So long England and thanks for everything, good friends, good people, good times,.............

.........,most of the time anyway, I'm going home!


2014 was in all honesty an awful year, depressing job, mounting debts, stress, high blood pressure, England becoming a less pleasant place to live for several reasons, bailiffs, anger, selling figure collection to survive, diabetes suicidal thoughts etc........blah, blah, blah!

So the other half decided that we should sell the house, move to a farm in the Republic of Ireland.........so we have and tomorrow we are!

I won't bore you with the drama of selling a house these days or packing up a man shed but we paid off the debts, bought a needs some work three and a half acre property in Ireland (lock, stock and two smoking barrels) and that was that.........

I'm going to miss England especially the friends I've met, the bloggers, the shows, the games, the best friends, becoming a Reject, the last few years of the eleven and a half years at GSK.............

So I'm off and will be back blogging regularly as soon as I can, painting, planting potatoes and turnips, becoming calmer, being Irish........

Currently still laptop free but using a pad and it can be a fecking nuisance, doing this on friends laptop where I stayed after the sale and transition, painted a lot before finishing work and hope to post in the painting challenge before time runs out, maybe one big post Curt?,.....

See you soon and a bit of cleavage at the end of the pictures as a warning for those who open this at work.............

Good friends, times and people......................

Happy Trails..................

"The Battle of Fulda", the what if Napoleonic wargame after Leipzig part 2!

Everything was in place for the game to go either way............but the dice gods were watching!

Every turn you had to roll to see who moved first, fired first etc...., Richard charged his Legere into the Schutzen, they were lucky they were able to form before they were hit but the main issue here is his Corps commander is within 2 inches and any casualties caused on his unit will cause a D20 to be rolled and the amount of casualties caused is rolled could kill him, they were lucky.....

This is something that tickled me, these casualties on a Russian column are from his own rocket battery, fired 7 times and it only caused two friendly casualties....... 

Here they come again, Russian spirit, Lee's frustration............

All that cavalry and a big gap..........

Trying a little David Bailey, ruined by a Russian........

The Prussians crest the hill..........

The scene of battle at this time, the Prussians are steaming ahead.........

John throws caution to the wind and launches his cavalry forward against lines of infantry and squadrons of cavalry............

He slowly dismantles the entire Prussian left flank, wins round after round of melee, the only fly in the ointment was a drawn result which he won next round, we couldn't believe the Prussians run of luck on the dice, when he had to roll for pursuit checks he would pass them comfortably and retire in good order..........

We then felt a disturbance in the force and the mood changed, we had joked that we should wake Ray as he was on nights but we needn't have worried as Surjit had rang him earlier and woke him not realising he was not at the game, how we laughed...........

A morale check has gone badly and a hole has appeared in my weak lines, at this stage it was about exchanging volleys............

Lee steadies himself again for another assault, 3rd or 4th time is the charm?...........

Still waiting on a charge on a very weak point of my line, they never came.......

French cavalry rush forward to fill gaps.......

Ray sides with the Prussians, smug shit.........

The Legere after a Russian artillery barrage finally hits and morale causes them to fall back, is the way finally open for the Russians......

John has now caused routing and Brigade checks for the Prussians, entire brigades are falling back, Surjit has rolled nothing higher than a 3 on two dice 3 times........

I drop my Poles back to form a secure line..........

The Legere (disordered) rush forward and slam the door shut on the Russian columns.......

Ammunition on most artillery had run dry for me and the Russians by this stage (only cannister left) but what's this.......an ammunition wagon appears but too late......

A deflated, grim looking, couldn't roll well to save his life, blogging, sweating but in his natural environment blog whore......

Richard charges but is met by two Prussian squadrons.........

Lee and his Russians threw himself and them forward time and time again but to no avail, no luck again with the dice or in fairness his position, I actually started to feel pity for him near the end, this infuriated Lee no end........

Richard has routed both the Prussian squadrons and pursued and smashed into a trailing unit behind.........

A better view and the two routing Prussian cavalry.........

Richard routed the third cavalry squadron........

2 of these routing units would disperse after failing another brigade check which if the game continued would have brought on another divisional check............

John received man of the game (failing at not looking smug but I don't think he was trying not to), never lost a melee and caused brigade and divisional checks within the Prussian army.......

The game ended there with Postie adding up the victory points, 1 to 5 points difference is a minor victory, 6 to 10 points difference is a major victory, we got a 12 points difference (18-6) and Postie declaring a bloody thrashing victory!

In fairness the Prussians and their allies had no luck, never won a melee, failed so many morale rolls, failed brigade checks and got their asses handed to them and then we (the French) started to feel sorry for them, I think this hurt the most........

Good game, great result, well for the French anyway............poor Lee's dice luck continues, the only thing that could have made this better if Ray had been a Prussian.....hold on he was for a while!!!!!!!