This book was brought to my attention by good friend, and gaming colleague Wayne and I immediately rushed out, bought the book and read it in a couple of days. I was both pleased and disappointed with the book.

Richards J. Heuer Jr.’s Psychology of Intelligence Analysis is an excellent examination of how analysts interpret information, form judgements and frequently mislead themselves without realising they have done so. Although written primarily for the American intelligence community, its arguments apply equally well to military planning, historical research, risk assessment, wargame design and almost any activity requiring decisions to be made from incomplete or uncertain evidence.

The book brings together articles originally written by Heuer between 1978 and 1986 for use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. They were revised and published as a collected volume in 1999.¹ This origin explains both the book’s strengths and some of its limitations. It is practical, accessible and firmly connected to the problems encountered by working analysts. At the same time, it occasionally feels like a series of related instructional papers rather than a single argument developed steadily from beginning to end.

Heuer begins with the uncomfortable proposition that analysts do not simply receive information and interpret it objectively. The mind organises what it sees through existing expectations, experience and assumptions. These mental structures are necessary because the amount of information available would otherwise be overwhelming, but they also determine which details are noticed, which are ignored and how ambiguous evidence is understood. Two analysts can therefore examine the same material and reach different conclusions without either being dishonest or incompetent.

One of the familiar examples is the ambiguous drawing first published by William Ely Hill in 1915, which can be seen either as a young woman looking away or as the face of an elderly woman.² Once one interpretation has been recognised, it can become surprisingly difficult to see the other. The point is simple, memorable and hardly new, but it remains effective. Analysts do not merely respond to what is before them. They respond to what their minds have already decided is likely to be there.

This leads to one of the book’s strongest arguments. More information does not automatically produce better analysis. Once an analyst has adopted an explanation, additional evidence is often interpreted in a way that supports the existing position. Evidence that fits is welcomed, while contradictory information is discounted as unreliable, exceptional or irrelevant. Expertise provides valuable knowledge, but it can also produce confidence in an established model long after that model should have been reconsidered.

Heuer’s discussion of memory is equally useful. Memory is not a perfectly organised archive from which information can be recovered unchanged. What people remember is reconstructed, influenced by later experience and organised according to what now appears important. Analysts may therefore remember evidence as being more consistent with their final judgement than it actually was. This is particularly dangerous when reviewing previous assessments because the outcome can make earlier uncertainty appear less substantial than it really was.

The middle chapters move from diagnosing these problems to considering methods for controlling them. Heuer examines the value of externalising analytical thought through written assumptions, diagrams, matrices and clearly stated alternative explanations. The most important of these methods is the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses. Instead of selecting the explanation that initially appears most convincing and searching for supporting evidence, the analyst identifies several plausible explanations and compares how well each survives the available evidence.³

This is a valuable reversal of the usual process. Evidence that agrees with a hypothesis is often less useful than it appears because it may agree equally well with several alternatives. The more revealing evidence is that which is difficult to reconcile with one explanation but consistent with another. The method does not remove judgement from analysis, nor does Heuer pretend that it can. Its value lies in making assumptions visible and forcing the analyst to confront alternatives that might otherwise be dismissed too quickly.

The James L. Adams nine dot puzzle serves much the same purpose. The reader is asked to pass four connected straight lines through nine dots without lifting the pencil. Most people unconsciously treat the outer dots as the boundary of a square, although no such boundary has actually been imposed. The solution requires the lines to extend beyond this imagined enclosure.⁴ It is another familiar exercise, but it neatly demonstrates how easily people accept restrictions that exist only in their own understanding of the problem.

The later chapters examine the more familiar collection of cognitive biases. These include the tendency to give excessive weight to information that is vivid, recent or easily remembered, the search for patterns in events that may be largely random, anchoring upon an initial estimate, overconfidence in judgement and the tendency to interpret outcomes as having been more predictable than they actually were. Heuer is particularly effective when explaining how these biases distort estimates of probability.

This is where the book overlaps most clearly with the literature on risk perception. Anyone with experience in that field will recognise most of the usual mechanisms. People overestimate dramatic risks, underestimate familiar ones, anchor upon the first figure presented, search for causal explanations and become increasingly confident as they receive more information, even when the additional material contributes little to accuracy. The work of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Paul Slovic and other researchers is clearly present throughout Heuer’s discussion.⁵

For that reason, I found relatively little in the book that was completely new. The ambiguous images, altered playing cards, probability exercises, nine dot problem, competing explanations and warnings about confirmation bias belong to the familiar equipment of courses on judgement, decision making and risk. Readers who have worked extensively in these areas will probably recognise nearly all the tricks before Heuer explains them.

That is not a serious criticism of the book. Its achievement is not the discovery of an entirely new psychology. It is the translation of established psychological research into the daily practice of intelligence analysis. Heuer shows why these apparently simple demonstrations matter when an analyst is attempting to understand military preparations, political intentions, deception, economic change or the behaviour of an adversary. A harmless mistake in a classroom puzzle can become extremely serious when the same mental habit is applied to a national security assessment.

There are, however, important limitations. Heuer sometimes treats the findings of psychological experiments as more settled and universally applicable than they really are. Many of the studies discussed in the book involved relatively small groups completing artificial tasks under controlled conditions. Intelligence analysis is a considerably more complicated activity involving trained professionals, extended investigation, institutional review and adversaries deliberately attempting to deceive them. The movement from a laboratory experiment to professional intelligence practice is therefore not always as straightforward as the book occasionally suggests.

The age of the supporting research is another limitation. Heuer’s original articles were largely written during the late 1970s and early 1980s, while much of the experimental literature is older still. Later research has refined, challenged or qualified some of the classic findings concerning cognitive bias. This does not make the book obsolete, since its central warnings remain sound, but it does mean that it should now be read as a foundational work rather than as a complete account of contemporary cognitive psychology.

The Cold War setting also shapes the questions being asked. The intelligence examples naturally reflect the institutional concerns of the CIA and the difficulties of interpreting the intentions of the Soviet Union and other state adversaries. The underlying principles remain relevant, but contemporary analysts face a wider range of problems involving fragmented organisations, rapidly changing information environments, social media, automated collection and the deliberate manufacture of enormous quantities of misleading material.

Heuer concentrates heavily upon the individual analyst, which risks making intelligence failure appear primarily a consequence of faulty personal reasoning. In practice, intelligence assessments are produced within organisations shaped by hierarchy, deadlines, restricted access to information, institutional rivalries, political expectations and the preferences of senior decision makers. An analyst may recognise alternative explanations but still work within a system that rewards consensus or discourages conclusions that challenge established policy.

Related to this is the limited treatment of group behaviour. Intelligence products are seldom the work of one completely independent analyst. They pass through meetings, committees, supervisors and several levels of editing. During that process qualifications may be removed, uncertainty may be reduced and an initially cautious judgement may acquire far greater confidence. Groupthink is part of the problem, but so too are status, institutional loyalty and the ability of senior personalities to dominate a discussion.

The Analysis of Competing Hypotheses is valuable, but Heuer may place too much confidence in its ability to discipline judgement. The method depends upon the analyst identifying the important hypotheses in the first place. If the correct explanation is omitted, the matrix can only produce a carefully organised comparison of incomplete alternatives. Assigning evidence as consistent or inconsistent also remains a matter of judgement, while apparently separate pieces of evidence may originate from the same source and therefore be less independent than they appear.

There is also a danger that structured techniques create an appearance of objectivity that they cannot entirely justify. A table, score or matrix looks more rigorous than an ordinary narrative judgement, but its contents still depend upon human decisions concerning which evidence should be included, how reliable it is and what significance it should receive. Structure can expose reasoning and make it easier to challenge, but it cannot convert uncertain evidence into certainty.

Heuer is convincing about the danger of rigid mental models, but gives less attention to the opposite problem. An analyst who constantly generates alternatives and challenges every assumption may become reluctant to reach any conclusion. Intelligence assessment requires intellectual openness, but it also requires decisions to be made within limited time. The practical difficulty is knowing when further reconsideration will improve the assessment and when it will merely postpone judgement.

The book also pays insufficient attention to cultural differences. Most of its psychological research and institutional experience comes from an American setting. Analysts examining another society may misunderstand its behaviour because they impose assumptions drawn from their own political culture. Language, religion, historical memory, social hierarchy and differing concepts of rational behaviour require more sustained consideration than Heuer provides.

Finally, the book is better at identifying analytical weaknesses than demonstrating that its proposed remedies consistently improve the accuracy of intelligence assessments. Structured methods may produce clearer reasoning, expose assumptions and encourage consideration of alternatives, but those benefits do not automatically result in more accurate forecasts. Evaluating analytical methods requires evidence about outcomes, not merely evidence that analysts followed a more disciplined process.

Heuer nevertheless makes clear that simply knowing the names of cognitive biases does not provide immunity from them. An analyst can explain confirmation bias in great detail and still seek evidence that supports a preferred conclusion. The answer lies in disciplined procedures, explicit assumptions, genuine consideration of alternatives and an institutional culture willing to reward disagreement when that disagreement is supported by evidence.

This is ultimately the book’s greatest strength. It does not promise perfect objectivity or suggest that uncertainty can be eliminated. Instead, it offers methods by which analysts can make their reasoning more visible, testable and open to challenge. Its lessons are valuable far beyond professional intelligence work. Historians, military planners, risk managers and wargame designers all construct explanations from incomplete evidence, and all are capable of mistaking a plausible story for a demonstrated conclusion.

Psychology of Intelligence Analysis remains an excellent work. Experienced readers may find that much of its psychological content is already familiar, particularly if they have worked in risk perception or decision analysis. Nevertheless, the clarity with which Heuer brings these ideas together and applies them to practical analytical problems makes the book well worth reading. It is less a collection of startling revelations than a disciplined reminder of how readily intelligent and experienced people can be trapped by their own expectations.

Its limitations also remind us that cognitive discipline is only one part of better intelligence analysis. Psychology matters, but so do organisational culture, source reliability, professional expertise, cultural understanding and the willingness of decision makers to hear conclusions they would rather not receive.

Footnotes

1. Richards J. Heuer Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999).
2. William Ely Hill, “My Wife and My Mother in Law,” Puck, 6 November 1915. Heuer uses ambiguous figures to demonstrate the influence of expectations upon perception.
3. Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, 95–110.
4. James L. Adams, Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), 23; Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, 67–68.
5. Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, 111–72. See also Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

The Dark Confederacy has never been particularly fussy about the men who answer its call. Courage is useful, loyalty even more so, while a clean conscience is probably a positive disadvantage. Among the latest veterans to drift into the company are three men whose reputations were made during the Civil War, when each performed deeds that earned him the title of hero. Time, defeat and several years spent in the company of things that should have remained buried have done little to improve any of them.

Captain Silas “Six Shot” Mercer — Pistol

Silas Mercer earned his reputation during the last desperate months of the war, when the Confederate cavalry was increasingly expected to accomplish miracles with tired horses, empty stomachs and ammunition that seemed to exist largely in quartermasters’ reports. During a confused Union attack on a supply column, Mercer found himself cut off with half a dozen wounded men and a single revolver. Rather than abandon them, he held a narrow bridge long enough for the wounded to be dragged clear, dropping several attackers before calmly walking away after firing his final round. By the following morning the story had already improved considerably, and within a month Mercer had supposedly held the bridge against an entire Union regiment.

Captain Silas “Six Shot” Mercer

Defeat did not sit comfortably with him. Mercer returned home to discover the family farm ruined, his brothers dead and the world remarkably uninterested in the sacrifices of Captain Silas Mercer. He became a gambler, occasional gunfighter and professional teller of increasingly magnificent stories about the war, although enough witnesses survived to confirm that beneath the boasting there really had been a remarkably brave cavalry officer. When the Dark Confederacy began gathering old soldiers to its cause, Mercer joined without hesitation. He still wears the remains of his officer’s coat and carries a revolver polished with almost religious devotion, claiming that the South has merely been waiting for men with sufficient patience to resume the argument.

Corporal Elijah “Long Eye” Ransom — Rifle

Elijah Ransom was never an officer and never wanted to be one. A Tennessee mountain boy who had been hunting since he was large enough to hold a rifle, Ransom became one of those soldiers whom officers remembered whenever something unpleasant needed doing at considerable distance. His reputation was secured during a retreat when he remained concealed on a wooded ridge overlooking a ford while the remnants of his regiment escaped across the river. For nearly an hour his carefully placed shots convinced the advancing Federals that a sizeable Confederate force still occupied the ridge, buying precious time before Ransom finally slipped away through country he understood considerably better than his pursuers.

Corporal Elijah “Long Eye” Ransom

Ransom returned from the war quieter than he had entered it, which was impressive because he had never been particularly talkative to begin with. He became a hunter and trapper, living increasingly far from settlements and appearing in town only when powder, lead or whiskey became necessary. Somewhere in those wilderness years he began claiming that dead soldiers sometimes followed him through the trees. Nobody paid much attention until he started describing men who had been buried hundreds of miles away and repeating conversations known only to their surviving comrades.

The Necromancer Reverend Malachi Graves recognised something useful in Ransom immediately. The rifleman now walks ahead of the Dark Confederacy, scouting roads, ridges and lonely farmsteads while speaking quietly to companions nobody else can see. His old rifle remains beautifully maintained, his shooting remains disturbingly accurate, and when asked how he finds enemies hidden behind cover he simply replies that somebody usually tells him where they are.

Sergeant Gideon “Gatepost” Harlan — Shotgun

Gideon Harlan became a Confederate hero almost entirely by refusing to move. During a vicious little engagement largely forgotten by everyone except the men unfortunate enough to have participated in it, Harlan and the survivors of his company were ordered to hold a crossroads while the regiment withdrew. Ammunition disappeared rapidly, officers disappeared even faster, and eventually Harlan found himself commanding a handful of frightened men behind a shattered fence. When the final Federal attack came, he waited until the enemy was almost on top of them before rising with a captured double barrelled shotgun and leading a counterattack that drove them back long enough for his men to escape.

Sergeant Gideon “Gatepost” Harlan

Someone later asked why he had stayed when retreat would probably have saved him a great deal of trouble. Harlan answered that nobody had told him he was allowed to leave. The story followed him for the remainder of the war, earning him the nickname “Gatepost,” because once Gideon Harlan had been planted somewhere it apparently required artillery to shift him.

Harlan survived the war, although civilisation proved considerably more dangerous. He worked as a railway guard, deputy sheriff, bounty hunter and occasional strikebreaker before discovering that his particular talents were welcomed by the Dark Confederacy. He asks remarkably few questions about Reverend Malachi Graves, the zombies or the other unnatural things accompanying the posse. After four years of war Harlan concluded that officers were capable of ordering almost anything, so a preacher raising dead soldiers merely represents a slight extension of established military practice. He carries a battered double barrelled shotgun, rarely speaks and remains exactly where he is told until somebody gives him a convincing reason to move.

Together Mercer, Ransom and Harlan represent three different remnants of the old Confederate Army. Mercer remembers its glory rather better than it deserves, Ransom remembers the dead rather better than he would like, and Harlan simply remembers his orders. Alongside Quantrill, Bloody Bill, Reverend Malachi Graves and the other Ragged Veterans, they make the Dark Confederacy look less like a military unit and increasingly like the sort of reunion sensible people would cross several states to avoid.

The Posse thus far.

Tomorrow the final recruits for the Dark Confederacy are another pair of hard bitten veterans, one armed with an old musket and the other carrying a pistol.

Superforecasting is one of those books that takes a subject most of us think we understand and demonstrates how casually we often approach it. Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner examine why some people are consistently better than others at predicting future events and, more importantly, whether the habits that make them successful can be learned. Their answer is broadly optimistic. Good forecasting is not primarily the product of extraordinary intelligence, secret information or inspired intuition. It is more often the result of disciplined thinking, careful use of evidence and a willingness to change one’s mind.

The book grew out of Tetlock’s long running research into political judgement and, particularly, the Good Judgment Project, in which thousands of participants made forecasts about real world political, economic and international events. The striking result was that a relatively small group of participants repeatedly produced more accurate forecasts than the average forecaster. Tetlock calls these people “superforecasters”, although the book is careful not to turn them into some mysterious class of gifted prophets. Their success generally comes from method rather than magic.

One of the strongest arguments in the book concerns the way a forecasting problem is approached. Rather than immediately deciding what will happen, successful forecasters break large questions into smaller ones, examine relevant historical frequencies, establish a reasonable starting probability and then modify that judgement as new information becomes available. A question such as whether a government will collapse, a war will begin or an international agreement will be reached is therefore not treated as a simple yes or no proposition. It becomes a collection of smaller questions concerning political stability, previous cases, leadership, economic pressures, public support, military capability and other relevant factors.

This emphasis on probability is particularly valuable. People have a tendency to speak about the future with far greater certainty than the available evidence warrants. Tetlock and Gardner instead encourage forecasts expressed as probabilities and demonstrate why distinctions between, for example, a 55 percent and an 80 percent chance actually matter. Once predictions are expressed numerically they can also be recorded and tested. The forecaster can no longer quietly reinterpret an unsuccessful prediction after the event and claim that this was what they really meant all along.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of the successful forecasters described in the book is intellectual flexibility. They are prepared to revise their conclusions, sometimes repeatedly, when circumstances change. This is not presented as weakness or indecision. It is a recognition that forecasting concerns an uncertain future and that new evidence should alter the probability assigned to an outcome. The poor forecaster becomes attached to a theory and then interprets everything through it. The better forecaster treats the theory as provisional.

The discussion of expertise is equally interesting. Tetlock’s earlier research had already demonstrated that impressive qualifications, professional standing and media prominence do not automatically produce forecasting accuracy. Specialists may possess enormous knowledge of their subjects while still being poor at judging what will happen next. Indeed, expertise can sometimes encourage excessive confidence because the expert has developed a powerful explanatory model and becomes reluctant to abandon it. Superforecasting does not dismiss expertise, but it makes a convincing distinction between possessing knowledge and using that knowledge effectively when making predictions.

There is also an important lesson here for historians and wargamers. Historical knowledge makes outcomes appear far more inevitable than they actually were to those living through them. Once we know that an offensive failed, an empire collapsed or a particular commander made the wrong decision, it becomes remarkably easy to construct an explanation showing why the result was unavoidable. Tetlock and Gardner’s approach encourages us to reverse the process and ask what probabilities could reasonably have been assigned before the outcome was known. That is a useful discipline when designing scenarios, campaign systems and decision based games because it reminds us that historical participants were dealing with possibilities rather than completed narratives.

For a wargame designer the book has another obvious attraction. Rules are filled with forecasts disguised as mechanisms. A designer is effectively predicting how frequently troops will break, weapons will hit, commanders will react successfully or particular tactical decisions will produce favourable results. Superforecasting reinforces the value of recording those expectations before testing them. If a designer believes an event should occur about one time in four, that assumption can be stated, tested and revised rather than defended after the game because the resulting narrative happened to feel convincing.

The book is not without weaknesses. Tetlock and Gardner occasionally spend too much time celebrating the achievements of the Good Judgment Project, and some of the individual examples could have been shortened without weakening the argument. There is also a danger that readers may come away believing that almost every uncertainty can be reduced to a sufficiently precise numerical probability. Real world forecasting remains dependent upon incomplete information, changing circumstances and events that may have few useful historical comparisons. The authors recognise these limitations, but the enthusiasm generated by successful forecasting sometimes threatens to overshadow them.

There is also an inevitable question about how far the techniques demonstrated in forecasting competitions transfer to the most difficult historical and geopolitical problems. A carefully defined question with a specified deadline is easier to score than a broad prediction about the direction of a society, the consequences of a war or the long term effects of technological change. The methods remain useful, but their precision should not be mistaken for certainty.

Despite these reservations, Superforecasting is an excellent examination of how people think about uncertainty. Its greatest strength is that it does not promise a method for seeing the future. Instead, it offers a disciplined way of being slightly less wrong about it. Breaking problems into manageable parts, beginning with sensible base rates, expressing conclusions probabilistically, updating them as evidence changes and keeping records of successes and failures are deceptively simple practices, yet together they provide a powerful corrective to intuition and overconfidence.

For historians, analysts and particularly wargame designers, there is a great deal here worth considering. We spend considerable time asking what might have happened, how likely particular outcomes were and whether our models produce believable results. Tetlock and Gardner provide a useful reminder that the quality of those judgements depends not simply upon how much we know, but upon how carefully we think about what we do not know.

The first recruits for my Dracula’s America Dark Confederacy posse are four gentlemen for whom recruitment standards have become considerably more relaxed. Being alive, for example, is apparently no longer considered essential.

The Dark Confederacy is one of those factions where the background and the miniatures fit together wonderfully. These are Confederate diehards who have taken refusing to accept defeat to a rather unreasonable extreme. Having stolen and corrupted the secrets of Vodou, their necromancers discovered that the dead could be returned to service as Revenants. The result is an army in which death is less a permanent career setback and more an inconvenient interruption. In the official background, the Dark Confederacy literally intends that the South shall rise again, which gives the old expression a particularly unpleasant new meaning.

My posse only needs four of these walking corpses, which is also the maximum number allowed in the official North Star Dark Confederacy posse. I actually have rather more zombie miniatures lurking around the painting table. I will paint these just because I have them but not until the force needed is finished. There is something particularly appropriate about having a small group of battered Confederate dead shambling along behind the Necromancer and the Ragged Veterans. They look less like a carefully organised military force and more like a unit that somehow missed the order to stop fighting several years ago.

Painting them was fun because I did not want these fellows looking like brightly coloured modern horror zombies. They need to belong to the Weird West. Faded Confederate clothing, filthy shirts, worn leather, dirty grey and brown cloth, rusted equipment and suitably unhealthy flesh should make them look as though somebody has quite literally dug up the last reserves of the Confederacy. I am thinking less Night of the Living Dead and more The Army of Northern Virginia has had a very bad decade.

On the tabletop they should also give the posse exactly the appearance I want. The living members may still possess some vague notions about tactics, marksmanship and self preservation, while the Revenants have a much simpler military doctrine: keep coming. Put them in front, point them towards the enemy and trust that being dead already removes at least one of the traditional objections to enemy gunfire. I am wanting a mixture of that poorly clad Confederate look, combined with the “fictional red shirts” of Quantrill’s guerillas.

So that is the first four figures completed from the Dark Confederacy painting list.

Next the Necromancer, Bloody Bill, and Quantrill are well on the way.

More Confederates tomorrow. Deo Vindice!

The great dinosaur downsizing programme has finally reached its conclusion. After much painting, tiny terrain construction and the slightly disturbing experience of watching enormous prehistoric monsters shrink before my eyes, the tiny dinosaur collection is now complete. Appropriately, the final three take us into the Late Cretaceous, with Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and Ankylosaurus joining their earlier Jurassic relatives.

First comes Tyrannosaurus rex, because no respectable dinosaur collection can possibly finish without one. Normally the undisputed star of the Late Cretaceous, this miniature version still possesses the teeth, the attitude and the ridiculously small arms, although at this scale he looks rather less like the tyrant king of the dinosaurs and more like a very angry lizard demanding to speak to whoever approved the downsizing programme. He may be considerably smaller, but I suspect nobody has had the courage to tell him.

Facing him is Triceratops, carrying three horns, a massive frill and the expression of an animal that has already decided everybody else is wrong. In life this was several tonnes of herbivore capable of making even a large predator reconsider its lunch arrangements. The miniature version retains all the menace, although being small enough to disappear behind a modest piece of terrain does take something away from the intimidation factor.

Finally there is Ankylosaurus, essentially the Late Cretaceous answer to an armoured vehicle. Heavy armour across the body, a club on the tail and apparently designed on the principle that anything worth protecting was worth overprotecting. Even reduced to tiny scale it looks wonderfully solid, although its mighty tail club is now probably more dangerous to neighbouring miniatures in the storage box than to a hungry T-Rex.

And with that, the tiny dinosaur collection is completed. Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus have been joined by their Late Cretaceous successors, the terrain has been shrunk, the dinosaurs have been shrunk, and an entire prehistoric world now occupies a fraction of the space once required by my larger models.

The age of the dinosaurs may have ended 66 million years ago, but this particular extinction event was caused by something far more powerful than an asteroid.

Limited convention table space!

Preparations for Victorious 26 are almost complete, and for once I seem to be approaching a convention without discovering at the last minute that something essential is still sitting unpainted on the workbench.

The Tiny Dinosaurs are finished, their equally tiny prehistoric world is complete, and everything is ready for some suitably small scale mayhem. The big dinosaurs may have fallen victim to convention table shrinkflation this year, but their miniature replacements are painted, based and looking considerably more enthusiastic about Victorious than creatures that have been extinct for 66 million years really ought to be.

The Guru’s Publications stock is packed and ready for sale, including the convention specials. All five Australian Frontier Wars books and rules will be available as a bundle for AU$80, rather than the combined recommended retail price of AU$108.26, a saving of more than 25%. A Wargamer’s Guide to Writing Rules, all 378 pages of advice, probability, playtesting and accumulated gaming wisdom, will also be available for AU$20, down from its RRP of AU$32.94, a saving of around 40%.

The point of sale “stuff” is packed as well, which covers all those mysterious boxes, signs, bags, change, displays and miscellaneous objects without which apparently no convention trader can function. Everything is now sitting there waiting patiently, which is more than can be said for me.

So the dinosaurs are ready, the terrain is ready, the books are ready, the bargains are ready and the Guru is rearing to go.

Victorious 26, here we come!

Last night saw another game of End of Reign using Dux Bellorum, this time with my Romans facing Wayne’s Sea Raiders. The Romans lined up with their usual mixture of legionaries, auxiliaries and noble cavalry, while across the field stood the considerably less civilised Sea Raiders, apparently confident that enthusiasm, large weapons and questionable personal hygiene would once again be enough to see off Rome. It was time to demonstrate the benefits of discipline, organisation and having an empire behind you.

The key move came from my Roman noble cavalry, who swept around the flank of the Sea Raider warrior line and suddenly found themselves in the rather attractive position of being able to threaten Wayne’s chieftain. Here was surely the moment for the great Sea Raider leader to stand proudly before his men, raise his weapon to the heavens and prepare for a heroic confrontation worthy of the sagas. Instead, in what is becoming typical style, the chieftain took one look at the approaching Roman cavalry and decided that discretion was not merely the better part of valour, but considerably preferable to being trampled by a horse.

So off he went.

Unfortunately for the Sea Raider warriors, their leader’s sudden interest in exploring safer portions of the battlefield did nothing to improve their own situation. My Roman legions and auxiliaries went to work on the warrior line, steadily battering it apart while the noble cavalry continued trying to get around the flank and catch the rapidly disappearing chieftain. The Sea Raiders fought hard, but Roman discipline began to tell, and one group after another found itself on the receiving end of the sort of organised violence that had made Rome rather unpopular across much of the known world.

For a while it appeared that the game might finish in the most satisfying manner possible, with the Sea Raider army collapsing and its chieftain finally being cornered by the Roman cavalry. Sadly, Wayne’s warriors proved slightly too considerate toward their leader. They collapsed before the noble cavalry could catch him, saving the chieftain from the glorious demise that everyone except the chieftain himself was eagerly anticipating. Once again he had managed to survive a battle largely through the ingenious tactical method of ensuring somebody else was fighting it.

And so it ended in an ignominious draw for the Sea raiders. The Roman legions and auxiliaries had smashed the Sea Raider warriors, the noble cavalry had sent their chieftain scurrying for safety, yet the slippery fellow somehow escaped before Rome could administer the appropriate conclusion. No doubt Wayne’s chieftain will return for the next battle claiming that it was all part of a cunning plan. His surviving warriors may have a slightly different version of events, although judging by the number left standing, there may not be enough of them to contradict him.

The first victims of the Great Dinosaur Downsizing Program have now emerged from the painting table, and I am pleased to report that an Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus have successfully survived the process. They are considerably smaller than their predecessors, although I suspect none of them are particularly happy about it. Millions of years of evolution spent becoming enormous, terrifying and generally inconvenient, only to be reduced to something that can hide behind a 25mm hex.

Apatosaurus

The photograph rather cruelly demonstrates just how far the mighty have fallen. Beside the new tiny dinosaurs are some of their considerably larger ancestors from my original games, including one of the dead dinosaurs. Nothing demonstrates progress quite like placing a freshly painted miniature beside the enormous corpse of its predecessor.

The little Allosaurus appears to be contemplating whether this represents its own future, while the Stegosaurus seems to have decided that keeping quiet and looking heavily armoured is probably the safest option. The Apatosaurus, meanwhile, has the expression of a dinosaur that has just discovered someone has reduced not only the terrain but also the catering budget.

Allosaurus

The difference in scale is quite remarkable. The old dinosaurs inhabited a world of 100mm hexes where they could thunder majestically across the table, scatter explorers and consume the occasional unfortunate human. Their tiny descendants must now accomplish exactly the same things on 25mm hexes while attempting to retain some degree of prehistoric dignity. This is less Jurassic Park and more Jurassic Parking Space.

Stegosaurus

Still, the experiment is working. Three dinosaurs are now ready to terrorise the new miniature landscape, and more are on the way.

There cannot be a winner without a loser or eight of them to be exact (important for game play).

The age of the giant dinosaur may be over, at least temporarily, but the age of the tiny angry dinosaur has begun. Looking at the size comparison, I am increasingly convinced that they are not merely smaller.They are annoyed.

After finishing my Church of Dagon posse, I have finally started work on my second Dracula’s America faction, the Dark Confederacy.

In my last post on the Dark Confederacy posse I mentioned that I had picked up the Dark Confederacy posse, along with a couple of extra blister packs and Quantrill’s Raiders, all from North Star Miniatures. Once I spread everything across the painting table and looked through the rules, it became obvious that I had more than enough miniatures to build a very flexible posse.

Quantrill, Necromancer and Bloody Bill

Rather than painting figures as I feel like it, I decided to work out a roster that should cover virtually every Dark Confederacy force I am likely to field. The current painting list is:

• Quantrill
• Sergeant Bloody Bill
• Necromancer
• Four Zombies (the maximum allowed in a posse, although I have another ten waiting in reserve)
• Two Ragged Veterans with rifles
• Two Ragged Veterans with shotguns
• Four Ragged Veterans with pistols

Four Dark Confederate Zombies.

That should provide plenty of options for different scenarios and campaigns without having to keep returning to the painting desk every time I want to try a different combination.

Two Ragged Confederates with rifles

Two Ragged Confederates with shotguns

Four Ragged Confederates with pistols

I also have two excellent Hired Guns ready to join the collection: the Stitch Doctor and the Gravedigger. Both fit the Dark Confederacy theme perfectly and add far more than just visual appeal.

The Stitch Doctor is exactly the sort of unsettling character you would expect to find travelling with an army that has embraced dark powers. Rather than relying solely on conventional medicine, the Stitch Doctor keeps fighters in the game through grisly battlefield surgery, patching up wounds that should probably have proved fatal. He provides valuable support by helping injured members of the posse survive long enough to continue the fight, making him an attractive addition to forces that expect to get into prolonged firefights.

The Stitch Doctor

The Gravedigger is equally thematic. Accustomed to spending his life among the dead, he is right at home in the supernatural horrors of Dracula’s America. His abilities revolve around corpses and the restless dead, making him an excellent companion for the Dark Confederacy, particularly when paired with a Necromancer and Zombies. Whether helping create opportunities for the undead or simply proving to be far tougher than his humble profession suggests, he looks as though he belongs with the posse.

The Gravedigger

One of the things I am really enjoying about collecting for Dracula’s America is that the game rewards variety. A posse is relatively small, but having a selection of leaders, specialists, Hired Guns and different weapon combinations means no two games have to be exactly the same. It also provides plenty of opportunities to paint characterful miniatures, and North Star have certainly delivered on that front.

The painting desk is now officially occupied by another collection of ragged Confederates, shambling zombies, and thoroughly unpleasant individuals. If all goes according to plan, it should not be too long before the Dark Confederacy is ready to take the field and show that, in Dracula’s America, some causes really do refuse to stay buried.