Greetings fellow wargamers!
It's been far too long since I've posted anything on this blog. I've been very busy and a portion of all that activity has actually been hobby-related, so I'm hoping to make up for lost time and at least get one new post done ASAP.
As the Summer proceeds I hope to catch up by posting about all the varied and sundry hobby stuff I've been up to this year. So without further ado, here I go...
On the weekend of Friday June 7th & Sunday June 8th I participated in a great weekend of gaming, dubbed by the three of us men involved: "BACHELOR WARS." As you might guess, none of us is a bachelor. My wife was away, and my good friend Nick Stern drove down from Northern California, leaving behind his own wife of many years -- in all but name -- to stay at my place and spend the weekend gaming.
An appropriate alternate name for our mini convention would have been "THE SWORD AND THE CON" -- as every game scheduled would be played using some version of Larry Brom's classic colonial rules set THE SWORD AND THE FLAME -- a system which, needless to say, has provided all three of us with some of our best wargaming memories.
We were joined by our mutual friend Daryl, who lives just a little East of me over in Pasadena. The funny thing is I've known Daryl for years and gamed with him several times at my place and at his, and the same goes for Nick and I, with our gaming friendship dating back even further. But Nick and Daryl had never met in person before. Instead they met in an online colonial wargaming forum, discovered I was a mutual friend, and then the three of us came up with idea of all getting together for a weekend of colonial wargaming. It was originally supposed to happen back in March to coincide with the annual Toy Soldier Show here in Southern California, but at the last minute Nick had a schedule conflict, so I went over to Daryl's place on a Saturday and played against him in one of his trademark Old School Toy Soldier style Sikh Wars games, which was fantastic, and which I shall blog about right here, sometime soon!
After gaming with Daryl on Saturday, I proceeded to attend the aforementioned Toy Soldier Show that Sunday, which was a lot of fun -- and where I met another miniature wargamer, named Patrick Finnerty, who happens to belong to a gaming club that happens to MEET REGULARLY FOR GAMING AT A CHURCH DOWN THE STREET FROM MY HOUSE, and where I have since shown up and enjoyed playing my first 2 games ever of the Osprey Samurai skirmish rules set, "Test of Honor" -- but that's a story for yet another blog post. I also got an invite to Patrick's place for a game of "Rebels & Patriots" on his 6' x 16' table (!!!!), which was fantastic, and which I will also blog about here in the hopefully not-too-distant future.
Getting back to the subject at hand, the first day of our trio's Colonial Gaming Extravaganza was at my place, playing a scenario I'd set up on my table BACK IN NOVEMBER 2023, but had never managed to actually play (I did say I've been busy!). Having Nick and Daryl -- two dedicated colonialists -- over was the perfect opportunity to solve that problem.
Here's a few pics of the table for that game, "The Battle of Kalu Khan AKA: The Black Sheep Incident." It as a Pathan vs. Pathan fight, featuring a Waziri raid on a Yusufzai village on the banks of the Kabul River, with the objective of rustling a prize sheep:
Awesome write-up. Sounds like a blast. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI just adore this, great to see friends get together and have a blast.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, guys! Michael, I need to go visit your blog -- something I haven't done in far too long! I think I may even be able to leave a comment as MYSELF! (just cracked the code of my blogger ID)
ReplyDelete