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Archives for April, 2010
Siege Engines R Us – quick build toy siege engine
Alexander got a new castle playset today, and on the front of the box were pictures of more things than were actually in the box. In particular there was a catapult (in the style of an Onager) and a few other siege engine type things. So in typical four year old fashion Daddy was asked to help with construction of a replacement. To start with we had some string and some lolly sticks, but those were just too difficult to work with, the lolly sticks were really too flat to be able to get the right sort of shape. Fortunately I remembered that we had some wood left from an ash tree that I had cut down and that some of those were about finger thickness. So I popped out into the garden and cut some of the wood up to…
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War in the West: German Plan
Alex Kleanthous, Trevor Duguid-Farrant and I got together a couple of weeks before the megagame to do the German the planning session we had a discussion about the plan to use, we were constrained to the historical planning directive issued by Hitler, but not to the historical operational plan. After a debate we decided not to follow the historical plan as that would allow the Allied player the option to use hindsight against us. Instead we developed a different plan with some different groupings of forces, and also changed the positions of the Army Groups and Armies outline, the main thrust is against the Belgians and it is intended to push onto the Belgian coast west of Antwerp and then sweep down the channel coast to the west (destination Dieppe). The thinking is that the Allies will not allow the…
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Identity Card Application
I went today to apply for a UK Citizen Identity Card. I've been meaning to do it for ages but finally got round to it because of the chance that I might not be able to after the election if the conservatives cancel the identity card. I doubt that if the scheme was cancelled there would be the appetite to recall all the cards and provide refunds for the people that got them, so it ought to be a cheap way to extend the life of my passport (which expires in a year's time). I can use the identity card for travelling to Europe, which is the only place I seem to go these days. The process was pretty smooth, and in fact I spent longer waiting in reception than I did being dealt with by the staff. I turned up…
Book Review – Blitzkrieg Legend
"In the West (Western campaign).- Panzer II and Panzer I in the woods; KBK Lw Kompanie Luftwaffe, "Luftwaffe war-reporting company" 4" (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Blitzkrieg Legend: The Campaign in the West, 1940 by Karl-Heinz Frieser My rating: 5 of 5 stars As part of the planning for the megagame War in the West I bought myself a copy of Blitzkrieg Legend because it is the German Army’s official history (although it didn't get written until the 1990s). From reading the first couple of chapters and looking through the maps you can see the evolution of the German plan. You can see why the directive was written the way that it was in October 1939. The most interesting thing for me is that there is no concept of a lightning war, the general staffs & high command all believe that…