Our Hammerhead Participation Game

A bit of a late one this, but a few weeks ago we ran our participation game at the Hammerhead Show in Newark.

My extensive terrain collection was brought out and Andy's Bounty Hunting rules were used. We had a load of interest and won the Best Overall Participation Game prize. 

We also featured in a YouTube video of the event.

Here is a selection of photos from the event: 

Preparations for Blood and Plunder Participation game at Hammerhead 2022

Yesterday we ran some trial games in preparation for our Blood and Plunder participation game which will be run at Hammerhead 2022 on  Saturday 5th March.

The table will be around 12ft long with two small land battles and a sea battle in the middle. The game will be suited to players with no previous experience of Blood and Plunder.

Blücher at Hammerhead

This Saturday I'll be running two Blücher participation games at Hammerhead.

There'll be the Vyazma 1812 game I've run at other shows and you are welcome to drop in and try your hand at that. But it's a complex game and will take all day to play!

If you fancy something more manageable I'll be running a short training game. This will take about 45 minutes to play and will introduce the game to new players. The scenario is based on the Battle of Arroyo Molinos on 28th October 1811 and features General Hill's combined force of British, Portuguese and Spanish versus a small French force under General Girard.

So if you would be interested in finding out about Blücher in 6mm come and say hello!

General Girard's forces rest at Arroyo Molinos...

... General Hill's troops have sneaked up during the night!

The Battle of Vyazma is progressing (at WMMS last weekend)

Blücher at Fiasco - AAR

Well today was the first try out in public for the Vyazma game. We took it to Fiasco in Leeds and had a great time. The game went well with loads of interest and very kind comments.

The French managed a very orderly retreat towards Vyazma with Davout's troops in particular acting like they were on the parade ground as they marched along the road in almost perfect column. Eugene's and Poniatowski's corps provided excellent cover and only really started to have problems towards dusk. But it was too late for the Russians by then as the majority of the French army had retreated out of their reach.

The Players consider the battle ahead

The advance force of Russians awaits the arrival of Davout's corps

Davout arrives and is immediately charged by Russian cavalry

Soon Davout is marching in orderly columns past Federovskoye covered by Eugene's cavalry and infantry

As Russian reinforcements arrive things start to get interesting

Poniatowski's troops stand firm against the Russian attack

Towards the end of the battle Davout's troops are falling back and Eugene and Poniatowski are holding fast. As dusk arrives they also will have to start falling back.

Blücher Demo Game at Fiasco 2019

We'll be running our Battle of Vyazma Demo Game at Fiasco 2019 this coming Sunday (27th October).

After Gaslands at Barrage Wargames Show

Ok... so it's been a couple of weeks... I will attempt to catch up with what has been going on in a few posts...

First up is the Barrage Wargames Show Gaslands Game. This went brilliantly. Very popular indeed on a ludicrously hot day. The game is perfectly suited to a participation game and the rolling deathmatch style worked excellently.

We added a rule that you could come onto the board in any legal Gear rather than being limited to 1st Gear only, but would start with a Hazard for each Gear above Gear 1. So you could join in straight away with the action in Gear Phase 3 by accepting 2 Hazards.

We had a chap videoing his experience playing the game. It's on Youtube here: "Barrage Wargames Show 2018 Stafford"

Gaslands Participation Game - Barrage Wargames Show - Stafford - 8th July

Today I've been getting the car cards ready for our participation game at the Barrage Wargames Show (Stafford UK) next Sunday (8th July).

The game will be a drop-in-and-play Deathmatch. Select a random vehicle and join in the mayhem until you crash and burn...

The idea is to keep the same game running all day, with a quick turn-around of turns and cars. But to do that we need players! So please pop in and play!

http://staffordwargames.wixsite.com/barrage

I've also finished off some new cars...

Higher Education

007

Ripsaw

Elvis

Two Months...

Just over two months since the last post... oops!

Well to be honest it's not because I've been lazy, more that I've been exceptionally busy. A lot of this was with non-wargaming stuff. i.e. re-enactments of various types. However there have been a few notable Wargames going on in that time. A quick run-down...

A Lion Rampant game with Ed. A favourite game of ours, but one I've posted photos of before. This decided me that I really needed to get some animals for my farms and village. These  have bought from Warbases and am actually just about to start painting.

A new game in the last couple of months has been Warpath: Firefight. We've played it a couple of times at the club and also demoed it at Derby World Wargames. I really like the game, but either I'm a superb player (doubtful) or the balance isn't quite sorted out for the Plague. I needs some mods I think.

It's been fun getting this table together, but tremendously easy. The buildings are from Deadzone and the boards & hills actually date back to games of Battletech and Starship Troopers I ran at shows many, many, many years ago.

I got a new display cabinet for my miniatures... The less used ones that I still want to see. The idea was that this would make space for me to make a display board for my Kings of War armies, but that project has been shelved for the time being.

I did remember finally to take photos of the bombed out church that my son Brendan made for his school project last year!

I got a game in of Fighting Sail with Ed and that prompted me to get my last French ship painted and rigged. See the next post for photos of that.

And of course there have been a few games of Kings of War including two tournaments, Battlemasters and Clash of Kings. Both enjoyable events that I took my Abyssals to. I now have plans to extend my Wars of the Roses army.

But yes... most of my efforts in the last two months have been re-enactment and bicycle related...

Those are just about finished now... and since it's out-of-season I'm hopefully going to be back on track with modelling.

Frostgrave at Salute - Debrief

Last weekend at Salute we put on our Frostgrave participation games. Jeff, Steve and Andy worked like troopers all day helping me demo games and talking to members of the public. We were waxing lyrical about Frostgrave, Hirst Arts blocks, MDF terrain, various miniatures both old and new, and even Kings of War for a while.

It was a great success with some very kind comments, especially appreciated was the thanks from the author of Frostgrave himself, Joseph A. McCullough for making his game look so good. I of course thanked him in turn for writing it in the first place!

I also had chance to play with the little blue-tooth camera I acquired recently, a Podo, and many of the photos below were taken with this tiny device that could fit inside the boards. Unfortunately it's focus is not ideal for photos like this.