Blog Review 4

First I want to advise anyone following the campaign that I have discovered an error. As part of the campaign I was working out the distance between two cities, and found that Google did not agree with my map. It quickly became obvious that I had made a serious error in the scale. I had written that each square on the strategic maps was 10 x 10 miles, when in fact it is closer to 20 x 20 miles!! I am not sure how this happened, but I suspect it was during the frequent rewrites of the maps, and in transferring them from the AA book to hand drawn.

Before the blog I would just have left it, because each strategic square is also a wargames table. 10 x 10 miles is a pretty big battlefield, but 20 x 20 miles is really too large. I do not want to have to redraw the maps again, and anyway the squares would be too small to be able to write any names in them.

I have changed each blog to show the strategic square as 20x20 miles, but I wanted to make sure that anyone who might be thinking of using them for their own campaign is aware of the error. Personally I can quite easily live with the extra large battlefield. There are so many other anolomies in wargaming that this is not really a problem for me. However others might not agree.

I had planned to do a review each week, just to do a summary of what had happened during the previous week. But it was a very confusing week, with visitors and a broken computer, so I did not have time to sit and think.

This week was to confirm that all of the background work has been done on the campaign, and to think aloud about what will happen now. But then something happened yesterday which changed my mind.

I mentioned some time ago about feedback, or rather the lack of it, when writing a blog. I meant, of course, your feedback to me. But after yesterday I though I would give you a little feedback from me to you.

Since I started the blog, just five weeks ago, it has taken over a large part of my life. I think I started it to share my idea on wargaming and in particular my 1813 campaign. I never really thought that it would be of any great interest to anyone else, but I thought it would be useful to have a record of how I arranged the campaign, and an ongoing record of our wargames.

Both Jan and I were amazed how many people have shown an interest, latest count 1699. Each morning the first thing Jan does is check how many have looked at the blog. Last thing each night I check the same.

At 3pm yesterday afternoon the counter showed 30 visits. I put the photos of the 6mm figures on the blog, posted a mention on TMP and OSW forum and had a cup of coffee with Jan on the naya. By 6pm the counter confirmed 80 visits. When I went to bed it was 130, and when Jan checked this morning it was 167 (by midnight).

It gives me a warm glow to think that there are 167 people out there, who I have never met and probably never will, who are interested enough in what I am doing to take the trouble to read the blog. And I would like to thank each and every one of you.

When we came to Spain we knew wargaming would be important to us, and we knew it would take up a considerable part of our time. We had hoped that we would be able to start up a club, such as we had run in UK for the past 20 years. We advertized in the English language papers, and got some response. There were about 8 who responded, but most of them had never wargamed before, and found it not to their taste. There were two exceptions. One was a very nice chap, who was more interested in sharing a bottle of wine and having a chat than in wargaming. The second was a very committed wargamer who, unfortunately, was not really interested in the Napoleonic period. So after three years we decided that we enjoyed it more on our own anyway.

We are very happy wargaming together, and to be honest it suits us better. We can play when we want, we can play how we want and we have no heated debates about rules. But we do miss sharing the hobby with others. And that is what the blog has allowed us to do.

So again thanks each one of you for your interest. Remember we are always interested in your views and opinions. We like to think it is as much your blog as ours.