September 2023 Report

A month bracketed by outings.

On one of the hottest days of the year I motored down to Newbury racecourse for Colours 2023 and sweltered amongst the crowds – do they have air conditioning or was it just a cunning plan to get more of us to the bar?

The ground floor was the usual array of traders so I got through that as quickly as possible – the benefit of actually pre-ordering was worth it this time. Some very nice display games on the 1st & 2nd floors and access to the outside for some air and shade 😀. All told a good day and a well done to the organisers.

First game of the month was a Soviet Afghan game using Spectre Operations V2 with the mujahedeen attacking a Soviet outpost.

The game played well. One mujahedeen group decided ‘to hell with cover’ and went full on martyr, attacking over open ground, not surprisingly they died.

The second group went all tactical and used a dried up river bed to sneak up on the Soviets, they had far more success 🤣

Next up was a Successors game, Antipater v Perdiccas, using our new elephants amongst other things. After the ill tempered last outing this was played in a far better spirit and much fun was had with stampeding elephants, dying elephants and pushes of pike.

In terms of losses the Perdiccans most definitely lost the most troops, including all their elephants, however, amongst the Antipatrid losses were two commanders, effectively paralysing the army.

In the middle of the month I took a drive up to Stone in Staffordshire to participate in a 6mm Cold War game organised by the Cold War Commanders Facebook group.

This was a bit of a leap of faith as I hadn’t met any of these guys before and had never played 6mm before but the Cold War Commander rule set is the one I’ve gone for to do my Iran Iraq project so best to learn from those who know what they are doing I thought 🤨

First off I had a fine time with some friendly guys and got a weekend of gaming in, which I haven’t done for a long time, and secondly I learnt a good deal more about the rules so win, win 😊

Back home and the group played out a TYW scenario, refighting Lutzen.

This was a gruelling fight (in a good way) which saw the Swedes take considerable losses (much like the real thing) but were unable to force the Imperialists out of their positions.

On a positive note, Gustavus survived 😁

Our final game of the month was an Italian wars affair, Milanese v French.

The Milanese largely stood firm behind a stream and let the French come on, hoping to wear them down with crossbow fire – actually the Milanese player couldn’t get his troops to move anyway! 🤣😂

It took some time and the loss of a great number of French nobles but eventually the French forced the stream and when the ponderous Swiss smashed through the Milanese left it was over for the Duchy 😥

Game wise that was it for the month, a respectable few games and the ‘new normal’ for us now, gone are the days of two games a week, but hey, at least we’re still gaming.

On the project front the Iran Iraq 10mm continues with another Chieftain tank battalion done (above) and a T72 battalion done (below)

Well that’s it I guess, more to follow next week after a holiday break, so adios until then. 🙂