World War I & II Variants

I've been doing a bit of research to back up a few ideas I have on the go regarding alternative histories set during the inter-war period.

1. British Civil War - I've been quite intrigued by the development of the "A Very British Civil War" wargame genre over the last year or so. This got my interest first and I've developed some army lists for the factions which I've placed in the WWII Rules in the Files Section. The conflict is set in 1938. I've designed a nice little scenario which I'm going to play out this month.

2. War Plan Red - inspired by the article in Miniature Wargames which outlines a conflict between the USA and British Empire over Canada. I watched the documentary on Youtube and was hooked to the idea. I'm developing some lists which detail the early war in 1935 and then the wider conflict set later in 1936-37. The later armies include some WWII AFVs developed earlier such as the A13 and M3 Stuart.

3. WWII set in the 1930s - to cover the Axis powers, UK, US, French and Soviets. Loads of early tanks to play with.

4. WWI extended by 10 years. This postulates an extension of the conflict past 1918 up to 1928 with all the possible technological advances this would entail. Bit of a nightmarish WH40K future history.

5. WWII extended beyond 1945 combined with a technological revolution - power armour, dreadnought walkers etc. These pet projects should keep me occupied for a bit!

Scottish Wargaming Armies

As I'm a Scot with a keen interest in both my own national aswell as military history in general, I thought I'd combine this into the creation of a list of Scottish armies throughout history during the periods when we were still an independent nation. Commencing with a Caledonian Army that can fight at Mons Graupius through the Dark Ages and Medieval periods into the Renaissance, covering Covenanters, mercenaries in the Thirty Years War and Montrose Royalists. All interesting stuff and I now need to start playing out some of my creations.

Battle of Leuctra 371 BC

I played a simulation of this classical battle between the Thebans and Spartans this afternoon. I chose the same historical deployments with 12 units per side. The battle commenced much as the original did with the cavalry clash and advance of the Theban left, however, the Spartan horse didn't scatter as they did historically and put up a holding resistance which bought time and allowed the entire phalanx line of both armies to eventually clash. It was looking good for the Spartan alliance until the deadlock suddenly broke on the strong Theban left with the destruction of the Spartan units and a spate of fortunate rolls from the Boetian allied phalanxes on the Theban right. As the Thebans turned to roll-up the remaining Spartan allies these conceded defeat and fled the field. A real hard fighting contest which went closer than the historical battle but with much the same outcome. The phalanx cohesion rule worked very well and made for rapid and bloody unit contests which seemed very in tune with phalanx warfare. I think I should have given the Spartans an advantage here to account for their superb drill and modify this to the second base loss resulting in the cohesion loss. An excellent game with lots of period drama.