PBEM Battle Reports

I have just finished the battle report for the second part of the battle of Zeitz in the PBEM Halle campaign. This has turned out to be a very long report, and it made me think about whether it is a good idea to make them so long and complicated.

When I started the blog I published battle reports in a very simplified form, with about four photographs of the main phases of the game. I had kept similar reports for many years as part of my personal record of my current campaign. Just something I could look back on, and an instant reminder of previous battles should I need to jog my memory. These were the reports I put on the blog in the early days.

The arrival of the PBEM campaign changed all of that. The battle reports were now to keep campaign players informed of how "their" battle went, and why they won or lost. I felt that it was important for them to be detailed enough for the players to understand why things happened, rather than just record that they did happen. This has grown into, I fear, pretty detailed battle reports with lots of photographs.

Its interesting that since the PBEM campaign started there have been a huge increase in the number of "hits" on the wargame rules blog. I assume that this is the campaign players checking rules, but I am not sure. At the start of the campaign all players were sent a copy of the wargame rules, so they have their own copy to refer to. So it might be that there is a general interest in the rules and the battle reports.

Anyway I shall continue to publish them in their current style at least until the campaign ends. Other battle reports, such as the Wellingtons Battles blog will have simpler reports, but with just as many photographs.

My son is buying me a new camera for Christmas. It has the ability to "stitch" photographs. Apparently this means I an take three photographs side by side and "stitch" them into one new photographs. If it works this would be very useful, because instead of having three photographs showing the left, centre and right of the table, I would only have one for each wargame move. But don't expect too much too soon. Photography has never been my strong point.

In the meantime if you would like to read the latest, and very long, battle report from the PBEM campaign you can find it here

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http://pbem1813hallecampaign.blogspot.com/