Adventures on the Wargames Table

The invasion of Italy, beginning with the Sicily landings in May 1943, are a part of WW2 that doesn’t seem to get as much attention as say Normandy or the Eastern Front but I cannot understand why? It has everything a wargamer could ask for: amphibious operations, airborne landings by glider and parachute, large scale assaults against well-prepared defenders, small scale house-to-house attacks to capture remote villages, colourful characters plus a huge variety of troops, equipment and terrain. So… when Orange Dave suggested we use the Bolt Action supplement “Duel in the Sun” to re-fight the Italian campaign, I couldn’t wait to get started! Game one in our six stage campaign represents a glider attack by airborne troops to capture a bridge a little way inland from the beach landings on the south-eastern coast. The Germans/Italians have rigged the bridge for demolition but, before they can blow it up, a glider full of angry airborne troops (in our case P...

Every wargamer worth his salt should do a little re-basing from time to time ... Here I've started re-basing my Early Imperial Roman figures with view to multi-basing them to suit a range of rules. This is how I posed them to get an idea of how I wanted the finished unit to look. Then out came two pairs of pliers to try to 'pop' them off the bases by twisting opposite corners. Foolishly I had super-glued them to the bases (do not do this!) but with a little application they came off okay. Unpainted sand These 8 figures are actually taking up the space of 10 figures, but as I have 16 I'd like to use them as two "troops" of archers for my Kingdoms of Men "Kings of War" army. For historical games they would simply be two detachments from an Auxiliary cohort. My Romans were originally organised and based with a view to campaigning in the newly conquered province of Britannia, but I've decided to abandon it to the barbarians and hea...

I expect many of you will have already seen the Facebook advert from Gripping Beast about their forthcoming massed battle rules "Swordpoint" ... Well, I'm rather intrigued by this. Penned by Martin Gibbins etc along with all the creative input from the GB team, it has to be worth a look! There was a demo of it at Salute, but I couldn't make it along this year. There's also some vague info from Guy Bowers on the WSS blog here . In the FB comments/replies there's talk of books of lists, etc. They've supported SAGA very well so it looks promising for Swordpoint. Talking of SAGA ... The campaign supplement "Age of the Wolf" was previewed at Salute and will be available generally next month. I'm very excited about this too. SAGA has been crying out for a campaign system and if this review is anything to go by then it looks very promising indeed. Also, in the FB discussion were comments about a forthcoming Arthurian supplement for SAGA....

Yes, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 90th birthday today! Your very good health ma'am! Hurrah!!!

Wargames Table chum Dave took along his Great War demo game (for Zero Hour) to Daffcon recently. Now, I wasn't available to attend but I was pleased to be able to help out with a few bits of terrain, etc. Dave sent me these photos which I was keen to share. The game all set up and ready to 'bully off' As mentioned before the Zero Hour rules are currently being re-worked to provide a more streamlined reading experience. The actual game mechanisms have been in place for some time and work very well. But as any rules writer will tell you, trying to turn ideas in to written rules can be quite challenging. This battle was themed around part of the British attack at Cambrai in November/December 1917, hence the Mark IV tanks and bare trees. More specifically the bridge crossing the St Quentin Canal at Masnieres. The British advance The Forces British 1 infantry battalion (3 companies of 2 platoons) supported by a tank company (2 male + 1 female, Goliath, Apollo, G...

Wargames Table chum Dave has recently bought himself a new gaming table from TSS . Now the boards are initially aimed at hosting a Great War demo game for Dave's Zero Hour rule set, hence the trench line. However some of the figures and scenery for that are still in the pipeline, so we decided that the best thing to do was to give it a run out with a quick game of Bolt Action. Dave led my Paras whilst I had Panzergrenadiers. The trenches will have added duck-boards, revetting, etc to go with the sand bags. The latter were just resin pieces that I picked up at a show a few years back. For now they were just placed on the lip of the trench; Dave will incorporate them when he customises the boards. When I picked up the boards I had a natter to chap at TSS and he's working on a range of boards built using the slightly more durable styrofoam material. I would just like to say that the boards have a lovely flocked finish and were a pleasure to play on - even the sound of the ...