Of Matters Martial

If You Wish To Read About Fluffy Bunnies And Rainbows -

Then you are not only in the wrong desert, you are in the wrong marquee on the wrong planet in - Ooh, the Andromeda Galaxy!
     Although - astronomy aside, here - whilst it might be two million light years distant, which sounds as if it's a long way off, the Andromeda Galaxy is in fact one of our most neighbourly neighbours in intra-galactic terms.  The Universe: the biggest thing there is.  Art?

Every dot a galaxy

     This might very well look like a special effects shot circa 1979, with all the "stars" bouncing towards the camera as our Starship Of The Imagination* ventures forth, but No: those individual blobs are galaxies.
     Galaxy.  A chocolate bar - no - hang on, where were we?
     Ah!  Yes, The Battle Of Lower Spleine.  For those of you who have been off on a mission to Jupiter, Conrad has been playing a wargame using the 'Polemos' rules, which he last used 7 years ago.  It has been a learning experience, one might say.  At mid-turn of Bound 13 things looked like this:

     For those unacquainted with warfare of the powder-and-shot era, this is pretty typical: the two cavalry wings are going at it hammer and tongs, entirely separate from the infantry battle in the middle.  Either or both of the cavalry wings might prevail and chase their opponents off the battlefield, leaving the stolid musketeers in the middle to fight alone.  Art?

     And do you know what, Conrad found another wargamer out there who has also been playing Polemos-based ECW games - 
     Here an aside.  Military history geeks, anoraks, nerds and wannabes tend to use a shorthand that normal human beings other people are unfamiliar with.  Hence "ECW" = "English Civil War", which, given that it is 320 years in the past, you might assume was not at all controversial.
     WRONG!  AS WRONG AS WRONG CAN BE!  wrong
     You have the clash between Divine Right Of Kings and The People's Will, and Protestantism and Catholicism, and North and South and East and West, Monarchists and Republicans (17th century iteration your honour) - the echoes of this conflict are with us still.  Go into a pub in Dublin and ask if anyone wants to subscribe to an Oliver Cromwell Christmas card ...

Popular with Republicans everywhere

     Yes yes yes, that's politics, but from the seventeenth century, so it doesn't count.     Where were we?  O yes -
     Your Modest Artisan happened across a fellow blogger on Blogger, who controversially calls his blog "Heretical Wargaming".  I think because in his overall Intro he says that he doesn't believe wargame figures and terrain are about the art of military modelling, which Conrad quite agrees with.  Then, I am lazy.  Also, JWH (the fellow-blogger, do keep up!) has been waging some ECW stuff with the 'Polemos' rules.  Art?

Taken from real life

     And to ensure JWH doesn't scoot off and hail his lawyer friends, let's have a link -

http://hereticalgaming.blogspot.com/2020/05/polemos-ecw-battle-of-ripple-field.html#comment-form

     He's using the second edition, where cavalry is now sorted according to "Dutch" or "Swedish" categories.  I need to drop him a line.  As you can see, his battle is a much smaller affair than mine, and Conrad was using a "Small" army as defined by the rulebook.  Food for thought, hmmmmm?     Motley!  Come over here and get a hold of this pike!

Careful now!

Back To "Thunder"

Do you see?  Do you see how I mercifully avoid any dreadful puns about storms and lightning? <makes annoyed face>  I'm wasted here, wasted.
     Okay, let us now examine one of the premier strips of the comic, which even made it into a television advert.  Art!

"Professor Brayne" - really!

     This is, of course - obviously! - "The Steel Commando", who was an experimental robot destined for use against the Teutons in the Second Unpleasantness.  At least in theory.  Given that we are talking 1940's levels of technology, he was a bit - shall we say "unpredictable"?  As in "Potentially more dangerous to his own side than the enemy" kind of unpredictable.  If Art will put down his plate of anthracite -

See what I told you?  Unpredictable

     There is a long and unfunny article potential here, about Artificial Intelligence, programming paradoxes and just how inherently flexible steel is - but I'm not going there.  Not today, anyway <drifts off into a musing pose**>
     As you might guess, TSC was not to be taken seriously and was one of those strips where you had an Odd Couple pairing - the Steel Commando itself, and sidekick Ernie Bates, who was a hopeless military bumbletuck.  Yet somehow in each story they got the better of the Bosche, no doubt with an inferred wink to the reader.

Oi!  Those are expensive, you know!

Whilst On That Polish Cultural Pash -
As usual, you can rely on Conrad's brain to throw up regurgitate emit some semi-relevant wibble and it didn't fail me last night.
     "What was that novel about Polish pilots who flee an over-run Poland, then make their way to This Sceptred Isle and fight with the RAF? - 'Valedictory', wasn't it?" I mused.  Or pondered, the two mental states are pretty close.
     Art! <said with a note of triumph>

A flinty-eyed killer in the skies

     Predictably, Perfidious Albion doesn't come out of it too well, as I recall.  Not only do we view the Poles as interesting specimens of humanity barely out of the Stone Age, we don't acknowledge their passionate determination to terminate Teutons with tracer ammunition.  I might have to look it up again and see exactly who the author is or was; I read it when it came out in 1983, when the internet was still just a twinkle in DARPA's eye.

Finally -
Sticking with things military, Conrad has noticed a couple of Youtube articles on the Kettenkrad, which is case of how you can have entirely too much of TANK, and also how the Teutons of the Second Unpleasantness would over-engineer everything they laid their hands upon.  Art?

     From the wonderful "Military History Visualised" as run by Bernhard, who has a brilliant Mittel-European accent.  So, this is the Kettenkrad, which was not designed for the Wehrmacht; instead it was a commercial vehicle which was purchased by farmers and the like, for it's off-road performance and ability to negotiate narrow tracks.  The Teuton armed forces fell upon it with glee at the outbreak of war, however, and ended up using 8,000 of them.  You may recall seeing one in "Saving Private Ryan".
     In addition to Bernhard, Ian "Gun Jesus" McCollum of "Forgotten Weapons" was also beaming from ear to ear at having a chance to drive one of these beasts.  Art?

     That's Ian with a daring passenger (ignore the fat white-haired bloke in the reflection).
     Right, that's enough for today, I'm hungry, it has rolled around to lunchtime and we'll come back to the Kettenkrad, O Yes By Jove Michael Gove.

See you!

*  Carl Sagan weeps off in the distance, necking either a schooner of sherry or a bucket of gin.  One of the two.  Not sure which.
**  Or is could be a posing muse.  Either will do.