speaker B:And, and this was, this was Macedonians.
Speaker B:He had a Macedonian army, a successor army, right?
Speaker B:I can't even remember what my army was.
Speaker B:But he'd figured out that Mike, Mike, Mike army was predominantly cavalry.
Speaker B:I think it was scythian or something, I can't even remember.
Speaker B:But he figured out that my.
Speaker B:Under the rules, my cavalry couldn't charge formed pike, right?
Speaker B:Understandable.
Speaker B:You know, you can't make a horse charger, a hedgerow full of spikes, could you?
Speaker B:So what he does, what he did is instead of deploying his, his successor pikeman in a block like he should do, he did.
Speaker B:He deployed the whole lot in a line across the whole table and just marched across the table, right?
Speaker B:And I could do absolutely nothing about it apart from Fire my bows at him and run away.
Speaker B:You know, so if there's always, there's all, you know, there's always stuff like that or, or guys or guys who will know that they're not supposed to do something with a set of rods.
Speaker B:Rules, but they continue to do it because nobody's called them out.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Like, like, not like, like being the wrong side of a wagon, using the wagon as cover.
Speaker B:But the rules stipulate you can't fire through a wagon.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And because nobody's figured this, they should be on the wagon, not behind the wagon.
Speaker B:And if they're in the wagon, they don't get the COVID but they get some other bonus or something.
Speaker B:Rested weapon or something.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:But these guys are behind the wagon.
Speaker B:So they get the rested weapon and they get the hard cover for the wagon.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But they're not actually allowed to fire through the wagon under the rules, you know, so there's all these kind of, you know, people will continually do this kind of thing.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Then around with the rules.
Speaker B:So that's something I try and something I try and by simplifying sets of rules and not having all these ridiculous sub clauses and all that kind.
Speaker B:I try and make it straightforward because I'm interested in the social thing of a game.
Speaker B:I don't think I'm particularly competitive.
Speaker B:I don't think that's important in a war game.
Speaker B:I don't think winning a war game or losing a war game is particularly important.
Speaker B:Important.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I think having, having a laugh around the table with, with a bunch of like minded friends, you know, taking the mickey out of one another.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:You know, laughing, laughing when they throw double ones.
Speaker B:Absolutely, yes.
Speaker B:All kind of things.
Speaker B:Or somebody declaring a charge and finding themselves an inch short, you know, that's always so funny.
Speaker B:All of those things are great.
Speaker B:But that's, that's my start point for a set of rules.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:It is not, you know, not, not.
Speaker B:I want it to be.
Speaker B:I want it to be fun.
Speaker B:And that's where I.
Speaker B:And that's where I start.
Speaker B:So you strip back all of the rubbish first.
Speaker B:Yes, I think so.
Speaker C:You.
Speaker C:So you strip it all back and you ask the one question.
Speaker C:The one question is how, how do I bring people together?
Speaker C:Yeah, that's.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And also you need to be able to, to create a set of rules.
Speaker B:And I'm going back to mad dogs here is how can you create a set of rules where in reality 500 blokes, 100 of them on a horse and a couple of guns saw off 15,000 enemy.
Speaker B:How can they do that in the middle of the day on a flat plane?
Speaker B:How do you do that?
Speaker B:You know, you need to.
Speaker B:So you need to come up with a system that paralyzes the enemy because that's.
Speaker B:I mean, when I was looking at Indian warfare, for example, you know, I don't mean, I don't mean Native Americans.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Indian war.
Speaker B:I mean Indian warfare.
Speaker B:Nine times out of ten, most of the army would just sit there and watch, you know, well, there was a scrap in the middle of the battlefield and everybody would sit and watch this, what was going on.
Speaker B:And if they thought things were going badly, they go home.
Speaker B:You know, if they thought things were going okay, they'd get their.
Speaker B:They'd sharpen their sword with, you know, thinking and, you know, lick their lips at the prospect of looting the baggage train.
Speaker B:And that would be.
Speaker B:That would be their sole contribution to the, to the battle.
Speaker C:You just gave me an idea for another scenario.
Speaker C:So the baggage train.
Speaker C:Yeah, I forgot about the baggage drain.
Speaker B:It's amazing.
Speaker B:The baggage trains.
Speaker B:The baggage trains throughout history have been a ridiculous lure for people, you know, and more than.
Speaker C:More than politics.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So it's.
Speaker C:I'm trying to free their country from this evil king.
Speaker C:No, it's that baggage train.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Has my name on it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I wonder if I get some pearls for the wife, you know, I want, you know, or she, you know, she, she.
Speaker B:She needs a new mixing bowl.
Speaker C:You know, these guys I'm fighting for ain't paying me worth nothing.
Speaker C:But that baggage train.
Speaker C:That's it right there.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Maybe I'll get myself a meal.
Speaker B:I love it.
Speaker C:Hey, John, I appreciate you so much coming on to Shot and Shield and talking with me today.
Speaker C:Just, you know, it's.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Amazing to have someone of your caliber to come on here and talk about rules and gaming and painting and.
Speaker C:And just everything that we've talked about.
Speaker C:And I appreciate it so much.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's absolutely my pleasure you very, very, very kind words.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:So got to edit that out there.
Speaker C:My cough.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:Sean Shield dedicated to colonial 19th century war gaming in history.
Speaker C:And as I said earlier in the show, we were going to be getting into the weeds of colonial war gaming.
Speaker C:And I did not do that alone, but with the help of war games elite, John Sutherland, who has been war gaming for more than 50 years.
Speaker C: that I mentioned here Glory,: Speaker C:Great game, tournament of Shadows.
Speaker C:It has been my pleasure to speak with John Sutherland.
Speaker C:What are you waiting for?
Speaker A:Come on, come on.
Speaker C:Shot and Shield, your colonial war gaming podcast.
Speaker C:The 19th century ended amid the glories.
Speaker A:Of the Victorian era.
Speaker C:Shot and Shield, a podcast dedicated to wargaming the colonial era in those aristocratic.
Speaker A:Victorian days when, as Israeli said, the world was for the few and for the very few.
Speaker C:The views expressed during Shot and Shield are the hosts and only meant to be taken seriously.
Speaker C:If you feel it's necessary.
Speaker A:Good luck against those elephants.
Speaker C:And now, Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:So we're in the home stretch of this episode of the Shot and Shield super podcast.
Speaker C:You could hit me up by going to Twitter or X or whatever it's called at Shot and Shield, on the email at Shot and Shield podcast, gmail.com or on Facebook in the Shot and Shield podcast War Gaming Group.
Speaker C:Now, in this episode's archaeological audio discovery, I present to you the Dreyfus Affair.
Speaker C:Now, earlier I told you about a rule addendum called Spycraft, which you can pick up through email, through Twitter or X or through the Facebook group.
Speaker C:But I wanted to kind of throw this out there.
Speaker C:This is from CBS.
Speaker C:It's called you are there.
Speaker C: It's a: Speaker C:I present this to you on Shot and Shield.
Speaker A: th day of September,: Speaker A:The court is in recess.
Speaker A:The judges are in chambers to make a crucial decision.
Speaker A:Will they admit as evidence the testimony of a German agent?
Speaker A:Captain Alfred Dreyfus stands accused of betraying the French Republic by turning over top secret information to this agent.
Speaker A:If the German's testimony is admitted, it is certain that Dreyfus will be acquitted.
Speaker A:If it is not, it is equally as certain that Alfred Dreyfus will again, as he was in his first trial five years ago, be judged guilty of treason and returned to the heat and the hell of Devil's Island.
Speaker A:The crowd here in the courtroom in this little town of Rennes is quietly awaiting the return of The Military Justices.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Rennes, CBS is there.
Speaker A:The last day of the infamous Dreyfus case.
Speaker A:Will a French military court defy an outraged world opinion and send an innocent officer back to Devil's Island?
Speaker A:CBS takes you back to the twilight of a century when the very foundations of the French Republic trembled at Emile Zola's cry.
Speaker A:I accused all things are as they were then, except for one thing.
Speaker A:CBS is there.
Speaker A:CBS is there.
Speaker A:Produced and directed by Robert Louis Cheyenne is based on authentic historical fact and quotation.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:It's reflected in the attitude of not only the spectators, but also it's reflected on the faces and in the MANNER of the 150 correspondents from all over the world, from Peru to Tibet, from Siberia to Maine.
Speaker A:About.
Speaker A:About 10 minutes ago, these very same correspondents heard Metz Labori, the brilliant defense attorney for Alfred Dreyfus, request that the court allow the testimony of the German agent, Colonel von Schwarzkopfen.
Speaker A:And here at our CBS microphone is Mait Labori himself, who has kindly consented to tell our American listeners why he considers Colonel von Schwarzkoppen's testimony vital.
Speaker A:Dreyfus was accused of corresponding with a German agent.
Speaker A:He was supposed to have betrayed certain military secrets to a found power.
Speaker A:That agent, the court maintains, is Colonel von Schwarzkopen.
Speaker A:Well, I simply want to ask Colonel von Schwarzkopen himself whether he ever received any information from Dreyfus or indeed whether he ever had any relation, direct or indirect, with Dreyfus.
Speaker A:Do you think, M. Labori, that Colonel von Schwarzenegger will agree to testify?
Speaker A:I've received notice from Colonel von Schwarzkopen that you would answer any questions put to him.
Speaker A:I see.
Speaker A:Well, then it's.
Speaker A:It's your hope and your expectation that if von Schwarzkopen is allowed to testify, he will clear drape.
Speaker A:More than that, he will be able to point his finger at the real traitor.
Speaker A:And that, sir, everyone knows there is no secret about it.
Speaker A:It was admitted by Major Esther Hardy, the villain himself.
Speaker A:Several years ago, after Dreyfus's first trial, the.
Speaker A:This poor dupe of the higher ups told it to an English newspaperman.
Speaker A:He said that the handwriting on this scrap of paper that Dreyfus was supposed to send to Germany was his own esperhazi.
Speaker A:And moreover, Colonel von Schwartkopena said, and I quote, I can swear on my honor that Dreyfus is innocent and that he is paying for another and pointing to Colonel Dupatti de Clam, this man sitting here, he said, you see that man?
Speaker A:I shouldn't like to be in his skin, he said, for he had an innocent man condemned.
Speaker A:Von Schwarzkoppen said that at the French warmer three years ago, didn't he?
Speaker A:He was an invited guest of the French military.
Speaker A:He said it to a colonel of the Swiss army.
Speaker A:And it seems to me in all justice and consistency that if the French army could invite a German to witness its military maneuvers, they certainly could invite them to testify at defence court martial where a man's life is at stake.
Speaker A:But mit flabbery.
Speaker A:When you presented your request the court said that Colonel von Schwarzkoppen could not testify because he's in Germany.
Speaker A:May we?
Speaker A:That is a practical consideration.
Speaker A:But the telegraph is also a practical invention.
Speaker A:And if as the good judges said, the telegraph is too public for diplomatic secrecy, let them send secret couriers in any to that suggestion.
Speaker A:As I recall it, Smith Lovery, the president of the court stated that the military code does not permit an interruption of the trial.
Speaker A:But he said sir, that he could not suspend the trial while couriers go back and forth across Europe.
Speaker A:The military court provides for a suspension of 48 hours.
Speaker A:Certainly we can risk 48 hours of the good judge's lives rather than risk perpetual living death on Devil's island for Dreyfus.
Speaker A:For life imprisonment is what the sentences will be again if he is the judge guilty.
Speaker A:Well now sir, you mentioned a short while ago that Major Esterhazy was only a dupe of higher ups in this whole affair.
Speaker A:Wait, wait.
Speaker A:Well now who in your opinion is the real, the ultimate villain of the Drapers king?
Speaker A:It is a clique, a military clique of desperate frightened souls.
Speaker A:And it is a tragedy, monsieur, that they represent the army of France.
Speaker A:There are many villains, but the chief among them is Colonel Du Paty de Klam.
Speaker A:He engineered it all.
Speaker A:Du Paty de Klam with his monstrous fancies, his complete and torturing madness.
Speaker A:Emile Zola described them well.
Speaker A:Du Patit de Klam.
Speaker A:This most intricate of mind, haunted with romantic intrigues, delighting in the methods of the newspaper novel like a cheap detective fiction writer discovering so called stolen papers, meetings in deserted spots, mysterious women who pedal overwhelming proof by night examining evidence in a room lined with mirrors.
Speaker A:Zola was right.
Speaker A:It is Dupatti de Clam who conceived a plan that would rid the French general staff of its only Jewish officer.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Because he wanted in ignorance and hatred and prejudice to find that would purge the French army of its own failure.
Speaker A:What possible motive could Dreyfus have?
Speaker A:Why would he deal in espionage?
Speaker A:Money.
Speaker A:This family has money.
Speaker A:They are wealthy.
Speaker A:A man with a wife, children, position, honor.
Speaker A:What would be his motive?
Speaker A:A criminal must have a motive.
Speaker A:The accusers of Dreyfus could find no motive and have to know.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:They acted.
Speaker A:How mad to put a revolver on his desk and expect him to kill himself for their own guilty consciences.
Speaker A:No, Monsieur Dreyfus will not oblige them by killing himself.
Speaker A:He will live to establish his innocence.
Speaker A:Thank you, Maitre Lavery, the defense.
Speaker A:Thank you, sir.
Speaker A:The defense attorney for Captain Dreyfus is returning to his seat before the judge's bench.
Speaker A:And here now is the man whom Met labor termed the melodramatic villain of this piece.
Speaker A:He is Lieutenant Colonel Du Pat, himself of the French General Staff.
Speaker A:Well, Colonel, what do you say to Met Labor's attack on you?
Speaker A:Monsieur, if Met has called me a chief detective fiction writer, I can call him a romantic novelist.
Speaker A:Destiny.
Speaker A:He will soon be a disappointed man.
Speaker A:Then you are convinced the court will not allow Colonel von Schwarzkoppen's testimony?
Speaker A:It is unimportant.
Speaker A:What testimony can one give for a guilty man?
Speaker A:Guilty?
Speaker A:Well, you seem to be somewhat in the minority in that view, Colonel.
Speaker A:Practically, yes, sir.
Speaker A:Practically.
Speaker A:The whole world is convinced of Dreyfus innocence.
Speaker A:The whole world?
Speaker A:Has the army of France disappeared off the face of the globe?
Speaker A:Just as Monsieur Labourin Zola cry out, Jacques, I too shall cry out, Jacques.
Speaker A:I accuse this misguided man of protecting a traitor and defaming the glorious name of the French army.
Speaker A: ng the first court martial of: Speaker A:These were brave officers and patriots who have shed their blood on the field of battle for France.
Speaker A:While writers, where do they shed their blood?
Speaker A:As I recall, Colonel Emil Zola, the writer, said that some serve France with the sword and some with the pen.
Speaker A:And Zola has also asked, sir, what name will posterity choose and honor?
Speaker A:That of Zola, the writer or yours, the soldier?
Speaker A:Evidently, Zola is a passionate man.
Speaker A:Very passionate for publicity.
Speaker A:It's a good way to sell books.
Speaker A:As for me, I will uphold the honor of the army at all costs.
Speaker A:And also injustice, Colonel.
Speaker A:Injustice.
Speaker A:If injustice was done to this traitor, which I swear is false, injustice is preferable to disorder.
Speaker A:Goethe said that.
Speaker A:And he is as great a writer as Zola.
Speaker A:We never meant to get you into literary discussion, Colonel.
Speaker A:But another great writer, Immanuel Kant, said, when justice is Gone.
Speaker A:It is no longer important that men should live on the earth.
Speaker A:I said it before and I will say it again.
Speaker A:Dreyfus betrayed France.
Speaker A:The sentimental conscience of the world brought him back from Devil's island for a second trial, but it will avail them nothing.
Speaker A:Dreyfus was judged guilty once.
Speaker A:He will be judged guilty again today.
Speaker A:Well, Colonel, you heard Mitch Levery claim that von Schwarzkoppen's testimony will prove Dreyfus innocent.
Speaker A:Would you care to comment on that?
Speaker A:Why don't we wait to hear what curiosity Colonel von Schwarzkoppen really has to say?
Speaker A:Perhaps the judges will allow his official testimony.
Speaker A:Oh, thank you, Colonel Dupati.
Speaker A:Declan.
Speaker A:The Colonel is now walking back to his seat.
Speaker A:He's a slight man with an impressive Prussian handlebar mustache.
Speaker A:Indeed, there's hardly a clean shaven face in this courtroom.
Speaker A:Both villains and martyrs here seem to be well hidden behind luxurious growths of beard.
Speaker A:A small group of men in the colorful costume of the desert has entered the court.
Speaker A:One man wears a turban, and he seems to be some kind of an important personage.
Speaker A:He's talking and laughing with the guards, and the guards have bowed to him and let him in.
Speaker A:He's a newcomer to the trial.
Speaker A:I haven't seen him here before.
Speaker A:And he's coming right up front here, surrounded by his rather fierce face.
Speaker A:Entourage.
Speaker A:Let's try and find out who he is.
Speaker A:I. I speak English, monsieur.
Speaker A:But why?
Speaker A:You want to know who I am?
Speaker A:Well, it's not everyone who can impress the God as you have.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That was quite simple.
Speaker A:I. I merely give my word that I would not create a disturbance.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker A:Then are you so celebrated for creating disturbance with people I have reason not to like?
Speaker A:Oh, I see.
Speaker A:Are there many of them?
Speaker A:Oh, no, no, no.
Speaker A:Not so many now.
Speaker A:I. I disposed of a few thousand when I was mayor of Algiers.
Speaker A:Oh, I understand.
Speaker A:You must be Max Regi, once mayor of Algiers, who, as you say, disposed of 10,000 Jews and massacres.
Speaker A:You'll have to excuse me now.
Speaker A:The president of the court has just entered.
Speaker A:The guards have snapped to attention.
Speaker A:Everybody has risen.
Speaker A:The judges are taking their places on the bench.
Speaker A:They remain standing on either side of the presidency, waiting for silence before he reads this momentous decision.
Speaker A:If the court allows the evidence of Colonel von Schwarzkopfen, Dreyfus will probably never go back to Devil's Island.
Speaker A:If the court refuses to allow it, Dreyfus will be doomed to dishonor and again return to the torture of the equator.
Speaker A:Courtroom is absolutely silent.
Speaker A:The President speaks.
Speaker A:Von schwarzkoppel.
Speaker A:Gunshots have thrown the corner into turmoil.
Speaker A:Just what has happened?
Speaker A:We'll hope to know for you in just a minute.
Speaker A:After the shot, a voice shouted.
Speaker A:I killed Gracus.
Speaker A:Out of my way or I'll kill you all.
Speaker A:I'm not sure just where that voice came from or if Dreyfus has indeed been shot.
Speaker A:The court is in an uproar.
Speaker A:Men are shouting and milling about.
Speaker A:Everyone is standing.
Speaker A:Women are screaming.
Speaker A:I still can't see the man who fired.
Speaker A:The guards are rushing to the rear of the court.
Speaker A:Evidently they're after the assassins.
Speaker A:I can't see Dreyfus either.
Speaker A:There's a thick mob around him and we can't get a microphone.
Speaker A:Over there.
Speaker A:Don.
Speaker A:Don Hollenberg, See if you can get through the Drapers.
Speaker A:Fight out if I've been carrying Superman.
Speaker A:John Hollenbeck is fighting his way through this mob.
Speaker A:We'll know in a moment what DR's condition is.
Speaker A:I think there were four shots fired all together.
Speaker A:Four shots.
Speaker A:Then a scream, and to repeat, a man shouted in French, I killed Dreyfus.
Speaker A:I killed Draper.
Speaker A:The assassin has evidently escaped in the confusion out through the rear because the guards have gone out of the building after him.
Speaker A:But the guards here in the courtroom are forcing the people back to their seats.
Speaker A:The police have drawn out their revolvers and are working desperately to restore order.
Speaker A:They're meeting with some success.
Speaker A:A lane is being cleared by the guards and the police right down the middle of the courtroom, clearing the way for a tall man.
Speaker A:It's Monsieur Tonne of the Judicial Police.
Speaker A:He's jumped up on a table now and is crying for order, waving his army that's been shot defending himself.
Speaker A:Liberty has been shot.
Speaker A:That was an official announcement from the police.
Speaker A:The most famous lawyer in France has been shot by an assassin who, strangely enough for me, had killed.
Speaker A:Oh, here's Don Hollister.
Speaker A:He's alive.
Speaker A:John Labry's alive.
Speaker A:It's really a miracle.
Speaker A:The bullet.
Speaker A:Bullet hit him in the fleshy part of his back, but thank heaven it missed his spine and vital organs.
Speaker A:That wounds not fatal.
Speaker A:Where have they taken him down, sir?
Speaker A:They've taken him to an abdomen room.
Speaker A:The doctors are taking care of him there.
Speaker A:Did he say anything?
Speaker A:Just after he'd been shot, he said, I may die, but Drapus is saved.
Speaker A:Dreyfus is saved.
Speaker A:Did you find out what they've decided to do about the trial?
Speaker A:Mat Demange, Labor's colleague, wanted to ask for a recess.
Speaker A:I should think so, yes, but labor said no.
Speaker A:He insisted the trial Go on.
Speaker A:Here comes Deange now at the Antero.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:Don Met Demar is approaching the bar.
Speaker A:The crowd is quieting down.
Speaker A:They're under control, although some people are still weeping and crying.
Speaker A:The president of the court speaking.
Speaker A:The court has offered to suspend for the day but M says it is the wish of Laboury that the trial be resumed here.
Speaker A:And he is after the court's ruling on the Sports cup and testimony.
Speaker A:The president's speaking now.
Speaker A:The president of the court says he is the only one who can permit Schwarzkopten's testimony and M. De pressing him for an answer.
Speaker A:Dizzy.
Speaker A:The president of the court has just announced that he will not admit evidence of Judge Att in a French court.
Speaker A:And so Colonel Van D's testimony is not to be allowed.
Speaker A:The audience is on its feet talking out.
Speaker A:The judge is threatening to clear the court if the demonstration is not stopped at once.
Speaker A:The violent outburst continues development.
Speaker A:The prisoner is frozen in his.
Speaker A:His face looks as if he's already been returned to the solitary and barricaded hut on Devil's island which he occupied for five long terrible years.
Speaker A:This refusal to allow Sportsgren's testimony means Dreyfus chances are gone.
Speaker A:It also is an affront to Imperial Germany as Colonel von Schwarzkopfen is an important figure in German intelligence and cbs.
Speaker A:Anticipating the judge's verdict has been an open line to our studios in Berlin for the German reaction to this French slight on the imperial government.
Speaker A:We take you now to Berlin.
Speaker A:Ned Calba reporting.
Speaker A:The Imperial German government has prepared a statement to be released officially on the decision of the French court in regard to Colonel von Schwarzkoppen's testimony.
Speaker A:Although Germany and France are traditional enemies they have never officially interfered with one another's internal peacetime affairs.
Speaker A:Today, however, the Imperial German government to uphold its honor among nations as it stated, goes on record before the whole world with the following statement.
Speaker A:I quote.
Speaker A:For the preservation of his own dignity and in fulfillment of a duty to humanity the Secretary of State makes the following statement.
Speaker A:I declare in the most positive manner that no relations or connections of any kind ever existed between the French Captain Griffel and any German agent.
Speaker A:That's the end of the statement.
Speaker A:And that bears out Colonel von Schwarzkopfen statement which has been barred as evidence.
Speaker A:I return you now to John Daly in the courtroom at Ren.
Speaker A:The official statement which you just heard from Berlin can have no effect upon the deliberations of this court.
Speaker A:The court retired immediately after refusing to hear Colonel von Schwartzkoppen's Testimony.
Speaker A:Opinion here in the courtroom is divided.
Speaker A:Some observers think that the court refused to hear the testimony because it had already decided to acquit Dreyfus, while others believe that Dreyfus is doomed once again.
Speaker A:Mitzvah is back.
Speaker A:He is here in the courtroom.
Speaker A:His wound is not as serious as we thought.
Speaker A:He insisted on coming into the courtroom in order to hear the final verdict.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:He was greeted by a sustained ovation when he entered.
Speaker A:And by the way, it was one of the happiest moments of this month old sad trial.
Speaker A:And Mitchellabori is now sitting on a well cushioned armchair provided by the court.
Speaker A:Dreyfus has just stretched out his hand to Mitz Labori.
Speaker A:The smile of clean, or rather a smile of keen pleasure, lights up his usually impassive features.
Speaker A:Dreyfus, of course, is the symbol of martyrdom in this priority.
Speaker A:But it must also be remembered that he's more than a symbol.
Speaker A:He's a man who has suffered much.
Speaker A:A man with a wife and children, fighting for his and their honor.
Speaker A:The judges are entering the court again.
Speaker A:They've not been out very long.
Speaker A:The spectators have risen.
Speaker A:A hush falls over the court.
Speaker A:This is the moment in which it will be determined whether the twilight of the 19th century will also see the twilight of the Republic of France or instead the triumph of justice.
Speaker A:Dreyfus has risen.
Speaker A:At this final critical moment.
Speaker A:His face has again become pale and impassive.
Speaker A:The judges are standing in their places.
Speaker A:Full military uniforms.
Speaker A:A white plume in the hat of the president of the court.
Speaker A:Black plumes in the hat of the other judges.
Speaker A:Medals, gold stripes, swords.
Speaker A:Soldiers erect in their formal bearing and their hands unsullied in white gloves.
Speaker A:The president is holding a white paper and he's reading the verdict of the century.
Speaker A:By a vote of 5 to 2.
Speaker A:The audience, aghast, let out a long, deep.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker A:The president cried out.
Speaker A:Silence closing in on the spectators.
Speaker A:The president continues.
Speaker A:10 Years.
Speaker A:The original sentence has been cut from life to 10 years.
Speaker A:The verdict finished.
Speaker A:The judges are turning and are leaving.
Speaker A:The gendarmes are pressing the spectators and no one is making a sound because the president of the court ordered that there be no demonstrations, no outcries of any kind.
Speaker A:The court is being cleared quietly.
Speaker A:Dreyfus was immediately surrounded by the guards, taken out of the room.
Speaker A:The atmosphere of this court now is like a tomb.
Speaker A:The original sentence of life imprisonment was unanimous, but this time it has been cut to 10 years.
Speaker A:And two of the judges, as you noted, dissented.
Speaker A:Now, in a sense, this may be said to represent Some measure of triumph, but still a human being, innocent in the eyes of the world, must spend 10 more years of degradation and isolation in a guarded hut on Devil's island.
Speaker A:Separated from his wife, his two children and his home.
Speaker A:Messages of protests are already beginning to pour into the special radio and press headquarters here in Ren?
Speaker A:And so for a report on world reaction we take you now to Don Hollenbeck who has gone back to press headquarters.
Speaker A:Before we give reports on the reaction from overseas.
Speaker A:Authorities have so far failed either to capture or identify the assassin who apparently was trying to kill Drapers but shot Major Labori instead.
Speaker A:Observers are speculating as to whether the shooting was the work of a fanatic or if it was a far reaching and worse well thought out plot on the part of the military to end this sordid case by assassinating the prisoner.
Speaker A:Now for what the world thinks of it all.
Speaker A:Telegrams are pouring in from all over the world denouncing the verdict as a monstrous defiance of conscience and reason.
Speaker A:There's a telegram from the great Italian actress Eleonora Duza.
Speaker A:One from the Gar in Nebraska, another from Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.
Speaker A:Emil Zola has wired Maitre Labori the following statement as and I quote, Henceforth count me as a most determined partisan for a vigorous fight and no mercy to the foe when we have him down.
Speaker A:From this day I re enter the arena, never again to leave it.
Speaker A:End of quote.
Speaker A:And now there are protests from businessmen from America, England, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
Speaker A:They threaten to withdraw their exhibits from the forthcoming Paris Exposition of a century of progress.
Speaker A:And now for comments in other parts of the world we switch you first to CBS in New York.
Speaker A:Quincy Howe reporting.
Speaker A:Here in New York we are having violent protest demonstrations and reports of more protests are coming in from all over the United States.
Speaker A:The sight of a handsome French officer on Broadway in front of the Criterion Theater has created a riot.
Speaker A:Men cried out shame on France and Long live Dreyfus.
Speaker A:Mark Twain, the famous author, has offered to help the Dreyfus family in any way he can.
Speaker A:The old Plymouth Church in Brooklyn has followed its time honored custom of taking definite action on all public questions.
Speaker A:It's crowded to the doors.
Speaker A:Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist, condemned the court martial of Dreyfus as follows.
Speaker A:We who are here for Christian worship condemn the trial and trust and pray that it yet may be overruled by a higher authority acting for the honor of France and in fear of God.
Speaker A:And now for reactions in England we take you to CBS London.
Speaker A:Harry Marvel reporting.
Speaker A:The Daily News has summed up the trial in a brief statement.
Speaker A:I quote, it is no longer Dreyfus, but France herself that is on trial.
Speaker A:The Times, normally a conservative newspaper, burned its pages with this editorial comment.
Speaker A:We do not hesitate to pronounce the Dreyfus trial as the grossest and most appalling prostitution of justice the world has witnessed in modern times.
Speaker A:All outrageous scandals in history pale into insignificance beside the crowning scandal of the verdict.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:Just a moment.
Speaker A:Just a moment.
Speaker A:I have just been advised that our correspondent, Ken Roberts in Carpentras, France, has succeeded in arranging an exclusive interview with the wife of the condemned man, Madame Lucy Dreyfus.
Speaker A:I switch you now to Carpentrant and Ken Robert to an old walled city that was once the residence of Pope Clement V. Madame Dreyfus and I are in the home of a friend of her husband's family.
Speaker A:Madame Dreyfus, why are you here in Carpentras?
Speaker A:Because it was here that I expected to shelter my husband.
Speaker A:Should he have been liberated?
Speaker A:The people here are not the victims of prejudice.
Speaker A:They do not hate.
Speaker A:I see.
Speaker A:Madame Dreyfus, may I ask why you are not at Rennes with your husband?
Speaker A:I was at Rennes.
Speaker A:But at Rennes, Alfred feared for my life.
Speaker A:He told me to take the children here.
Speaker A:He did not want at Wren to see a dishonorable spectacle.
Speaker A:And now that your husband has been found guilty again, what would you do?
Speaker A:Madame Dreyfus, I will do what I promised to do when he was first unjustly convicted five years ago.
Speaker A:I will devote my life to proving that he is innocent.
Speaker A:Well.
Speaker A:Is it true, Madame Dreyfus, that you made a pact with your husband?
Speaker A:That if he fights to live in spite of the tortures of Devil's Eyes, you will fight to liberate him?
Speaker A:Yes, that is true.
Speaker A:He could have easily committed suicide on Devil's island by taking off his hat and burying his head to the sun for only 10 minutes.
Speaker A:It was torture to remain alive five years in solitary confinement.
Speaker A:And when the fourth rumor spread in France that a American rescue ship was off Devil's island, they punished my husband by keeping an armed guard constantly in his cell, day and night, pointing a pistol at him, hoping he would make a move so they could have an excuse for killing him?
Speaker A:The world knows, Madame Dreyfus, that it was your love and your devotion to your husband's cause that kept him alive in his.
Speaker A:Did more than that.
Speaker A:He asked me to send him English books to keep his tortured mind occupied.
Speaker A:That is how he learned English and Me too.
Speaker A:I read the Moltres.
Speaker A:Do you plan an appeal, Madame Dreyfus?
Speaker A:Yes, Immediate.
Speaker A:More Matre Laverie.
Speaker A:I am so glad he was not hurt seriously.
Speaker A:He is a great man.
Speaker A:He will leave at once.
Speaker A:And for my part, I will devote my life to reaching every wife and mother.
Speaker A:I will move the hearts of every wife and mother of the world.
Speaker A:For every wife and mother of the world would fight so that their husband, their son, shall not suffer injustice.
Speaker A:I will tell.
Speaker A:This is John Daly in Wren.
Speaker A:We have interrupted Madame Dreyfus to bring you a bulletin.
Speaker A:Captain Dreyfus has been pardoned.
Speaker A:I repeat that Captain Dreyfus has been pardoned.
Speaker A:The President of France has just announced that due to extenuating circumstances, Captain Alfred Draper Dreyfus has been pardoned in principle.
Speaker A:It is not yet clear what is meant by the phrase in principle or what the extenuating circumstances are.
Speaker A:But one thing is sure now.
Speaker A:Dreyfus has been pardoned.
Speaker A:Here's another announcement just given to me.
Speaker A:Dreyfus accepts the pardon.
Speaker A:His attorney, Mitch Labori, urged him not to accept, but to fight on for complete vindication.
Speaker A:But Dreyfus doctor declared that his body could not stand the audience of further imprisonment.
Speaker A:And here's still another announcement, and this one comes from the French Ministry of War.
Speaker A:In a special order to the French army, the Minister of War says the incident is closed.
Speaker A:I ask you, and if need be, I order you to forget the past in order to think only of the future.
Speaker A:I cry heartily, vive lame.
Speaker A:The army belongs to no party, but only to France.
Speaker A:And I repeat, the incident is closed.
Speaker A:That's the end of the order from the Minister of War on this climactic day of the infamous Dreyfus case.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Alfred Dreyfus is pardoned, but the fight against prejudice goes on.
Speaker A:You have been listening to the Dreyfus case, another broadcast in the series Series CBS is there.
Speaker A:Produced and directed by Robert Louis Shayan.
Speaker A:The Dreyfus case was written by Joseph.
Speaker C: and Robert Louis Shayan from: Speaker C:And you were there.
Speaker C:And you can pick up the free rule addendum called Spycraft.
Speaker C:You could pick it up on Facebook at the Shot and Shield podcast wargaming group on Twitter at Shot and Shield.
Speaker C:Or you can email me shot&shield podcastmail.com I'll send it to you.
Speaker C:I'll share it to a bunch of our shared groups in Facebook and hopefully that's something you can get a lot of use out of, but I had to have something spy like and the Dreyfus affair certainly fit that Bill sadly concludes another episode of Shot and Shield being that this is supposed to be the July episode, but now it's the August episode.
Speaker C:I would like to thank each one of you for joining me and your patience as I wrap my head around all the difficulties it is to get these podcasts out.
Speaker C:I also want to thank John Sutherland for joining me today on Shot and Shield to talk about just an amazing host of all kinds of different things from war gaming to painting to his great works with Mad Dogs and Englishmen and his upcoming work great game the Tournament of Shadows, which will be debuting next year.
Speaker C:I most certainly will have John Sutton Sutherland on again to talk about that.
Speaker C:The closer we get to the debut of that game.
Speaker C:It was a great treat speaking with John if you are listening for the first time, please take a moment and join either the Twitter feed at Shot and Shield or on the Facebook in the Shot and Shield Podcast Wargaming Group.
Speaker C:And please post your excellent work Miniatures Painting or builds to the page.
Speaker C:Both the Twitter and the Facebook group have excellent experts who can help you with any questions and if I can steal your tremendous ideas, I certainly will.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Now all that's left to be said is that you've been listening in from England, in Cupertino, California and in Saskatoon, Canada.
Speaker C:Plus you've been listening in 76 different countries to the Shot and Shield Supercast, a show dedicated to Colonial and 19th century war gaming and history.
Speaker C:A podcast meant to be heard while you are painting or working on your amazing projects.
Speaker C:I am the Marquis of Middle Florida, Lord Scott and I'm out.
Speaker C:This has been a Production of the Experience 13 podcast network 13.
Speaker B:Your electricity.
