Adventures on the Wargames Table

Orange Dave and I were keen to get on with our Sicily/Italy campaign so game two was arranged to coincide with our inaugural visit to Bristol Independent Gaming. Here's the table with some troops deployed ready for the off. The hill is thanks to Dave - the rest is from Jim at BIG :o) Before I get on to the game I just want to say a big thank you to Jim at B.I.G. for a superbly warm welcome. Beforehand I'd mentioned that Dave and I were doing Bolt Action in Sicily so Jim laid out a splendid table for us. I arrived, we had a quick chat then he showed me the table and frankly I was blown away at how welcome we were made. Well done, sir! We will definitely be returning! Regularly I hope. Anyway, game two of our campaign sees Dave's victorious Allied force pushing inland after their successful initial assault. We'd agreed that in game one, if the allies took the bridge then they would be allowed armour for the next game, so I was firmly expecting at least a Churchill...

A recent trip to see friends in Cornwall was an absolute blast! Some of the best fun to be had in a l-o-n-g time! Thanks to Colin and Nik, Paul and Helen, and Vicky, plus the boys for a superb weekend of fun, games, great company, fine food and excellent walks!!! This included a first play of a truly awesome after dinner card game (which is a must-buy) plus ... I learnt a huge amount about Robots, Marvel Superheroes and Dinosaurs! ;o) Games first ... of course we managed to squeeze a couple of games in between all the sight-seeing. The first game was splendid Kings of War bash with Colin, which (being a KoW supremo) he won with ease. I've blogged about KoW before so 'nuff said. The other game we played was none other than the latest offering from Too Fat Lardies ... Version 2.0 Now, Paul has only just taken delivery of a hefty order from Front Rank miniatures (we were opening the packs to put them on the table!) so only a few are painted, but hey, who cares when yo...

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...