I have been to... Naples

 We recently had a trip to Naples with our kids and their other halves. I've been to Naples (briefly) before but this time we stayed for a week, including a couple of days in Sorrento. I won't bore you with lots of holiday snaps, but I will as usual focus on stuff of vaguely historical or military interest.

First up is the Castel Nuovo down by the port. I have to say that this is one of the ugliest castles I've ever seen. 

It is infilled with all sorts of incongruous architecture. It is only 'nuovo' in the sense it is a bit newer than the Castel dell'Ovo which is down in Santa Lucia, near the site of the original Greek settlement. This was built in 1279 by Charles of Anjou. The in filled entrance was put in by Alfonso of Aragon in 1442.

And is just a great monolithic lump, not enhanced by the endless roadworks around it. I didn't bother going inside, but it is in a very commanding position next to the main port area.

This is the Piazza Plebiscito, about half a mile from the Castle. It commemorates Italian Unification in 1860 but was until relatively recently a huge car park!

Set into the Palazzo Reale on the other side of the square were a number of interesting statues. King Umberto I himself, who put the statues in.

Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother in law and one time Prince of Naples. Quite a restrained hat for Murat. 

Charles V.

And everyones favourite, Ruggero (Roger) the Norman!

Around the corner is a fine statue of Octavian.

In Plaza Bellini are the mains of some of the original Greek city walls, this area is on the edge of the old city and it s three main east-west thoroughfare. It is about a mile north of the port. 

There is a rather nice campanile on the Via Tribunale.

But the real saint around here is apparently Diego Maradona, who is commemorated everywhere.

While we were there we took another trip to Pompeii. I've already reported on this at length on our previous visit, so I'll skip over this a bit.

The weather was rather nicer this time, and there were lovely displays of poppies everywhere.

Just flowering in the disturbed ground.

As the weather was so nice there were quite a few big tour groups, but it wasn't overwhelming.

I'm not very big on taking pictures of dead people, but this a reproduction of one of the original plaster casts. You can still see this poor chaps clothing on him.

The museum was almost deserted, I've no idea why as there were lots of big groups around. Here is Alexander the Great marrying Roxanne.

And everyones favourite naughty lady, Livia. Looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and nothing like Sian Phillips.

Down by the port were a few moored coastguard and customs ships, some more heavily armed than others.

And a nice view across the bay of Vesuvious. The building on the left is the cruise terminal, originally built by Mussolini. It has a very fascist vibe going on.

Behind the port and the ugly castle is this huge square, with views up to Castel St Elmo. Between the hill and the end of the square is the start of the Spanish Quarter, a rabbit warren of towering tenaments and narrow streets bisected by the Via Toledo, dating from Spanish rule We were staying there.

The Castel St Elmo is rather more attractive. We took the very useful funicular railway to the top  instead of walking up the very steep hill in the heat.

And it has fabulous views over to Vesuvious. The active vent is the one on the right, although nothing ng like as active as Etna. Our guide at Pompeii cheerily told us all about the super volcano out in the bay, which will (one day) destroy the whole of Europe! 

And views across the city. That is the Spanish Quarter below, built from the fifteenth century onwards. 

While we were in the old city we went down into the old Greek/Roman aqueduct system. If you are in Naples, I thoroughly recommend this tour.

This was one of the water storage chambers, the floor is 7m higher than it should be, as it was filled with rubbish at some point and topped off with concrete.

One of the more open chambers with a well in the roof. We are about 60m underground here. The chambers are all carved out the volcanic rock under the city.

One of the water channels with an amphora for scale. As the rock is so porous, the channels (and chambers) are lined with waterproof plaster.

One of the storage chambers with water in it. Some of the passages to get here were very narrow and low, not suitable if you have mobility problems or are of broader girth. 

And another.

During the war the chambers were used as bomb shelters, and there were various WW2 displays underground and nearer the surface. Some reproduction German uniforms and various weapons.

A rather dashing Italian.

British khaki drill and battle dress.

A bonus on this particular tour was a trip to the remains of an old Roman theatre up the road.

It has been heavily plundered and built over, so at first there wasn't much to see. Two of the arches here under the plaster are Roman, the rest are later additions by the Spanish. 

But underground there was quite a bit more - mainly the remains of the back stage and dressing rooms. Behind that bricked up window is the bathroom of an Air BnB! Supposedly this was one of Nero.s favourite theatres, I'm not sure what he would have made of that. 

While we were in the city, we also went to the Archaelogical Museum of Naples, but I'll do that as a separate post.

Newline 20mm Alexander the Great

 This is turning out to be a bit of a Macedonian week isn't it! 

Now, I already have a 20mm Alexander figure, the HaT one, which is incorporated into my Companion Cavalry DBA element (riding a generals white horse, naturally). For my Alexander the Brief game, I felt he warranted a separate character. I actually have another plastic Alexander in stock (don't ask), but as my Hannibal personality figure is made of metal, I thought this Alexander deserved to be metal as a standalone figure. 

And here is the Newline 20mm Alexander the Great figure, from their personality range. A nice easy figure to assemble, just horse, rider and lance. I had to drill out his hand a bit more to take the lance as it was bunged up with flash, in fact the rider had a fair bit of flash in general. I got most of it off, but discovered later there was some left on one leg. Oh well. The horse was pretty flash free.

The outfit on the model is straight out of Duncan Heads 'Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars', so I used the suggested colour scheme for that. It was taken from a contemporary painting of Alexander, so as accurate as these things ever are. In this one he is wearing the helmet with feather plumes (also featured in the 'Alexander' film in the battle of Granicus, I guess we all have the same sources!), as opposed to the bare headed Alex at Issus shown in the famous Pompeii mosaic.

Alex's outfit is quite simple, just a white tunic and leather armour shoulder guards, an iron waist belt/armour with a pale purple cloak. Red crested helmet with white feathers. I did a black undercoat, then misted it white to emphasise the highlights. The paints are a mixture of Humbrol, Citadel and Coat D'Arms horrible thin purple. Good job I did a light undercoat. He got a wash all over and then I picked out the highlights again and added the red and green trim described by Head on his armour using Posca Paint Pens.

Although my DBA Alexander is on a white horse, I did this figure on Bucephalus. So black all over. Annyingly he has some sort of nose armour moulded on top his head, but I just painted black over it and put Bucephalus' white star in the middle of his forehead.

You can see how the thin purple colour has run over the black/white undercoat to produce quite a nice shading effect. I didn't do any drybrushing on this figure, just washes and highlights.

The saddlecloth is the inevitable leopardskin (same as my plastic one). This one even has paws moulded on, and an attempt to mould the leopard spots! I just did it ochre and drew the leopard spots on with a 0.2mm micron pen.

Once all the paint had dried it got a thick coat of floor varnish, and was based up on a 2p coin with builders sand and a bit of static grass. Although Alexander only fought four major battles, he remains endlessly entertaining, so I'm sure this command figure will see lots of action. I have no great qualms about using him as a Successor general either. 

Here he is leading the Companions somewhere in Asia Minor. Once more unto the breach dear friends. He is somewhat bigger than my HaT Companions, but hey, he is Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Brief - some tweaking

 After the last round of playtests I had a bit of a think. I wanted to make the game a bit more 'heroic' and reduce the chance of appalling dice throws scuppering the Macedonian player. I was also very taken with Shaun Travers idea about restricting the deployment of reserves. So off we go again. 

Back to Granicus. For this iteration I'm using restricted reserves for the Persians. So they deploy in a sector in the second line, but can only reinforce the same sector or an adjacent sector in the front line. The Macedonians are unrestricted - their army is smaller and they are commanded by Alexander the Great!

The first round is pretty successful for the Macedonians. The entire Persian front line is wiped out. I put the Peltasts up against the Horse Archers to avoid their horrible bonuses against melee infantry, and otherwise just relied on the Companions and Pikes to clear the Persian cavalry. The Persians have put their mercenaries up against the Pikes and pushed both their reserve archers up. Foot Archers are good against melee cavalry. Oh dear!

Another tweak I'm using is that Alexander is allowed to make one re-roll per turn, on any dice. He has to do it immediately for any given sector combat. Think of it as leading a charge or rallying the troops. So when the Persian archers rolled a '6' against the Companions, it was time for a re-roll.

The re-rolled Archers missed and were duly annihilated in melee by the Companions. The Pikes defeated the mercenaries and the Peltast/Archer skirmish was inconclusive.

The Persians committed their last infantry to the line, but with their centre broken, they fled the field. That is another tweak, the Persians are defeated if their Army is reduced to two elements or less, I found in playtesting that once a gap appears, the army has almost certainly had it anyway due to outflanking, so it is quicker to end there. The Macedonians can still hang on with one unit, as they are Macedonians and it is a very long way home.

Back to Issus. The Persians have an infantry front line for this one (Archers and Kardakes) , so Alexander also led with his infantry, cavalry in reserve.

The Macedonian Pikes and Hoplites succeed in routing their Persian opponents, forcing the Persians to commit their cavalry and mercenaries. Alexander has to rally the Peltasts though as they lose their fight with the Persian archers. I really don't want to put Macedonian cavalry up against archers again.

Things suddenly go south, despite Alexanders personal intervention, the Macedonian pike block is routed! Once again the battle of the light troops is inconclusive, but the Macedonian hoplites rout the Persian cavalry. Just goes to show that even with the tweaks, the Macedonians can come unstuck.

Alexander commits the Companions to the centre.

The next round of combat brings the Persians down to two elements as the Companions break through, and it is time for Darius to run away with Alex on his heels. 

Finally Gaugamela. As before I tried to avoid putting melee infantry up against the Persian horse archers, instead the Macedonian front line is the Companions and Peltasts against the Horse Archers, and the Pike phalanx against the Scythed Chariots.

The Persian horse archers defeat the Peltasts, Alexander doesn't intervene as the Companions are more important, and the Companions and Pikes are victorious. The Thessalians go in against the Horse Archers from reserve, another tweak I've made is to rate the Thessalians as 'Ferocious'. The Persians cunningly put their reserve archers against the Companions, the Immortals take the centre against the Pikes.

Despite Alexanders personal leadership, the Companions are shot down! To add insult to injury, the Thessalinas completely fail to rout the horse archers, fortunately the latter miss with their arrow volleys.

It all rests on the Phalanx now.

Alexander is forced to rally the Thessalians from a successful Persian charge, but the Phalanx makes no error and breaks the Persian centre. Darius legs it back to Bactria.

I was pleased with that. I liked the changes to the Persians, it made them less flexible and more brittle, which is how they seemed to be irl. The great success was Alexanders re-rolls, they really added something to the narrative feel, and although it is a powerful bonus, I was pleased that on two occasions he failed as it adds some jeopardy to the experience. 

The lower breakpoint for the Persians saved some play time, but I think the decisions around whether or not to use Alexander to re-roll added to it, so in the end the three battles took 15 minutes to play. I'd rather have some decisions about where to use a General than another round of combat though. 

I think that is ready to try with the Tuesday regulars now.