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.

I was surprised to find that the book I brought home was a novel, not a history book. The campaign maps showing front lines and retreats tricked me into thinking otherwise.

Third Reich at War by Michael Veranov is a dark war novel that steps away from typical military fiction and fantasy. Instead of exploring whether Nazi Germany could have won World War II, Veranov examines what would happen if the Third Reich waged war according to its own ideology, without any limits or morality. The outcome is not a story of victory, but a deep look at escalation, distortion, and eventual failure.

The novel depicts the Third Reich more as a machine than a nation. War is shown not as a series of major battles but as an ongoing situation where logistics, administration, ideology, and violence are interconnected. Tactical fights happen, but they seldom lead to resolutions. Each apparent victory creates new demands, stricter controls, more severe actions, and further radicalization. Veranov’s key idea is that total war combined with total ideology speeds up the process rather than stabilizing power; it ultimately consumes it.

Ideology in the book is not just background or fancy language; it acts as a system that influences manpower policy, leadership decisions, production priorities, and occupation methods. Racial beliefs damage military effectiveness by impacting recruitment and deployment. Loyalty to politics often takes precedence over skill. Fear replaces trust within leadership, and acts of violence become commonplace. Veranov illustrates that this is not chaos, but a specific type of order: administrative violence, cruelty as part of routine, and murder accepted through official processes.

One of the novel’s key features is its emotional restraint. The writing is precise and often feels cold. Veranov avoids dramatic elements and heroic views, making the brutality of events more unsettling. Violence is not portrayed as cinematic; it takes shape through reports, orders, and logistical changes. Units are reassigned, populations are processed, resources are used up, and formations disappear. Fear arises not from spectacle, but from repetition and scale.

Individual characters exist but do not dominate the story. When they are highlighted, they are often limited by rules rather than personal decisions. Taking initiative can lead to punishment as much as it can to reward, hesitation can be dangerous, and standing up for morals rarely leads to positive change. This supports one of the book’s main points: as ideological systems strengthen during war, individual choices diminish. People still have worth, but mainly as parts, roles, and replaceable elements.

As the war continues, Veranov shows a regime that reacts to failures by intensifying its actions rather than reassessing. Defeat leads to more oppression, shortages mean stricter discipline, and loss of land results in tighter ideological control. The system grows increasingly fragile. Adaptation can only occur within limited boundaries set by strict rules and fear. When collapse happens, it is not clear or moral; it is messy, inconsistent, and unresolved, with ongoing violence long after any strategic goals have faded.

The novel effectively highlights its strong systems thinking and avoids romanticizing disasters. Veranov illustrates that escalation can be systematic rather than random, and that logical management can exist alongside mass killings. It’s particularly valuable for those interested in strategy, operational tactics, or simulation, as it views war as a connected series of pressures instead of just a battle of talent or determination.

Its limitations stem from its purpose. The emotional distance may frustrate readers looking for strong character development or deep psychological insight. Civilian experiences are often discussed in general terms rather than through personal stories, and the book expects readers to have some knowledge of World War II institutions and terms. These choices limit its audience but maintain its clarity in analysis.

Third Reich at War is important because it challenges comforting beliefs. It does not claim that evil is always incompetent or random. Rather, Veranov argues that ideological systems can operate effectively and cruelly for extended periods but may ultimately be unable to survive. The novel is not just a warning about the past; it examines how modern states, devoted to total belief and total war, can harm both their enemies and themselves through logical actions.

A great message, and some interesting thoughts, but I found this one just OK.

When building a German force in Bolt Action, the Headquarters unit is essential—it serves as the tactical center of your army and plays a crucial role in coordinating your overall strategy. A basic Second Lieutenant starts with one attendant, but the German army list allows you to enhance your command capabilities by adding up to four more men to your command team.

This adjustment transforms what could be seen as a weak leadership unit into a robust small-group combat team capable of executing orders and influencing the frontline effectively. By carefully selecting additional personnel with diverse skills, you can create a well-rounded HQ that not only leads but also supports other units during engagements.

The increased flexibility and strength of your command team significantly improve your chances of maintaining control over the battle, allowing you to adapt your tactics to the ever-changing dynamics of the battlefield.

The strength of this expanded squad lies in its remarkable versatility, which allows for a range of strategic options on the battlefield. By leveraging the “German Command” special rules effectively, you can equip these extra men with submachine guns (SMGs), significantly enhancing their combat capabilities.

This modification transforms your HQ from a traditionally passive support unit into a potent assault force that can lead the charge in critical engagements. Whether you are navigating a “Big Push” scenario or meticulously clearing ruins in Stalingrad, the presence of a 5- or 6-man command team armed with SMGs can deliver an impressive amount of short-range firepower. Their ability to lay down a barrage of bullets makes them a formidable “Point Unit” that opponents cannot afford to overlook or underestimate.

This not only shifts the dynamics of the encounter but also pressures adversaries to reconsider their tactical positions, creating opportunities for your squad to dominate the battlefield. In essence, the combination of strategic flexibility and overwhelming firepower allows for a more aggressive approach to warfare, ensuring your forces can adapt to various combat situations with ease.

Strategically, this upgrade reflects the evolution of German tactical doctrine as the war progressed into the mid-to-late years. Influenced by the experiences of the Sturmpioniere and Panzergrenadiers, the Wehrmacht began to move away from the traditional reliance on the long-range Kar98k rifle for every man.

Instead, they leaned into the “Assault Element” concept, where command groups were heavily outfitted with automatic weapons to seize and hold vital objectives. By mimicking this in Bolt Action, you aren’t just buying extra dice; you are recreating the historical shift toward aggressive, high-mobility warfare where firepower at the point of contact was the deciding factor.

Investing in these additional men provides your officer with a much-needed layer of survivability, ensuring your vital morale bubbles remain active even under heavy fire. In a game where “Small Unit” rules can make two-man teams easy targets for snipers or lucky HE hits, a five- or six-man squad acts as a resilient buffer.

These extra bodies serve as extra numbers for your Lieutenant, allowing the unit to weather early-game attrition while staying close enough to your frontline squads to keep them from breaking under pins.

Furthermore, this expanded command team functions as a versatile mobile reserve capable of finishing off weakened enemy squads in close quarters. While your main infantry sections pin the enemy down, the HQ can maneuver into position to deliver a decisive blow. With the combined volume of SMG fire and the high “Aggressive” profile of a Veteran unit, they can effectively clear a building or contest a late-game objective, transforming a traditionally passive leadership piece into a genuine “force multiplier” on the tabletop.

My squad depicted her follows that doctrine of upgrading all of the figures to have a SMG, but also to give them additional movement and firepower with a Sdkfz 250/1 with MMG.

I think it gives a cost effective potent and mobile force for a combined points cost of just 141pts. The other option is to run the command squad as a last turn objective grab with just 2 additional figures, no SMG and a Kubelwagen for 68pts. Depends how you want to play the game.

Saw this one at the bottom of a box in the back corner of a Thrift Shop.Picked it up for AU $0.50 and gave it a quick paint job. Ready for action.

Egyptian sphinxes are definitely some of the coolest and most famous monuments from ancient times. The Great Sphinx of Giza is the most iconic one, just hanging out on the Giza Plateau with a lion’s body and a king’s head. Back in the day, this combo was all about power and protection—the lion stood for strength, and the human head was a nod to intelligence and royal vibe. But the sphinx wasn’t just an eye-catching statue; it was supposed to be a guard keeping an eye on sacred places.

Most experts think the Great Sphinx was put together during the Fourth Dynasty, around 2600 BCE, under Khafre, who has his pyramid right behind it. The way the Sphinx lines up with Khafre’s causeway and valley temple backs up this idea, and it looks a lot like other royal portraits from that time. Made from one giant chunk of limestone, this monument really shows off the ambition and skill of the Old Kingdom builders, who cleverly turned natural rock into a powerful symbol of kingship.

The meaning of sphinxes changed a lot over time. By the New Kingdom, people saw the Great Sphinx as Horemakhet—“Horus of the Horizon”—a sun god all about rebirth and new beginnings. Pharaohs like Thutmose IV even left messages between its paws, treating the sphinx like a god that could hook them up with kingship and good vibes. This change shows that sphinxes weren’t just static symbols; they were lively religious figures in Egypt’s sacred scene.

Egyptian sphinxes weren’t just hanging out in Giza; they were everywhere! You’d see them along temple paths at places like Luxor and Karnak, often with ram heads (which were all about Amun) or human faces. These cool sphinxes created ritual corridors that divided the normal world from the sacred space. Their presence repeated made everything feel orderly, authoritative, and safe, thanks to their size and rhythm instead of just being huge monuments.

These days, Egyptian sphinxes, especially the Great Sphinx, are cool symbols of history, mystery, and toughness. Weathering, restoration, and new takes on them have changed how we see them, but their original purpose is still pretty obvious: they were all about showing off royal power and their link to the universe. Unlike those tricky monsters from later Greek tales, Egyptian sphinxes were more like guardians of meaning, built to last just like stone.

28mm Figures to show the size.

A great investment

John Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty, also published as Battle At Sea, plays a key role in late twentieth-century military history by applying the analytical methods from The Face of Battle to naval warfare. Instead of providing a full history of naval battles, Keegan focuses on a few key naval engagements to explore how technology, leadership style, and military traditions influenced how wars were fought at sea. He shifts the focus from fleet movements and strategic results to the challenges admirals faced, especially regarding information, communication, and decision-making in a setting where combat was often remote, delayed, and reliant on technology.

Keegan argues that naval warfare creates unique psychological and structural challenges for commanders. Unlike land combat, where the closeness to violence allows for immediate understanding, battles at sea are marked by uncertainty and sudden disasters. Analyzing battles like Trafalgar, Jutland, and Midway, Keegan shows that technological advances—from sail to steam and air power—did not just make warfare deadlier; they changed what commanders could perceive and control. He notes that military doctrine often lagged behind these technological shifts, leading to situations where having better equipment did not always result in winning battles.

From a historiographical perspective, The Price of Admiralty challenges traditional military histories that emphasize decisive moves, numbers, and leadership. Like The Face of Battle, it contributes to the “new military history” movement, which includes psychology, culture, and personal experiences in warfare studies. However, while Keegan acknowledges human limitations, he primarily focuses on senior command instead of ordinary sailors, partially reverting to elite viewpoints despite his critiques. This approach has faced criticism from some naval historians who believe that Keegan’s interpretations—especially regarding Jutland—oversimplify operational details and overlook logistical, tactical, and material elements.

The book’s selectivity is both its main strength and limitation. By focusing on a few cases, Keegan deeply examines themes like friction, misperception, and institutional inertia. However, this narrow focus restricts broader comparisons, and non-Western naval traditions and asymmetric warfare are largely overlooked. Therefore, The Price of Admiralty should be seen not as a complete history of naval warfare, but as an interpretive essay on how navies have historically understood battle and why these understandings often fell short in practice.

Keegan’s work not only contributes to history but also provides valuable insights for designing naval wargames, especially at the operational and command levels. He highlights uncertainty, delayed information, and limited control, which challenge traditional game designs that focus on perfect knowledge and immediate player action. Keegan suggests that the main issue in naval warfare isn’t just using firepower, but knowing when, where, and if a decisive battle is happening. For game designers, this means that elements like fog of war, unreliable intelligence, and command challenges should be central to gameplay instead of being optional features.

Keegan’s analysis of military command culture shows how rules can become restrictive and unbalanced. The admirals in his studies are limited not just by their enemies but also by doctrines, communication systems, and deep-rooted beliefs about decisive battles. Naval games that incorporate this view can show how institutional habits affect decisions, like delayed orders, limited command choices, or penalties for breaking standard procedures. These mechanics illustrate historical truths more accurately than systems that let players make unrestricted optimizations.

Keegan describes technology as a source of confusion instead of clarity. While radar, air reconnaissance, and long-range gunnery enhance reach, they also create false leads, misinterpretations, and overconfidence. This perspective suggests that technological advances shouldn’t just be seen as simple improvements. Rather, technology should create new decision challenges, add more information to analyze, and increase the risk of serious mistakes if data is misinterpreted. Games that require players to make decisions based on uncertain or misleading information better reflect Keegan’s view of naval combat than those that provide clear detection and straightforward engagement results.

Keegan’s analysis shows that naval battles often do not lead to clear victories, even if they are tactically successful. This affects how we define victory in naval wargames. Instead of focusing on total destruction or easy objective control, games inspired by The Price of Admiralty should measure success based on endurance, keeping forces intact, disrupting the enemy, or holding strategic positions under uncertain conditions. In this way, Keegan’s work supports naval game designs that view warfare as a continuous process influenced by perception, fatigue, and limits, rather than just a series of clear-cut battles.

Taken together, The Price of Admiralty remains a significant contribution to both naval historiography and the theory of military simulation. While specialists may dispute aspects of Keegan’s interpretations, the book’s enduring value lies in its insistence that naval combat cannot be understood solely through tonnage tables, gunnery ranges, or battle plans. Instead, it reveals battle at sea as a human, institutional, and perceptual problem—one that continues to challenge historians, commanders, and game designers alike.

Not an easy read but I really enjoyed it.

The half squad is designed to move quickly to an objective hold it. The NCO’s SMG and the LMG will provide adequate firepower until reinforcements arrive.

The half squad.

NCO

Infantry 1

Infantry 2

LMG team with dice holder for recording casualties.

The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War by Bill Gammage is a real game-changer in the world of Australian military history. It first hit the shelves back in 1974, based on Gammage’s PhD work, and it totally changed how we look at history by moving away from just talking about battles and military leaders. Instead, Gammage brings us the real stories of everyday soldiers. He dug through tons of letters and diaries from the Australian War Memorial, letting these soldiers tell their own tales. This book is all about the feelings, memories, and personal stories of those who were there, rather than just the big strategies or epic battles.

My copy was licked up from a Thrift Shop and was heavily underlined and notated which made it hard to read especially when some of the underlining and notes I considered not important and quite wrong! I just hate this!

Despite this the real magic of The Broken Years is how it mixes in real soldier stories. Gammage doesn’t just throw in quotes to make it colorful; he builds the whole argument around what they said. Because of this, you really feel the excitement when they signed up, the shock when they hit the battlefield, the boring grind of life in the trenches, and how people’s spirits just faded over time. It really hits home. Instead of showing war as a bunch of heroic moments, it reveals it as a long, tough journey that changed how people thought, connected, and saw themselves.

This book really “hits you in the feels”. Gammage shows how the initial excitement and hope turned into disillusionment, tiredness, and deep sorrow. Even when their belief in the war’s meaning starts to fade, the soldiers stick together. Focusing on friendship, resilience, and loss changes how we think about the Anzac experience, shifting it from just heroism to something way more relatable and human. Plus, the book sparks bigger conversations about what it means to be Australian and how the First World War shapes our culture.

At the same time, The Broken Years focuses on a specific angle. It’s not about the nitty-gritty of operations or tactics, so if you’re looking for a breakdown of battles or the decisions made by commanders, you might want to look elsewhere. Some reviewers have pointed out that it misses a few important topics, like religion, discipline, and the bigger social effects of the war beyond just the soldiers. But these gaps make sense when you realize that Gammage wanted to create a social and emotional story based on personal experiences instead of trying to cover every single detail of the war.

Even with its flaws, this book has really made a mark that won’t fade away. It changed the game for how we look at and teach Australian war history, and its ideas still pop up in later research, books, and even movies. The notion that the Great War totally “broke” a generation—physically, emotionally, and mentally—has become a key part of how Australians understand the years 1914–18, and we owe a lot of that to Gammage’s insights.

Final summary:
The Broken Years is a game-changing read that totally reshaped how we look at Australian military history by putting the stories of soldiers front and center. It’s powerful, fresh, and really brings out the human side of things, showing the First World War as a tough journey filled with endurance, disillusionment, and camaraderie instead of just plain old heroism. Even though it’s not your typical military history book, its emotional punch and impact on research make it a must-read for anyone interested in Australia’s Great War.

An extremely thorough and well researched work. If you can get it cheap certainly buy its if only to use as a reference document.