Battleground Show and lots of other stuff from last week 😀

It has been a busy week, 1 funeral, 1 reunion and two games so this is a mixed bag to catch up on the blog. First up a plug for the Battleground Show which is next Saturday.

For several years I have put on a small participation game, this year I wanted to make use of the recently painted Uboat as part of my Operation Sealion campaign. A few final touches to the setup are needed this week.

But here is the basic layout, the Germans are looking to capture a number of objectives around the harbour, the game itself will be very simple. Anybody at the show or in the area come over and play or just say hello 👍

Last week saw a return to Middle Earth for a battle

As a ‘pick up’ game two equal forces charged onto the table

“They have a troll” !

Warg riders face off against Gondorian infantry who form into a shield wall

After several turns of combat the ‘evil’ forces of Sauron get the better of it and the dark rider charges into finish of the Gondor scouts.

….then dash it Eomer charges in from behind rolls some lucky dice and the evil shade is despatched to the underworld fun all the same 😀

I’ve been in London for a couple of days catching up with some friends..…I found time for some research into possible future projects at the British museum ?

By chance the trip also coincided with an temporary exhibition at the British library on the history of Fantasy literature sponsored as it happens by Wayland Games

A whole mixed bag of stuff and this is just a few snaps as I walked round, above an original by Alan Lee….hard not to be inspired by his artwork

A Warhammer battle found its way into the exhibition

A first addition of the Hobbit

Links back to classical literature, here the Iliad 

and a copy of Beowulf , lots of their stuff so if you are stuck in London with an hour to spend worth a look.

Following our last SYW battle Martin and I decided to see how a non-historical SYW campaign might work, i won’t go into the details here as we are still developing the mechanics but after developing a hex based map and a exchanging a number of moves two of our armies clashed

We then played out the battle this weekend

The battlefield turned out to be rolling hills with the four villages as objectives, the Prussians are advancing across the table looking to capture the bridge in the village in the distance.

Using Honours of war we rolled for a our generals abilities and a flurry of 6’s meant pretty much all of the Austrians and two of the Prussian brigades would be hot headed and dashing. Unfortunately for the Prussians this effected them badly. Having set up anchoring their left flank in the village they were forced to charge out towards the Austrians !

Lucky they have cavalry support, across the rest of the battlefield musket fire  rings out

The Austrians decided to advance 

They focus on the Prussian  centre where a worrying gap develops ?

At the other end of the battlefield the Prussians have at least made it to the objective, must now they must hold it

This they do for several turns, but support is slow in arriving

Austrian cavalry being pushed back

But at least the Prussians can hold their line of retreat. In the end the ‘dashing’ Prussians in the objective village on the river chose to charge out, suffering badly from their foolhardy assault their brigade collapsed, this gave the Prussians no option but to withdraw and the Austrians a minor victory. A very fun battle right up to the point the Prussians charged out of their stronghold ! We are tweeting the campaign rules but planning another battle soon.

Much discussion about lead piles recently lucky I’m not counting ! Martin dropped these unwanted figures off for me to sort and accommodate into my Napoleonic project. Mainly elite miniatures, so older sculpts but I am interested to see how they paint up. Out of this pile I have managed to salvage three infantry battalions, one being a small Polish Regiment and some British light cavalry although they need horses. Several other command figures etc. they was also a Foundry battalion of french although they really are too small to use in my collection, so I’ll need to move them on. If anybody collects Foundry Napoleonics let me know.

The bag weighed a lot !

My plastics volcano has also grown this week by the kind donation of some Epic Scottish pike blogs. These were the ‘free’ sprues which came with WI magazine kindly donanted to my force by David 

And some painting, running along side my British Napoleonics which just need basing I have also painted up another unit of Late Romans. Very simple scheme and some old shield transfers which don’t look too bad from a distance.

That’s it for now, I have some more prep work planned for this week before the Battleground Show and should have some British Guards to share when I have painted the bases on them.

Thanks for checking in 👍

Matt