"I have a clever plan....."

Thanks for all the feedback & requests.   Its been a ...few...years since I read up on any accounts of Gettysburg apart from various memoirs (from both sides), or based a game on some part of it, and have never gotten around to the Peach Orchard etc. So....I've just been making a brief review of that section of the battle and have decided that to design a scenario to fit my troops on hand, my table, and my one page rules, with at least a whiff of history it'll take a day or six before I can get the game on the table.       
(Luckily I'll be home alone next weekend! :)  ), 

 (see Kinch's Charge 1 July 2013 on my then 6'x8' table.)

Yeah, the armies have grown in numbers since then.

So, in the mean time time, I'll start with a simple scenario from one of the other requested periods and keep going until all requests have been tabled.

Winter Is Coming!

Its been a busy couple of weeks, just not much hobby time but its time I wake up my table, roust a bunch of figures, and get a game set up. The question is: "What period and scenario?".

My ACW lads are near the top of the list but I just can't seem to come up with a fresh scenario for them and anyway, while watching our next door neighbors getting all worked up, I wouldn't want to give them any ideas. That leaves me my Prince Valiant collection and my 16thC lads, both last played several months ago. 

 

I just need to come up with a scenario but while I'm pondering that question, I'm wide open to suggestions and requests. 

Of course, I'ts also time to work on some figures but that also means making a decision.......

Now What?

Once upon a time......or 2 years ago to be precise, I set out to prepare a 1790's Caribbean wargame to take to Huzzah 2023. 

See "A Desperate Affair"

but somehow, by the time I got to Huzzah, it looked more like this:

Yup, here we are in Egypt.....some navigator......
No I'm not sure how these things happen but they do. 

Anyway, it was fun to put together but that campaign is officially over, the French and British troops have been shipped across the Atlantic to the Caribbean as originally intended and the Egyptian and Turkish troops are sitting around smoking their pipes and wondering what their future is. Me too (except for the smoking part). 

The only thing that comes in mind is to pit them across my 16thC Imperial forces, Landsknechts, etc but at that time, Turkish cavalry spurned firearms and, well, most of my Mamlukes have them and none have the bow that was a major weapon for Turkish cavalry. The infantry is fine, its just a bit ironic because my original homecast Turkish infantryman was sculpted 20 years ago for just such a setting. A project which never got off the ground then, and which I don't feel like tackling now. 

 

Took along time for these guys to get dressed and on the table but at least I didn't have to worry about the fragility of the too thin bows they were sculpted with.

Trying to sell them is a very tempting option, if I can find a buyer, as it would put an end to that temptation when I'm trying to reduce and finish what I have I've been working on for the last 20 years........... I think I'll put up a page with pictures and see if anyone is interested in this motley crew of some 40 odd Mamluke/Turkish conversions, mostly home cast with the cavalry being semi-flats.

I also hemmed and hawed about my French camel company but I decided that I like the troopers enough to take away their camels for some other use, and ship them to the West Indies as local volunteer light infantry.(at the moment, Prince Valiant's Persian enemy Satrap has claimed the camels to keep his elephant from getting lonely).  

My hastily improvised Chouan Royalists will also be disbanded, part to go back to their original role as Canadian 1837 Patriotes and rebels, part to go back to being ex-slave guerillas. (see below)

Royal Navy attacks an inconvenient French shore battery in the West Indies.

Yeah, this means I'll be going (virtually) to the West Indies in the heat of summer rather than going in winter. Oddly, the only times I got close to the Caribbean were also  in summer, (as a young Naval officer) a stop in Bermuda while on exercises and a stop at Cuba when I was an exchange officer on a US Destroyer in '76 and as a foreigner was not allowed on shore at Guantánamo Bay! Ah well, it was also summer when I watched icebergs go by off the coast of Baffin Island.  

Year 14! The Plan.

WELL, here we are again! Another new year begins!

 (For casual or newer readers, July the 3rd is the anniversary of my 2010 heart attack. (The only one if I can help it!) Celebrating it not only reminds me of a personal revolution in lifestyle, it also reminds me to look at how my New Year plan is going, and to adjust my plans accordingly. (Healthier than I've been in decades thank you, despite coming up on my last 60-something birthday in a few weeks time.)

One ongoing goal is to reduce the number of miniatures and books etc that are cluttering up my room. Some are there as remnants of long ago collections, some because of "haven't got around to" syndrome, others as "excess to requirement" stragglers, and so on. When I do reduce, I do not usually immediately re-home figures and books but wait for a few months/years to see if I miss them or if I've found a way to make them less redundant. However, as life goes on, I am losing patience with the overflow of excess boxes, bins, stacks etc and constant nagging thoughts such as "I really should get around to painting this lot some year" or "I ought to get these guys on the table as long as they're here..." and finally "If I haven't gotten around to these in the last 30 years, what are the odds I'll get them done in the next 10 or 15 years?". 

The truth is that while I'm a bit of a hoarder, and once wanted to do everything of interest to me, as 70-something looms next year, I find that in the 55 years that I've wargamed, I have at least dabbled in pretty much everything that I have had some interest in. However, too many of them were not pursued with the depth I would have liked and too many were taken up to match what friends were doing.  My main desires now are to spend more time on fewer collections, play more mini-campaigns even if they are just a series of scenarios with a narrative link, and reduce duplicating, including that of the "same weapons and tactics, different hats" syndrome.  (See the active collections here: http://gameofmonth.blogspot.ca/p/overview-my-armies-rules-and-plans.html)

Almost all rules and plans have exceptions, so I am keeping three 40mm 'Horse&Musket' collections.  Two of these are inspired by, but not recreating, certain wars in my country's history. One is inspired by the British conquest of Acadia and New France, the other was inspired by a mix of the War of 1812 AND the Rebellions of 1837-38. The 3rd one is my Britain vs Revolutionary France collection which has absolutely no reason to still be here except that I put a lot of work into putting it together, mostly converted home cast figures, they reproduce my first 15mm armies in the early 80's, and it allows me to steal scenario ideas from CS Forester's Hornblower" stories, and, well......I like 'em!.

So, there we are. The plan, rather unusually, is only a tweak of last year's plan, but its working for me.

Rainy Day Soldiers

 We're all but promised a few rain showers over this weekend, and I'm sure we all no what THAT means!  (rain-holiday from lawn and garden duties etc). 

The question is: What shall I play tomorrow?  All suggestions and requests will be considered whether comments,  even anonymous ones, or emails.    

At the moment, I'm leaning towards getting my revived Oberhilse and Faraway troops out again.

I've also been revisiting my plans for my remaining collections. One change is that despite my desire to set games in my province, apart from the two sieges of Louisburg, it was almost all small but bloody skirmishes between raiding parties and the defenders of their targets or else smaller sieges such as Ft. Beausejour or Ft. Anne. 

My toy soldiers want something larger and more noble with no harm to non-combatants etc etc. and without harm to non-combatants where possible, So I've moved my alternate Acadia setting from my primary list to the secondary list, meaning I'll keep working on the figures and will put them on the table when in the mood, whether its tomorrow or next year.  I still have two companies of Highlanders to cast and paint and summer is the best season for hand casting. I'm sure their arrival will trigger a desire to see the full battalion in action.

Looking Behind and Ahead.

The armies that I am now refurbishing were a direct result of my falling in 'love' with shiny Scruby 40mm figures nearly 20 years ago, crossed with a long standing interest in the uniforms and history of mid 19thC "small wars" (from India and Mexico, to suppressing rebellions in my own country, to the Crimea). 

A 2013 battle report: The Brooklyn Fusiliers storm a Pirate base (click to see). 

When I started to develop my 1830-40's "Imagi-Nation" setting, my table was roughly twice the size it is now, I was in my 50's, could paint for hours, had a few bucks in my pocket, and thought I knew what I wanted. Of course I eventually I realized that part of me still wanted to do everything! I still wanted to paint and play with armies from some 2,500 years of history across 1/2 the globe, and contribute troops to various co-hosted convention games and games with local friends. So I tried to do it all and while I almost never "finished" any of the "projects" I was working on before starting the next two, I still enjoyed the journey. 

However, over the last decade I eventually found myself mired in incomplete projects, and realized that much of what I had started, was never going to be "finished", even if used once or twice with stand ins. It was also clear that even if I did do everything that caught my attention, there was not enough room to display or even store that many figures, nor time enough to play with them all. 

I've also figured out that apart from storage and display space issues, painting is less enjoyable than before. Neither hand nor eye are as steady and focused as they were, so my attraction towards the simpler glossy toy soldier look is a bonus, but even so I can't sit and paint for hours any more. So, as "70" looms, the time has come for yet another phase of downsizing and reducing the number of collections/projects. 

So what stays and what gets dropped?

Despite all the enjoyable experiments and detours, for me, a setting resembling 19thC eastern North America is still right for my main, all purpose, generic (semi-fictional) horse & musket collection. The terrain will be based on familiar terrain in my own country, including period battlefields that I've visited 150 years later. The uniforms, historical or fictional, call to mind "Tin Soldiers" (such as the Anderson's Steadfast Tin Soldier)  as well as "The Alamo", and the tactics were at the height of development until the arrival of the minie ball changed things. The secondary collections that are still alive can be seen on the "My Collections" tab on the right hand side of the home page.

So, that's the plan, and while I'm refurbishing the Brooklyn Fusiliers, here's a  2012 Oberhilse and Faraway Battle Report from the archives:

__________________________________________________

Jan 7, 1842

THE BLUE REPUBLIC CROSSES THE LINE

Yesterday morning, an unprovoked attack was made on the new battery established at Torn Point near Belmont on the Blugene River.  The Queen's forces in the area were composed of 1/2 a company of the Royal Fusiliers guarding the bridge near Brown Rock, the gunners with their 12 pounder and a company of local militia. These troops were on the Qui Vive however,  and at the first sign of enemy preparations alerted neighboring garrisons who rushed to their aid with unprecedented haste.

Three companies of Blue's 1st infantry under General Scott landed  upstream of the bridge. One was dispatched to hold off reinforcements while another company approached the redoubt at the bridge and opened fire. Despite taking 25% casualties, the Elite soldiers of the Fusiliers stood their ground and with a withering return fire, drove off the attack. The 3rd company soon renewed the attack and forced the remaining Fusiliers to retreat. While some Blue soldiers set to work tearing up the bridge, the rest followed up the Fusiliers who were attempting to make their way across the fields to rejoin their regiment and drove them off.   A fresh company of Fusiliers supported by a company of Victoria Rifles was at hand already. Several point blank volleys routed the first company of Bluecoats then a bayonet charge cleared the bridge before the destruction could be completed.

The Stone House near the point was attacked by Brigadier Zinn with a company of Rifles and 2 companies of the 2nd Infantry. Brigadier Zinn, led the 2nd Infantry forward in person but a bullet from one of the defenders threw him from his saddle and the attack stalled. The Rifles began to work their way around the House and casualties began to mount amongst the defenders but help was at hand. Rushing up the road from Brooklyn came the Green Tigers led by Colonel Stoneforte. The Grenadiers rushed to reinforce the defenders of the house while the rest deployed and opened a heavy fire.

1. 

Moments later a loud whistle followed by an explosion announced the arrival of the Rocket Battery. Fresh from the exercise grounds, these opened an unusually accurate barrage. Behind them, Princess Louise's Dragoons  trotted up the road, helmets gleaming in the sun

jj.  

Crossing rapidly over into the adjacent fields, they charged the company of Blue infantry which had been pursuing the Fusiliers. Blinded by their own smoke, the Blue Infantry failed to form square and were ridden down.

The invasion seemed well repulsed but Blue was not yet done, The second wave was at hand! Despite the lack of any senior commanders, two companies of the 3rd Infantry and a Mountain Howitzer landed and pushed inland while the Rifles pushed up the road and opened a heavy and accurate fire on the Rocket Battery, forcing them to limber up and retreat. Behind them, another wave of boats landed. The Blue Guards were at hand!

Pushing up the road towards the bridge a company of the 3rd opened fire on the Dragoons from behind the fence line. The cavalry wheeled around but as they attempted to jump the fence to get at their foe, a tremendous point blank fire cut them down in droves and the remaining dragoons scattered back to safety.

The day hung in the balance as the Blue Guards formed with precision, their Colonel at their head. With a ring cheer they charged the house where the Tigers had replaced the garrison.

A volley the likes of which has rarely been known cut down the Colonel and nearly 1/2 the Guardsmen. The remaining Blue troops quickly re-embarked and abandoned their enterprise.

Happy 2024!

And so it has begun, 2024, who knows what it will bring?  Still, best to start with some sort of plan.

1st test casting from the new Prince August 40mm SYW mould.

Last summer I decided it was time to go back to posting plans for the year ahead at the start of the calendar year instead of doing so on the anniversary of my 2010 heart attack, so, here we are!

See here for details: My current collections and plans.   (link fixed)

The Fight for Acadia Begins

In years gone by, I've collected and wargamed multiple "periods" using various sizes, mostly from 6mm to 54mm, too often doing favoured "periods" in multiple sizes, often depending on what friends were doing, partly because I'm interested in many (MANY) things, partly to help get a group project on the table sooner, partly because I want to paint "some of this and some of that" , and...because I preferred to play with figures I had painted. 

All of that has been very enjoyable but these days, 90% of my gaming is solo, and the rest mostly with the host's figures. More than that, over the last 50+ years, everything that I have been interested in, has been at least sampled, as have many other periods and scales which were tried as part of a group interest, and countless sets of rules, published or homemade. 

All of that has been fun but my efforts to do anything more than dabble in very short mini-campaigns or narrative campaigns, (Essentially playing a game then making up how that links to the next game.) have all failed to get very far. It's also led to too much time writing and adjusting too many sets of rules, often in the middle of a game. Then there is the backlog of unpainted soldiers........

Well, this past fall, I sat down and decided on what I really wanted to focus on, and was practical over say the next 20 years or so. (He wrote optimistically since that'll put me approaching 90.) I'm not being too brutal though, my remaining collections will still cover 1/72, OS 25mm,  40mm and 54mm from the dark ages to pre WWI. 

However, I need more storage/display space, more storage space and fewer distractions. That means yet another round of finding new homes for many of both old and new, toy soldiers. I know that some find that thought disturbing but of the many who have been reposted in the past, memories remain but none have been mourned. Better to march on someone else's table or be on parade on their shelf, than to wait endlessly in a box at the back of some closet.

It'll take a while to get organized but I'll list things here for a while before I start listing them on eBay or tipping them into the melting pot to be 'reassigned'. 

The last action of 2022.
I think its time to give them the first action of 2024!

Now, on to that first battle of the year!

Reduce, Recycle, Reuse

When I started getting into shiny, old school 40mm figures, I was thinking about various historical, mid 19thC, campaigns, British wars in India, the various rebellions in Canada and the US Mexican War and the Oregon Crisis over the west coast border between Britain and the US. In my eagerness to do them all at once, in no time I had parts of all of these ready to go, BUT none ready. Well, the toy soldier approach was starting to appeal to me and so I made up a fictional setting and bent the narrative to justify finding ways to find a place for all. 

Faraway's Belmont Fusiliers, and the Young Buffs have been ordered to trade their old Havelock's for ordinary Pork Pie forage caps.
These OS 40mm figures are from Historifigs War of 1812 range. They are listed as Americans since that's what the Scruby catalogue said, but are actually wearing British uniforms with the Waterloo shako. The Havelocks and Porkpie Forage cap are epoxy putty over a trimmed down shako. 

The idea worked once I adapted my brain to the setting and I still think its a useful approach but since I'm trying to reduce the size of my combined collection and to focus on a smaller number of settings so I can go a bit deeper, I decided to rethink some parts of the plan. The result is that the "Colonial" theatre is now the unique setting for the early 20thC while the  mid 19thC will be constrained to the Oberhilse and Faraway wars. A few units will need a bit of tweaking, but nothing serious.

A shot from my 2009 playing of 'Forlorn Hope' from Asquith & Grant's Scenarios For All Ages
See my 'Playing The Redbook' blog series

Slowly, the plan is forming!

Mom! He's at it again!

"At what?"

"Oh! Rebasing! What a mess!"

I'm not sure if its something cosmic or just the looming shadow of the end of my 7th decade and the signs that my body and mind are starting to slow down,  but over the last month or so, I've been reconsidering my hobby plans and aims and what will someone have to handle  if  when the inevitable happens. Over the last 15 years, I've re-homed several thousand mini's in 6 scales but since I haven't stopped adding, there's still a few thousand painted and unpainted miniatures for someone to dispose of some day. 

But that's a longer term issue, in the short term, I've revised my plans with an eye to reducing the number of my active collections again so that I concentrate on pinning down my rules and running some mini-campaigns of one sort or another. 

The new regulation.

More on my revised plans later, for now, I'll finish rebasing enough units to get a game on the table midweek.

Where Away? (updated)

Its that time of year. My conventions have come and gone and I don't have plans for next year, the shelves and cupboards are overloaded with painted armies and unpainted figures, and I'm having trouble deciding what I want to do next. 

As much as I love my French Revolution troops and as many settings there are that they can be used for, they haven't helped solve my "too many figures, too little time, storage space and energy" dilemma.  What the heck was I thinking?!?  Well, that's not going to be resolved today but I do need to restart making choices and trimming my collection of figures.  But not today when I'm tired and its wet and windy out side and my wife's off at a dog show for the day. 

Today is more of an off the shelf One Hour game day, but which era? Something that hasn't been played in a while perhaps.....

  or 

or maybe, just the usual "goto":

Hmm.... Well, lunch first, then a decision....

Aha!. Meanwhile, back in Oerberg: 

Hmm, that was quick.....

Year 14: Steady as She Goes

Well, here it is again, the 4th of July, and time for my annual look at things. 13 years have passed since my "little incident" (ie heart attack) and very little has changed since last year. 

54's in Action

I have managed to resurrect some of the figures I had put on notice while simultaneously reducing the number of "periods" I'm playing, thus allowing more table time for each, and reducing the number of sets or rules I need to keep in my head.  I also managed to get to my first convention since Covid hit, and managed 3 games against live opponents in addition to the convention games. So, all in all a successful year. 

1/72nd ACW, its just about time they came back out. 

As for the year ahead, the only disturbing thing is my desire to just keep doing what I'm doing with no urge to change rules or scales or periods or......well, it just seems like not changing would be a big change but, on the other hand, not changing would be a change in itself, so I'll just go with the flow.   

I've got more BIG tall metal Scots Pikes and  CHUNKY printed highlanders to paint and then exercise so we should see at least one 16thC game. 

and  then....

Prince Micheal has yet to meet these fellows who also have 3d printed reinforcements on the workbench.

So, let the paint fly on and the dice roll! 

A Project For This Fall and WInter

Having grown up an "Anglo" in Montreal, you'd think I'd have wargamed Wolfe's Quebec several times by now, but really, given the way it was presented in school, there was nothing to it. Wolfe had a brilliant plan, The British were gallant and the French all ran away. It was while I was studying at the Military College in St. Jean, that doubts started creeping in. 

I think the first crack came during  the American Bicentennial, as Cadet Curator of the Musee de Fort St. Jean, I and my 2ic Simon MacDowall, under the guidance of Dr Ruddy (as good a professor and friend as one could wish for), had the pleasure of coordinating a portion of the visit of the Brigade of the American Revolution to Quebec. Montgomery had besieged Fort St. Jean back in the day and the Brigade was following in their footsteps, putting on displays of drill and firing a few volleys etc.. I was invited to accompany Dr Ruddy for the finale on the Plains of Abraham, and that's where this becomes relevant to the matter in hand. 

OK, Hopefully the games will look better than this quick mockup.

While touristing around, I went to see the famous Wolfe's Cove/L'Anse au Foulon where the British soldiers scaled the cliffs, dragging cannon behind them to surprise Montcalm. Having wandered through the old Lower Town and followed the road up to the heights, I was confused. The map and some plaques indicated that I was there but it wasn't even a stiff walk up really. Eventually I shrugged my shoulders and decided that at some time in the past, someone must have blasted a road out of the cliff face. 

Then, a year or so ago, I bought a new book on the campaign: Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution by D. Peter MacLeod. This Canadian historian has done some very thorough research, including digging through archives in France and Britain as well as Canada, and letters and diaries etc from various individuals including both armies, the Royal Navy, and les Canadiens and even a transcription of an account by one of the First Nations who was there. He also studied a lot of period maps. Turns out, the maps and French accounts all agree that there had long been a road running from the cove to the plain at the top, that's why the French used it for supplies and why the British were able to get the army up so quickly including artillery pieces. 

By studying current information etc in RN records and various diaries and reports, several things became clear. The French post was not at the top of the cliff, it was partway up the road. The advance party of Grenadiers and Highlanders was supposed to land at the cove but the current carried them past it. Not ones to quit, they landed and scaled the cliff to the top. By the time they got there, the main party was already making a frontal assault with little success, so the advanced party descended and attacked the French in the rear!

For the first time, it all made sense. I'd always wondered why the French had used a steep path up a cliffside to bring in supplies when they had plenty of more convenient landing spots with roads. There was another accepted story about the one volley thing which never quite rang true once I grew up, and it  was also debunked and explained but that's for later. The point is, its time I played out some sort of series of tabletop games based around the Quebec campaign 1759/60, and if I start planning and preparing this summer and fall, it'll provide a number of games this fall and winter.

Next Step

This whole French Revolution Revival, (My largest collection was 15mm Fr. Rev, now long gone.) began at the start of the century when I saw Rob Dean's homecast Scarlet Pimpernal collection based on converted Meisterzinn homecastings. My efforts kept getting put aside until they went into limbo, only to revive just before Covid hit and the border closed.......sighhhh.... but I persevered. Since Rob's figures were all singly based, I did the same but the larger my collection got, the more I remembered why I dislike single based arnies, even if movement trays are available. 

A formation of 3 troops of Mamlukes. I'm very pleased that the new recruits, painted with the new paints,  have fitted in seemlessly with the ones I painted last year.
(Its more about the painter's style than the paints.)

Recently Rob decided to shut down his project and is arranging to have a mutual friend pass Rob's collection to me at Huzzah in May. (To help with storage on my end, I'm going to send back all of my Not Quite the Seven Years War Prince August units  to be donated to the HAWKS to use or gift as they like, keeping only figures suitable for the Quebec, Acadian and Louisbourg  campaigns). Yesterday I realized that this change in plans means that I don't have to stick with several hundred single figure armies but can go back to multifigure bases and the latest descendant of Hearts of Tin (nee  Morschauser Meets MacDuff  c2003-ish) on permanent (sic) bases rather than movement trays, thus not only speeding up gameplay but also reducing the shelf or travel space by 1/3. 

To make it easier to track hits, I'm adding little patches of long grass that will hold a small die.

Of course, this also means I need to add 2 figures to each of my infantry battalions......... 

Year 13

Here we are again on a 4th of July. It is the 12th anniversary of my little heart attack and I'm still here. By default, it is also the start of Year 13 of the rest of my post heart attack life, and so I am continuing my practice of using this day to look at where I am and where I'm planning to go this year. It'll be a short one though since its "Steady as she goes!"

My current collections page has been recently updated so I'll save my fingers and just point to that page: "My current collections and plans"  and confirm that the series of games based on the requests/suggestions that I received in June, will continue with the French Revolution. 

I having been away visiting family, but its time to go home and start preparing for the next game.

My latest great-nephew, a Highland bull.

The 3rd runner up in the suggestion pool was the French Revolution and my plan is to assembly a company of marines and a naval landing party and stage a small amphibious raid on a coastal battery.

A mock up photo from 2016. Its for the wrong war, but there's a shore battery, a small cutter and one of two longboats  for the landing party, all still in the cupboard. Its a start. 

Since the game will be set in the 1790's, the marines will be wearing the white facings worn before they became 'Royal". Offically their headgear at the time was a Bicorne but since line infantry and even the guards were often to be found in round hats, I think I'll  go that route.  

Looking Ahead

 Its a cold, damp, blustery day. Lots to do but.....not a bad day to put in an hour or two of hobby time.

Happy to be home again, the armies are preparing for their next game by having the bottoms of their bases painted in case they should fall over in public, and having their company number painted onto the back of their bases to aid sorting at conventions. (Next May in Portland oh Powers that be!) 

I am still set on reducing the number of collections and rules that I use to 8 so that I can dedicate more time playing with what I do have and play some more mini-campaigns.  I also want more free storage space and fewer distractions so sometime this winter there will be a call for brave volunteers to give new homes to old loved soldiers now retired and to 'recruit's who will never be activated, but that is for later.

Time now to think about a game for this cold, damp, blustery week. My 54's have been longest on the shelf of my remaining main collections, but I think its time for some armour, spears and bows. It just remains to pick a scenario and period. Will it be: 

These guys?

OR

or these guys?

Time will tell.

An XII

Well here I am. Today was the 11th anniversary of my relatively mild heart attack and I'm in better health now than I was before it. Part of me thinks its time to let it go but part of me still thinks its a good idea to remember.

Anyway, despite Covid, its been a good year with almost as many non-solo games as usual except that they were all video-chat games. I  expect a few local games by fall.

Today's game came to me from Delaware, USA: MacDuff in the Not Quite Seven Years War.
(Oh alright, Rob and I fought to a draw. A small game with big figures, somehow that's become my favourite style. How did that happen?)

The original idea was to use this annual post to look at what I plan to focus on over the next year but rather oddly for me, I'm quite happy to just keep doing what I'm doing and to continue pimping up my troops and terrain, adding a few bits and pieces here and there. At least I think I have now accepted my new preference for smaller armies of larger toy soldiers as a regular feature, with the occasional bigger battle with smaller, model figures to remind me that I was once a serious historical wargamer at times. 

v

It was the end of June, nine years ago that I first started thinking about using 54mm figures in units of 4 infantry and 3 cavalry on a 4" hex. Apparently  it still seems like a good idea to me.

OK, enough babbling, on to the game waiting on the table!

The counter attack!