Solo Christmas Wargames Quiz

By Rob Morgan

My first thought when putting this quiz together was to make it a sort of OstFront-Winter War- battles and campaigns in the snow special, but that’s a bit too obvious and so I tried to vary the questions a bit. I couldn’t find a battle in which sleighs were used either, but if anyone out there can think of one?

Battles fought on skis seem pretty rare too.

So, here we are, one question for each day of Christmas:

1. In which standard work on wargaming will you find an account of ‘The Battle of Schwein Lake.1806’?
2. Which European fortress was destroyed by its defenders on March 22nd, 1915, after a siege of five months?
3. Which, now-vanished, wargames journal had the motto “It is better to be feared than loved”?
4. The Battle of Chaeronea, 338BC, was the first victory of what formidable military formation?
5. What battle system, devised by Colonel A.H.Bourne, did Charles Grant expound in his 1979 Wargame Tactics?
6. The Battles of Lobositz (1756);Kolin(1757);Hochkirch (1758) and Kunersdorf (1759) were defeats for which ‘great’ military leader?
7. What makes the Battle of Monongahela (1755) and the Battle of Quebec (1759) unique encounters in North American warfare?
8. Whose first military history publication was The Malakand Field Force: A Frontier War in 1898?
9. The Battlefields of Lewes (1264); Lutzen (1632) and Ligny (1815) all had a distinctive physical feature rarely seen on the modern wargames table. What was it?
10. Which army fought eight (arguably nine) battles in as many days and then surrendered?
11. What structure did Bonaparte use to his victorious advantage at the Battles of Ratisbon (1809), Wagram(1809), and Smolensk (1812)?
12. What do the Late Medieval Battle of Towton (1461) and the Napoleonic Battle of La Rothiere (1814) have in common?

Sadly, no cash prize this time, but they should exercise the little grey cells. A couple of hard questions too, I think.

Rob Morgan.

Editor’s note: Answers can be found here.