The third of the three standard Panzer 1’s of the production line today.

All three completed Panzer 1’s out for a country drive.

Working on some more infantry in the near future.

The unit later called the Wombat Battalion started not as an official battalion but as a group of engineers, railway workers, dockyard welders, and AIF veterans in the heavy workshops of Williamstown railway yards and nearby docks on Port Phillip Bay during the last months of World War II.

The original requirement was based on practicality. Australian forces in New Guinea, Borneo, and nearby islands faced terrain where regular tanks didn’t work, and pack transport was unreliable. Roads turned to mud in the monsoon, bridges fell apart, and vehicles broke down due to humidity. Infantry could move forward, but slowly and without the necessary fire support against well-defended Japanese positions and new threats that appeared in the last year of the war.

A proposal from the Army’s Directorate of Mechanical Engineering in late 1945 suggested creating a medium mechanized bush vehicle that could travel in areas where wheeled and tracked vehicles could not. The idea was straightforward: a walking machine that could step over logs, cross streams, and climb rough terrains while carrying armor and weapons to support infantry patrols. This proposal could have stayed theoretical if it hadn’t found an unexpected place in the workshops of Williamstown.

The Williamstown railway yards had spent the war years fixing locomotives and making heavy transport parts for the nearby dockyard. By 1946, as wartime contracts decreased, the workshops still had skilled workers and heavy machinery but didn’t have a clear plan. Several returning servicemen, who were fitters from armoured and engineering units, started to experiment with load-bearing frames made from surplus steel plates, locomotive suspension parts, and hydraulic components taken from old industrial equipment.

The first prototype, called “Quadruped Load Carrier No.1,” was basic. It had a central body on four legs powered by modified hydraulic pistons and electric motors using a petrol generator. Movement was slow and clumsy, but it could travel over terrain where trucks or Bren carriers couldn’t go. More importantly, it could carry heavy loads. When equipped with makeshift armor and a mount for a Vickers gun, it was able to provide moving fire support while advancing with soldiers.

News of the experiment got to Army leaders through informal means, mainly from officers who had worked with the same men now in the yard. By mid-1947, a small team from the Army Design Establishment was sent to watch the trials. Their report called the machine “not practical for regular warfare but possibly useful for operations in rough or thickly vegetated areas.” The funding was limited but enough to officially start the project under the vague name Bush Mobility Experimental Section.

Over the next eighteen months, development increased. The Williamstown workshops adapted railway techniques for armour construction, creating hull sections that could be put together without special casting. Locomotive gears were changed to move the legs. Cooling systems were made to work in humid conditions. The machines became more reliable, stable, and, of course, more heavily armed.

Veterans from engineering and armored units created a test group. They learned to operate and maintain the walkers in their original environment, surrounded by steel frames, oil drums, and the noise of railway repair work. The crews nicknamed the machines “Wombats” for their short, heavily armored look and their slow, stubborn nature—hard to start, tough to stop, and more likely to push through obstacles than go around them.

By 1948, three working prototypes were ready. They were moved north for tests in tropical conditions with infantry units to assess their value for patrol support and perimeter defense. Reports were cautiously positive. The walkers were slow and needed regular maintenance, but they could transport heavy weapons over terrain that other vehicles couldn’t handle. They were especially useful in defense, helping to secure patrol bases and provide higher fire support above thick vegetation.

In response, Army leaders approved the creation of a permanent unit: the 3rd Experimental Bush Warfare Group (Mechanised). Members were selected from engineering corps, armoured units, and infantry battalions with jungle experience. Training took place at Williamstown, where railway yards were converted into an armoured depot. Walkers were next to locomotives being fixed, and armour plates were cut using the same machines that made rail parts.

The unit’s informal title, Wombat Battalion, was officially used because there was no better name agreed upon. The motto, “Eats Roots and Leaves,” started as a joke about the wombat’s diet and the machines’ ability to clear paths through the jungle. It was later put on unit insignia and banners made for morale, not regulations.

Operational doctrine stressed teamwork with infantry instead of acting alone. The walkers were meant to move with patrols, offer fire support, and act as mobile strongpoints in areas where artillery and traditional armor couldn’t go. Maintenance was demanding, needing a dedicated crew of mechanics for each machine alongside its operators. This led to the battalion not reaching large numbers; instead, it operated as a specialized unit deployed where the terrain and situation warranted it. This doctrine demanded heavy armaments and the Taipan Projector Cannon was developed from a captured German tank.

By the early 1949, the Wombat Battalion was both a test and a symbol. Its machines clearly came from industrial sources, showing signs of railway and dockyard work. However, they reflected a unique Australian style of mechanised warfare: practical, makeshift, and influenced by available skills and materials rather than just official plans.

From the workshops of Williamstown to the jungles beyond the mainland, the battalion’s history was connected to its origin. The railway yards kept making replacement parts and new hulls long after other wartime industries had shut down or changed. Each machine showed, in riveted steel and welded plate, the mark of the yard where it was made—an industrial heritage as noticeable as any regimental tradition.

Konflict 47 rules
Unit Type: Medium Walker (4 Legs)
Standard Weapons: 1x Turret-mounted Taipan Projector Cannon (counts as a Schwerefeld Projektor) Regular: 255
1x Forward-facing, Hull-mounted MMG Veteran: 306
Movement Rate: Up to 6″ . Advance Run: 6″–12″
Damage Value: 9+
Quality: Regular 255pts / Veteran 306
Morale Value: 9/10
SPECIAL RULES
•Multi-legged/Slow
Rift Dice: 1 Gravity Pulse Weapon

The model is the Australian Heavy Quad Bush Walker WW2 from Kyoushuneko Miniatures, and the drawings were done by Chattie. Photos by the author.

I have just finished the second PZkpfw 1 for my Africa Corps.

I intend to have five in the army, strategically chosen to ensure a well-rounded approach to various combat scenarios. Among these, I plan to incorporate three standard PZkpfw 1’s, with their massed machine gun fire. Additionally, a Sd.Kfz. 265 Panzerbefehlswagen will serve as the command tank.

To bolster my defensive measures, I will also include some anti-aircraft protection with a Flakpanzer 1, ensuring that my ground troops are shielded from aerial assaults while while add some extra oomph against light vehicles.

I am hoping this combination of tanks will create a formidable presence, enabling me to engage effectively with enemy forces while maintaining a robust defense. swell here’s hoping!

Below is the two PZkpfw 1’s I have complete thus far.

Hopefully another one tomorrow..

Good friend John had been helping me with one of my many projects and he lent me this book to read.

Our Starry Banner is an important book about the Eureka Flag. Instead of viewing the flag as just a symbol with one meaning, it explores a more challenging question: how did this piece of cloth become so significant, debated, and reinterpreted?

The book’s strength lies in its restraint, avoiding the trap of making Eureka a moral story or a national myth. Instead, it focuses on the flag’s material history, its presence and absence, and the evolving communities that have claimed it. Eureka is portrayed as a dynamic concept, shaped by memory, politics, protest, and culture. It depicts the flag as a social object rather than a fixed belief, showing how various groups, including trade unionists, republicans, and artists, have influenced its meaning, often in conflicting ways.

This complexity may unsettle readers seeking a single interpretation, but it enriches the understanding of how symbols function in history. The book effectively addresses the flag’s significance after the Eureka event, emphasizing that its true power emerged from rediscovery and reinterpretation over the years, especially during times of conflict and change. It is also noteworthy for avoiding oversimplifications, presenting the diggers as complex individuals rather than archetypes of democracy. For those interested in the debates around the Eureka Flag, including ownership and symbolism,

Our Starry Banner offers important insights, clarifying why the flag remains a topic of contention—not due to misuse, but because of its inherent openness and fluidity. In essence, the book does not dictate what the Eureka Flag means; it reveals why it can mean multiple things, making it one of the most honest examinations of Eureka and a valuable complement to more narrative accounts of the Stockade. If certainty is what you seek, this may not be the right book for you. However, if you desire a well-researched history that considers context and humility, it certainly is.

Really liked this book that packed zo much into just eighty pages.

I write my own rules because, somewhere along the line, I stopped believing that “a balanced game” automatically meant “interesting.” What I actually wanted was simple rules with real pressure. The kind that creeps up on you while you’re still congratulating yourself on a clever plan.

That’s how I ended up re-inventing mechanics like Pressure, Suppression, and the ever-elastic concept of Fun. Pressure exists to remind you that merely being in the game has a cost. Suppression exists so firepower can ruin your day without politely removing your miniatures. And Fun exists because sometimes the correct historical outcome is confusion, panic, or a decision you immediately regret.

This philosophy leaks into everything I write. Scurvy Dogs started life as naval adventure and ended up being mostly about eating chocolate dubloons. Mission Lock exists because I hate the fact that in most rules I can walk right in front of my opponents machine gun just because it has already fired! Try that in real life and see how may steps you get to take.

Then there’s Trench Crawl, which is what happens when you ask, “What if the battlefield itself actively resented you?” Terrain does matter and can sometimes be more dangerous than your opponent if you do not use it properly. Blade and Banner pretends to be about medieval heroics but is really about loyalty, fatigue, and the awkward moment when your banner is still flying but everyone underneath it is questioning their life choices.

Somewhere along the way, dinosaurs got involved. I don’t even pretend this was sensible. One minute I’m modelling pressure and morale, the next it’s prehistoric monsters rampaging across the table because history, frankly, could always use more dinosaurs. And once you’ve allowed that, it’s only a very short slide to Tuk Tuk Zombie Rumble, which proves beyond doubt that no setting is safe from a lunatic with a computer.

I know full well these are not rules most people want. Writing my own systems is like setting loose cats and dogs to fight over dollhouse furniture. Wait I did that! The cats demand nuance, friction, and historical texture. The dogs want clear objectives and positive reinforcement. The furniture, tiny tables, tiny chairs, all lovingly painted end up scattered across the floor.

But that’s exactly the point.

I don’t write rules everyone will like. I write rules that do what I want them to do at my table. Rules where terrain matters, hesitation hurts, and success feels temporary. Rules where running away is often correct, heroes survive mostly by accident, and plans collapse in ways that feel depressingly authentic.

Writing short, simple rules is not easy. So many of the rules you see these days just do not work because they are written by those who have no concept of game theory (see my post), and how to use it to design rules that are simple and fun.

So yes, I write my own rules. They’re not fiddly. They’re opinionated. They involve pressure tracks, suppression states, dinosaurs, zombies, and occasionally a tuk tuk doing something it absolutely shouldn’t.

They are not for everyone.

But when the dinosaurs are being hit by a volcano, cats are screaming, the dogs are barking, the dollhouse is on fire, the unsuppressed machine gun is killing everything in sight,and everyone around the table is laughing despite themselves, that’s when I know the mechanics are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Have fun!

Maree and I had not been to Victoria Market in the Melbourne CBD for several decades so we decided to make a trip. Almost nothing has changed to the infrastructure sadly, but it has become a huge tourist trap with several tourist groups being “guided” through the precinct.

Our major surprise, although it is not that surprising given the tourism focus, was the prices. even humble vegetables were a good 25% or more above normal prices in the burbs.

Anyway that is just a rabbit hole when the real purpose of today’s post is to review a book I picked up from the Second Hand book section at the market. Again most prices were ridiculous but for this one I was prepared to pay the twenty bucks because it is difficult to get.

Bob O’Brien’s Massacre at Eureka is written to unsettle the comfortable way Eureka is usually remembered. Instead of treating the Stockade as a brief clash that quickly turns into a story about democracy and reform, O’Brien insists that what happened on 3 December 1854 was an act of state violence serious enough to be called a massacre. The book is openly argumentative. It does not pretend to be neutral, and it makes no apology for trying to force a moral reckoning with how colonial authority was exercised.

The core of O’Brien’s case is the imbalance of power. Government troops were organised, armed, and acting with official sanction; the diggers were a loose, uneven group who built a rough defensive position that was quickly overrun. O’Brien pays particular attention to what followed the assault, arguing that official language about “dispersal” and “restoring order” was used to soften the reality of killing, injury, and chaos. For him, using the word massacre is a way of cutting through that language and naming the violence directly.

The book draws on newspapers, parliamentary debates, coronial material, and eyewitness accounts, and it does so with energy and purpose. O’Brien is especially sharp when he shows how official accounts minimise events or go silent at critical moments. Where the record is thin or contradictory, he tends to assume the worst of the authorities. This approach gives the book much of its punch, but it is also where many criticisms begin.

The most common criticism centres on O’Brien’s use of the term massacre. Historians such as Geoffrey Blainey and John Molony have argued that, while the government response was brutal and excessive, Eureka does not fit neatly into the usual definition of a massacre (Blainey 1963; Molony 1984). The diggers were armed, had constructed defences, and did return fire. From this perspective, critics suggest that “violent suppression” or “assault” may be more precise terms, even if they still acknowledge that official accounts played down the severity of what occurred.

Other historians have questioned how O’Brien handles gaps in the evidence. Clare Wright has pointed out that nineteenth-century records are often incomplete and inconsistent, particularly in moments of crisis, and that missing or vague documentation does not automatically prove deliberate concealment (Wright 2013). O’Brien frequently reads silence as intent, which strengthens his argument but sometimes stretches what the sources can securely support.

Casualty figures are another area of dispute. O’Brien implies that more diggers may have died than the official figures record, including men who later died from wounds or mistreatment. Historians such as Mark McKenna accept that this is possible, but argue that the surviving evidence does not allow firm conclusions (McKenna 2004). The criticism here is less about honesty than about certainty: the book sometimes moves quickly from what might have happened to what probably did.

There is also criticism that Massacre at Eureka does not engage deeply with alternative interpretations. Earlier historians are often portrayed as smoothing over violence or protecting a national myth, rather than as working with different questions or standards of proof (Molony 1984). This makes the book sharper and more readable, but it narrows the discussion.

Military historians have added that O’Brien gives limited attention to confusion, loss of control, and command failure among government forces. Studies of colonial warfare suggest that violence often escalated rapidly once firing began, without clear direction from officers. Acknowledging this does not excuse brutality, but it complicates claims of a single, clearly directed act of killing (Connor 2002).

Finally, some critics argue that O’Brien applies modern moral language too directly to a nineteenth-century setting, while others see this as exactly the book’s strength. Refusing to soften violence for the sake of historical distance is part of what gives the book its force, and why it continues to provoke debate (Attwood 2020).

In the end, Massacre at Eureka works best as a challenge rather than a final word. Its critics do not deny that Eureka was violent or that official accounts minimised that violence. What they question is how far O’Brien pushes his case and how confidently he labels it. The book’s real value lies in forcing readers to slow down, look hard at the bloodshed itself, and think carefully about why the words used to describe Eureka still matter.

Easy to read but probably will keep just for its referencing. A small section on uniforms which is great for us gamers.

1. Geoffrey Blainey, The Rush That Never Ended (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1963).
2. Clare Wright, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2013).
3. Mark McKenna, “Eureka and the Limits of Legend,” Australian Historical Studies 35, no. 123 (2004).
4. John Molony, Eureka (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984).
5. John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002).
6. Bain Attwood, Empire and the Making of Native Title (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), methodological discussion.

Sergeant Patrick Kelly

Sergeant Patrick Kelly did not expect the war to turn strange, but it did. He joined in the usual way—waiting in line, filling out forms, having a medical check, and taking a train ride north—and for the first year, it was a typical soldier’s war: mud, sweat, and orders yelled over engines and gunfire. Then, the machines started to show up.

Sergeant Patrick Kelly with his brother Dan and best mate Steve

At first, there were only rumors from New Guinea about Japanese tanks that moved slowly and odd walking frames spotted in the misty jungle, with patrols disappearing silently. Headquarters thought it was just nerves and exaggeration, claiming the jungle created illusions and that tired men imagined things.

Then the first walker strode out of the tree line at Buna, and the war tilted into something else entirely.

Kelly was a railway fitter, so he knew machinery and was skeptical of anything that seemed straightforward. He was assigned to the experimental Australasian Detachment of Allied Special Research Command because he could disassemble an engine in the dark and keep his unit alive during combat.

Promoted in the field after his lieutenant failed to return from a reconnaissance sweep, Kelly developed a reputation for quiet competence. He did not shout unless necessary. He did not waste men. He believed in steady fire, covered movement, and making sure everyone who went forward had a way back.

His orders were rarely clear. Investigate sightings. Escort the prototypes. Support Papuan scouts. Engage only if necessary. Report everything.

The last instruction quickly became the most important. The things they encountered did not always fit neatly into standard after-action reports.

Kelly kept a notebook anyway.

The notebook became invaluable as the first clashes with new Japanese weapons showed, brutally fast, that standard kit was useless. Patrols came back shaken, talking about weapons that crackled or shimmered rather than fired—electric shocks, intense heat, and fast-moving projectiles that burned straight through cloth, webbing, and even thin armour. Men were being wounded without hearing a shot or seeing a muzzle flash, hit by something they couldn’t dodge or block. It was unsettling in a way normal gunfire wasn’t.

Sergeant Patrick Kelly responded the only way he knew how: by making do. His section began bolting scrap plate onto gear, layering insulation under uniforms, and adding crude grounding strips to weapons and packs. It looked rough, but it worked. The energy weapons didn’t bite as deep, fewer men went down, and confidence slowly returned. Facing something new and frightening, the troops learned they could adapt—and that mattered almost as much as the protection itself.

Allied engineers quickly developed a protective system combining layered alloy plating, insulated backing, sealed fittings, and specially reinforced helmets to defend against energy and penetrator weapons. Initially issued to Australasian units working with experimental walkers and crawlers, this new gear was informally named Kelly Armour after the field improvisations that inspired it. Although it was heavier than standard infantry gear, it significantly increased soldier safety against the new weapons in the Pacific theatre, allowing troops and machine operators to act with greater confidence in this unconventional war.

The figures are available in stl form from Kyourshuneko Miniatures Weird War Australian range, which I picked up and had a mate print some off for me. The range is extensive and I will highlight more in due course.

There are no rules or lore about the Australians so I will produce this as I paint the figures.

A little more done today on my 95th rifles contingent for Silver Bayonet. These have taken a few months just to get this far one colour at a time. Oh well may be soon, maybe not.

The Rifleman is a soldier type in The Silver Bayonet: A Wargame of Napoleonic Gothic Horror, known for their excellent ranged combat skills. Unlike a regular Infantryman with a musket, the Rifleman uses a Rifle, giving them improved accuracy and range.

In game statistics, the Rifleman has an impressive Accuracy of +2, significantly increasing their chances of hitting targets at long distances. They possess a base Speed of 6, which allows for decent movement on the battlefield, along with a Melee skill of +1, a Defence rating of 13, and a Health score of 10.

Recruiting a Rifleman costs 18 points and takes up a single soldier slot in your unit, making strategic placement crucial for maximizing their effectiveness. Their primary strength stems from their weapon of choice: the Rifle, which boasts a remarkable 30″ range, surpassing that of traditional muskets, and utilizes the soldier’s Skill Die for calculating damage dealt to enemies. Additionally, the Rifle is designed to generally ignore some levels of armour (Armour (1)), providing an advantage when facing heavily armoured opponents.

Equipped with a bayonet, Riflemen are also capable of engaging in close combat, transforming their weapon into a Hand Weapon if the situation demands it. Like most firearms in the game, a Rifleman is required to spend an action to reload after firing, which can introduce tactical considerations during engagements.

Nations such as Britain, Prussia, and Russia are particularly noted for their access to this powerful unit type, making them excellent choices for players who favor a long-range combat style with precise fire. You can also use specialized ammunition, such as Silver Shot, to effectively deal with supernatural foes.

By leveraging the Rifleman’s strengths and carefully managing their positioning, players can dominate the battlefield, maintaining control over engagements from a distance while effectively countering threats with calculated precision.

The figures are from Elite Miniatures and supplied by Elite Miniatures Australia

We finally managed to squeeze in another game of Silver Bayonet, and this time I decided to unleash my Spanish against JD’s Austrians—because why not throw a little salsa into a battle of wits? At this point, we’ve both got a decent grip on how the game flows—like a toddler with a juice box. We know what risks are worth taking, when to go charging in like knights of the round table, and when to retreat like we’ve just spotted our ex at a party. That comfort level made this round an absolute riot: packed with tension, overflowing with dramatic flair, and filled with those hilarious moments that linger in your memory long after the dice have stopped rolling!

The table set up with all of the objectives close to the table centre.

It seems the dice gods finally looked down upon my warband and decided, “Not today, Josephine.” Managing a 87.5% survival rate is the kind of statistical anomaly that usually requires a blood sacrifice or a very specific ritual involving lucky socks, leaving your squad in the enviable position of being a growing powerhouse rather than a collection of fresh graves. Even my lone casualty couldn’t be bothered to fail properly, escaping with a mere flesh wound that serves as more of a “vacation” than a career-ending injury. While he’s stuck in the infirmary nursing his bruised ego and a lack of survival XP, the rest of the crew is busy leveling up and presumably mocking him for his poor positioning. In the brutal world of campaign gaming, walking away with your roster intact is basically a victory lap—though I’d keep an eye on that survivor, as he’s definitely going to spend the next game claiming he was “tactically repositioning” rather than actually getting clobbered.

The injured model’s plight perfectly showcases one of the things I absolutely love about Silver Bayonet. He wasn’t a goner yet. He wasn’t even in the market for a fancy wheelchair. Nope, he’ll be back strutting his stuff! But guess what? He’s missing out on that sweet experience bump for finishing the game. It’s a tiny detail, but it nails home the point that just remaining on your feet and functioning is a big deal. Sure, heroics are fun and all, but let’s be real—endurance is the unsung hero of the day!

Overall, it was a gaming evening so fantastic that it made a cat on a hot tin roof look like it was lounging on a sunny beach, with desperate decisions that would make even the most seasoned politician turn crimson and just the right sprinkle of luck to keep the whole affair hilariously chaotic instead of spiraling into complete madness. My Spanish was as graceful as a bull fumbling through a china shop, JD’s Austrians were serving up chaos like they were at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and by the end of the night, the table had morphed into a frightful little horror-war saga that could give Dracula a serious case of the jitters!

Exactly what Silver Bayonet should do.

The Austrian leader takes down a werewolf, but wait a black dog is coming!

What really kicked the game up a gear, though, were the individual acts of heroism that erupted once everything went sideways. Teniente Coronel Álvarro Carretero very nearly punched his own ticket to the afterlife. After personally deleting a werewolf in savage, up-close fashion, he promptly discovered that bravery is not, in fact, armour, and ended up wobbling on the very brink of death. Enter Médico Sargento Mayor Antonio José Hildago, who dragged him back from the great beyond with the sort of calm efficiency that suggests he’s done this far too often. That one intervention didn’t just save Carretero—it saved the entire Spanish force. Had the Teniente Coronel gone down, the battle would have taken one look at the chaos and gleefully sprinted off in a completely different direction.

Instead, once he’d been stapled back together and reminded which way up he was supposed to be, Carretero did exactly what you want a campaign leader to do. He didn’t go hunting for a second werewolf to wrestle for bragging rights. He didn’t pose heroically on a rock. He spent the rest of the game trudging across the battlefield like a very determined, very bloody bit of command infrastructure—rallying shaken men, pointing at objectives, and physically refusing to let injured soldiers lie down and have a quiet existential crisis under fire. It was gloriously cinematic: a man held together by bandages, attitude, and pure professional spite, keeping the entire force functioning through presence alone.

And he wasn’t the only one cashing in hero points. Sofía Obero earned her reputation the old-fashioned way by killing a rabid dog and then by finding a werewolf and making it stop being a problem. No drama, no near-death sermon, just a clean, hard, decisive kill that removed one of the nastiest threats on the table and permanently upgraded her status from “another figure on the roster” to “that one—yes, that one.” The kind of moment where the dice nod respectfully, the table goes quiet for half a second, and everyone knows a name has just been written into the campaign’s unofficial history.

By the end of the game, those miniatures had morphed into something far more dramatic—veterans with wild tales, battle scars, and enough swagger to fill a bar! If you ever wanted proof that a campaign system can create epic drama, look no further. Win or lose, Silver Bayonet shines brighter than a disco ball when these hilarious moments pop up, and let me tell you, this game served them up in spades!

Confirmation from the Gaceta de Madrid

I wrote this for the anniversary of the Battle of Bardia about fifteen years ago, not because anniversaries require ceremony, but because they bring unfinished thoughts to light. Bardia was the first time Australian troops were ordered to attack a stronghold directly and take it apart by hand. There were no alternative plans, just continuous fighting in trenches. I’ve revisited Bardia many times, on game boards, in notebooks, and in incomplete rule sets stored away for years. Each time, I was left with the same question: not who won, but how anyone managed to keep going.

Published today you can pick it up on Amazon or Wargames Vault.

Trench Crawl and my other rule sets are not a sudden inspiration. These are house rules I’ve been writing, rewriting, and quietly testing for nearly thirty years. They started as margin notes for late-night games, solo refights when no one else was interested, and long arguments about what trench fighting actually felt like once the maps stopped working. They evolved slowly, shaped less by theory than by dissatisfaction with neat outcomes and clean victories. Only now am I finally getting around to dragging them into the twenty-first century and turning them all into something coherent, playable, and shareable.

Trench Crawl comes from that process. It’s not a game about winning. It’s about whether your section survives until the end of the trench. It doesn’t focus on who wins the battle, but on how long a unit can keep going under pressure, fatigue, and uncertainty. This is important because, in history, most trench fighting wasn’t about complete destruction. It was about morale, teamwork, exhaustion, and not being able to face one more close fight.

At its core, Trench Crawl is a trench exploration and fighting game for two or more players, or for solo play. Each game focuses on a single advance through a fortified trench, rather than an entire siege or broad strategy. The scale is intentionally small and cramped. There are no large flanking moves or major breakthroughs. The trench itself poses challenges, with play happening in a maze of blind spots, firing areas, dead ends, and unexpected turns where every choice matters and every error adds up.

The game focuses on the process of modeling rather than specific outcomes. It doesn’t aim to show exact casualty numbers or improve weapon efficiency. Losses are represented in a general way, highlighting fear, confusion, and the gradual loss of teamwork. A section doesn’t fail just because it loses soldiers; it fails when it becomes fragile, confused, or can’t move forward. This failure can happen abruptly or gradually, but it seldom resembles a clear defeat.

One key aspect of the design is that the trench system isn’t planned beforehand. Instead, it reveals itself as the game progresses. Each move uncovers a new trench section or junction, some leading forward and others ending unexpectedly. This setup makes planning difficult. Players usually see only a move or two ahead, and losing momentum can be very costly. Decisions are made with limited information, reflecting how trench warfare became unpredictable after the fighting began and maps became unreliable.

When contact occurs, it is sudden and personal. Fighting happens at close range in confined spaces where visibility is poor and angles are awkward. There is no sense of a stable firing line or a comfortable engagement distance. Each contact represents a brief, violent clash that may seem minor in isolation but leaves a mark that matters later. Individual fights are survivable. Repeated fights are dangerous. Even success carries a cost, and a section that wins every encounter can still fail the crawl.

Rather than focusing on detailed casualty counts, Trench Crawl emphasizes pressure. Pressure arises from movement, contact, suppression, hesitation, and delay, influencing unit behavior more than firepower. Suppression limits options, slows advances, and raises the chance of a unit stalling or withdrawing. Over time, this creates a pattern where initial progress seems manageable, mid-crawl fatigue sets in, and late-crawl choices become increasingly urgent. The system was tested to ensure a typical infantry section could remain effective during prolonged trench engagements, but only if managed carefully and not pushed forward recklessly.

Withdrawal is not seen as failure. Players are expected to stop, regroup, or pull back, and knowing when to do so is often the most crucial choice. Many trench battles in history ended without a clear winner, with both sides tired and confused about who had the upper hand. The rules acknowledge this by considering survival, teamwork, and ongoing effectiveness as important results on their own.

Inspired by warfare from the twentieth century, Trench Crawl is designed to be timeless. The game’s core mechanics—discovering trenches, resolving contact, managing pressure, and withdrawal—work the same whether in ancient, medieval, nineteenth-century, or twentieth-century settings. Only the weapons and descriptions differ. The experience of moving into a hidden, defended position remains fundamentally unchanged.

This design approach extends beyond Trench Crawl and influences all my current projects, including a skirmish game based on the French and Indian Wars, Escape from Stalag 22, a card game about captivity, Shattered Hulls, an ancient naval game, and Sand, Sweat and Camels, which will release soon. The same concepts inform Hold the Line, an Heroic Victorian game, Aluminum Clouds, an anime skirmish game, and Channel Clash, along with a major rules writing project on the Australian Frontier Wars. The Hennessy series, starting with Hennessy of the AIF, a historical account of Operation Opossum, and a wargame scenario book about the Kokoda Track are books also in development.

All of it comes back to the same instinct that first drew me to Bardia. I’m less interested in perfect plans and decisive victories than in what happens when those things fall apart. Trench Crawl is an attempt to model that moment honestly. It’s taken a long time to arrive here.