From my side of the table… War of 1866… First game of the year.

Greetings…

At the beginning of the year we gathered at Michael Perry’s house for the first game of the year.

We played a War of 1866 game …

Nick, Dan and myself took the part of the Austrians and Michael, Alan and Dave were the Baddies

We used ‘This Hallowed Ground’ again…With some modifications to try and reflect the different training and doctrine of the two armies…

The game started with a cavalry action/skirmish…

Our glorious brave cavalry.

The clash of arms.

Our glorious brave cavalry running away…Sigh!

Our brave infantry surge forwards.

Some of our glorious brave cavalry returned to the fight.

The infantry to the front of the cavalry represent German Confederation Allies.

A view of the Baddies…all armed with machine guns and bazookas.

We bravely move forward… but we are already starting to take considerable casualties.

Following our excellent combat doctrine we fixed bayonets and rushed upon the Baddies through a hail of machine gun, bazooka and possibly light mortar fire.

Our superbly positioned artillery pours fire upon the Baddies.

Our brave soldiers press on.

Gaps start to appear in our lines.

Our truly glorious cavalry throw themselves at the Baddies line.

Casualties mount up among our brave soldiers.

This brave and skilled battery does it’s best to stem the tide of  
Baddies… but alas it is not enough.

Our men eventually decided that there was a really nice Coffee House in Vienna that 
they all needed to visit .

We… came second… Sigh!

We may have given the baddies too much of an advantage in this fight… All but one of our brigades broke and only a couple of the Baddie battalions were lost…..but it was still fun.

I have had a couple of ideas for some tweaks, so maybe next time we won’t get quite so massacred.

The Baddies and the German Confederation Allies were from Michaels collection.

The glorious Austrians were from Nicks collection.

You can find an alternative (Baddie…Prussian propaganda) account of the battle here…

https://www.facebook.com/perryminiatures

All the best.  Aly

From my side of the table… ACW… Last game of the year.

Greetings….

Between Christmas and New Year Alan and Michael Perry and myself popped over for a game with Dave Andrews in his lovely wargames room…

Dave had set up the table for an American Civil War game …

We used ‘This Hallowed Ground’ which can be downloaded from Jay Whites excellent blog …

http://jayswargamingmadness.blogspot.com/

We had a splendid day’s gaming…Michael and I were the Union and Alan and Dave took the part of the Confederacy….

There were various points on the table that needed to be captured and held… in the end we fought to a rather bloody draw…

Here are some pictures…

The field of battle

The brave boys in blue.

Rebellious rascals 

It’s hard to believe… but these are my dice scores.

Unfortunately the high scoring dice here indicate casualties.

Red dice start to appear amongst the Confederacy.

At the end of the game…The Confederacy has the crossroads and The  Union hold the bridge.

All the figures and terrain are from Dave’s wonderful collection… It’s always very inspiring getting to play with all those lovely toys.

All the best.  Aly

Happy New Year.

Greetings…

Well… Another year.

I shall not dwell on the state of the world where our collective so called leaders have run the whole gamut from violent madness through to rank stupidity.

This year … very much like the previous two… My family, friends (in and out of the blogosphere) and my hobby have kept me sane.

I survived Covid then returned to working from the office full time and after many delays work started on improving and updating my house…nice new double glazed windows and posh looking shutters… Hopefully this will continue steadily throughout 2023.

Work and renovations have certainly disrupted my hobby time but not halted it… I managed to finish two projects…The War of 1812 and 40mm Napoleonics… I say finished but of course to be more accurate, I have enough toys for a game.

Getting out to shows and events and meeting up with friends old and new has been a real pleasure , as has getting back to face to face gaming.

Here is a little reminder of what I have been painting over the year… one image from each month.

January 

February 

March

April 

May

June

July

August 

September 

October 

November 

December 

Thank you to all my friends and followers who have given me endless encouragement and support over the last twelve months…

Here’s to a more peaceful, safe and healthy New Year filled with toys , friends and games.

All the best.  Aly