I had a minor procedure at the hospital today, so am back home just taking it easy for the rest of the day ..... which loosely translates into doing only wargamey things :-) 

With the main proofing of the 1066 game done and the text files back with the publisher for agreeing / signing off, a sudden sense of actually having some spare time has caught me a bit off guard.

So it is time to jack the 1809 campaign back up ….. but, surprisingly the short but intense distraction of the 1066 effort has put the campaign away from my immediate recall, I’ve lost the nuance of it all, funny how that can happen so quickly, so I will take the opportunity today to go back to the first post and read through everything, to pick up the threads again and then hopefully, some campaign action can resume between our French and Austrian forces.

As for painting, another Austrian infantry unit is very close to leaving the basing table and marching to barracks - hopefully before Sunday, which is my submission day for painted pieces to the Analogue Hobby Challenge. I don't think I am going to make my 400 point goal by the deadline of 21st March - but have not given up yet!

A looong time ago there was a series of Fighting Fantasy books by the pens of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

They were essentially paragraph-driven stories / role-playing games. You are on paragraph number 222 and it says something like 'Before you is a closed door and there is a passage to your left,  from where you can hear a noise that sounds like a hammer hitting an anvil - do you;

Want to go down the passage towards the noise - Turn to 74

Open the closed door and enter - Turn to 306'

You would then make your option and turn to that paragraph and the adventure continues.

Your interaction with the story comes from the character that you create at the outset. You roll dice and use the scores to determine your skill, stamina and luck. These values are used during 'play' as you fight monsters, pick locks, and find / use equipment / potions.

Anyway, I was in a local shop the other day and the first 12 books have been brought back into print. I picked up book 1 (of course) The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - this must be a nostalgic blast for many.

Anyway, I am going to run with this as a bit of fun, but I will map my way around the place in an effort to have a serious go at this. When I used to play, I would madly dash through the paragraphs having no idea where I was relative to other locations that I had already visited.

"At last your two-day hike is over. You unsheathe your sword, lay it on the ground and sigh with relief as you lower yourself down on the mossy rocks to sit for a moment's rest. You stretch, rub your eyes and finally look up to Firetop Mountain"

And so it begins!

I roll for my character traits and get extremely lucky rolls for Stamina and Luck, but not so much for skill. It appears that I might be a stupid but brave warrior perhaps!

Having regard for my traits, the Character that I have generated is ...

Gyrth, son of Godwin. I am to prove my warrior credentials by entering Warlock Mountain and dealing with all that Warlock Zagor can throw at me. You can see from my credentials below, I am very brave and lucky, though perhaps a bit dim. Hopefully by the sword I shall be up to the task!

Skill = 8

Stamina = 23

Luck = 12

A backpack with provisions (10 meals - which restores stamina)

A sword (surely this is a magnificent two-handed beast - we shall soon know!)

Leather Armour (hmmn - hopefully I will find something to add to this)

Shield (I feel a bit compelled to design a shield face or perhaps use a Victrix transfer!)

1 Potion of Skill ( you can choose one potion. I have taken this because my skill level is not great). 

Well, here we go. I usually manage to last about an hour with these sort of things, whatever, this is going to be a lot of fun.

For some six days now, I have been working constantly on proofing the 1066 game. This is a thorough process that needs everything checking and double-checking. The games need playing to ensure that set-ups are right, that there are the right numbers of counters and playing is a good way of stress testing the rules and charts when done in conjunction with reading alone.

[image left - thank you free ClipArt].

Yesterday I submitted a document to the publisher containing those things that I felt needed some attention and although today has involved a bit of to and fro with a couple of e-mails etc, the 'calm' is palpable and being enjoyed!

I will likely need to pick things up again tomorrow as I expect the publisher will be responding by then.

As boardgamers, our world is one of buying games and then looking for the errata that has come out since publication, which unfortunately has a certainty about it. It is the responsibility of the team to reduce the prospect of that as much as possible and I have found the process interesting as involvement means looking at a game purely from an errata prevention perspective, rather than a players perspective.

Anyway due to time demands, unfortunately my 1809 campaign is still set aside and also my painting for the Analogue Hobby Challenge has pretty much derailed, so I spent some time today completing the painting of Prince Liechtenstein on his horse and based up 20 Austrian painted and varnished Infantry figures. The edges of their bases need painting, then basing paste applied and finally a good dosing of flocks and tufts added. I hope to have them ready to photograph in time for submission to the painting challenge next Monday. That should earn me 110 points towards my challenge goal.

With those infantry now off the painting corks and while I finalise their basing, 8 artillery crew and two cannons have gone straight onto the painting corks, so that a start can be made, while the other stuff is getting done. If possible I would like to get that all done by the end of February.

That will leave 21 days of March (minus 4 days away), before the Challenge ends, and the need to get the final infantry unit painted up, based and presented, plus a couple of other items that will bring me up to the 400 point goal that I signed up for .... Phew!

In the continuing proofreading of the 1066 game, the next battle, Stamford Bridge went to the table last night.

There is a brief write-up on BoardGameGeek at the link below. This time, as well as the AAR, I discuss the new counters that are used at set-up to disguise the Viking strengths in their front line. 

The Vikings had been taken by surprise and many of them on this hot day had left their armour back at Riccall, some 10 miles away, and so their army is represented by different strength units, depending on whether they had armour or not.

The counters do not have any strengths on their face, so neither side knows their combat value until they engage in their first combat, at which time the counter is flipped to reveal the fighting value on the other side. The counter is then swapped out for the real counter that shows combat values on one side and Disordered status on the other.

Above is Harold attacking Orri!

LINK

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3661216/hello-from-the-designer-and-production-team

Everything is on hold while I enter some intensive activity of proofreading the Dragon Ships & Iron Knights game.

Part of this includes getting each battle to the table, so that set-ups, counter mix and play aids can be stress tested.

Yesterday I went through the Hastings rulebook and map and managed to get the game on the table last night. Everything went fine and the things that needed to be picked up were.

The pre-production copy comes with a gloss finish, so the light edges on the counter here are caused by reflected light that the camera lens picks up, though oddly the eye doesn't! The production copies will be matte.

One of the changes for the new edition is that 'Disorder' status is shown on the flip side of the counter, rather than being a separate marker, so now the only markers used in the game are Rout markers. This makes counter management easier as the stacking level is just one unit per hex, so it effectively removes and shuffling of counters around, units are just flipped over.

I have put some replay and observational notes up at BoardGameGeek at the below link.

Today I will be proofing the Hastings historical and design notes and then moving onto the Stamford Bridge game.

Link

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3661216/hello-from-the-designer-and-production-team

These are my own homebrew Napoleonic rules and by now they must be the most expensive set of rules on the planet!

Every few months, at £12 a go, I get a new set sent to me from a print on demand company, as the previous set gets amended and filled with red pen.

The last version was November 2025 and these will be February 2026, so I got just over 3 months out of them - about average!

Several of the amendments have fallen from moments arising in the recent games that I have been playing of the 1809 campaign game.

That should be a pure white border on the front cover, but my camera white balance was 'off' and it has gone for a blue tint - how very independent!

How long before the red pen strikes again and the margins on the pages fill with indecipherable notes?  .... my bet is one game :-)

Not so much out of the box, as hot off the printers press! I have just received a prototype copy of Dragon Ships & Iron Knights, to be published by Legion Games.

This boxed game contains the three battles of 1066, Gate Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.

The Heritage of the package is that I self produced Stamford Bridge and Hastings as a desk Top Published effort back in 2000 / 2001. In 2016, Revolution Games picked up the titles and published them as two separate games under the ‘Invasion 1066’ banner.

Legion Games are about to publish a game called ‘1066 Year of Destiny’ designed by Geoff Noble, which is a strategic covering of the tumultuous events of that year. Randy Lein at Legion Games wanted to publish a second game covering the tactical battles of 1066 to compliment Geoff’s strategic design.

The decision was taken to use my two games for the tactical side of things and that Geoff Noble would design the third battle of that year (Gate Fulford) using the same game engine, so that all three games could be presented in a single package and here we are!

I have taken possession of the tactical game prototype to do a thorough final proof read before publication and I must say the component quality is excellent and if you don’t mind me saying, it is just a lovely thing to see your own efforts given this look.

The box is 1½” deep. We get three maps, one for each battle, each measuring 17” x 22” (so half maps) and they are printed onto card. The hex sizes are 1” side to side to accommodate the big counters. 

Each of the battles gets its own rulebook printed on heavy paper with a sheen and in two column print format. The Stamford Bridge and Hasting booklets are 12 pages long and the Gate Fulford is set at 8 pages. All three booklets have the same standard rules presented in the first four and a half pages (i.e. the game engine is exactly the same across all three games), the rest of the booklets are exclusive to their relative game and include set-ups, special rules, history and design notes.

The counters are lovely (by Ken Demyen as are the maps). You get two sheets of ¾” counters depicting units, leaders and rout markers. Some of the counters are shared across more than one battle.

Rounding out the package are three single sided, full colour, player aid sheets (again the work of Ken) on nice weighty card with a sheen to them. The first identifies all of the counter types and shows what the values on the units mean. The second has the charts for close combat, missile fire, reorganization and feigned cavalry attacks, there are also some illustrated examples on there such as charge arcs. The third card holds the terrain charts, movement allowances and the morale groupings that the system uses and again, there are a couple of illustrated examples on there.

So the next job now is to proof read and further play the games to stress test the charts and set-up information etc and make sure that they are right.

I will get some of that play test stuff out so that anyone interested can have a closer look at game parts and system etc. 

The next couple of hours have brought quite a bit of action, with engagements on the slopes, in the village and at the lower bridge.

The direction of the campaign is becoming established and the advantages of timescale in linked games and campaigns more obvious, as it may now take units a few hours to get the orders they need and for them to then move to new locations.

There is some good detail of events over on the Battlefields & Warriors blog.

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-bridges-pursuit-of-vi-korps-10-am.html

The 8 and 9 AM turns in the campaign have now been played through and a report posted to the Warriors & Battlefield Blog (link below).

We get a couple of actions being fought one at the village itself and the other below it, amongst the vineyards.

I am really liking that everything that goes on in each fight feels like it is important because of the tie-in to whatever else is going on in the campaign.

The post also outlines a couple of admin features that I am using to make the campaign run smoothly and to enhance the solo aspect of play.

W&B Blog Link;

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-village-comes-under-pressure.html

The 7 AM turn in the ‘Pursuit of IV Korps’ campaign has now been played out and a record of events has been posted to the Battlefields & Warrior Blog (link below).

The French are relying on a fast and aggressive advance to unhinge the Austrian defence.

What is the state of readiness and commitment of Austrian forces to their rearguard positions?

 Information LINK;

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/02/7-am-pursuit-of-vi-korps.html

Our face-to-face game last night covered The fighting at Rose's Wheatfield 2nd July 1863 (Gettysburg) is the first installment of the tattered flags series. Designed by Hermann Luttmann and published by Blue Panther.

We are given a taste of tactical fighting. Brigades are on the table and they are formed by their constituent regiments, which themselves will be represented by 2 - 4 counters.

The counters are oblong and the map has a grid of points that allows the units to set up and move in a style that, visually at least is very reminiscent of a miniatures game and the designer has produced a system that nicely replicates the free form of a figures game i.e. the grid is much less obvious to play.

For my money, in the goal of getting a figures style game, play felt a bit process heavy and mathsy, more obvious perhaps in the evening when tiredness kicks in.

It does move along at a fair old place and no doubt system familiarity over several playings would help. The system is 2D10 based (so D100 on application) and can be quite swingy over the results range.

Overall I felt the game was a brave stab at the unusual (but welcome) mix of boardgame with a figures feel, but ultimately I thought that at times it was getting in its own way.