SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
For as long as I can remember, I have been in love with miniatures: truly, madly and deeply. The first set I remember comprised 12 cowboys in 6 poses, all six guns and 10-gallon hats in a kind of brown resin. From the pictures, I must have been about 6 (for I was so obsessed, I must have demanded a picture) At 7, I put together my first kit with my father, a rather snazzy looking Panther tank in 1:48. This was also the first time I’d picked up a brush. I wish I could tell you it was beautiful, but I can't. I painted it a nickel colour with deep green and black patches with a generous daubing of claret around the hull in a crude representation of gore. I was a macabre child. It would take pride of place among my 8th Army plastic soldiers: as an adult I lament that I put a late war German tank next to mid war British soldiers, but what absolutely filled me with irritation when playing with toy soldiers with other children was the lack of rules or structure. The outcome of an engagement was down to your force of personality, manipulation, domineering attitude or petty threats; to my mind at the time tantamount to barbarism. So, when I discovered Warhammer 40k, it was heaven-sent. It was 2001, I had just turned 9. It had been a very difficult summer full of problems a child doesn't fully comprehend but feels keenly. It was at this point, at the start of a new academic year, that two of my friends came in excitedly chatting about a new game they had started playing over the summer. A game full of elves, orks, soldiers, space marines and, most importantly, machine guns. I listened enraptured, desperately trying to wrap my head around the concepts of dice, tape measures, rulebooks and models. I'd rushed home that day and when my mother arrived, asked if I could go over on the weekend. Parents were liaised with and a date was set. When I arrived, it was a spectacle never before seen. There was no playing on the floor (as I had expected); the dining table had been cleared and a green felt mat covered in hills, ruins and trees took the place of a table cloth. Two forces mirrored each other: one in the resplendent blue of the Ultramarines; the other in red, green, white and blue, the colours of the Eldar. I was utterly blown away. The entire day was spent with my best friend and his dad soaking the battlefield in the blood of grizzly conflict. That night we poured over the artwork and pictures of that rather hefty 3rd edition rulebook. That was that, I had to get an army. My birthday had just been, so no chance of an army until Christmas, 3 long months away. I mewled, whined and grizzled my way into a starter paint set with 5 space marines, a brush and a paperback catalogue from Mason’s Models. My mother was appalled at the price, which only galvanised my resolve. I carefully and painstakingly painted those 5 chaps in one morning, with more effort and enthusiasm than I had ever applied to anything before. Christmas finally came and I got the 3rd edition starter set. I would have assembled them in record time had I received any glue with my present. Instead, I buried myself in the rulebook, reading it cover to cover. To the delight of my mother, as I was a good, but idle, reader. My other present was a house key. It felt like a perfect Christmas. I was a latchkey kid now, and there was no finer hobby to be found. I'd build and paint models, construct scenery and read rulebooks and lore to my heart's content. Weekends were reserved for fighting epic conflicts, pulling off daring raids and sundering lesser forces with chitinous claw or beneath crushing hoof However, what came next was to revolutionise my hobby. The release of the magazine series Battle Games in Middle Earth in 2002. This is without doubt the finest wargaming publication that has been, and will ever be, made. It was a fortnightly release complete with miniatures every issue; all this for the princely sum of £3.99 (contrast this with White Dwarf retailing at £3.50 at the time). Each magazine was incrementally teaching you the rules in piece meal, gradually advancing your painting skill with guides, scenarios, battle reports, tactics, lore and scenery building. After a dozen issues you had a great collection of fully painted miniatures, a solid knowledge of the rules, the tactical know-how and a table full of scenery to play on I had been a fan of Tolkien before Peter Jackson's trilogy, I listened to the BBC radio productions of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings regularly on tape (kingly gifts indeed for the time). My copy of The Hobbit was very dog eared and well worn (that's the edition, below), my LotR books less so and The Silmarillion practically unread. I was primed and ready to submerge myself in a miniatures game set in this world. Living in a rural area, this gave my hobby structure, provided me with achievable goals and the skills and motivation to complete them. Sadly, none of my gaming friends at that time were as taken with it, preferring the galactic conflict only the 41st millennium could provide So I squirreled away alone in my fantasy world until I hit secondary school and found a few others who had been doing exactly the same. This created a community that I'll never see again in my life. A group of players that had flawless knowledge of the rules, fully painted armies, loads of scenery, similar levels of skill and, perhaps most importantly, the time and motivation to play. I feel utterly spoilt to have had this experience of the hobby for a few years. It was a period of time for which I will be eternally grateful. A high that I will always chase, an unachievable dream for an adult to pursue. Thus began a fraught love affair with my hobby, the flame may have at times guttered through the years but it has always remained lit
Root is a board game I very much enjoy. It's physically beautiful, the gameplay is really engrossing and it doesn't tend to last too long. In a recent online discussion, a critic complained that the problem with Root is that the theme is "just pasted on." This is a common criticism leveled at certain games. The charge seems to be that the ostensible premise is inessential: they game can be played just as enjoyably (or more enjoyably) ignoring the setting and characterisation, as an abstract strategy game, like Chess. Let me just stick with Root a bit longer. Root is a pretty vicious area control game, with each faction working towards victory using different mechanics. It would work as a purely abstract game, although it would be hard to remember the differences between the factions or keep a clear idea in your head of your own faction's mechanics if they were just "the oranges" and "the blues" rather than 'the Marquise de Cat' and 'the Eyrie'. Root's distinctive art and ADORBS wooden meeples. Wanna play??? But Root gains a strangely compelling quality from being a struggle between adorably cute woodland animals for control of the forest. There's a dissonance between Kyle Ferrin's art and the (pretty brutal) gaming experience itself. Ferrin claims to draw on Disney's Robin Hood (1973), Brian Jacques' Redwall series and David Petersen's Mouse Guard for inspiration; I'm reminded of Sylvanian Families and the children's books of Richard Scarry from the 1950s and '60s. From top left: Robin Hood, Redwall, Mouseguard, Sylvanians, Scarry's Busytown and Root The art has a lovely pastel palette and the cartoon characters have a breathless innocence to them. But the game is frankly ruthless, with a zero-sum dominance mechanic and an ugly impetus for everyone to gang up on whomever's in the lead. The context of the game is civil strife, with arch-capitalist Cats filling the forest with sawmills, prompting Marxist revolution among the rodent proles and a crackdown from the avian aristocracy. When the expansion introduces the mercantile otters and the grinning Lizard Cult (who want opponents to martyr their worshipers, thereby radicalising them into terrorists), the tension between the cutesy art and the dark subject matter creates a delightful disquiet. The Lizard Cult are a peaceful sect who just want to tend their sacred gardens. They recruit from the hopeless and dispossessed, radicalise them and spread like a virus. Maybe some point is being made? Designer Cole Wehrle could have located this game in a different setting. It would work well in revolutionary Paris, with revolutionary Jacobins battling the troops of the Ancien Régime through the streets and courts of the city. Or in St Petersburg in 1917, with Bolsheviks versus Tsarists. Or Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar. Or Thatcher's Britain. But the dissonance is the point. By setting the conflict in an idyllic forest, Root rises above simulation and becomes a robust metaphor. It's about all civil wars, everywhere. Root resonates with what is happening in Syria, what happened in Bosnia, with Franco's Spain and the American wilderness of Last of the Mohicans. The beauty of the backdrop sets the ugliness of the conflict into vivid relief. Magua should put down his tomahawk and check out the scenery Root, I think, passes the theme test with flying colours. Indeed, to complain that Root has arbitrarily draped itself in a woodland-animal setting, rather than, say, Krystallnacht or the Gunpowder Plot, is to miss the point of animal allegory. It's like saying George Orwell's Animal Farm would be better if it had used people instead of pigs. Having flashbacks to GCSE English Lit? But I own other games that deploy theme less successfully. Atlanteon is one of Reiner Knizia's less distinguished efforts. Originally, it was Revolution, and featured Jacobins and Royalists fighting for control of the districts of Paris. Now it's got a fantasy theme about mer-people in the undersea Sunken Kingdoms. A game of undersea conquest for two players. Or just a Maths puzzle. The re-skinning of this game is entirely cosmetic. Knizia has created a simple little area control challenge that's more like a mathematical puzzle than a board game (a criticism leveled at a lot of Knizia's work, to be fair). It doesn't need any theme at all: it works fine as 'whites versus blues'. There's something faintly insulting about the Atlantean aesthetic, as if I'm too dumb to try a number-puzzle game but might be lured in if it has monsters on the box. In fact, BGG user Matt Drake says it best in his review 'Undersea Conquest' = 'Boring Math Game with Sea Monsters’: you could strip the theme off the game completely without affecting it in any way at all. The box ought to say that Atlanteon is a game of boring math with some pictures of sea monsters I don't agree with Drake that the game is simply boring (although you definitely need a certain Sudoku-inspired mindset to get a kick out of it) but he's right that the theme is irrelevant to the game. Atlanteon reveals nothing about the nature of civil strife and nor does it explore the imagined reality of an undersea civilisation. It's revealing that another BGG-user (ludopath - great name!) delightedly re-themed the game around the film Mars Attacks! (1996) with a homemade set of components. I don't know if this makes me want to play the game again but it DEFINITELY makes me want to re-watch the film Another undersea conflict game makes a great comparison. Abyss is by Bruno Cathala, who brought us Shadows Over Camelot, Cyclades and Five Tribes, so he knows a thing or two about theme the same way Knizia knows Maths. Abyss has great broody art of hideous fish-people in a dank and macabre undersea realm. The box art, with its haunting variants, has inspired a slew of Abyss-themed selfies: The aesthetic continues with the use of (fake!) pearls as currency (though they roll around a bit) and, in the expansions, some superior miniatures. But when you look past the art and the components, Abyss is just another area control / resource management game, where you recruit Allies who help buy Lords who help claim Locations that help earn victory points. It doesn't have to involve fish people in an undersea world: it could be Renaissance princes or Cold War scientists or Han Dynasty mandarins instead. Yet I don't feel that Abyss is in the same category as Atlanteon. Abyss could have been created with a different context to it, but it still makes a good job of this context. The undersea kingdom is vividly realised, with its crab armies and jellyfish mages, its seahorse farmers and cursed nebulis pearls and invading Leviathans. When you play Abyss you can imagine the world it's set in and it's a pretty cool world. You wish there was a graphic novel or an anime series. Maybe the Aquaman horror spin-off, The Trench, will do it justice... Abyss doesn't reveal anything in particular about the nature of courtly intrigue (unlike Root, which captures some of the dynamics of revolt and oppression) but it does evoke a world that feels different from other economy/worker Euros with similar mechanics. By contrast, Lords of Waterdeep carries the official Dungeons & Dragons imprimatur. You assemble parties of mages, warriors, rogues and clerics to go on quests while buying up property in Waterdeep that helps assemble better teams; at the end of the game, your completed quests convert into victory points. Yet your mages, rogues, etc are coloured cubes. Don't misunderstand: Waterdeep is a very enjoyable Euro-style resource management game with gorgeous components but it feels nothing like D&D. It doesn't explore the Forgotten Realms setting in any meaningful way. You're just collecting coloured cubes in differing permutations. More accurately, Cube-Collectors of Anywheresville Let's take a look at games designer Vlaada Chvátil and his magnum opus, the magisterial Mage Knight. This game is based on a (now defunct) wargaming property with video game and novelisation spin-offs, so it has a setting to compete with Waterdeep and Abyss. This is another Euro-style game: Vlaada Chvátil chose not to treat the game as an exercise in Ameritrash roll-the-dice-and-kill-the-monster adventuring. Instead, he built for Mage Knight a delirious mathematical engine, where you level up your immortal knight by deck-building across several axes: acquiring spells, magic treasures, new feats and henchmen and - crucially - the manna tokens to power them. Mage Knight is hands-down the most intellectually engrossing epic-puzzle game out there. Whether it's a fun board game to sit down with friends I cannot say (no one will sit down and play it with me ::sob::) but by universal agreement it's the best solo board gaming experience to be had. But here's the thing: amidst all the calculations and hand management, where's the theme? Some people on BGG noticed the, uh, distance between Mage Knight's swashbuckling box art and its rather more cerebral mechanics and called foul:
'Adventuring for Accountants' - no slur on accountants, someone has to keep all the beans counted in this complex world of ours, but that isn't why I game - Don Smith I want sex, and the game tells me to go mow the lawn - Brent Lloyd Mage Knight was recently 're-skinned' as Star Trek: Frontiers. This game (ever so slightly) simplifies Mage Knight's daunting rules while retaining the impenetrable rule book (nice touch!) and replaces knights with Federation or Klingon starships and their captains, manna with data, mercenary units with Away Teams, monasteries with M-Class planets and the Atlantean Cties waiting at the back of the board with ominous Borg Cubes. It's Next Generation Star Trek too. The Trek re-theming works a bit better than the original. The luck-free, deliberative mechanics suit being a starship captain rather better than being an immortal barbarian, orc or elf plundering dungeons and razing villages. There's now a happy alignment between what the game asks you to do and what you imagine yourself to be doing while playing. Journalist Dave Goodhart, reflecting on the Brexit divisions in the UK in his book The Road to Somewhere (2017), suggests that people are split into 'Somewheres' and 'Anywheres'. The Anywheres are educated and mobile with an identity based on career success: they can drop roots in any city (and they like cities) or any country. The Somewheres are rooted in a geographical sense of identity: Geordies or Scousers, Yorkshire farmer or Cornish housewife. The 2016 Brexit referendum was, on this analysis, the Revenge of the Somewheres. Games can be Somewheres or Anywheres too. Abyss is a Somewhere, despite its fairly generic rules, but Atlanteon is an Anywhere. Mage Knight looks like a Somewhere, with its map-board and 3-D city models, but once you play it you realise it's really an Anywhere with a regional accent! Abstract games don't even try to be Somewheres, although there perhaps was a time in its development when Chess really did represent two armies opposing each other. A good example of a Somewhere-game is Firefly, which evokes the events of the beloved TV show and explores what might happen with characters or settings barely touched-upon in the show. What if Mal went evil and worked for Niska? What if River Tam became a heavily armed mercenary and flew around with Jubal Early collecting bounties? What if Jane was a hero? Firefly could, I suppose, have been any pick-up-and-deliver heist game. Instead of spaceships in the 'Verse you could be driving Minis around Italy. Moreover, Firefly has a synchrony between rules and theme that Mage Knight lacks: its push-your-luck cardplay when you carry out heists and the way other players send horrid Reavers moving erratically towards you all the time. And this coming-together of mechanics and imagination is what makes the game rich in theme, rather than the fact that you (really do) keep a dinosaur on your dashboard. Disclosure: I don't play Firefly very often because, for me, there's a quality in games that trumps theme most of the time and that's BREVITY. Firefly is charming and beautiful but it takes an AGE to play, especially once the expansion boards are on the table. Mage Knight may be a big puzzle but, intellectually, it rewards the 3+ hours you're going to sink into it. Another Somewhere-game would be Western Legends. There are options for cattle rustlin' and outlaw shootin' and raisin' hell at a cat house with the dollars you earned prospectin' at the mine. It's a sandbox game where you get to try out being a law-abidin' Marshall or a no-good Wanted Varmint or drift between the two. But the Poker Card mechanic offers the synchrony that brings the whole thing together. You don't need to drop character just because there's a fight. It's pretty short too. It's only right to finish off by considering wargaming rather than boardgaming. What could be more thematic? Your 11th Hussars are just that: Cardigan's lovely cavalrymen, right down to their pink cherrypicker trousers. These are Somewheres: they belong. You could no more paint their trousers green than you could equip them with lightsabers. Wargaming rules tend towards the vanilla: their point is to be invisible, so that players can concentrate on lovingly recreated battlefields and troop movements and tactics. Sometimes a rule mechanic tries to add something more by way of synchrony, like the push-your-luck fate tokens in Test of Honour or the order dice in Bolt Action. But the main asset of most rules sets is that they can resolve a conflict between any type of troops in any century or theatre of war. Yet gamers aren't content to leave it at that, are they? Let's have my Hussars fight your Cheyennes! they say. Or Polish winged hussars versus Parthian cataphracts. Or Celtic charioteers versus Egyptian Mamluks. As soon as you do this, the theme has evaporated. Once they're taken outside of Crimea or Ladysmith or the Western Front, in what sense are your miniatures really Hussar Cherrypickers at all? They've become generic light cavalry Anywheres. Fluidity can matter as much as theme. Perhaps it's because gamers are naturally, even irreverently, inventive. Perhaps it's in the nature of games themselves that possibilities be stretched, flipped and warped out of shape. As a child, my Marvel action figures were battling their DC opposites long before their comic companies signed any crossover deal. In fact, General Ursus from Planet of the Apes joined the fray as well, I recall. Hello again, old friends... Maybe it's post-modernism working its whacky spell, but we're increasingly seeing cross-overs as promos or DLC in various games. Fanatic from Sentinels of the Multiverse turns up as a playable character in the PC version of One Deck Dungeon. Fireteam Zero's Shadroe 'Rat' Decatur turns up in Order of the Vampire Hunters. There's a Game of Thrones themed Catan, while Cluedo, Monopoly and Risk have had their DNA spliced with everything. Back in the '90s, Capcom brought us Streetfighter versus the X-Men and then there's Kingdom Hearts: in what other game could Bambi or Dumbo aid you in battle? This sort of post-modern mash-up seems to be a growing force in our culture, but it's toxic for theming in general. Theme becomes a dress-up or cosmetic, like a new wallpaper for your phone - arguably, the way social class becomes about supporting a certain football team or getting a particular haircut. Look how Pandemic is no longer about super-bugs or all the iterations of Munchkin or the way Legendary Encounters morphs through Marvel, Alien, Predator, Firefly, Buffy, X-Files and Big Trouble in Little China. Maybe it started with Top Trumps, but the logic of capitalism means a successful product needs to be able to re-skin itself like this. The future belongs to Anywheres. I felt this death-of-theme at work when GW wrapped up their haunting, baroque Old World setting for Warhammer Fantasy and replaced it with Age of Sigmar, which imported all of Wargammer 40K's juvenile aesthetic but none of its macarbre humour or inventiveness. Out went the clever historical/fantasy pastiche setting with its 17th century black powder conflicts reimagined with orcs and elves and eerie Chaos instead of Hapsburgs and Bourbons; in come testosteronal Stormcast Eternals (space marines, basically), gurning demons and a pantomime backdrop of wrecked fantasy worlds for monsters to brawl over.
But it's not the apocalypse. Look, Legendary Encounters does a really good job of reskinning with different themes. These themes are explored with bespoke mechanics, not just slapped on for a price tag. In the meantime, and perhaps in reaction against this, the demand for (and therefore the provision of) deeply immersive, single-theme games grows. No one is cranking out generic battle games like Risk any more; instead you get Rising Sun with its lovingly detailed miniatures, kami-worship phases, options for your troops and monsters to commit seppuku and tussle for honour. So perhaps that's the way things have to go: flexible rule templates that can throw down roots Anywhere (good when the imagined situation is compelling, bad when you're collecting cubes or mass-plating Stormcast minis) .... or highly specific rules tailored around telling one particular story, exploring one particular situation, staying Somewhere. I wonder, though, where that leaves the games in the middle. Just as society seems to be polarising into Anywheres and Somewheres, are games polarising too? What future is there for lightly-themed games like 7 Wonders and Dominion, which kinda-sorta have a setting (Iron Age empires, medieval kingdoms) but which, in play, are all about the icons and the numbers? It's interesting to watch White Wizard Games rake in the cash by re-skinning Dominion first as SF (Star Realms) and then as fantasy (Hero Realms). Perhaps the future belongs to Somewheres after all. It seems Brexit has a lot to answer for. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pull Superman, Spider-Man and General Ursus out of the attic and make them fight... If you want more of this sort of chat (minus the post-modernism), Tom Vasel (minus the hat) nails it in discussing Dominion at 48:00
Soldiers trudging into position in great formations, with banners billowing in the breeze. Cavalry wheeling round the flanks, harrying the enemy. Archers letting loose a hail of death. The horn is sounded and the charge begins; the crush of combat rages as walls of shields and spears collide. Like many wargamers, the imagery above sends waves of excitement through me. And it's a feeling Warhammer Ancient Battles, a game of waging war with historical armies, stirs. TV shows and films depicting battle as it was in the 'old days', in pre-industrialised times, have held a grisly fascination for me since I was a small boy. As I made the first steps into Games Workshop's universe, I was always drawn to the fantasy armies; preferring swords and shields to the mechanical madness of the 41st millennium. This was as much inspired by the rich imaginings of Tolkien than the prospect of pre-industrial carnage on the tabletop. But even in those early days of exploring the hobby, there was always a lingering idea that, instead of orcs, elves and dwarves, what if it was 'real-world' warriors? Where every model on the tabletop represented someone that could have been an actual person, from the historically well-documented leaders down to the lowly footsoldiers? There is a certain frisson that fighting a battle with models that represent real people has. Yes, we all love a brutal orc or a power-armour-clad Space Marine, but it's the relatability of humans on the tabletop, people just like you and me, that draws me into historical-based games. Unlike a genetically-altered space warrior of the far future and the haughty elf whose psychologies are alien to ours, with armies of humans you can easily imagine what the little guys on the tabletop are thinking (or would be thinking if they were real people, of course). Maybe the leaders are focusing on the intrigues and plots that lead to the confrontation on the field and what it would mean if they were to lose. Whereas the lowly footsoldiers are missing their homelands and the loved ones they might never see again, quaking in their boots. I love imagining what might be going on inside their little plastic or metal heads; it fascinates me. There is also the thrill of changing history. In late 2018, Spalding Wargames Club re-fought the Battle of Hastings using Warhammer Ancient Battles. In that game, Duke William was not so much a conqueror but conquered. The moment the Norman warlord fell, the whoops of delight from the Saxon players and the laments from the defeated Norman side echoed through the hall. What made the moment even more amusing was that William was slain not by King Harold or even an elite huscarl warrior, but by humble ceorls: low-born farmers with only a vague idea of how to use a spear. However, you don't have to be completely historically accurate with Warhammer Ancient Battles. Want to know how late Imperial Romans would fare against the English forces that fought at Agincourt? Could a Biblical Egyptian force take on the horse warriors of the Huns and win? Get the armies together and duke it out to find out. It doesn't have to be a historical re-fight every time. Just have fun. Samurai vs Conquistadors! Wait, this actually happened: in 1582 in the Philippines.
The game's 1st print in 1998 was based heavily on Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition, just with the magic removed, but the 2nd edition (from 2010) has moved further away. The 2nd edition (right) is hardback, better laid out but slightly scales back the influence of 'special' individuals It is a game largely based on manoeuvring large formations of troops. Each represents a band of warriors in your army; whether an unruly rabble of Celtic clansmen or the disciplined ranks of Roman legionaries The way units move, wheeling and shifting frontage, gives an impression of the unwieldy nature of moving around big formations of closely formed warriors. It gives a taste of the real life challenge of positioning soldiers on a battlefield for tactical advantage. Moving troops is a crucial part of the game; it can win and lose battles 28mm is the assumed scale of miniature to be used, but slight alterations can be made to the rules to allow different size miniatures. It is deliberately ambiguous on whether one model equates to a single warrior on the battlefield. This facilitates lower model counts to be used to re-fight historical battles that involved numbers a mere mortal could not possibly collect in a lifetime (never mind have the room to play with on a regular table). But individual figures matter: standard bearers, musicians and officers have specific advantages that make them quirky and add to atmosphere. A single infantryman or cavalry model represents maybe three or four individuals on the field. The way units move on the tabletop certainly gives an impression of a more epic, larger scale. But no matter how you imagine it, there is no effect on the way the game plays. Despite units feeling big and weighty when they are moved on the tabletop, there is still a lot of sway and back-and-forth actions that happen in the game. Units are not locked in combat, grinding away at each other until one side is eventually wiped out. A group of warriors can suffer a thrashing, taking numerous casualties, and lose its nerve on a failed morale check and be forced to flee from the fight. Their enemies can then pursue, having a chance to hack the running cowards down. If the fleeing troops manage to outrun their pursuers, they can form up again, ready to step back into the fight There are situations where a unit can be utterly crushed in combat, yet miraculously pass its morale test and stand firm in the face of astounding odds. It's moments like these that really stand out in the game. So a cavalry unit could make a sweeping charge and wipe out a group of troops to then thunder on and clash with the heart of an army's formation. Or it could collide with a wall of shields and spears that proves unmovable and find themselves being repelled. Astute tactics and taking the right risks pays off here. But sometimes you are just subject to the luck the dice gods gift you (just as in many wargames). It keeps the game exciting, as not even the most experienced tabletop general can be entirely sure of the outcome of any assault Although choosing the right units to take on all opponents is a part of the game, it's more about having the right balance of troop type. There are no intrinsically over-powered 'races' – everyone's a human, no matter who you are fighting (apart from perhaps horses and war elephants of course) There are no massively powerful individual models either, there are no 'bring this model if you want to win the game' options. No one in history had the strength to tear through iron armour like butter! Even the strongest and greatest warriors were merely flesh and blood, with the real world limitations that go with that. The focus really is on tactics on the tabletop, rather than choices made before the battle even begins. Sourcebooks help you recreate particular armies or historic conflicts Unlike its sister game, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warhammer Ancient Battles pays greater attention to weapons and their effects on the field. There are no game changing magic weapons. Warhammer Ancient Battles also runs a bit quicker than the fantasy equivalent as it forgoes that game's Magic phase, for obvious reasons. This means the turnover from one player to another is so much quicker.
Members of Spalding Wargames Club reflect on 2019 and their resolutions for gaming: New Year, New Gaming You - Chris Peat
But this year, once you've got past the flurry of torn wrapping paper and exploded with glee at the latest expansion set for your favourite system, maybe you should look back at 2018 and take stock of your gaming life. It's time to make some New Year's gaming resolutions. Conquer the miniature mountain So, you've got those fabulous new figures and you can't wait to get them painted and added to your army. But will you? Or will they just be dumped on to that ever growing miniatures mountain we are all guilty of owning; that stack of plastic, lead and resin we promise to get round to painting one of these days. Maybe it's time to actually crack out the paints and, at last, get scaling that mountain. Perhaps take it steady, don't rush in and aim to paint the whole lot in a weekend. You just won't. Allocate a unit to paint and stick with it until it's finished. You might not reach the summit, but even if you make it just past 'miniatures mountain base camp' and finish just a single unit or character model, that may well give you immense fulfilment and pride; maybe even a renewed love for the hobby. You might also find yourself hankering for a game to use your freshly painted minis in. And therein lies another potential New Years' gaming resolution: get more games in. That's one we can all make. Get gaming Sometimes real life can get in the way of our gaming lives and more pressing commitments mean we cannot play as much as we would like. That's unavoidable. But let's be honest, sometimes we're just a little too lazy to get a game organised. We all love the thrill of tabletop action, but the lure of video gaming may be a quick fix for our hunger for excitement. Or even the sedateness of binge watching a box set can be too much of a temptation for some. It's all too easy to fall into that trap. But what is it that makes wargames, and tabletop games in general, so much more rewarding? Books could be written about this, but in short, one factor is the human element. The fact you are playing with a living, breathing gamer. Being able to shake their hand, watch their puzzled brow as they decide their next move or slap their back as they make a joke. It's so much more social and that can only be good for you. So, maybe make a resolution to get out there and get gaming. If you're not a member of Spalding Wargames Club, get yourself down. Even if you don't have a game organised, come on down and have a chat with some of the members. You will soon be embroiled in a game the following week, or even that night. And you know you will love it. But maybe you're a Club stalwart and are more weeks than not down there playing. In that case, maybe your New Years' resolution should be to become one of those friendly souls who gets games sorted for people. As the clock strikes midnight on 1 January, make a vow to get the community spirit going and help out fellow gamers. Aid others in arranging games, demo your favourite system and maybe even put on big multi-player battles. Get others involved and give something back to the local gaming community. You might also want to be a better gamer. Perhaps make 2019 the year you finally get your head around those complex rules you previously just winged. Learn your army inside out. What is it good at? What are its weak points? Perhaps you could look at it from a practical stand point too. Vow to be an organised gamer in 2019. Maybe store those tokens you keep losing or misplacing in little bags. Make sure you have something to put your objective cards in too. Invest in some decent storage devices for miniatures and accessories. These precious models and gaming products are not cheap, so keep them safe. New Year, new game Maybe the New Year is a good time to try out a new game. Like the look of that new rulebook that's ready for pre-orders? Fancy dabbling in wargaming feudal Japan, Dark Ages England or a whole host of other historical settings? Maybe you just have the desire to make the jump to fantasy gaming from sci-fi, or vice versa. You never know, it might turn into your new favourite. Whatever system it is you choose, you have to be dedicated to it. Read the rulebook, try a few practice games on your own, collect and paint an army. You might have to collect a couple of armies if no one else plays it in order to entice someone to join you in a game. Don't get the rulebook and let it gather dust on the bookshelf. We know there are some of you reading this that are guilty of doing just that (you know who you are). The New Year might even mean a new army. Again, make a vow of dedication if this is your chosen path for the next 12 months. But let's not forget, are you sure you want to be adding to that miniatures mountain? Whatever your New Year's gaming resolution is, let's hope it goes well and lasts out the ensuing year. Happy gaming in 2019. Get yourself painted - Martin Jackson
The slog began. Thanks to the utterly brilliant week away we had all pushed our painting schedules to breaking point. For the rest of the year only new models and a small collection of fantasy miniatures remained on the 'to-do list'. The painting fatigue was strong after such an ambitious undertaking, but, as the festive season drew near, I was confident I could achieve 100% painting completion before the lure of new miniatures became unbearable. Of course Christmas came and, to my surprise, my Dark Angel army grew exponentially. Fully painted was a little further away but still achievable. Then came March. More specifically March 5th. Birthday gifts arrived and among them was a large number of Bolt Action Soviet Troops. In the world of any wargamer, new always correlates to interesting in terms of miniatures, so of course I started adding to the collection. As the Spalding Wargames Club really hit its stride I was drawn into more and more exciting new gaming systems. Board games, war games, skirmish games, fantasy, sci-fi, alternate history, legendary movie settings..... Christmas 2018 is fast approaching. I was so close. Barely a couple of hours from completion. Maybe this year will be the year I stick to the resolution. Curating my Collection - Jonathan Rowe A games collection is like any hobby collection, like collecting records or books or cactuses. Your collection grows to a satisfying size, then bulges, then sprawls. My games collection climbs a wall in my living room, lurks under tables and in cupboards and stacks up the corner of my spare bedroom. And still the parcels arrive from Amazon, from eBay, from The Works, from various Kickstarter projects... Something must be done. Before my partner Christine snaps and makes a vast bonfire out of the lot. There's no question of selling on games or (shudder) giving them away. We're not reduced to that yet. We haven't lost a war or anything. No, new shelves are required, upstairs, in my little study. Strong shelves and deep ones, right up to the ceiling. Plans have been drawn: a carpenter appointed: Christine is calmed. But where do we go from here? Do I keep adding to this vast library? Surely enough is enough... Well, it's never enough, now is it? Realistically, I'm going to keep on buying games, but maybe 2019 should be characterised by a new spirit of discernment. Even in late 2018, I was starting to hold fire on big Kickstarter investments. I've got a lot of monsters-on-a-map games: beautiful skirmish or campaign games like Gloomhaven, Fireteam Zero, Order of Vampire Hunters, Myth, Conan... So I froze my finger above the mouse-click that would have added Everrain, Tainted Grail and Monumental. I did right, didn't I? Didn't I...? Then there are the games that don't get the time and love they deserve. Gloomhaven was Crackhaven for a long time, then it stalled. It's a beautiful, brilliant campaign project and if I don't move it onwards in 2019 (I won't say "complete it" - I'm not a dreamer) then I won't be able to look myself in the mirror in 2020. Fireteam Zero is an exhilarating campaign game and simple to boot. That has to see the table in 2019, complete a few story arcs, take down a few bosses... There are also some deep strategy games that need mastering. Nine Worlds has sat on a shelf for months now. It looks lovely. The gameplay is deep. What's the problem? Well, it's a bit fiddly to get your head round. It really needs two people to sit down, master it, then sell it to other people. The catch is, it's not that great as a two-player game; it's really about getting 4-6 people to compete in an insane, world-hopping kaleidoscope of Norse myth and madness. But 4-6 people won't be able to get their head round it. So I'll keep dusting that one but I can't quite see how a New Year's Resolution is going to bring it to life. So New Year Resolutions don't solve every problem. You can't just 'resolve' a game like Nine Worlds onto the table. And even if I resolve to refrain from Kickstarter projects, how can I avoid the months of regret and self-blame afterwards? I mean, look at Western Legends... If only I'd resolved to get that in 2018 ::sob:: Bring colour to Blackstone - Tom Hopkins
My additional resolution is to unload a lot of my pre-existing armies/half completed projects. Some of you may be delighted to know that I’ve already sold 4 of my Imperial Knights on eBay, in an effort to diminish my collection before the move out to China! I’m probably going to need the extra money anyway. Getting the fix I need - Ian Davison
I need to get my Gobo's painted for the Bloodbowl League in January, as looking good while getting smashed is what's it all about. I want to spread the love of Keyforge - really enjoyable card game with next to no buy-in and great playability. Thankfully lacking the 'addiction' of your regular CCG as each deck is unique and self-contained. Isaac's at an age now where he wants to be playing more games so I want 2019 to be a year where he gets the chance to play as much X-Wing, Bloodbowl and board games as possible (even when that means I have to drag myself from the comfort of the couch to do so). And finally I'm going to get to the Wednesday Club as much as possible to have a go at whatever and not be so hung up on just one system in 2019. Farewell to Greenskins - by Alec Bell
After that, to devote more time to the gaming systems i was introduced to in 2018, specifically Bolt Action and Test of Honor, and to get the respective armies for both painted. I'd like to get to grips with more skirmish-type games. I have loved playing Mordheim in the past and it has been too long... and i would also like to have a crack at Necromunda as i have never played and it looks right up my alley. I want to get the board game Scythe out and have a first run-through see what's what (though am a little daunted by it). And last, but by no means least, I'm looking to invest in a co-op table top game. I'm currently torn between Mage Knight and Gloomhaven but have yet to make a decision! The case against New Year resolutions - Karl McMichael
I would advocate that being less stringently goal-focused on a grand scale is beneficial for you and your personal hobby. This doesn't mean goals are a bad thing in the short term, but keep them manageable to motivate you.
Although this doesn't mean I don't wish to improve in my hobby, but instead of being goal oriented I’m going to endeavour to make the time I do get to spend on my hobby is quality time. I implore you all to do the same. Happy New year. No sign of snow as of writing, but my gaming tastes are running to the hibernal, so... it's time for winter-themed games! Frostgrave is my first thought for a wintery wargame. This is a fantasy skirmish game, reminiscent of GW's old Mordheim setting and premise: you are a 'warband' of unscrupulous types ransacking a ruined city infested with traps, horrors and other antisocial raiders. Frostgrave scores big on theme. The setting is Felstad, an ancient city that has been a frozen necropolis for 1000 years thanks to an ancient curse. Yup, arrogant wizards brought down a civilization-squashing blizzard on their empire. Now the city is thawing and wretched barbarians (you, the players) are trying to plunder the city for loot and magical technology. Frostgrave is popular for its fluid combat mechanics and the simple device whereby the wizard levels up but the disposable mooks don't. However, a big part of its charm is the setting itself: Felstad is part frozen tomb, part gladiatorial arena, part gigantic dungeon. Scenery can be treated with snow and icicles to bring out the atmosphere of ancient death. Brr-rr-r. The other appeal is that, although there are official Frostgrave miniatures and terrain, it's a game ripe for cannibalizing other products. Any fantasy miniatures can make up a warband. WWII scenery and terrain gets adapted for Felstad, as well as product lines like Ruins of Daldorr, but there's been healthy cross-pollination with Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K, which also feature battles in ruined cities. The frosty battle mat for Frostgrave has inspired 40K players to visit a slightly different setting: the death world of Fenris, where the Space Wolves have been battling Chaos Space Marines and a demon horde led by Magnus the Red. Epic stuff on any battlefield, but all the better on an Icelandic landscape of volcanic vents and freezing snow. It's nice that the Space Wolves vary from the standard marine template, what with their beards, furry cloaks and big Thunderwolf hounds. Of course, the definitive winter battle for me is Hoth, where the Empire assaults the rebel base in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Star Wars: X-Wing seems to be crying out for the action to descend from the generic reaches of space to the chilly atmosphere of Hoth. Just stretch out a crisp white sheet on your gaming table and you're done. Actually, other gamers are well ahead of me and have worked out several scenarios for playing missions around the Battle of Hoth. Historical battles in snowy conditions are a bit rarer (campaigning season is the summer, right?) but there are examples crying out to be brought to the table. First of all, the Winter War (1939-40) in which Finnish troops resisted Soviet advances - notably the Battle of Suomussalmi where a small Finnish force used the frozen terrain to defeat a vastly large invading army (albeit one poorly equipped for the weather and with most of its effective officers recently purged by Uncle Joe). Bolt Action could do a good job here, with a few house rules for fighting on frozen lakes and cool Finnish ski troops zipping around! If you want to break out Test of Honour this Christmas, you could re-enact the Siege of Osaka (1614), which finally established the Shogunate by breaking the last resistance from the Toyotomi Clan. The winter campaign features some great set-pieces, such as 600 men defending a village against the Shogun's larger force armed with arquebuses and heroic last stands on the Sanada-maru earthworks - all to defend a big brass bell inscribed with coded curses directed at the Shogun. A bit further back, there are some great battles-on-ice in the medieval period. In 1242, Alexander Nevsky led the forces of Novgorod to victory over the invading Teutonic Knights (engaged in a doomed 'crusade' against Lithuanian pagans and Orthodox Christians). The "Battle on the Ice" put a stop to the Crusade and cemented Nevsky's reputation as a national hero. And you can listen to Prokofiev's epic score while you're playing: music that pierces your soul with chilly menace and heroism. Wait till the Slavic choir kicks in at 2:25....! Further back still, Norse sagas and the poem Beowulf record Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern in the 6th century. The brothers Eanmund and Eadgils enlist Beowulf's tribe, the Geats, to recover the throne of Sweden from their usurping uncle Onela (reminds me of Hamlet... or am I thinking of The Lion King). In the battle Eadgils kills Onela - but here we have early Vikings fighting on ice and one of them is Beowulf!!! Would Saga be the best game for this? Saga features a campaign pack for 'Aetius & Arthur' (the Dark Ages proper) which is about right for Beowulf, date-wise - but the game also has an 'Age of Vikings' set which would look cooler, even if a bit anachronistic for the 6th century (Vikings are a few hundred years later). Board games are a bit easier to reference, because they choose a wintry setting precisely for theme and the obstacles it creates. Take Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game. This is a fantastic zombie holocaust game with a fresh twist. The zombie plague has already happened, but you play survivors in a walled compound and winter has arrived. You have a mission to accomplish which sens you on trips out of the colony, scavenging for fuel, food, medicine or weapons. Meanwhile, the undead gather in greater and greater numbers, forcing you to build barricades. This would be a good enough game as it is, but there are two fantastic twists. First, every time you take your turn someone else draws a Crossroads Card which creates a dilemma for you: welcome in fugitives or turn them away? crack down on mutineers or back down from conflict? celebrate Christmas or stick to strict rationing? Secondly, although the game is cooperative, everyone has a personal mission that forces them to act against the interests of the group: maybe you're hoarding medicine for your sick daughter or holding onto weapons so you can strike out by yourself when things go south... The constant pressure of the undead, the weather and the need to find food gets ratcheted up by the fact that you can't entirely trust each other. This game is very hard to win, but so much fun you don't mind losing. Other games just have winter variants. There's a Winter Carcassonne, that lets you build your vast medieval city in a snowy season rather than creating an expanse of green fields. It looks cute (arguably, better than the original) but it's purely cosmetic: the game plays the same. Since it's so pretty, you might choose to get this version of Cacassonne instead of the original but beware if you get the Carcassonne bug (and for some reason people do) you might not enjoy mixing these winter tiles with the summer ones in the various expansions. Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries brings this classic game out of the USA and lets you spread your railway (rather than railroad) tendrils across Scandinavia and Finland. This is also a stand-alone version of the game but it is significantly different from the original: ferries play a major role in setting up routes, it's only for 2-3 players and the geography leads to more aggressive play. I'm not the biggest fan of Ticket To Ride (I think you have to be one of those train-fans really to get into this game), but this grittier, nastier version of the game might appeal to me more.
Last up, two favourites Winter Tales is a complete oddity: a storytelling game with competing teams. Snow White has become as evil a queen as her stepmother and, assisted by the larcenous White Rabbit and the Big Bad Wolf as her enforcer, she has subjected Wintertown to a fascistic regime. The resistance, led by Pinocchio, the elderly Dorothy of Oz and various other magical outcasts, is trying to bring her down. Yup, it's fairytale characters doing bloody civil war. The board is BEE-YOO-TIFUL and you play the game by telling stories using cards with scribblings by ACTUAL Italian children. Mistfall is a cooperative deckbuilder fantasy quest game. The setting is the Valskyrr, an evocative northern wilderness (fantasy Poland, basically) and a corrupting entity called 'the Mists' is raising the undead, mutating the beasts and demonizing the wizardry. Out you go on a series of quests to drive back the Mists. The gameplay is dense and challenging and each character is utterly distinctive but the real star is the setting itself with its rime-crusted towers, glacial vistas and frosty forests. Brr-rr-r. One more blog to go then it's Christmas.
I, like a lot of gamers, began my love affair with table top battles through Games Workshop and specifically Warhammer Fantasy. I dabbled a little in historical games (again under the GW umbrella) with Warhammer Ancient Battles but never really committed to anything beyond Warhammer Fantasy, 40k or the various offshoot games set in the same universe. It was my introduction to Bolt Action that changed all of this. I was (and still clearly am) blown away with how well Bolt Action plays and how much I enjoyed assembling and painting the delicate "real life" scale miniatures over the heroic and exaggerated characters I've been used to. Like most wargamers I'd find myself looking at other products from trusted manufacturers and weighing up if I fancy giving new gaming systems a go. It was on a lazy browsing session I first stumbled upon Test of Honour. My initial thought being, "Well this looks brilliant, but can I really add another game to my ever expanding collection? I've got so much painting to do....." However the miniatures looked so good. The game itself is set in an unquantified "Feudal Japan". Single shot muskets, lightning fast katanas and deadly naginatas all feature. Common troops can perform one action per turn but more powerful characters (Loyal Samurai, Ronin, Ninjas, to name a few) have more actions. Feudal Japan isn't the easiest of settings to get right yet the models seemed to do just that.... but my sensible side won over and I decided not to buy the box set. Then Warlord Games started giving away the rulebook as a free pdf (limited time only). Obviously the rulebook got downloaded and the system read incredibly well. As with all good games it’s difficult to master but so easy to pick up. Very few mechanics to learn but enough to offer depth of choice. Sticking to a "you go, I go" turn system seems simple. Add to this the dodge mechanism and suddenly drawing a token from a bag has a huge bearing on every choice you make but the token means you don’t know which of your units you can activate. The extra "fate" tokens and their subsequent upgrades keep every round fresh and can seriously change a scenario in an instant. When the third fate token is drawn, this immediately ends a turn. This forces you to decide between caution (possibly missing your chance to activate a character/unit) and all-out attack (possibly exposing or over committing a valuable piece). Almost everything in the game is accomplished by rolling the game’s bespoke dice and hoping to get three swords or more (roll five and fun bonuses occur). Risk management is balanced with a need for offensive play. Still a good rule set isn't always transcribed onto the table as well as expected. So once again my sensible (boring) side won me over. Other than moving, which can be done freely, an action requires the successful passing of the relevant test. The more powerful a character is the more dice they have to attempt to pass. Seems simple.....but the addition of bonuses for 5 swords or more, and the hilarious consequences if more X's than swords are rolled, keep the action fresh. Each weapon has its own specific bonuses (which activate if five swords are rolled). Weapon bonuses vary on the test being rolled at the time (attack, dodge, damage etc). However the most significant test the game demands is the Test of Honour. Used in the same way as leadership or morale in other gaming systems, a model’s test of honour can lead them to flee, show courage and stand or (in the case of a samurai) fight on through a near deadly wound (drawing a samurai Injury Card and press on in a weakened state). Within a week one of our club members starts talking about a new samurai game they've just bought. Asking if anyone would like a demo game....well I leapt from my seat. As easily as that I was stood at a table playing the game I'd frequently toyed with buying; and it played incredibly well. Quick, smooth and riddled with intricate choices in every scenario. Even a straight punch-up requires tough choices on how to draw your enemy out or bog them down. I've been absolutely hooked ever since. It obviously helps that the models are stunning, multi-part and completely dynamic through construction. My sensible voice has been banished, sent back to the farthest depths of my mind where it belongs. Test of Honour now proudly sits on my shelf and is played as often as possible. The moral of the story? If the game appeals to you, go for it. You'll most likely thank yourself.
Chris Peat's long-awaited Battle of Hastings wargame took place last night, recreating the events of 14 October, 1066, but with a rather different outcome. Alec and Tom commanded the English, reversing history's verdict by smashing Chris and Dave, who commanded the invading Normans. The battlefield was amazing. I think it's safe to say a higher power was with Tom and I this evening and the travesty of the original result was well and truly redressed - Alec Alec's view of the historical Norman victory as a 'travesty' is a popular one, but Duke William seems to have earned his triumph through a combination of snake-like guile, military experience and sheer political chutzpah that would do any wargamer proud. And probably a bit of luck too. Maybe we think of it as a 'travesty' because we imagine the Normans to be French and think of this as a defeat at the hands of the Old Enemy. And indeed, French were present on the right flank of William's army, with Bretons on the left. But the Normans were odder than that. The Normans were the descendants of enterprising Vikings who had carved out a Duchy for themselves a century earlier. By William's time, the Normans ('North-men') were Christians, but they retained their ancestors' affinity for hare-brained violence and whacky haircuts and, as far as the French were concerned, there was always something a bit 'off' about them. Really, the events of 1066 were about the attempts of various Scandinavian nobles to seize the legacy of the Norse King of England, Cnut the Great. That's why the English King Harold Godwinson had to see off Norwegians at Stamford Bridge before he could deal with William at Hastings. Harold Godwinson's claim to the throne was pretty sketchy too. The super-wealthy Earl of Wessex, he was the richest man in England: a sort of 11th century Richard Branson (if Branson was 6 feet tall with the athletic grace of a young Nureyev and the easy power of Ali coming out in the first round...). His father Godwin had been a kingmaker and Harold wanted to go a step further. When Edward the Confessor died childless, he left the country under the 'protection' of Harold. Vague enough - and Harold quickly got himself crowned on the back of this testimonial (not unlike Branson, whose headmaster told him he'd either end up in prison or be a millionaire). Still, lots of the great and the good in England saw Harold as an upstart. But what availed so many valuable gifts, when good faith, the foundation of all virtues, was wanting? - Oderic the Chronicler sticks it to Harold (and Richard Branson) Harold's gift for shooting his mouth off and promising all sorts of things to all sorts of people was going to rebound against him. A couple of years earlier, he'd been shipwrecked and found himself the guest (= prisoner) of Duke William of Normandy. Supposedly, Harold had promised William his support in getting the English throne. If Harold was Richard Branson, then William was Donald Trump, except that William was 5'10" and ridiculously strong with a voice like the guy who does horror movie trailers. Once news of Harold's coronation reached Normandy, William went into a frenzied campaign of slurs and fake news, representing Harold as an oathbreaker, his coronation a usurping of the throne and the bishop in charge of it a heretic. William got the support of the Pope (who sent a funky banner), the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Sweden - so maybe not like Trump at all then.
The two forces that met on that October morning were well-matched. Historians think William's forces numbered 10,000 and Harold's 7000, but Harold had a great defensive position and his men were fighting for the homeland, whereas William's troops included lots of mercenaries. The main difference was fighting style: the English kept to the tried-and-trusted strategy of a shield wall stocked with axemen and a few archers to spice things up: William brought with him newfangled cavalry, with those weird stirrups they'd pinched from the Muslims. Probably, though, military experience was decisive and William had this in spades, whereas Harold was fundamentally a Christmas-tree-and-budgerigar salesmen made good (or was that Richard Branson...?). Instead of staying on the higher ground, the English charged after the retreating Norman knights. It was a feint, of course, and the English fell for this time after time. Once Harold died (probably not shot in the eye, but chopped to messes by William and his knights), the English morale collapsed, although Harold's hearth-companions fought a doomed last stand around his corpse. [William] demonstrated – not without difficulty – the superiority of Norman-French mixed cavalry and infantry tactics over the Germanic-Scandinavian infantry traditions of the Anglo-Saxons - historian David Nicolle on Hastings (and, perhaps, Brexit) The rest, of course, is history: fast-forward to Christmas Day and William is being crowned in Westminster Abbey. Over in East Anglia (Harold's stomping ground, before he inherited Wessex), one Hereward the Wake will lead a romantic but doomed resistance to the all-conquering Normans. Maybe Chris will set up the Siege of Ely (1071) for a future game? But it wasn't all bad, was it? The Normans gave us archery and centralised government and a decent tax system. In return, the English kept their word for 'knight' (Anglo-Saxon 'cniht' instead of the French 'chevalier' which tells you something) and within a generation, the sons of Norman conquerors were growing beards and wearing their hair long and wavy, to the despair of their parents who thought they looked like girls... or - wait for it - Richard Branson!
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