Little wars part 3

Here are the last few pictures of Little Wars.

Over the past couple of years I have become a bit nostalgic with my wargaming and I have become a fan of the so called "Old School Wargaming" trend. Reliving the golden age of wargaming when battalions were big 30+ and bounce sticks and canister templates abounded on the games table. Yes the rules sets of a Charles Grant, Donald Featherstone etc. were the thing. It is what I started playing with ( or rulesets of a similar vintage). So the following pictures were a real treat for me. It is true that 54mm toy soldiers is more typical of a game that would have been played by HG Wells rather than Grant who used 25-30mm figures but I think it still captures that "Old School" look and feel.

I am so tempted to do a 54mm army but my problem is that the periods that I am interested in doing in 54mm ( Napoleonic and Seven Years War)I am already working on in 28mm. The other issue is the figures are mainly soft plastic. When I started my wargaming I had a bad experience with Esci British Napoleonics and I swore I would never go back to soft plastic. The larger figures may be better for paint chipping but I am not really game to try. Maybe I will do just a couple of figures down the track just for fun.

These last set of pictures cover another favourite period of mine Pirates Arrrrrr!

This terrific display was run by fellow NWA club members (Spot the blue shirts!) Mark "Fly" Goldyn et al.

I love the number of scratchbuilt ships for this game.

Bye for now.

Little Wars 2014 part two

Back again :) trying to keep the momentum going for my blog.

Okay Little Wars is the big wargaming event for the year and deserves another post with lots of pictures of the different games on show. We had a great range of games on show from steampunk goodness with In Her Majesties Name and Dystopian wars, pulp Back of Beyond games, WWWII with Secrets of the Third Reich, X-Wing , Warhammer Fantasy plus plenty of historical games with Napoleonics, French and Indian Wars, World War II and Vietnam and Modern Africa.

So why am I still talking you ask? Bring on the pictures!

Dystopian Wars

In Her Majesties Name

I do like the cobblestone play mats.

The battle of Ulsan - Russo-Japanese war naval

 

Vietnam - Flames of War

Warhammer fantasy

Back of Beyond Pulp gaming

Secrets of the Third Reich

There was so much going on with this table. Plenty of action organised by fellow NWA'ers James Wright and Brendan Day.

I mean who doesn't love a spider tank?

More to come tomorrow!

Cheers

Neil

Little Wars 2014!

This weekend was the annual wargame show Little Wars now in its new venue at the Kingston City Hall in Moorabbin. It was a great venue and I hope we are back there again next year.

I was running a public participation game called "The Twenty Minuters", a World War One dogfight game using the free Canvas Eagles rules with 1/72nd scale model planes. The star of the display was the Zeppelin which I scratchbuilt out of foamboard, dowel, balsa and paper card. A local television crew was doing a special on the show and they did a short segment on my game.

Here are some pictures of the event and my display game. Here is the hall before the masses arrive.

Here is my game in full flight (pardon the pun) with the zeppelin.

The Zeppelin game is set in the early war period around 1916. After that the Zeppelin became easy pickings for the faster more heavily armed fighters. The aircraft were british DH2 and Nieuport 11 fighters and the Germans had Fokker EIII and Pfalz EIV defending the Zep.

The Zep was brought crashing down in flames by a DH2 pilot who pumped a couple of long bursts into the envelope and scored particularly well on the damage chits.

I also had plenty of late war aircraft too.

The Red Baron despatching a Sopwith Camel flown by an Australian (note the bommerang symbol on the side). Historically the Australians had lots of fights with the Baron's Jasta 12 squadron and of course the latest theories suggest that the Baron was killed by an Australian machine gunner in the trenches.