500,000 Pageviews!!!

An anniversary of sorts one could say, and average of over 5000 page views per month over the nearly 8 years since I started Wargaming in 28mm.

Let us have a little look back, the original blog title was Fuentes de Ornoro and with the initial plan to document my progress in building the forces to fight the said battle. It is interesting to me that at the time my plan was to build the forces so I could play the battle using the Le Feu Sacre ruleset from Too Fat Lardies. I planned to have 12-16 figure single rank bases in 28 mm. 

From my original post, it seems that command stand and skirmish basing was important to me.  It is amusing to think that it really the only thing I have held on to. I have gone through multiple different rulesets and basing configurations but held on to the idea that I wanted command bases and skirmish stands. I have even got rid of the bulk of my 28mm Napoleonic collection (around 800 left of the original 2800 figures that were painted over the last 8-9 years).

It is also funny to think that I have come somewhat a full circle in Napoleonic rules preference, I have not returned to Le Feu Sacre but am now playing a Napoleonic ruleset by the same author Darren Green, General Bonaparte meets Chain of Command (a name I suspect that will change when it comes out of playtest).

Somewhere along the way the blog title got changed to Wargaming in 28mm and sometimes smaller. This was to accommodate a foray into 15mm WWII wargaming that was pretty short-lived with a fairly complete DAK and 8th Army being sold off to Australia. I suppose I thought about changing the name back to Wargaming in 28mm, but then along came Chain of Command and my decision to go with 20mm figures.

The subject of my posts over the years have mirrored by transition from a painter to a wargamer. As time has gone by, I clearly have become less interested in painting and more interested in play testing rules especially Napoleonic rulesets. As you can see below these have been some of my most popular posts. This has been well illustrated by the fact that I have commissioned painters to paint a 15mm ACW Union army, 6mm British and French Napoleonic armies and most recently a 18mm AB Napoleonic force to replace my sold 28mm Napoleonic figures.

So what have people liked, well it looks like this:

Field of Glory Ruleset Review: Over 7500 hits, this was part one of a playtest review of this ruleset for grand tactical Napoleonic gaming from Slitherine. I never played it after, probably because I am less interested in grand tactical wargaming. I am not sure how successful this ruleset is, but there sure were a lot of hits.

A SAGA Warband from the Emirate of Seville: Over 5800 hits, I have never really understand why this was such a popular post but I can guess. To be clever, I originally used arabic calligraphy in the title. I suspect that the number of hits had nothing to do with wargamers, but more from government security agencies and wog-types looking to join up to sacrifice their worthless selves. Best to shut up I suppose, but I have noticed that I spend a lot of time on the internet browsing sites that offer reproduction Dane-Axes. Anyway re-writing the title in english seemed to stop the flow to this post.

Field of Glory Ruleset Review: Almost 2300 hits, part 2 of above.

Another Non-Wargaming Post!: Over 2100 hits, not sure why people are interested in holiday snaps, but this post chronicling myself and Jennifer's 2012 trip to Italy was quite popular.

La Haie Sainte: A Black Powder AAR: Almost 1200 hits. An AAR post using a series of hand written notes from the commanders to document the action with a linked playtest, this time of Warlord Game's Napoleonic ruleset Black Powder. This is not a bad ruleset and it actually does quite a good job of playing asymmetric games, as I found with this encounter and subsequently with a Hougoumont game. I find the mechanic though hard to remember and a bit boring.

I was going to stop at 5, but I noticed that the sixth most popular post was one dear to my heart:

Skraeling Warlord and who were the Skraelings anyway?: Over a 1000 hits, since I am a from The Rock, I am quite gratified to see this was quite popular.

Closely followed by the following all at 900 hits.

Winter War Terrain

Struggle for Hougomont, A Lasalle Playtest

La Haie Sainte: A Black Powder Playtest

The Hanoverian Grubenhagen Leichtes Bataillon

Well where to from now, I turn 60 this year, so lots of wargaming left yet! Less interested in painting though, so I suspect I will keep the commission painters busy. To celebrate this milestone, I will post some photos of my new 18mm AB army in my next post. My main non-gaming hobby focus is now terrain building, and hopefully I will have some posts of my two latest projects: Stalingrad and Jungle terrain for the Pacific and Far East WWII gaming.

And finally on to gaming, clearly I am a committed Lardie (adherent of Too Fat Lardies rulesets). These rulesets just stand above others in tactical complexity but simplistic mechanics. They truly live up to their motto "Play the period not the rules". I will continue to be deeply involved in Chain of Command and Dux Britanniarum, and will follow the Napoleonic derivative of CoC to it's conclusion. I am also quite excited about Sharp Practice 2 which is just about to be released. For non Lardite rulesets, I will probably continue SAGA and have a look at their new campaign supplement Age of the the Wolf and hope to have a go at Blucher for grand tactical Napoleonic wargaming using 6mm figures. Over the last 2-3 years, I have found that campaigning is much more fun than stand alone games.