Historical Information Sources

This is a post I made on the Very British Civil Forum: ARBM War Room. 

It is quite amazing what stuff exists in the archives.


The 1933 Census was one of my primary documents for writing ARBM. I considered a Census in the year I was writing about a lucky coincidence. (Shelldrake generously posted the link to the PDF. 1933 Census He has made a number of interesting posts recently that are well worth reading. VBCForum: ARBM War Room )

The Australian and State yearbooks are particularly interesting if you want to know everything from population distribution to exports and imports for an area. Here is the link to the 1934 Yearbook. 1934 Australian Yearbook. From here you can also get access to the state's yearbooks, except for SA and TAS who didn't produce them till more recently.

If you want to uncover information about the various factions, and probably discover more, then a trawl of the Australian archives provides a vast amount of material collected by the Attorney Generals Department: Investigations Branch and the organisations they morphed into. (The Commonwealth Security Service in 1941 and later Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, aka ASIO in 1949) The files hold official correspondence, surveillance reports, newspaper clippings, etc. Some of which is still redacted, more due to the files being scans of the original paper file rather than being classified. These files provided an insight into the numerous factions that existed at the time and were my primary source for factions presented in ARBM. With the exception of the ARC, which I created, all the factions presented really existed and many were under active surveillance.

Here is the link to the National Archive: National Archives of Australia  If you start by searching on a faction from the book you are interested in you should find something. The New Guard and CPA (Communist Party of Australia) information is voluminous and will provide many nuggets.

The Newspaper archives are also useful if you know what you are looking for. I generally use Trove at the National Library of Australia.  Trove

Matt
https://arbm1933.blogspot.com.au/

Eureka Miniatures, Cancon and Max34

Living 10 minutes walk from Eureka Miniatures means I am able to drop in every month, talk to friends and generally enjoy the wonderful characters that make up our hobby. Nic is always welcoming and always has new greens to ogle at. This combination means that I am able to get miniatures that he has put on to molds but not formally released on the website.

Nic and Eureka Miniatures will be up at Cancon over the coming Australia Day long weekend. Along with many delightful new figures he will also have copies of my Book, "A Right Bloody Mess" for those of you who wish to delve further into the Australia in the 1930s.

 One of his latest offering is the Mad Maximillian range of cars, accessories and figures. These are all 1930s inspired and offer incredible modelling opportunities. There is a corresponding set of rules, Maximillian 1934, abbreviated to Max34, by Ara from Mana Press.

Max34 is a simple and fun set of rules, with the ability to tailor vehicles statistics to match your creations. It is based in the ARBM setting and is a great example of my desire for the gamers to take the ARBM setting where they will.

Here are a couple of cars I have borrowed from the web. These beautiful examples are by Pappa Midnight and show what can be achieved.

2018 is Here (and my 1st International Delivery)

The silly season is over and 2018 is upon us.

The first copy of ARBM delivered outside Australia arrived today, the lucky gent hailing from Scotland. Deliver was 16 days. Not bad as this included New Year. It looks like 3 week delivery times are a good approximate, except for November/December when all bets are off.

So what does this new year hold for me? Truthfully, I have no bloody idea.

• I have a novel in the planning phase.
• I need to clean up the games room before my wife gets involved.
• I would like to play more board games, hopefully dragging my wife beyond Carcassonne.
• I have three rule sets in development, getting one through play testing would be nice.
• Keep working on Rommel scenarios for ARBM.
• Finish my example CoC forcelists for ARBM.
• Learn IABSM and adapt for ARBM.
• Paint more.
• and the list goes on.

Now for something interesting.

An Australian Red Centre mobile patrol late in the conflict. Trucks are armed with German supplied MG-34s.