After a gentle flight down to Birmingham I met Angus Konstam at the airport and we were both collected by Tony Dillon who was also attending and lived locally. We arrived at the Chesford Grange for this years wargaming weekender and soon met up with the other attendees in the bar!
Friday night was spent catching up with everyone after a year (what a short year!!). It was great catching up with everyone again.
After breakfast on Saturday we quickly got the games underway. Paul Robinson ran an excellent Ramilles battle based on the fight around Franquenee. Colin Ashton, assisted by Robbie Rodiss ran Leuthen complete with baking powder snow. Graham Cummings ran Falkirk 1746 on teddy bear fur with his own and Guy Barlow's Jacobites and Martin Gane rolled out his Sudan game, the hottest terrain in what turned out to be the coolest area of the room.
I have some piccies from the games I took part in but the standards of figures, scenery, terrain and overall effort from those hosting or helping out were very high, once again it will turn out, I am sure, to be the highlight of my wargaming year.
Steve Pearse and myself faced off against Mark Dudley and Ian Burt at Ramillies and adopting an aggressive approach led the French to victory.
That afternoon I took on the mahdists in the Sudan - on my own (which was alas to be my downfall)!
And then on Sunday (after a wonderful evening swapping stories of vinyl, turntables, music and even a little bit of games workshop with Aly Morrison and Steve Metheringham), I faced the highland clans at Falkirk with Chris Gregg as Cope we myself as Hawley. This turned out rather more successfumlly as despite some effective highland charges we were able to hold our nerve and position and with a combination of musketry and cannister send Charlie's men packing.
At lunch on Sunday we had a small prize giving with Tony taking home a very nice vignette by John Ray for Most Military Gentleman, Robbie taking home Most Unlucky General - a shiny sculpt by Aly, and Paul winning the draw (picked by his wife !) for Best Host - a copy of the Perry Twins new Travel Battle game.
I managed to pick up some figures from Graham and as a present a lovely command stand vignette of a mounted officer and highlanders from Jim Purkey who'd travelled over from the States. This latter will be appearing in the Sugar Islands book I'm sure. I also touched base with Chris about adding a couple of illustrations for that too....but no ladies in uniform!
What a wonderful weekend....
.......can't wait til the next one!!!
3 comments:
Stuart,
It was a superb weekend and will be hard to beat. Your organisation of the event was magnificent and deserves all the praise and thanks given.
A very nice and succinct account Stuart. Thank you for all you did over the past year and at the event to make it run so smoothly. I greatly enjoyed the chance to get to know you a bit better and discuss your most interesting book - I feel sure you will find excuses for more than a couple of drawings!
Chris
http://notjustoldschool.blogspot.co.uk/
http://cheltenham-art.com/chrisgregg2.htm
Thank you for organizing a fantastic weekend Stuart, it was great to catch up.
All the games were fun and interesting to play.
Cheers,
Will H
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