Adventures on the Wargames Table

Captain Todd shook his head grimly as the stretcher-bearers ran past carrying the badly wounded Lieutenant Carruthers. The Germans had really caught B Company on the hop. Although how they had managed to infiltrate the front lines was anybody’s guess. May be one of the few remaining French collaborators had helped them? What mattered was that Monty had given the order to hold the village at all costs. Reinforcements were on their way. In fact Monty had visibly bridled at Todd’s suggestion that it might be prudent if the General and his small staff withdrew from the village. “Right... Sergeant Murphy!” he called, his voice carrying even over the buzz of German MG fire. “His Lordship isn’t going to run just because a few German parachutists are giving us some bother, so I want a section in the old barn and another behind the café. The Vickers can cover the château gates and the road!” “Yessir!” the brawny Irishman replied snapping a crisp salute, then dashed off bellowing at his men to g...

I've found my British platoon a little out-gunned compared to Panzergrenadier and Fallschirmjager platoons and their seemingly endless supply of MG42's ;o)  So, a quick word with the quartermaster and 'hey presto' ... A Vickers MMG. Actually, I picked it up at Salute but it's taken me this long to realise how much I needed the extra firepower! Also, here's a closer view of the "senior officer" I've painted for our recent "Monty" campaign (more on that in the next post!). Not quite a facsimile of the real man, but hey - this one is only an inch high! A better view of the MMG. The gunners and the chap with the compass are Warlord figures. The other two, pistol and rifle, are from Crusader miniatures. I like the fact that the machine-gunner has his tea mug strapped to his backpack. Oh, and the barn and fences are by Charlie Foxtrot models.

Way back last year I got the splendid Sarissa Chateau kit as a birthday present. As I put it together I realised that simply plonking it on the table would not be enough... it needed a proper setting, i.e. landscaped gardens! Anyway, Jenny has kindly painted it (rather nicely) for me, so here it is. Reining in any Capability Brown tendencies, I designed the gardens from scratch, bearing mind that you need to be able to get plenty of models in and around it. I ordered some mill columns from Warbases, some gates, plus I asked them to cut some tiled strips (for the wall tops). The walls are simply foamcore with the tiling strips added. The 'gardens' are MDF sheets - all cut to fit together seamlessly. The MDF has to be fairly strongly pre-curved using plenty of heavy books to obviate the curving brought about by applying texture and paint - these have turned out nice and flat. No fancy gardens are complete without some statues. The bronze statues - spare Roman and Med...

Général de Brigade d'Orange and I were keen to do some more play-testing of his splendid rules "Zero Hour" so I laid out a table and waited ... since he was fashionably late ;o) I decided to take a few pics of my WW1 British heading for the front line. Think this chap needs the attention of a pretty nurse at the nearest aid station - sadly it will be some tired, over-worked and possibly ham-fisted medical orderly who will apply the dressings. A walking stick ... the ideal weapon for tackling the might of the Imperial German army. Not quite an army of Germans, but a few of them were getting ready to give the BEF a warm welcome. Others were beyond caring what the enemy did. Anyway, the good Général de Brigade d'Orange finally arrived, muttering something along the lines of ".. couldn't let the fois gras go to waste.." or perhaps ".. I was really enjoying that French tart.." ;o) So enough faffing around with dollies and sce...