Bachelor Wars '24

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.

Nick & I posing in front of a local toy store we visited together 

the first time we met, when he drove down in 2010, for my very first

"Maiwand Day" game, played  to commemorate the

130th Anniversary of that momentous battle...

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:

Nick & Daryl strike a pose as friendly companions --

shortly before going to war against each other on the Frontier:

Nick was kind enough to bring 4 spare Colonial Osprey

books already in his own collection as gifts for us.

I of course already had them also, so Daryl got 'em all!

 

Daryl also got the gorgeous 54mm early c.19th Century Skinner's Horse

Sowar, which would fit perfectly into his own 54mm collection...

...BUT Daryl already had Christopher Hibbert's,

"The Great Mutiny," so I got that one.

THANKS AGAIN, Nick! 

Friends moments before waging tabletop battle as enemies...

Overhead view of terrain layout for the Battle of Kalu Khan...

View looking South, with the North-West Frontier of

British India in the distance just beyond the bookcases --

too far away for any Imperial intervention to prevent the conflict...

NOTE the wedding band on prominent display...

NOTE the flock of sheep caught between the raiders (on foot) and

the defender's off-table reinforcements (on horseback) -- which

was not planed but came to pass with a certain poetic grace...

The next post on this blog will be a detailed After Action Report on the Battle of Kalu Khan, but for now I will move on to the next event on the Bachelor Wars schedule: a 54mm Boxer Rebellion game featuring Admiral Seymour's train-borne relief force having to repair damaged track before moving on to rescue the besieged legations in Peking!  We swapped out my river terrain boards for more ground-cover boards and then Nick went to work laying out all the terrain and troops he'd brought with him!  Nick later commented that the combo of speed and precarious balance with which we managed to rotate out the river boards, install the ground-cover boards, and deposit the out-of-service rivers atop my bookcases reminded him of parkour -- which I took as a hilarious compliment that made me laugh at myself and feel proud at the same time!

Admiral Seymour himself...

Some time soon I will do a full-blown AAR on this splendid game as well, which was tremendous fun -- and I'm not just saying that because I emerged victorious!

3 lucky bachelors for the weekend --

2 great games down & still one more to go...

Nick takes in the air & ponders tomorrow's battle...

Saturday morning, Nick and I headed for the hills -- of the San Gabriel Valley and Pasadena, where Daryl had prepared the last of our trio of colonial conflagrations...

Set in a whimsical version of the Khalsa Sikh kingdom, circa 1845, with a dash of Gilbert & Sullivan and a morsel of Tin-Tin mixed into the recipe, it involved a British expeditionary force aiming to conquer the Sikh capital, which was bolstered by elaborate defensive works...

Return of the wedding band...

It was yet another great game, which I will detail in yet another future AAR.

Whew!!!

Thus ended the events of the first-ever Bachelor Wars -- other than Nick and I watching THE LONGEST DAY that night, in honor of the recent 80th Anniversary of D-Day.

There was some discussion of reconvening next year, which would be fantastic, but for now I will only focus on the happy memory of a great weekend of wargaming!

NEXT UP:   The Battle of Kalu Khan........