Lard on the Volga - Birthday Bash 2017

It seems strange how something always seems to crop up on the evening my local wargames club meets. School plays, my daughter’s swimming training, my son's football games, a phone call with work – whatever the excuse, it’s going happen on a Tuesday evening when my local club meets.

For a long time we’ve talked about meeting on a weekend, and putting on a club game. 

I turned 50 a little earlier this summer, and this seemed like a good excuse to hire the club venue and stage a large game of “Chain of Command” last Saturday. My chums Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner have already posted a ton of photos from the game on their fine Lard Island News blog. So what follows is my recollection of our visit to Korbinskaya on the Don River.

For anyone thinking about staging a “birthday game”, I can honestly simply say – do it! It’s a great way to arrive at “that” milestone, as well as spending the time with a great selection of friends who just also happen to be wargamers.

Setting the Scene

One of the fun things about any wargame is setting the scene. Rich sent a few emails to me in the week before the game, detailing the setting on the river Don at the small town of Korbinskaya and it’s nearby Collective Pig Farm No. 452. A force organisation table later and I was in business, sewing minefields, working out defensive positions and finding old photos on the internet of what a collective farm would look like. A little goes a very long way when it comes to inspiration!

The table

We ended up with a large wargame. Indeed, 22 feet of wargame, from the Don to Collective Pig Farm No. 452. As you’ll see from the photographs, Rich and Al’s terrain was a joy to behold.

The fine Russian buildings from Warbases, Sarissa and Charlie Foxtrot looked splendid. My favourite was a wonderful Russian Church, complete with boarded up windows and Bolshevik and Soviet posters demonizing the Russian Orthodox Church.

Logistics

Never let a wargamer go hungry or thirsty. It’s an old saying (I’m sure), but nevertheless it’s an accurate one. I had arranged for lunch to be shipped in from our local bakery including a selection of decadent, bourgeoisie confectionary. Inevitably this was enjoyed by the Soviet players just as much as by the evil Nazi players.

I was honoured by my Lard chums increasing our collective daily sugar intake by creating two cakes, which were unveiled at the end of the day’s gaming. Despite initial misgivings, the indoor (Health and Safety Approved) sparkler worked far better than the Soviet pioneers’ satchel charges on the tabletop.

The game

As all games seem to do, it raced by. The Germans thrashed forward to the small, Tasrist-era bridge over the Lenmakluski stream, while I attempted to corral a slightly-recalcitrant defence using fiendish Commissar methods. The Soviet sailors from the Black Sea fleet arrived in the nick of time, just as most of the crews from the T-34s were bailing out under steady German fire.

As you can see from the photos, the troops provided by Rich, Al and Ade were of a wonderful standard. Thanks chaps!

The After-game entertainment

The best part of wargaming is the friends you share the hobby with. As might have already been mentioned by Rich, one can only hope that the band enjoyed themselves as much as we did.

"The Pikeman's Lament" - Pike & Shot skirmishing from Osprey Games

One of the great things about the wargaming hobby is seeing friends and fellow wargamers enjoying fantastic success doing the very things which make our hobby such fun.  For many years I've been enjoying the excellent "Dalauppror" blog authored by Michael Leck, who I had the great pleasure and privilege of meeting at Salute a few years back.

Michael's rules for pike and shot wargaming, "The Pikeman's Lament", written with well-known wargames rules supremo Dan Mersey, were published yesterday by Osprey Games.  I'd pre-ordered my copy, and they were waiting for me when I arrived home last night.

They are a lovely looking set of rules, and feature everything that you would need for recreating small scale engagements and large skirmishes in the 17th Century.  There are many fine illustrations from the Osprey books, and some terrific photographs from many well-known wargamers and modellers, including Michael himself, the super-talented Matt Slade and all-round blogging superstar Mr. Michael Awdry, who posted some great photos on his own blog HERE which didn't quite make it into the finished rules owing to space constraints.

I'me really looking forward to giving these rules a try.  The "petite guerre" of raiding, forcing contributions, scouting and skirmishing was a major feature of many seventeenth century campaigns, particularly during the winter months when main field armies were in winter quarters.  

Michael and Dan's rules should be perfect for recreating these kinds of actions - swirling cavalry skirmishes, desperate last stands of small companies of soldiers in remote villages, plundering of supply columns.  These types of encounters were a very popular theme in mid-seventeenth century 'battle-paintings' - and there's plenty of inspiration to be gained from searching out paintings such as the above canvases from the Dutch artist Pieter Meulener.

I really looking forward to using the rules for my own chosen period of the 1680s in Flanders - a brief read through of the rules last night gave me some (hopefully) good ideas for the games we can stage and the terrain I can build for these kinds of actions.

Here's hoping these rules spark everyone else's imagination.  Congratulations to Michael and Dan, and best of luck with the venture!!

Crisis 2016, and the field of Waterloo

Over the last few years, I’ve made various trips to wargames shows in the UK and Europe. I don’t always blog my photos from these trips, not least because I’m using Twitter a lot more for posting daily updates. However, Twitter’s not the easiest platform to find anything on – whereas with a blog, I think you can find things a lot more easily through the indexing. 

With that in mind, here’s some of the action from the TooFatLardies’ recent trip to Waterloo and Antwerp in early November. In short it was a cracking weekend. Rather than drive straight to Antwerp for the Crisis 2016 show, we stayed a night at the Hotel 1815, on the site of the Waterloo battlefield. 

So, with that introduction (and well aware that looks at anyone else's holiday snaps is sometimes as dull as watching paint dry), here's my photos from the couple of days we spent in Belgium.  Apologies, my friends, if you doze off... 

Starting with a fine guide to the battlefield (regardless of whether you agree with the arguments concerning Wellington, Blucher and Gneisenau...)

.. and on to the field of Waterloo itself, trampled only by us and thousands of Belgian school parties and battlefield enthusiasts for hundreds of years ... 

The 1815 Hotel was a strange place.  We were refused alcohol in their (empty) bar on account of already having eaten dinner. We enjoyed a quiet drink on the steps of the hotel kitchen, instead.  The hotel did have curious portholes in the bedrooms allowing us to catch fine views over Wallonia on the early Friday morning.

We took the opportunity on both the Thursday and Friday to explore the battlefield, Plancenoit village, Hougoumont and Papelotte. There’s a lot to be said for walking a battlefield, as I’m sure you know. You get a feel for the ground, the terrain, the slight (or steep) folds in the ground which you feel could cause havoc with a column of heavily equipped infantrymen, such as these roads near Papelotte.

You can walk into a village and realise, as we did at Plancenoit, why the imposing church became such a tough and difficult objective for the Prussians to capture, surrounded by steeply dropping narrow roads and pathways.

There's ample time to observe the local architecture (or point out the 18th century brickwork) ... thanks Nick.

Terrain which seems at first sight to be flat, reveals itself with undulations and folds in which cavalry squadrons could reform and or conceal themselves.

Above all, you get a sense of the land, especially when a battlefield such as Waterloo is largely untouched by the following centuries.  Horses grazing just where French and Prussian cavalry vedettes would have clashed, about a mile from Placenoit, was a lovely sight.

It’s a very interesting battlefield, all the better for providing surprises about a battle I thought I knew reasonably well.

Then, after Waterloo, on to Antwerp. As cities go, it’s high up on my list of favourites. Perhaps it’s because I’m always in the company of great friends, and having fun.

Or maybe its because the good people of Antwerp are a friendly bunch, confident in the beauty of their city, its heritage and sense of style (as well as its prosperity). 

Perhaps its also the fact that I enjoy reading of the history of the city and the Spanish Netherlands in general (as readers of this blog will already know). It was a lot of fun to come across a statute of the great Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger on one of the walks we took on the Friday afternoon before Crisis.

Just wandering through the city is a feast for the eyes, and other senses, including wonderful buildings, fine chocolatier and great beers.

On to Crisis itself. It’s a fantastic wargames show, highlighting some of the best games on the “circuit”, remarkable painting, and great imagination. Crisis is all the better for attracting great European wargamers, including many old friends and faces from the UK. Here’s just a selection of the fine games.

And after all that, the fine people at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp presented Rich and Nick with a fine trophy, now hanging as a chandelier in Lard Island, no doubt.

A great weekend.  A huge thank you to the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp, who work hard to produce such a fine show year after year.  And thanks also to the various bloggers and readers who came and said hello during the weekend.  

Roll on Crisis 2016 next year!

And, next on the blog, some more 2mm Thirty Years War-themed posting, and news of what I'm thinking about for Curt's 7th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge!  Catch you all soon!