Border Reiver 2025 - A Very Truncated Show Report

A couple of weeks' ago, I was able to pop in to the Border Reiver show in Gateshead. I had been busy doing something else hobby related, of which more anon, so I was only able to get in towards the end of the show. Border Reiver isn't a particularly big or busy show, and by the time I got there (about 1345)  - which took a bit longer than it might, the roadworks around Gateshead are a bit confusing - there was only an hour and a bit before the end, so it was definitely on the quiet side (although outside wasn't particularly quiet - there was a Women's Soccer League match on at the same time! - Howay the Lasses!)

The first game I saw was just being packed away - pike and elephants always give a hint of Raphia!

The details of this one have totally escaped me, I'm afraid. Looked good though.

A FPW game; BBB continues its long march through the "big battle, modest table" institutions of C19 wargaming...

Some kind of SF (possibly VSF) flying game

A very nice, wintry WW2 game; Chain of Command, I think

Warmaster! Very nice-looking game. Makes me wonder why I don't see more Warmaster games, given how influential it seems to have been

A great WH40K scene; the models were really nice, the guy said it had been one of his lockdown projects, to make the terrain look great

A big WW1 aerial game, with British fighters intercepting the German Gotha bombers.

Glorious-looking Gothas. They are big things!

A game company show case, with really nice volcanic terrain - there are little lights in the crevices to provide the glowing effect: it was genuinely awesome, well done them. I can't recall the name of the game, although I think it began with Chrono-.

At that point I ran out of charge, so I didn't get to take pictures of many other games, although since most of the games and traders were packing up by this point, I guess that doesn't matter too much. I missed taking some shots of a really big Punic Wars game, which was a shame. One of the guys was showing me some of the Fernando Enterprises painted figures they were using, they did look really nice, so if you were thinking of sending some figures off to Sri Lanka, I guess that is some evidence you should do so with confidence.  

I was then at that slightly difficult moment of whether to ask traders if I could look at/buy stuff whilst they were packing up (this was about 1430). I did it a couple of times, and people were fine, but I got a bit less confident as the packing up intensified, so I bought a very nice cake (Border Reiver has the best cake stall!!) and then left. I have been to shows near the end before, so I do get it, but I wonder what I would have made of it if this had been my first show. Anyway, I guess I can spend my pocket money at the Other Partizan instead. Everyone who I did talk to was very friendly, and I got a good rundown on some of the games, including plenty more praise for Bloody Big Battles.
 

Generative AI and Wargames' Scenario Generation

 I was very interested to read Norm Smith's latest blogplost on 'Battlefields and Warriors' on generative AI within gaming, specifically in terms of scenario generation, 'The Impacts of AI'. To make sense of my post, it will definitely be worth your while to read his first. 

 

The central claim is that generative AI does not really create, but it basically just steals stuff and reformats it.  This felt testable, so I have had a go, but before I link to the results, I held a few things in mind:

 

If I were asked, even if just asked myself, to create a Wars of the Roses scenario, to what degree would I fall back on things which I had read and then slightly re-package them? How would I come up with a creative solution which wasn't also a very unlikely scenario i.e. the scenario had to be both creatively different but also highly plausible? What, in terms of generating non-historical scenarios for historical miniatures games, would I consider to be sufficiently different to be not merely copying? In Norm's test, the differences between his own internet-published games and the AI-generated scenario, seem to be minimal (he didn't link to his own scenario directly)...what would happen when I tried it? In short, I would try to apply the same standard of judgement to AI behaviour and performance as I would to human behaviour and performance.

 

The results are here. Essentially, I asked the LLM (ChatGPT5 - Thinking mode) to create three scenarios. I have included the prompts I used, but to summarize:

 

Scenario One - a Wars of the Roses scenario for about 5000 combatants per side, each with a roughly even chance of winning.

 

Scenario Two - a scenario appropriate for Norm's own Piggy Longton campaign.

 

Scenario Three - a Wars of the Roses scenario, no further guidance. 

 

And then I posted them up as a page on this blog, with no changes and some very light formatting.

 

I am no expert on The Wars of the Roses. I would say I have more than a passing acquaintance, but no expertise at all, so I don't know if these scenarios are minimally repackaged historical battles - there are no battles immediately springing to mind. I also don't know if they are repackaged human-written and published scenarios, although again, nothing immediately sprang to mind, but my knowledge is even more limited here. So, if anyone can see through a thinly disguised historial or imaginative scenario please let me know! The challenge, to be clear, is not to find points of contact, it is to find something which has been basically been copied and very minimally changed - i.e. if a human had written it, you would have considered that human had copied it.

 

Disclaimer: I don't use AI to generate the scenarios I play personally.

Planning Armies: 6mm War of the Spanish Succession

Quite a niche post follows, even by my own low standards! It is about miniature army planning and scope - including scope creep...it might be of some mild interest to that tiny subset of gamers who are currently pondering the War of the Spanish Succession in 6mm; or perhaps, slightly more widely, gamers thinking about new horse-and-musket armies more generally

 

Model manufacturers are probably well aware of this, but it is definitely true that nice figures and models will help to persuade us to buy more than we might have planned. My 6mm War of the Spanish Succession collection is a case in point. The original scope of the project was quite tight: it was to be a 'tabletop teaser'-type force, with two armies, each just large enough to refight all the sources of 'Tabletop Teaser' type scenarios I possess. That amounts to, more-or-less, the Tabletop Teaser series in Battlegames magazine; Grant and Asquith's 'Scenarios for All Ages'; Grant's 'Programmed Wargames Scenarios'; and Neil Thomas' scenarios in One-Hour Wargames. And, in terms of playing, this is more-or-less exactly what has happened. Roughly speaking, the following forces will cover you for all of this:

 

BLUE FORCES:

4 units of Artillery

1 unit of Light Artillery  

1 unit of Engineers

3 units of Heavy Cavalry

3 units of Medium Cavalry 

3 units of Light Cavalry 

2 units of Elite Infantry 

3 units of Light Infantry

10 units of Line Infantry

 

RED FORCES:

3 units of Artillery

1 unit of Light Artillery  

1 unit of Engineers

3 units of Heavy Cavalry

3 units of Medium Cavalry 

2 units of Light Cavalry 

1 units of Elite Infantry 

3 units of Light Infantry

9 units of Line Infantry

 

1 Pontoon Train 

4 Supply wagons 

 

So this was my target. And it was achieved quite easily. I themed the 'Blue Force' as French, but with a very high proportion of foreign units, especially Irish. The 'Red Force' was themed as British, with as high a proportion of Scottish units as could make sense. The rationale for the above was using them as the regular troops involved in the various Jacobite rebellions, as well as for the generic Horse and Musket scenarios.

 

But, it turned out that efficiency be damned, I really, really liked painting WSS figures!  So The Red forces also got a brigade of Dutch Foot (which were Scottish), and another brigade of Dutch Foot (which were French), the French got a couple of Spanish units too (mainly Irish regiments). The Manchester Regiment, The Royal Ecossais and various Jacobite units were also done as if they had been raised for the '15 rather than the '45. You get the idea. As the armies expanded, I looked to the couple of sets of rules I had for the WSS which included army lists to give an indication of what a reasonable-sized complete army might look like.

 

Firstly, the army lists in Horse, Foot and Guns:

 

The Imperialist Army: 1 x Headquarters, 1 x Command Post, 5 x Cuirassiers, 2 x Dragoons, 1 x Hussars, 28 x Infantry, 1 x Field Artillery, 1 x Heavy Artillery 

 

The Anglo-Dutch Army: 2 x Command Posts, 11 x Horse (3 x Dutch, 2 x British, 2 x Danish, 4 x German), 9 x Dragoons, 2 x Guard Infantry (1 x Dutch, 1 x British), 3 x Grenadiers, 49 x Infantry (15 x Dutch, 12 x British, 2 x Danish, 4 x Prussian, 16 x German), 7 x Field Artillery, 2 x Heavy Artillery. (n.b. The British Horse become Cuirassiers in the middle of the war).

 

The Franco-Bavarian Army: 1 x Headquarters, 1 x Command Post, 2 x Elite Horse (1 x French, 1 x Bavarian Cuirassiers), 6 x Horse, 8 x Dragoons, 4 x Guard Infantry (3 x French, 1 x Bavarian), 2 x Grenadiers (1 x French, 1 x Bavarian), 39 x Infantry (34 x French, 5 x Bavarian), 7 x Field Artillery, 1 x Heavy Artillery (n.b. I don't think there can be strong objections to replacing some French units with Spanish, to taste)

 

There were a few surprising things in there to me: the lack of Imperialist artillery, and the preponderance of Foot over Horse were perhaps the most obvious. Grenadiers don't seem to have played quite as big a part in the WSS as these figures imply. In any case, these armies did represent a significant expansion over my originals! However, I am nearly there for the Anglo-Dutch and Franco-Bavarians, I think I am only missing some of the German Foot for the former, and some of the French Foot for the latter.  

 

The other set of army lists I have for the WSS are those in the 1e of the Polemos WSS rules.  They imply much bigger forces, big armies by anyone's standards, even in 6mm:

 

Ansbach (1 Foot, 2 Dragoons)

Austria (36 Foot, 28 Horse/Cuirassiers, 11 Dragoons, 4 Field Guns, 8 Light Guns) 

Bavarian (12 Foot, 13 Horse/Cuirassiers 1 Field Gun, 2 Light Guns) + 2 Guard Horse 

Cologne (3 Foot, 3 Horse, 2 Dragoons)

Denmark (13 Foot, 8 Horse, 3 Dragoons)

France (67 Foot, 45 Horse, 11 Dragoons, 2 Hussars, 8 Field Guns, 10 Light Guns, 4 Siege Guns) 

Franconia (3 Cuirassiers, 2 Dragoons)

Hanover (13 Foot, 6 Horse, 6 Dragoons, 2 Field Guns, 4 Light Guns)

Hesse (7 Foot, 5 Horse, 3 Dragoons)

Holland (21 Foot, 22 Horse, 6 Dragoons, 1 Field Gun, 4 Light Guns)

Holstein (2 Foot, 1 Cuirassier, 4 Dragoons)

Ireland (4 Foot, 2 Horse)

Italy (1 Horse)

Mainz (2 Dragoons)

Mecklenburg (1 Cuirassier, 1 Dragoon)

Munster (3 Foot, 1 Horse)

Upper Reich (Oberreich) (8 Foot, 2 Horse)

Palatinate (10 Foot, 6 Horse)

Portugal (9 Foot, 12 Horse, 1 Field Gun, 2 Light Guns)

Prussia (14 Foot, 5 Horse, 4 Dragoons)

Savoy (10 Foot, 4 Horse, 3 Dragoons, 1 Field Gun, 3 Light Guns)

Saxe-Gotha (1 Cuirassier, 3 Dragoons)

Scotland (4 Foot), 

Spain (11 Foot, 16 Horse, 5 Dragoons, 2 Field Guns, 3 Light Guns),  

Swabia (2 Cuirassiers, 2 Horse, 1 Dragoon), 

Switzerland (4 Foot), 

Britain (18 Foot, 6 Horse, 3 Dragoons, 2 Field Guns, 3 Light Guns),  

Walloon (4 Foot), 

Westphalia (2 Horse), 

Wurttemberg (3 Foot, 1 Horse, 1 Dragoons), 

Wurzburg (2 Dragoons), 

[Allied artillery totals (12 Field guns, 18 light guns)]

 

(the bold is just to indicate the larger contingents involved)

  

So I have enough units to paint for a very long time, if I want my games to be accurate to the individual facing colour level. This is not however what Heretical Gaming is all about! So my actual target has evolved into having sufficient forces for the HFG lists, plus functional extras as they come up (so a few units of Spanish Horse for Almanza say). 

 

The other way to approach this would be to look at the overall forces one would need for the battles listed in the ruleset, viz.:

 

Chiari 1701: 

Imperials: 27 bases Cuirassiers, 36 bases Foot, 9 bases Dragoons, 4 bases Field Artillery, 8 bases Light Artillery 

French: 34 bases Horse, 66 bases Foot, 5 bases Dragoons, 5 bases Field Artillery, 10 bases Light Artillery  

Luzzara 1702: 

Imperials: 28 bases Horse, 35 bases Foot, 12 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Field Artillery, 5 bases Light Artillery 

French: 31 bases Horse, 39 bases Foot, 14 bases Dragoons, 4 bases Field Artillery, 6 bases Light Artillery  

Speyerbach 1703: 

Allies:13 bases Horse, 30 bases Foot, 6 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Field Artillery, 4 bases Light Artillery French:17 bases Horse, 27 bases Foot, 3 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Field Artillery, 4 bases Light Artillery  

 

Blenheim 1704: 

Allies: 26 bases Horse, 43 bases Foot, 16 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Field Artillery, 7 bases Light Artillery Imperials: 20 bases Cuirassiers, 10 bases Horse, 21 bases Foot, 19 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Field Artillery, 3 bases Light Artillery 

French: 11 bases Cuirassiers, 50 bases Horse, 88 bases Foot, 8 bases Dragoons, 4 bases Siege Artillery, 6 bases Field Artillery, 10 bases Light Artillery  

 

Ramillies 1706: 

Allies: 43 bases Horse, 74 bases Foot, 19 bases Dragoons, 12 bases Field Artillery, 18 bases Light Artillery 

French: 48 bases Horse, 2 bases Hussars, 70 bases Foot, 17 bases Dragoons, 8 bases Field Artillery, 10 bases Light Artillery  

 

Almanza 1707: 

Allies:14 bases Horse, 23 bases Foot, 4 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Field Artillery, 5 bases Light Artillery French:20 bases Horse, 26 bases Foot, 3 bases Dragoons, 4 bases Field Artillery, 6 bases Light Artillery

 

One could then create a 'Blue' Army of the maximum number of bases to fight as the French, and a 'Red' Army of the maximum number of bases to fight as the Allies or Imperials. In practice, that just means sufficient bases to refight Blenheim and Ramillies, everything else fits inside. 

Helpfully, this family of Polemos rules also includes options for Smalland Medium-sized games based on the above. Broadly speaking, they imply forces of a third to a half of the above figures for Small, and around two-thirds for Medium. Even for 'Small' battles, it is noteworthy how much proportionally more cavalry and artillery there will be on a Polemos battlefield than on an HFG battlefield. The 'average' small armies work out as follows:

Chiari:

Imperials: 14 bases Foot, 9 bases Cuirassiers, 3 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Light Artillery, 1 base Foot Artillery

French: 22 bases Foot, 10 bases Horse, 3 bases Light Artillery, 2 bases Foot Artillery 

 

Luzzara:

Imperials: 9 bases Horse, 13 bases Foot, 3 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Light Artillery, 2 bases Foot Artillery

French: 9 bases Horse, 13 bases Foot, 6 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Light Artillery, 2 base Foot Artillery

 

Speyerbach:

Allies:   6-7 bases Horse, 13 bases Foot, 3 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Light Artillery, 1 base Foot Artillery

French: 12 bases Horse, 13 bases Foot, 3 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Light Artillery, 1 base Foot Artillery

 

Blenheim:

Allies: 27 bases Foot, 17 bases Horse, 12 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Light Artillery, 2 bases Foot Artillery

French: 26 bases Foot, 22 bases Horse, 3 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Light Artillery, 2 bases Foot Artillery  

 Ramilles:

Allies: 23 bases Foot, 15 bases Horse, 6 bases Dragoons, 6 bases Light Artillery, 4 bases Field Artillery

French: 24 bases Foot, 15 bases Horse, 7 bases Dragoons, 3 bases Light Artillery, 3 bases Field Artillery 

 

Almanza:

Allies: 10 bases Foot, 6 bases Horse, 2 bases Dragoons, 2 bases Light Artillery, 1 base Field Artillery

French: 10 bases Foot, 6 bases Horse, 2 bases Light Artillery, 1 base Field Artillery  

 

Roughly speaking, these armies are about a Baccus Army pack plus a couple of extra individual packs in size, with the exception of Blenheim and Ramilles, which are more like an Army pack and a couple of reinforcement packs.  That might be a good target for the average gamer. The Polemos 'Small Armies for Big Battles' lists are similar-ish in size to an HFG army - which makes sense, when a base is Polemos WSS 1e is ~ a battalion, and a base in HFG is ~ a brigade.

 

An Allied Army would come out as  27 bases Foot, 17 bases Horse, 12 bases Dragoons, 6 bases Light Artillery, 4 bases Foot Artillery, which would be:

1 x Generals Pack (£4.32)

2 x Foot Booster Packs (£47.52)

1 x Foot Pack (£8.72)

1 x Horse Booster Pack (£23.76)

1 x Horse Pack (£10.08)

1 x Dragoon Booster Pack (£23.76)

2 x Dismounted Dragoon Packs (£8.64) 

2 x Light Artillery Pack (£8.64) 

1 x Foot Artillery Pack (£4.32)

Or about £130-140 all-in. 

Hobby Update 22 Sep 25

A very short follow-on from my last hobby post: a few pictures of other stuff I have finished working on recently. First up, Warlord Roman Auxilia (for my youngest son):

 

 

And then some extra Baccus 6mm WSS troops:

Prussian infantry in the foreground (Markgraf Christian, Alt Dohna, Holstein-Beck, Markgraf Albrecht)

Hanoverian Horse (Gardes du Corps, Croix de Frechappel, von Goden, Noyelles) and Foot (De Charles, Bernstorff, Leib Infantry)

And a base each of British (35th), Dutch (de Waes) and Spanish (Toledo)

 

I have also been given some painted 6mm Ancient, GNW and WSS armies. They will require a separate post to do them justice, but they are a very useful set which really expands the number of battles, particularly, ancient battles, I can refight with something close to the correct troops. Next on the painting tray for me are some more WSS: Bavarian Foot and some Spanish Horse are closest to completion.

Not Quite Dead...

The summer has seemed to pass in a hot fug of work and family stuff to so, so ages since I have been able to post, or game very much. Starting my own business has been a real roller-coaster! So just a short, proof-of-life post... 

More pictures to follow shortly, but I have managed to get some painting done. This has mainly been a bunch of Roman Auxilia for my youngest, but I have also done some more troops for the War of the Spanish Succession: some Hanoverian Horse and Foot, complete except for the flags, with some Prussian and Bavarian Foot underway, with a couple of odds-and-ends units from other nations too. Earlier I completed a bunch of Baccus WW2 stuff, which I don't think I have posted before:

 

US SP artillery and anti-aircraft, plus some 105mm Shermans

German SP anti-aircraft artillery, plus an SP gun and a Desert PzIII with the long 50

Some Nebelwerfers (critical for doing Normandy!) and a few Achilles SP AT guns

The Nebelwerfers

Some German guns

and the whole lot in one go

Some Crusaders and some Valentines, plus some more SP AT guns

more German SP guns, Panzer IIIS, and some Sd222s.

And some more US tanks, including an ARV

And for something completely different, some Cataphracts! Realized I was missing some, but they are a very versatile troop type for Roman-era warfare.

I have played a couple more battles in my shadowing of the Polemarch's 'War of the Stuart Succession' campaign, but not had time to write them up properly. However, as a snippet:

A French invasion!

 

Fighing amongst the coal pits!

 

Hope springs eternal, and I have been promised a bit of a break next month, so I should be able to complete a few more models and get some more games to the table, whereas the majority of gaming time in the last couple of months has gone under the category of 'pondering gaming' rather than painting or playing. Still, that's not nothing and I have managed to at least refine a vary disparate list of things I was vaguely considering to something more like a plan, with an attached shopping list. But we shall see! We have also had a bit of a change-around at home, so I might have a little more storage, painting and gaming space to use, which should help a bit too.