A busy weekend, Society meeting 24th February and Cavalier 25th February

Andy rounds up a busy weekend for the Society. Photos by Andy unless stated otherwise, header photo by Stephen.

Last weekend saw both a Society meeting and our annual trip to the Cavalier Wargames show run by Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society.

Only three games at the meeting on Saturday, perhaps due to some members only being able to get out on one of the days.

First up, David ran a Napoleonic Corps game using General d’Armee rules and figures from his collection. This was a popular game with half a dozen members partaking.

Eric ran a Judge Dredd RPG, only a couple of photos of this one I’m afraid.

Judge Dredd RPG
Judge Dredd Bar room Brawl

Finally on Saturday Andy and Stephen finished off their Lion Rampant Five Battles campaign, joined this time by Treasurer Mark and new member Charlotte.

Game one.

This was a Convoy mission, the Christians had to escort three “baggage” markers diagonally across the table, a cart, some monks and some civilians. The Muslim forces had to stop them.

Much reduced cavalry face off (Charlotte)
Andy’s convoy and escorts (Charlotte)
Egyptian Light Cavalry (Charlotte)

Game 2. This was to be our “Big Battle”, with two commands on each side. Here the objective was simply to defeat the opposition.

Andy’s warband
Andy’s Warband (Charlotte)
Charlotte’s and Stephen’s warbands
Stephen’s view point (Stephen)

We will post a write up of the final games in the campaign in the near future.

CAVALIER

On Sunday half a dozen or so members travelled to Tonbridge for Cavalier.

The Society’s game for this year was masterminded and built by Phil, and was a 3D representation of a map game published in the 1977 Warlord Comic Summer Special portraying a Luftwaffe raid on Southern England during the Battle of Britain.

Phil’s board, 560 individually marked squares!
Airfields and ammunition dumps are three of the targets for the Luftwaffe
A close up of the town
A copy of the original game can just be seen at the bottom of the photo

MWS at Salute 50

A small contingent from the society braved the roads (and rails) to Excel last weekend to stage Peter’s Fallujah 2004 game at Salute 50.

A view from one end of the Salute 50 hall to the other, MWS were at the far right end in this photo.

The premise of the game is that a USMC platoon have been tasked with clearing an area of Fallujah, sweeping through buildings to clear them of insurgents. The three participants each control one of the platoon’s squads, and depending on the draw of Fog of War cards may have additional assets to aid them in their mission, for example, helicopters, an M1 Abrams tank, a LAV-25 APC, a sniper team or a Navy Corpsman.

Games are intended to last an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, and use a simplified version of Ambush Alley’s Force on Force rules. Figures are from Elhiem Figures Modern range, civilian vehicles from Matchbox or similar and buildings and terrain scratch-built by Society member Peter.

Peter and John explaining the finer points of the rules to the three volunteers.

Here are a few more photos of the game in action:

We were very pleased to be awarded a prize by the South London Warlords: “Best 10 – 18mm game”.

The game’s mastermind, Peter, receiving the award.

The trophy

Congratulations to Peter for creating an award winning game, and thanks to all members who have helped run the game at shows this year.

The game’s next appearance is at Broadside on June 10th.

Salute 2021 Trophy and Society Meeting 13th November 2021

The Society has been busy this weekend jut passed, a small contingent ventured to ExCeL for the delayed Salute 2020 (or 2021?) whilst others attended the normal society meeting. First up, Salute. Andy’s thoughts with pictures by John, Mark and Andy.

Five of the membership, John, Brian, Mark, Marcus and Andy, attended Salute putting on Marcus’ Pulp participation game “Biggles and the Island at the Top of the World“.

The theme for the show was the Battle of Britain. The 2020 show was intended to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the battle. Centrally displayed in the hall were a replica Spitfire and Hurricane, with some RAF reenactors making an appearance after the photo was taken.

They say ExCeL looks like a hanger…

I got the impression that Salute hired more of ExCeL than usual, to space us out more, although I also understand there were fewer games and traders scheduled to attend than in “normal” years; and there were a few “no shows” in both categories.

Salute General view. More spaced out than usual, and perhaps fewer attendees?

In Marcus’ game Biggles is searching a lost Artic island for a missing Professor and the strange artefacts he was studying.

Biggle’s party deplane from their Walrus

His party discover a secret labyrinth, with ever changing chambers and passages.

The labyrinth awaits the explorers

However he was not alone, a party of Nazis with unworldly weapons were also trying to recover the Professor.

The German’s advanced submarine

The Russians had also sent an NKVD team to prevent the Nazis securing their objective.

The Soviet NKVD disembark from their Aerosan

And finally, a lost tribe of Vikings were hellbent on preventing anyone from leaving the island with the Ragnarok Stones, the phenomena the Professor had been studying.

The Vikings patrol the labyrinth

We ran several games throughout the day, with up to four members of the public taking control of one of the four parties.

A selection of photos from the games:

Vikings find the secret chamber
Biggles faces down the NKVD
The Germans find themselves boxed in

We are pleased to announce that the game won the Jim Clarke Memorial Award for the Best Science Fiction / Fantasy game at Salute.

The Jim Clark Memorial Award for the Best Science Fiction / Fantasy Game

Meanwhile, back at the regular Society meeting, other members were running a series of games. Photos courtesy of Mark J and Stephen.

First off Mark J and Pete ran a game of Fields of Glory, pitching Mark’s Hundred Years War English against Pete’s Hungarians.

FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians
FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians
FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians
FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians
FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians
FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians
FOG Ancients – HYW English vs Hungarians

The first battle was won by the English, the Hungarian Knights couldn’t cope with longbows and stakes. The Hungarians won the second battle by focusing on the men at arms and drawing the longbow fire away from the knights. So, honours even.

Alan ran a Star Wars X-Wing game.

Star Wars X-Wing
Star Wars X-Wing
Star Wars X-Wing

And finally Stephen ran a Stargrave game – A Hive of Scum and Villainy:

‘A Hive of Scum and Villainy’ – a Stargrave adventure
‘A Hive of Scum and Villainy’ – a Stargrave adventure
‘A Hive of Scum and Villainy’ – a Stargrave adventure

Revisiting Snowfall

Back in 2015 club member Marcus put together a James Bond themed game for that years show circuit. The game had secret agents being chased down a snowy mountainside pursued by numerous bad guys.

Marcus demonstrating an early mock up of the game

There were many challenges to putting on a game like this, constructing the mountain, sticking magnets to it to stop the miniatures sliding to the bottom as well as many action cards, unit stats and rules for the game.

But another challenge was a real lack of 28mm modern era skiing miniatures. Marcus could find plenty of WW2 winter troops but wanted this to be modern. Marcus did manage to find suitably positioned troops to act as the bad guys, and converted them to be on snowboards.

Modern troopers on snowboards

However Marcus needed skiing miniatures to represent the secret agent, their love interest and a final miniature for the main bad guy (well bad woman in this case).
Having dabbled a bit with sculpting miniatures I volunteered to see if I could convert some existing miniatures for the starring roles.

The man himself

Marcus provided a number of miniatures, so I started with the main character, the body was an artic trooper miniature with a head swap from a Copplestone Castings Man in Black miniature. I chose this miniature because it needed to be holding ski poles and have their feet in a suitable position for ski’s, and this one was already in a good pose.

I had changed the left hand because of the original weapon being held, repair the detail on the miniature and added a fur collar to ensure it looked suitable for cold weather.

The Female Agent before and during the conversion

The miniatures Marcus was hoping to use for the female characters I struggled to get to work, after a few failed attempts I went looking for substitutes. For the good female agent I went with the Vampire Hunter also from Copplestone Castings. After removing the weapons and replacing them with ski poles I repositioned the arms and legs into a skiing pose. Marcus wanted them to look cool so I also added a pair of sunglasses. A bit of fur for the top of the boots and jacket collar added the winter feel, rather than the leather style of the original.

The enemy agent before and during the conversion

The enemy agent proved to be the most difficult to create. After a lengthy search I found a suitable miniature from Reaper Miniatures.

The miniature came with separate hands holding different weapons. These were tricky to remove and I had to pin the hands to the main body. I decided to do a head swap on this figure since the original was wearing desert style garb. The next step saw a twist of the arms and legs, again to get that skiing pose. I also bent the cloak to give the impression of it being caught by the wind as the agent sped down the hill. Sunglasses came last with the same added fur to winterise the miniature.

The finished conversions

Here we have the finished converted miniatures. The ski’s were cut from a plastic cover off a note pad, with the final stage just to add the ski shoe binding points.

The agents in action

Tony F from the club volunteered to paint the agents and we can see them in action. This was an interesting game to create things for and a popular choice at the shows that year.

 

Dogfight ’69 at Salute 2019

Here are a few shots from games we ran at Salute on Saturday.  We were kept busy running games back to back for most of the day, each game taking 20-30 minutes, as our participants flew their Corsairs to stem the tide of the Salvadorean invasion..

A Tale of Two Skimishes

Alan K updates us on the club’s two visits to the the Skirmish wargames show in 2018.

As I was putting together the forces for our game at the next Skirmish show (the Second Battle of El Teb, 29 February 1884) I realised that I hadn’t written anything about our two visits last year.

For the first show we had decided on a 28mm Vietnam scenario based on a hastily mounted search and rescue operation for a downed helicopter crew. But as we watched the weather forecast steadily worsen (an interesting contrast to this year) with snow expected it was touch and go whether we might attend at all. In the end we decided to brave it and the snow turned out not to be anywhere near as bad as we had feared. Unfortunately it did have rather a chilling effect (sorry about that) on both the traders and visitors.

In any event, we arrived well in time and set up the game with the crashed chopper over to one side and the landing zone (LZ) over toward the other. The players took control of the small US unit designated to search this area and were duly landed at the LZ. The Viet Cong (VC) and other random encounters were all handled by the FNG rules from Two Hour Wargames.

Between the LZ and the main search area was a fast flowing stream crossed by a single ford on the main route to the nearby village. The players seemed reluctant to use the ford and so decided to cross the stream. Unfortunately the first man lost his footing and if it had not been for some quick reactions on behalf of his squad mates he might have drowned. Of course all the commotion attracted the attention of a lone VC who began taking pot shots from cover at the US troops in the open.

After dealing with this initial threat the Americans advanced and began to make their way slowly through the long grass towards the jungle encountering more VC emerging from cover or well concealed spider holes and always keeping an eye out for booby traps! The US forces made slow progress taking a few casualties before being assaulted by a larger VC force. Having seen them off they finally located the chopper crew and withdrew to the LZ for a dust off.

Our second visit to Skirmish later in the year was another 28mm affair but this time winding back to the Great War. In this case our game was set early in the war, featuring a certain Erwin Rommel and taken directly from his own account of the action in his book Infantry Attacks. In his own, admittedly potentially self-aggrandising narrative, after advancing west from Hill 325, Lt. Rommel stopped his platoon in cover in a field and took a scouting group ahead. Making use of cover and the foggy conditions, they passed one farm and found their way close to the Mussy-la-Ville road. As the scouting team approached they spotted a couple of French squads relaxing along the road. Rommel decided to attack rather than wait to bring up the rest of his platoon. Surprised by Rommel’s bold attack the French put up little resistance and then surrendered.

In our scenario the player who took Rommel was somewhat less bold and when he encounter the French decided to fall back and gather his platoon before attacking. Unfortunately for him that meant another French squad had arrived before the Germans returned and they had more of a fight on their hands!

Dogfight ’69

Dogfight ’69
The Hundred Hours War

Our new show game for 2019 had it’s first outing at Cavalier 2019.

The Salvadorean Invasion!

This is set in the war that briefly erupted between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969.  This was the last occasion in which piston-engined fighters engaged in air-to-air combat.

Honduran Corsairs approach

This is a participation game with the players taking on the role of Corsair pilots in the Honduran Air Force.

Salvadorean Mustangs on Combat Air Patrol

The players have to launch ground attacks on the invading Salvadorean Army column to halt their advance, whilst warding off the attention of patrolling Mustangs of the Salvadorean Air Force.

Honduran Corsairs approach the target

Congratulations to club member Dave Sime who put together the game, which scooped the Best Participation Game prize at the show.

Honduran Corsairs come in low to strafe over the Salvadorean invasion column
Corsairs and Mustangs go head to head above the Salvadorean column

SELWG 2018

The club had another successful day at SELWG 2018, winning the Best Terrain trophy for the third year in succession. Here’s Phil looking suitably pleased with life 🙂

We’ve posted plenty of photos of the game in the past, but this is surely an excuse for a few more ! Photos by Phil and also courtesy of the official SELWG photographer.

Open Day 2018

The club is holding its annual Open Day on Saturday June 23rd (11am to 4pm). This when we put on many games and open our doors for all to come and visit and get a much wider idea of what we do and the games we play. We try to put on a good variety of games across all the popular periods and scales, all of which are open to visitors to join in. We offer a special discounted membership rate for anyone who joins the club on the day. There’s also a prize draw sponsored by local manufacturer Brigade Models for all visitors.

This year there are seven games, including one put on by Milton Hundred Wargames Club, our nearby friends and neighbours. The six club games are as follows:

The Fall of the Ramas Echor – a 28mm Lord of the Rings game set just before the Battle of Pelennor Fields, TA3019.

The Second Battle Of Sluys AD1370 – 28mm Medieval action using Lion Rampant rules.

Fields of Glory – a 15mm ancients game using the FoG ruleset.

Sharp Practice – 28mm Napoleonic skirmish action in the Spanish Peninsula.

WW2 Naval – early war action between the French and Italian navies in the Mediterranean.

Gaslands – post-apocalyptic car racing.

Directions to the club’s venue in Linton, near Maidstone, can be found on our website.

From the Archive

Member Phil recently unearthed a load of very old photos relating to show games in the 85-88 period. You’ll find them linked below (be prepared to be amazed at what some of us used to look like when we had hair…):

Unnamed 15mm Ancients Game – Tunbridge Wells ’85

The Vire Incident (WW2 54mm game) – SELWG ’86 and Tunbridge Wells ’87

Berlin or Bust (20mm WW2 Participation game) – Salute ’88 and SELWG ’88