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Yes, this issue is late. Well, technically, last issue was slightly early, but in

any case, my apologies to those of you who have been chafing at the bit in anticipation, but the last couple of months have been, umm, ‘challenging’. We’re all friends here, so I feel you deserve the unadulterated facts.

Well, it was only a matter of time before the recession

began to bite in this sector of the leisure market and, most particularly, my tiny corner of the niche which is wargames publishing. But, for whatever reason, over the Christmas period and into the new year, it seemed as though the world had died outside my door. Cashflow pretty much dried up, and as anyone who has ever run a business knows, that’s a pretty terrifying position to be in. It certainly hasn’t restored any colour to my already silver scalp.

Like any business owner, when this happens, you of course try to understand why this should be. Is my product rubbish? The volume of compliments I receive, both written and verbal, would suggest not. Is my customer service poor? Again, feedback tells me otherwise. Is my product too expensive? Once more, substantial numbers of you tell me that you consider Battlegames to be good value for money, and of course I have no control over international exchange rates or the peculiar machinations of the Royal Mail when they set their postage rates. I even put the cost factor to the test by introducing a short subscription as a low-cost alternative, and of course there are now 15 digital issues, plus the Table Top Teaser special, available at half price online. They have made, in short, almost no difference, and in fact people are still buying the paper issues and the full subscription in much greater numbers. Go figure.

So perhaps – and you, dear readers, will have to tell me if I’m wrong – the recession has just dragged on so long that whilst my sources tell me that sales of miniatures and rules have continued unabated, you have been making cuts, or holding off spending on the ‘peripherals’, amongst which this, and perhaps other, magazines are counted.

Be that as it may, I have a mortgage, bills, credit cards and loans to pay, and it is indeed a mercy that I have several strings to my bow. And so, to keep the wolves from the door, I have been taking on private commissions for graphic and web design, copywriting and marketing consultancy, as well as pursuing a few other personal projects that

Editorial Contents

Cover: Perry 28mm plastic Napoleonic infantry blaze away during a game staged at Partizan last May, featuring the new Black Powder rules.

Editorial 3

Blissful bocage 4Diane Sutherland, UK

Forward Observer 7Mike Siggins, UK

Boardgames as campaign engines 9Bob Barnetson and Bruce MacFarlane, Canada

Talking wargaming: line versus line 15Chris Scott, UK

Table top teaser 17C. S. Grant, UK

Recce special: Thomas the game engine 21Arthur Harman, UK

Whiling away the hours 25Gary Pready, UK

Keep your powder dry 26Henry Hyde, UK

Recce 37New goodies reviewed by our team

The Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal: update 43Our campaign to help support ex-service personnel continues

Events November/December 2009 44Richard Tyndall, UK

Competition and classified ads 45Win a copy of Black Powder!

The Battlegames shop 46The place to order your subscription and much more

have sat on back burners for far too long. These have all, naturally, gobbled up chunks of my time. In addition, I have been taking steps to ensure the longer-term future of this publication, and am delighted to report that both moral and financial encouragement has been forthcoming from a number of generous individuals who not only wish to see this publication reach a ripe old age, but also reckon that having someone at the helm who has been kept relatively sane may not be such a bad idea. If you feel the same way, then by all means get in touch, or at the very least, dig a few people in the ribs and tell them to subscribe or advertise!

Anyway, that’s enough words from me, because this issue is full of many thousands more. And more than anything else, you tell me that it’s the writing in Battlegames that keeps you coming back again and again. I’ll take your word for it.

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Blissful bocageThe continuing tales of a wargames widow

by Diane Sutherland

I love Dorset – scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream, dreamy, romantic walks along the Jurassic coast – yes please. So why am I standing in a fusty

old shop watching the wargamer talk to someone who looks like Arkwright from Open All Hours about cold water dyes and extra fine rodent bedding. I hate mice and rats, but he makes soothing noises and I just smile when he buys two cheap plastic buckets.

bWhat immediately comes to mind when you think of

Normandy in World War Two? No, not John Wayne being pulled along in a cart in The Longest Day and neither is it Bathing Corporal Brian, or whatever that Stephen Spielberg film was called. Bocage, that’s what Normandy is all about. We’ve all been through the piled-up lines of lichen, admit it. We may even have tried sticking moss to lengths of dowel, but that didn’t work either, did it?

Our recipe for bocage without tears means quite a lot of preparation and several stages; but it is well worth the effort. So what is bocage? Basically it is a high bank with a thick hedge and trees on top. French farming history lesson over, let’s get started.

You will need the following:A roll of 1 inch (25mm) thick rubberised horsehair•Some 2-3mm MDF sheet•A seed tray and some sheets of newspaper•Polystyrene packaging•A bucket (or two)•A bag of fine hamster bedding•Cold water dye (green or yellow and blue)•Brown paint with sand mixed in•Slightly watered down green paint•Glue, brushes, craft knife and scissors•

First you need to dye the hamster bedding. Using the cold water dyes gives you the option of determining the exact colour for the hedges. Bear in mind the bedding is

quite ‘blonde’, so go for a slightly stronger mixture than the instructions on the dye might suggest. Mix the dye and water in a bucket, then pour in the hamster bedding. This will leave to be left for at least two days to make sure that the dye has taken. It is a good idea to mix up the damp hamster bedding a couple of times each day. If you fail to do this, you might find that the bedding at the bottom has been strongly coloured and the stuff at the top has barely been touched.

Once you are happy with the colour, pour out the damp shavings onto a seed tray. You will discover that 90% of the paint and water has been soaked up by the bedding. Spread it out over the newspaper; ideally leave it to dry in the sun. Give the mixture a good stir now and then to encourage it to dry. You might want to change the newspaper because it will soak up a good deal of the moisture.

We went for 8-12 inch (20-30cm) sections of bocage. Cut the MDF wider than the inch-thick bank. Cut plenty of lengths; this is going to be a production line process. Family and friends overwhelm us with packaging material, after all it saves them going down the recycling centre. Some particularly carve-able black polystyrene was just the job. We roughly cut it and stuck it to the MDF.

Use a craft knife to carefully fashion the bank. You want a relatively flat top and bevelled edges, although the sides of the bank can be pretty rough looking and they will look more realistic. You can vary the thickness for additional authenticity. Once you are happy with the overall shape, you can give the packaging a precautionary coat of cheap emulsion. This will encourage the brown paints and sand mix to adhere to the packaging more readily.

Our brown paint and sand mix is quite light. It is designed to match the terrain boards. You might want to go for a darker colour. Large DIY stores will mix any colour you come up with; most of them will have colour scanners and can produce a bespoke colour to your specifications. A litre should not cost you more than around £10. When you mix it with the sand, you will get at least the equivalent of 2.5 litres worth of coverage.

Liberally slap on the brown paint and sand mix and allow to dry. Make sure you have covered the whole of the bank and the base of the MDF. When this is dry, we give the whole thing a light dry-brush with white craft paint.

Not a promising start? This is a strip of the black packaging material (from a computer), stuck to an MDF base. This section will be hollowed out to

make an improvised trench in the bocage.

This is our dyed hamster bedding mix. Even the fine stuff has larger chunks in it, but life is too short to be worrying about finding a sieve. You can use this material to make trees and bushes using a very similar technique to

the hedgerow process.

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Now for the hedges. You can, of course, choose to fix trees along your bank; a simple solution to this is to buy any of the cheap Chinese import trees designed for railway layouts. They are designed to be pushed into polystyrene or something similar and with just a blob of glue will be a permanent fixture. It would be more authentic to put trees on your bocage sections, but we chose not to.

The sheet of rubberised horsehair that we used was around 6 x 3ft (1.8m x 90cm) and around 1 inch thick. Using your scissors (try to find the largest dressmaking scissors), roughly cut ¾-1.5 inch strips of the horsehair. Bocage is naturally uneven, so you do not need to be too precise. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that you want the bocage sections to look like a continuous bank, so you might want to opt for standardised heights at each end.

Size up your strips and then cut to match your bocage sections. Assuming your hamster bedding is dry, we can now move onto the dip stage.

We are going to use slightly watered down green paint as our fixative. Again, it is normal emulsion paint that we had mixed up in a litre tin at the DIY store. You can reuse the bucket and pour about half a litre of the paint in. Add about half as much water and give it a thorough mix. You are looking for a runny mixture; it needs to be able to soak into the horsehair, but not be too runny so that it goes everywhere. As an optional extra, you can squeeze some white wood glue or PVA into the mix to make it stickier.

Dip the horsehair topside down and immerse it in the green paint mix to around three quarters of its height. By leaving the bottom of the horsehair ‘raw’, you can give the impression of plant roots. Gently shake the horsehair over the bucket and then dip it into the dyed hamster bedding. Shovel the bedding up the sides of the horsehair to get a good coat then lay the horsehair strip, root-side down, onto sheets of newspaper. Continue the process until you have completed all of the dipping. They will take some time to dry. Use a hot glue gun to fix the horsehair

strips onto the banks and make sure you press down hard to ensure that it adheres to the whole of the bank.

You might want to vary the look of the banks; we made some with gaps and put in gates, others had open spaces (make sure they are vehicle width). You might want to make broken sections for your Sherman Dozers. Corner sections are easy, as the horsehair is very forgiving. We also made some thicker sections that would take whole infantry platoons, anti-tank guns and dug-in tanks.

This is exactly the same method we use to make conventional hedges; simple strips of MDF or card, covered in brown paint and sand then ½ inch thick and 1 inch tall dipped horsehair sections. Intersperse gates, sections of fencing and gaps to suit.

As a final thought, you might want to spray your lengths of bocage with a matt varnish, as it does help to ensure that the hamster bedding stays on the horsehair. However, in our experience, the paint is sufficient for pretty robust handling.

bI’m way past the embarrassment stage when it comes to

shopping with the wargamer. In fact I even shop for him. I dread the moment when a shopkeeper, after ringing up an eclectic selection of items, whispers knowingly, “Ah, constructing Roman field defences, if I might venture madam?” What on earth am I going to say to that? “Don’t be impertinent; gabions weren’t used until the medieval period!”

This is a basic bank section for the bocage showing the coverage of the brown paint and sand mix. The piece has been given a dry-brush with

white craft paint.

This is a close up of one of the curved sections of the bocage with a gap. You can be as creative as you like with the shape of the bocage sections; we opted for a range of free standing pieces, but you might want to make

permanent fields fixed to a baseboard or your terrain boards.

A close up of a dipped strip of rubberised horsehair. The paint and dyed hamster bedding mix has dried and has produced a robust and credible

looking hedgerow.

If bocage is not your thing, then straightforward hedges can be made in exactly the same way. These are around 1“ tall and thinner (about ½“).

Intersperse the sections with gaps, gates and rickety fencing.

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You can buy a roll of rubberised horsehair for under £30. Given that it’s 6’ x 3’ x 1“ (1.8m x 0.9m x 25mm), that’s all the horsehair you are ever going

to need. Why not split a sheet with someone? Rubberised horsehair supplies can be bought online at www.jamiltonupholstery.co.uk and cold water dyes

are available at www.dylon.co.uk or www.dyeshop.co.uk.

Bocage used in a 28mm game simulating a sunken road section. This is set in England and would suit any period, so you don’t have to be wargaming in Normandy to have a go at this. Notice that the paint and bedding mix has not been applied to the bottom of the hedgerow sections to simulate roots. Church made by Jon Sutherland and in the collection of Tim Hall.

Bocage used as it was intended in a Normandy based World War Two game in 20mm. At this scale, the true horror of the bocage as a defence line and how it affects lines of sight can be clearly seen. All photos by Jon Sutherland.