ALY MORRISON'S "BUTTERFLY" ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF WARGAMES AND TOY SOLDIERS

Sunday, 15 June 2025

Wild Geese 2025… And other Stuff.

Greetings…

Last weekend saw this years gathering of The Wild Geese Wargamers…

As always it was a joy of an event…. Excellent Company, Excellent Food and Excellent Games…

I took part in three games… And much to everyone’s …( Including mine ) surprise… I did quite well 🙀.

Okay….

Here are the pictures…

Off course the first thing I did was go straight into Shiny 42mm Seven Years War…

Steve’s game was based on The Combat of Domstadtl-1758…

I was one of the Austrian ambushers…




Steve produced an impressive amount of wagons… All of which had to get over the bridge and off the table…






Our glorious Austrians attack the convoy… Vigorously.


It was close… But eventually the Austrians block off the bridge from the Prussians and started to cut them up bit by bit.

Hurrah!

Next up…

More Seven Years War…This time from Ken… And more wagons trying to get away over a bridge…


I was on the Austrian side…

The bridge with the wagons in the middle distance…


Prussian hordes move rapidly towards our wagons


They shall not pass…



Yes we will…


Could the wagons move any slower?
Yes!…



The hard pressed Austrians hold out … with high casualties…


And a good number of wagons make it to safety…

And the third game … On the Sunday…
Sepoys and Soldiers…


A lovely colourful game put on by Martin…



I played the Maratha’s….


This is my Rocketeer unit/units… The ones with the red buttons…
These were absolutely the stars of the game…
Their bombardments caused the demise of two British units and one battery destroyed a cavalry unit in hand to hand combat….
Hurrah! Hurrah!…


These guys may look like they are attacking… Nope! This lot were retreating madly…
They did rally…Eventually…





We fought on doggedly… And much to our amazement we managed to wear the British down and cause them to break off the attack…


I say!….

The other games over the weekend were…


The Siege of Bogorovsk!…From Chris and Niall.








And the return of Keith’s French and Indian Wars river romp…



And very much to my surprise…


The Best General…. 🙀

A fantastic weekend indeed.

And so…
Other stuff…

The Trooping of the Colour…





I watch this every year… 
With the commentary turned off as I like to listen to the rattle and drum of all the equipment and the sound of the orders being barked out…
I think the whole thing has a Victorian maybe even Crimean War vibe about it… Certainly old school.

One of my friends tolled me I was a very strange socialist 🤣…

You may have noticed that I haven’t really been doing a lot of painting or that much posting really…
I’ve put it down mainly to the Blepharitis that I have… 
Which I have thought has been improving and in fact it is…
Unfortunately… As I have discovered after an afternoon of scans and tests… What isn’t improving is the Cataracts that I have developed in both eyes…Every thing is very fuzzy in my right eye and the left eye is not as bad but still showing signs of developing further…
It turns out that being on steroids… Which I am… Can cause the little buggers to come on quicker than normal…
I have been registered for the operation… Which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later…
The “Myopic Shift” that you get with Cataracts has been fairly severe… So I am getting new glasses and a new prescription to compensate…
This may actually allow me to get some painting in…Which would be nice.
Fortunately I don’t have too many problems reading… So there might be a few book reviews/recommendations on the way…

Although I have been told not to overdo things…

All the best.   Aly












Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Partizan… 2025.

Greetings…
So it’s only taken over a week for me to post the pictures of my flying visit to Partizan last week.(18th May)…
All the usual things have gotten in the way… Life , Work and Health… Yes… good old Health…The eye is starting to improve a bit… but the rest of me is a wreck 🤣🙀🤣…
I blame a lot of my aches and pains on the weather…I think we are having four seasons a day at the moment… And they are all grey ,grey, grey grey.🙄

So…
Here are some pictures of the games that caught my eye…
First up a lovely Wars of the Roses game from The Bodkins…




Next up…
A Peninsular War game from The Perrys…





Alan tells me these are Horreros…


And now The League of Augsburg…
The Dutch Invasion of Hispaniola…



Next… Eastern Front 1941.
From the Derby Wargames Society (I Think).




And finally…
Wake Island… Or maybe a version of Wake Island… 
From…
The League of Extraordinary Kreigspielers…






My loot for the day…
If I had more time and more energy I am sure I would have got a lot more…
My butterfly was disappointed but my wallet was delighted 🤣😂🤣

Time constraints meant I couldn’t judge the Tabletop Vignette competition… So I don’t know who the winner was…
But… My vote would have been for this…


A beautiful Sassanid Command Stand…
I believe from The Bradley Barn Wargames Group…

So there you go… A short but enjoyable visit and many thanks to Alessandro for giving me a lift and to Lorenzo for buying me Ice Cream…

It was apparently one of the busiest Partizans ever… It certainly looked like it…

My only gripe would be a lack of comfy seating for grumpy old gentleman like me.. And cakes 😁

All the best.  Aly