Jim's Wargames Workbench

And drum roll please...Ta Da. The Lard Magazine 2021 has just been made available for you to download and it includes my Khalkhin Gol article and scenarios, as well as quite a lot of really good stuff for a wide selection of the Lardy rules, which is a nice change from the usual. 

There's also a very interesting interview with Mark Backhouse about Strength and Honour, which is well worth a look if you want to get a better grip on the system and how it works. It all makes up just a little bit for what can only be described as a bit of a ***** year! 

A bit of a random mix but lots of nice terrain and figures. I had to grab some photos in the tea break, so didn't get round all the tables, which was a shame. My favourite was the Boshin Wars Sharp Practice game, which looked lovely and was really original. I'm hoping the event will run again next year and, if it does, I'll definitely be back to run a game of Bag the Hun or What a Tanker! or perhaps just take part.

I've been at work today so the official celebrations will be at the weekend, when I'll also be opening my presents, so what they are exactly is still a bit of a guess. I know there's some Cruel Seas stuff in there, as I was allowed to choose that, and there may well be some Flames of War things too, as they were on my Amazon wish list. I also already have some socks from my daughter, so that's a nice non-wargaming and much more practical present. To give myself a pat on the back for surviving this long, I also decided to give myself a couple of boxes of 28mm Warlord Napoleonic French line infantry in greatcoats, so my resistance has obviously crumbled. I'll just put that down to my age!

A game of Napoleonic Sharp Practice is being put on at the club next week and, in an idle moment of lapsed resistance, I suggested that I might be interested in taking part, were it not for the fact that I'm already booked in for a Cruel Seas game. 

No sooner had I posted my interest on the club message board, than I was mercilessly prodded from various directions by the club Sharp Practice enthusiasts, with tempting suggestions about a French force in 28mm, despite the fact that I am useless at painting and have a well founded phobia of fiddly uniforms.

The upshot of this is that I'm thinking about getting a couple of boxes of plastic French line infantry in greatcoats, as it was pointed out to me that they are much easier to paint than the bog standard uniform figures. This is probably a really bad idea and chucks my ACW plans out of the nearest window. 

Happy New Year!

I only have one New Year resolution this year and it's to get more wargaming done, both at the local club and solo in the holidays. I also have some clear plans and projects for 2019, some of which I've already started and a few which are new, so I'll set out what I'll be up to in another post. In the meantime, it's also Xmas here, as we open our English presents today, rather than floating them across to France then bringing them all the way back again. 

I now have a very nice blue Sea Cloth from Tiny Wargames so will be rethinking the bases on the ironclads and pre-dreadnoughts for a start, and a couple of boxes of Perry 28mm ACW figures, for which I'll have to think of a possible use, perhaps Sharp Practice or those new rules from Dan Mersey, Rebels and Patriots, who knows? I doubt I'll get round to doing that this year, however, as the focus will definitely be on more naval and air wargaming once again. More about that tomorrow!

Tally Ho!

I was disappointed not to see the TFL Summer Special this year but it has now been replaced by an annual Lard Magazine, which has just been published instead of the Xmas Special. It's an interesting idea but I will miss the bi-annual format, which coincides with my holidays. 

I have contributed to several of the Specials in the past, with scenarios and articles for Bag the Hun, but haven't been organised enough this year to get anything submitted. I have no excuse not to get my act together now that there's a full twelve months to sort something out!

It's a sad fact that I have drifted away from Too Fat Lardy based projects this year, apart from What a Tanker! and Bag the MiG. This was partly a response to the total domination of the TFL stable by Chain of Command and Sharp Practice. 

I am genuinely  interested in both of these rules, particularly Chain of Command, but will probably never get round to using them due to my phobia of 28mm figure painting, not to mention my almost complete disinterest in Napoleonics. It's horses for courses I suppose?

I'm sure they are brilliant rules but I'm more of a naval and air wargaming fan, so they will always be another one of those 'if only I could find the time' daydream projects. I think there may well be something under the Xmas tree tomorrow to focus my mind, I'll just have to wait and see?

The new magazine does have quite a lot of content dedicated to these juggernauts of wargaming but also has some other material for some of the 'lesser' rules like Bag the Hun and I Ain't Been Shot Mum, which is a breath of fresh air. I get the impression that there's an effort underway to give these older rules systems a much needed boost?

There's also some good stuff for What a Tanker but not the anti-tank gun rules that I was hoping for. The best article, from my point of view at least, is a revised spotting system for BTH which looks very interesting indeed. This uses a dartboard wheel thing which looks intriguing!

Anyway, for just under seven quid you can't argue with the value for money, even if all of the content might not be you cup of tea. 

I had a quick visit to this Napoleonic coastal fortification while we were camping but forgot all about it until I was going through the photos. It is just the sort of thing that Richard Sharpe or Horatio Hornblower might have to blow up, escape from or otherwise sneak around, so you can imagine how it might make an appearance in a Sharp Practice scenario or two. It wouldn't be difficult to scratch build either being essentially a box in a trench, with a wall and gate behind to cut off the headland from any pesky Rosbif's. I also thought it would make an excellent feature on some coastal terrain for Napoleonic naval games.

Another very interesting article and set of scenarios popped up in the TFL Xmas Special this year, focussing on Sharp Practice and pirates. The rules adaptations and army lists are by Chris Stoesen, who has also written material for Bag the Hun, amongst other things. He has used 15mm Peter Pig figures for his games, which jogged my memory as I have a big stash of these in a box along with three or four resin pirate ships, all of which I acquired via eBay many, many years ago.

I've done quite a bit of pirate gaming in 28mm and also fiddled about with 1/450th scale pirate ship skirmishes a while back, using the Peter Pig ships and Galleys and Galleons (I really should paint up the models and have another go at this). Anyway, I really liked the piratical scenarios that Chris has written for Sharp Practice and quite fancy giving them a try with the 15mm figures, especially as I'm never, ever going to do 28mm Napoleonics or the like!

I've been reading a lot about the second edition of Sharp Practice lately, so thought I'd get the basic pdf of the rules to have a closer look. I don't have any immediate plans to do anything with them but, in the long term, I do quite like the idea of either historical ACW or a Malburian 'imagi-nation' using plastics to keep the cost to a minimum. With that in mind, I've also got hold of a box of Perry Confederate infantry, to see what I could do on a tight budget with this set of rules. I reckon that a company of the 5th Alabama Regiment could just about be squeezed out of the forty four figures in the box, although I'd also need some skirmishers....ho hum.