Historical Reference

By Robert Kelly

The Household Cavalry Museum

Judging by YouTube and videos and photos from any tourist site, everyone who visits London seems to end up at Horse Guards to take a photo of the mounted troops on guard there. The reason there are so many tourists is because it is so centrally located.  It’s not far from any of London’s attractions like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. So do what I did. 

Walk past the crowds, through the gate, and go around the corner to the Household Cavalry Museum (orange arrow).  Or if you are walking up the Mall or through St. James Park from Buckingham Palace, cross the Horse Guards Parade directly to the museum (fuchsia arrow). Other nearby sites are circled in purple, such as the Mall, Churchill War Rooms, and 10 Downing Street. 

“I used to say of Napoleon that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.”  – Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington

By Patrick S. Baker

Battles of Napoleon: A Construction Set (BoN) was developed by Chuck Kroegel and David Landrey of Tactical Design Group (TDG) and released by Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI) in 1988. BoN was the last of twelve serious war games developed by TDG and marketed by SSI. On a note, SSI arguably produced the first “serious war game” for the microcomputer (read personal computer), Computer Bismarck, in 1980.

BoN was a turn-based strategy game, where players would take control of either French or Allied armies during the Napoleonic Wars and make decisions on movement, formations, and tactics. The game incorporated various factors such as weather, terrain types, and troop morale and training to simulate the complexities of real battles.

By Robert Kelly

This is my latest museum report from last year’s Grand Tour of Europe. I had always heard that Budapest was a city worth visiting and it didn’t disappoint. Budapest has many things to see and do and is quite inexpensive compared to places like London, Paris, or Copenhagen.  The Hungarian Army Museum is located on Castle Hill near the Buda Castle.

There are two ways to get to the top of the hill.  To ensure that you go right to the museum first, you take the minibus/golf carts that are parked at the base of the hill.  They are inexpensive, rather fun, and will drop you off at the entrance to the museum before it heads over to the castle (with the rest of the family). The second option is the funicular. It won’t drop you off right at the museum but it was impressive.

“This game is so bad it makes Superman 64 look like Doom.” — anonymous game reviewer

By Patrick S. Baker

Okay, boys and girls, please have a 55-gallon drum of hand sanitizer ready for this one. Today gentle readers I recount the story of not only one of the worst video games of all time but also one of the foulest and most atrocious video games of all time. And NO, I’m not exaggerating in any way about what a disgusting piece of work this game is.

Custer’s Revenge, also known as Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica: Custer’s Revenge was one of three ‘adult’ video games released November 1982 in a package of video games called Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica. The other two games in the set were Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em and Bachelor Party.

Many sources erroneously report that the games were produced by a game company named Mystique, but in fact is no game company named Mystique. Mystique was the brand name for the line of adult games produced by American Multiple Industries (AMI).

By David Garvin

In a previous post, I interviewed Dr. Andrew Hershey, designer of many Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) scenarios and Historical ASL campaign games, colloquially known as HASLs. It was quite evident after reading that interview, that there is quite a bit of research behind many ASL Scenarios and especially HASLs.

As such, by playing any well-designed HASL, one can gain a better understanding of the nature of the conflict at large and the feel of certain battles. For me, one of the best examples is found in the HASL Kampfgruppe Scherer: The Shield of Cholm (KGS). It was produced by le franc tireur in 2011 and designed by the aforementioned Dr. Andrew Hershey.

By Robert Kelly

I retired from the Canadian Public Service in early April.  Within a few days my wife and I were on our way for the “Retirement Grand Tour of Europe”.

As my wife is from Denmark, we set up our Forward Operating Base in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. Besides a one-week Baltic Cruise out of Copenhagen with stops in Stockholm, Helsinki, and Tallinn, our plan was every week or so we would see what deals Ryanair had. 

If we could find cities with good hotel deals at the same time, we would make our bookings. My wife had always wanted to go to Paris so that was our first trip “outside the wire”.

As we went in May, the tourist season hadn’t fully started, so prices were still reasonable. But then coming from Denmark, everywhere else in Europe is reasonably priced. 

“We came to serve God, and to get rich.” ― Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo

By Patrick S. Baker

1984’s The Seven Cities of Gold (henceforth Seven Cities) is generally acknowledged as one of the most successful and influential early “open-world” video games.

In an open-world video game, the player can wander freely through the virtual world and has significant freedom in choosing how and when to approach the game objectives. In the game a player takes on the character of a 15th-century conquistador, sailing across the Atlantic to the New World to explore, obtain gold and make the Spanish court happy.

The name of the game comes from the legend of the seven cities of gold variously called Cibola, Quivira, or El Dorado. The mythical cities were fabulously wealthy and supposedly located somewhere in what is now the American Southwest.

By Patrick S. Baker

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me

We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot

Drink up, me ‘earties, yo ho

We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot

Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho

–From Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me), by George Bruns

In 1982 Sid Meier and Bill Stealey founded MicroProse and by 1986 the video game company was highly successful by largely focusing on military and vehicle simulations such as Chopper Rescue, Spitfire Ace, and Silent Service. But Meier, MicroProse’s chief designer and programmer, had grown bored with the hyper-realistic games and wanted to do something different.

In a meeting with Arnold Hendricks, a MicroProse programmer, Meier heard the pitch for a pirate game. The game was pitched as an “Age of Sail” ship-to-ship combat game, much like Avalon Hill’s Clear for Action. Meier liked the idea but wanted it to be an open-world adventure game, not just a combat simulation. Meier later wrote: “Pirates didn’t spend all day fighting one another. Pirates had adventures.”

By Patrick S. Baker

“Peace, impudent and shameless Warwick, peace, Proud setter up and puller down of kings!” – William Shakespeare – Henry VI, Part III, Act III, Scene 3.

Besides being a great background for some of Shakespeare’s best plays, the Wars of the Roses make a fantastic setting for a great game: Kingmaker. Developed by Andrew McNeil and released in the United Kingdom in the fall of 1974 by Ariel Productions Ltd, a division of Philmar, Ltd. The front page of the rule book read in part: “

…. The game takes as its basis the concept that the dynastic struggle between the royal houses of Lancaster and York (called the Wars of the Roses) was, in reality, a series of brutal and bloody power struggles between factions of self-interested noble families, with the Yorkist and Lancastrian princes the pawns in a greater game of gaining control of the country in the name of one or the other monarch. Players control pieces representing the noble families as they seek power by a combination of military, political and diplomatic skills.”

By Howard West

Background

My previous article Team Yankee COLD WAR Warrior Revisited the T-55 Tank focused on a Team Yankee player adding a 24-27 point 2nd or allied T-55 tank formation to an existing army list. With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the Team Yankee Meta. 

Also, several of our upcoming local Team Yankee tournaments that I will be playing in have the following point levels: 110, 94, and 70. I thought this provided a good basis for a series of list-building discussions for Team Yankee on No Dice No Glory.