"Firing into the Brown" #37 - Dams, Solitaire and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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Bit of a (delightful) rabbit hole this one..  while doing the research on the arches in the last post, I heard mention of the fact that the creek had dams at each end..  I had no idea, but when you think about it it makes sense if you want to use gunboats as an additional line of defence in what is a tidal creek..

Bit of orientation, following..  top of the page is North, the remains of the (only) dam left is ringed in red, the Lines are outlined yellow, with the separate moat in front, I've ringed the remains of the old road bridge (from the last post) in blue. My guess is that the western dam disappeared as part of the land reclamation for the Hilsea 'wall of death' (that big roundabout on the left).

This used to be one of my regular cycle routes to work, so I've looked at this feature for years, never knowing it was the remains of a dam..  this - following - is the one ringed red in the map..

An army report on the status of the Hilsea Lines made in 1853 mentioned that the creek was filled with weeds to the point where for 3 to 4 hours every day it could be walked across (!) so later in the decade, as part of upgrade works on the Hilsea Lines, the creek was widened and deepened to allow it to be used by gunboats.

Dams and flood gates were constructed at the ends of the creek to allow it to be kept it in water at all stages of the tide.

..the Lines are behind that line of tree's in the distance (following)..

Which opens me up to another delightful rabbit hole kicked off by this little ramble - what kind of gunboats were they?! 😏

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Anyhoo..  enough local history (apologies, but it is my blog and I find it fascinating.. 😀) and time for some gaming..

Just after Christmas, with my Christmas present vouchers grasped in hot sweaty hand, I obtained the item left from Amazon (other online monolithic shopping experiences are available). This was based on positive feedback on a couple of board game/solitaire board game Farcebook groups I belong to..

Mike (Lambo) has a fair few published booklets/games, but given the subject matter this was a bit of a no brainer for me..  what do you get for your (very reasonable) amount of money?

An A4 size booklet, printed on good paper, and strongly bound (I have forced this open on some of the pages in order to play a game and there's no sign of the pages getting loose or giving up the ghost). 

There's 50 plus pages, comprising a dozen or so pages describing the (fairly simple) rules, and more specifically the AI for the programmed opponent, but the meat of the book is the 15 separate scenario's (battles) with the battle specific deployment rules and OOB's...

The following an example of how it looks - this is the second battle in the book and is a screenshot of the final move of one of my attempts to win the game (I've played twice and not one this one yet)...  

The rules are fairly simple, but there is enough meat in there to give you pause for thought and you do have to think about what you're doing. The AI for the automated opponent is good, and is quite detailed with responses for each troop type (only 4 types by the way; Musket/Pike/Cavalry/Cannon)

So far I've played four times, and I'm two all against the AI - each game lasts about 15 to 20 minutes, and the way I am playing it is to scan the maps and counters into my PC and then use GameMapr* as the playing medium - moving the counters around on the online map.

*I've had GameMapr for years, but can't find an online site where it can be downloaded, but I suspect you could use any graphics program to do the same thing ...

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...