Back again!

The Prodigal Blogger returns!!!

Through reasons not entirely of my own making, it has been ages since my last post:

1. The World Cup was on and, even with the (less than) mighty English doing rather less well than at least 16 other teams, it was still compulsive viewing.
2. Workload has been manic at, erm, work...
3. Family members will insist on me taking them to football practice/ matches/ tournaments, hockey training/ matches, swimming, Guides/ Brownies/ Beavers, shopping, etc.
4. Equipment failure of the PC (as in personal computer) kind.

Yet, at the risk of sounding like Yoda, "Idle I have not been."

Which leads me nicely to the X-Wing tournament I entered on 12th July at Stafford Games. I only played my first ever game a week or so earlier, but took my TIE swarm along to test my Dark Side out against all comers. Four enjoyable games, two wins and two losses (to the two guys who eventually finished first and second), and not finishing last was a bonus! Both my defeats were against a four X-Wing set up, with named characters and a few additional skills thrown in. My TIE swarm was 5 Academy TIE fighters (read "crap") and two Avenger Squadron TIE Interceptors (read "rather better than crap, but hardly elite"). Do I intend to stay with the Dark side after being bested by X-Wings??? Well, my two wins were against other Rebel ships and I have not even used my TIE Advanced (Darth Vader's ship at the end of Episode 4) or my TIE Bomber...

We also took "Kirkburn Bridge, c1314" to Phalanx back in June for a third outing. The (less than) mighty English took the wrong football boots to this event too, however, and disappeared faster than an ice cube in the Sahara, but we did at least manage to wound Robert The Bruce! It did not help when Nephew Paul rolled 10d6, needing 5+ saves, and made 8 of them.........Occasional Wargamer Brother Kev was most gracious as Gloucester's knights raced back home via Berwick, northern jeers ringing round their great helms. OWBK even agreed to give Nephew Paul a lift home after my vociferous threast of violence and abandonment drew further mirth from the other side of the table. OWBK is known to be rather more mellow than I...

And what have I smuggled past my lady wife these past two months? Well, apart from Star Wars space ships, my main single purchase was some 1st Corps/ Curtey's Arthurians, actually Saxons, with a view to resurrecting that ideal, using Dux Bellorum, when I have finished.......

the Turks.

The "Malta" project has continued apace, and I will post photos soon, with around 180 done so far. I have also purchased another 180 varied Turks/ Moslems and Christians to finish this off, along with some plastic Arabs who will be converted (as models, not in any religious sense) to bear ladders, etc., for the storming of the town walls in our proposed game. Yet, I have shelved this project temporarily to concentrate for the rest of this month on....

Turks.

15mm ones to be precise, so I can enter another Stafford Games tournament on 6th and 7th September using the "By Fire & Sword" rules. Only 30 more cavalry to finish as I type and I have only played once, using Poles against Cossacks, so a few practice games through August would not go amiss.

So, reasons good and bad aside, I am still here, I am still painting, I am still buying and I am now posting again!!!

See you soon.

G

Phalanx - Roll of Honour

Purchases aside, what did I think about Phalanx?

GAMES - almost all were of "wargames standard" rather than professionally-produced trophy magnets, which is not a bad thing, especially in this age of one size fits all and especially if you want to grab some new blood and not deter them, but there were some nice tables. My usual gripe, and one very much in evidence again today, is the guys who turn up to play and turn their backs on everyone around. If your are demonstrating something, then DEMONSTRATE IT!!! Too many games are used as excuses to put on something a bit bigger than the home table allows for, with no thought or desire to actually interest anyone else in what is actually a public event and an ideal showground for the hobby. (OK, I will climb down now, put the rant-a-phone away and carry on....)

Special mentions go, firstly, to the Crosby club for their Very British Civil War game, masses of mainly Metcalfe card kits forming a Coronation Street like vista on a 6 x 4 table, with Anarchists and other ne'er do wells trawling the streets or cowering behind barricades. As the writer of the Freikorps article that appeared in Battlegames issue 14 (my one and only article to date, thereby showing how lazy I have become...), this was a set up almost bound to catch my eye.
Secondly, the Victorian set up for the new rules from Westwind looked the picture too. Daft lad that I am, I did not get the name of the guy running this. The Critical Mass people also had a couple of tables showing off their sci-fi rules, one a sort of Ancient Egypt/ Stargate affair, the other a floral haven with multi-coloured trees. Simple yet very pretty.

TRADERS - special mention number 1 goes to Early War Miniatures, whose Mark V male tank and illuminated display certainly tempted my wallet - but I was on a mission not to buy what I did not intend to, so not this time. Special mention Number 2 to AW Miniatures, a name I had not encountered before, but their Indian Mutiny figures looked the part. Special mention Number 3 to Dave Thomas, who sold me much of what I bought, yet put in a discount I neither asked for nor expected. There was probably enough to interest most visitors, but one or two notable absentees who normally frequent bigger affairs. I think a "normal guy" could get most of his needs at Phalanx, though I did not notice any plastic kit suppliers anywhere that I recall.

VENUE - big enough (just!) for the show, but parking tight due to other commitments on the site - it is a sports and social facility. Lighting in these places also appears to be uniformly poor unless you like yellow.......

ACCESS - I thought the weather might make the journey interesting, but, those startled rabbit car drivers who lose the plot whenever it rains/ snows/ threatens to either rain or snow/ blows greater than force 1 on the Beaufort scale, aside, the journey was pretty uneventful. And then there is the daily outing of the National Stunt Drivers' Association, aka anyone in a lorry........

Actually, the venue is dead easy to find, being just a mile or so off the M62.

WILL I GO AGAIN??? - Oh yes!!!!!

G

Anarchist road block on the VBCW games by the Crosby club of Liverpool

The entire VBCW table

A varitable oodle of VBCW reinforcements (what is the collective noun for reinforcements?)

Those rabble-rousing Anarchists again

I always had a thing for steam lorries, ever since I saw one on the film "One of our dinosaurs is missing", with Peter Ustinov

The Ravenna game by the Lance and Longbow team

I like early cannon too

 

The game put on by Warlord games tos how off thier new World War 2 rules - more of the higher end game table

The other side of the Warlord Games demo

Some Indian Mutiny action, which looked rather interesting, but I cannot remember who was staging it.....Bally Badmashes to the flank look set to kill off a few kilties

Is this really worth fighting over? Mudbrick metropolis laced with Johnny Foreigner types who don't like good Queen Vic, Gawd bless her! 

Goodies

The Phalanx Show has been and gone for another year and I did indeed make the jaunt up the M6 to St Helens. The weather promised to be foul, but was largely OK for an English summer, but the usual line up of startled rabbits (aka car drivers who lose the plot when the rain/ snow/ wind/ etc comes in) put in their customary appearance. Ditto the National Stunt Drivers' Association aka anyone in a lorry........

But I digress.

I had a budget. I blew it, but not by the usual margin, so perhaps I am either:
a) tiring of my lifelong predeliction for soldierly toys, or,
b) found little to my tastes on offer, or, there but for the grace of God,
c) I am becoming responsible and realise I have to curtail my expenditure once in a while.........

Here's what I bought.

If you recall my previous post, I was looking for more 1690 stuff (infantry, cavalry and artillery), as well as additions to my 30 Years' War artillery and a couple more bits as options.

From the picture above:

Front (l-r): 3 packs of Ancient Indian cavalry from Curtey's/ 1st Corps (AN INTENDED PURCHASE!), then Reiver Castings 1690 era cavalry and infantry (7 packs, ANOTHER INTENDED PURCHASE!!), then 5 30 Years' War guns with 2 crew packs (Curtey's/ 1st Corps again and YET ANOTHER INTENDED PURCHASE!!!).

Middle (l-r): 2 boxes of "1672" infantry from the former Copplestone range purchased from Dave Thomas, along with 4 packs of Crusader Woodland Indians from the same source (I AM ON A ROLL HERE !!!!!), topped off with 2 large (3"/ 75mm) and 4 medium (2+"/ 60mm) metal discs for command elements for 1690 and a pot of brown Basetex, all from Magnetic Displays (who seem to be at every show I ever go to - top performance there from them).

Back (l-r): 2 largely random purchases - the "Charlie Don't Surf" rules from Too Fat Lardies (which may help kickstart my Vietnam stuff) and the "Enduring Freedom" sourcebook to "Force on Force" from Wargames Emporium.

I ALMOST STUCK TO A PLAN!!!!! I ALMOST BOUGHT ONLY THINGS I "NEEDED"!!!!

So, is it "a", "b" or "c" that is to blame?????

G