Broadside 2019

When I woke up this morning, my brain was wide awake, despite the effects of a bout of insomnia and my alarm going off an hour earlier than normal. Unfortunately, the rest of my body was not so awake - cue one shin bashed on the metal bedframe. I promptly reset the alarm and went back to bed for a while with my injured leg elevated

Finally I got up, had a quick breakfast and made my way out of London to Sittingbourne to attend this year's Broadside show. I arrived shortly after the show had opened, so didn't have to queue for long. After a quick perusal of the flea market, I headed downstairs to the main part of the show.

For those who haven't been, Broadside is a cracking little show run by the Milton Hundred Wargames Club, with a good variety of demo and participation games. For its size, it definitely punches above its weight for the traders it attracts.

I took photos of all the tables before I commenced my shopping - I had a fairly short list of things I definitely wanted to buy and there were a few things I was on the lookout for in case any of the traders had them. I was also open to "ooh - shiny!" items.

During the day I met up with a number of people. Early on I met Bob Cordery and David Crook. When I got downstairs I popped over to the Rejects' game for a quick chat with Evil Postie, Ray and Big Lee and dropped off my backpack with them. A while later I met Clint who gave me a small bag of chocolate fudge.

I also had a couple of good long chats (inside the hall and outside having a smoke) with Dave Stone who runs Wargames Terrain Workshop and is (ir)responsible for the "Death Match" game you'll see in the pics later.

I think that's more than enough of an intro blather, so let's get on with photos.

The Tables*

*not all of the tables were games

Echidna Games - Laserblade

All Around The Board - Boardgames

Battlefront - Flames of War Late War

Wargames Terrain Workshop - Death Match

Sarissa Precision - demo of the new terrain tiles system

Man O'Kent Games - Gaslands and their upcoming spaceship combat game

Catalyst Games Lab - Battletech

Milton Hundred Wargames Club

Gravesend Gamers Guild - Kill Team

Skirmish Wargames - Mag Force 7

Deal Wargames Society - Operation Brassard (Invasion of Elba 1944), Assault on Cape d'Efola

SEEMS - The Colonel's Jammed and the Gatling's Dead!, Brits vs Zulus

 

Postie's Rejects - Battle of Killiecrankie 1689

Maidstone Wargames Society - Corsair vs Mustang - Dogfight '69

Shepway Wargames Club - War in Middle Earth

Friday Night Firefight Club - Trophy Hunting In The Lost Valley

Medway Wargames Society - A Song Of Ice And Fire

Emotionally 14 - Star Wars Legion

 To finish off this post, here's my loot:

I might be starting a British Airborne platoon for Chain of Command...

Another Aussie Matilda and a FOO team

Draft horses and more Stronty Dog

Some bits for modding Hotwheels for Gaslands

Some cheap sable brush sets (£7.50 per set of 6) and freebie key fob and bottle opener

Another jungle village building

Chocolate fudge!

Phew! That's another show post done and dusted!

Sunday Workbench 02 June

Having drybrushed the scrapheap base on Friday, yesterday I made up a dirty brown wash and applied it all over everything. This morning I realised that I made the wash a bit too dark (and maybe too densely pigmented) and I had to redo all the drybrushing. I also added tufts:

Once they were done, I spent a while cutting up nylon scourers for my hedge-making project. This is what I got from a 10-pack of large (15 x 23 cm) ones:

The strips on the left are shorter, the ones on the right are taller. I have enough here to do just over 10m of low hedges and 12m of tall ones. I actually have another two packs of scourers should I wish to make more.

Later this afternoon I will be gluing them onto tongue depressors. The next few days will see me shaping them a bit so that they don't look quite so neat and regular - I won't go too mad with them as they are just for the club, so will get abused a bit.


UPDATE:

All the strips have now been glued onto tongue depressors. For the shorter (in height) ones, I had some short (length) strips left over, so I used those to make up some gapped hedges.

And in case anyone thinks that the lower boards aren't full:

Overall I have 79 of the short hedge strips and 83 of the taller ones.

Friday Workbench 31 May

I was intending my post today to be AARs of the ADLG games I played yesterday. But I forgot my camera, so there were no pics. I was giving my opponents some practice ahead of the club's one-day competition later this month - the theme is late medieval, so I took a Burgundian Wars Swiss army.

My first game was against Mike R's Order of St John; followed by Dave S's Medieval Spanish (Castille) list. I lost both games, but could have won both if my dice rolls for some crucial combats hadn't been so awful.

However, it was a useful learning experience for me as I now know how to adjust my list for future games - less pikes, more halberdiers (and upgrade some to Elite) and more light troops to make the army a bit larger and more resilient.

With that wittering out of the way, on with today's workbench post.

Today I have mostly been drybrushing the Gaslands scrapyard terrain pieces. I've also glued the spare cars onto some of the bases to add some height.

Tomorrow will see me giving them all a dirty brown wash and when that is dry I will be adding some static grass tufts.

Bank Holiday KotB Big Game 26 May 2019

I mentioned in my last post that yesterday was a big game of King of the Battlefield at the club. I got there slightly before 1pm and helped setting up the tables.

The game started shortly before 2pm, with 5 players:

Clive - British and Hessians; Right Wing
Stan - Prussians; Left Wing

Mike R - Austrians and some Russians (on a flank march, arriving quite late); Right Wing
Richard - half of my Russians; Centre
Me - the other half of my Russians; Left Wing

We were joined by three other players at various points - Jerry took over the centre portion of Clive and Stan's army; Ian G arrived with more British and took the left wing, with a big cavalry reinforcement donated to Clive's right wing; and Mike C with more Austrians on our right wing (with a small reinforcement of cavalry sent to my wing), who arrived just as Mike R's Russian flank march arrived on table.

It was a fabulously chaotic game. Clive and I both started out with equally poor dice rolling for our combats, which saw a fairly even distribution of units leaving the table. Unfortunately my dice rolls didn't improve as the game went on, whereas Clive's improved significantly. The one bit of good dice luck that I did have early on was that all my control tests for redeploying infantry from column to line and unlimbering my artillery passed on the first attempt. We did have some wonderful cavalry melees though.

Further down the table, everyone seemed to be having better dice luck, with less units being killed early on.

I took a fair number of photos throughout the game - here they are for your delight.

 

 

Yes! I've killed all of Clive's cavalry!

Yoiks! He's got more!

I'm sure we had more infantry than that a few minutes ago...

Hmm, the Serbskiy hussars are dead. I guess we will be too, soon.

I thought there was another gun in this battery?

Crikey!

 

Phew! Austrain cavalry are here - guess I'll scoot out of the way!

Hah! So long and farewell, British guard infantry!

As we called an end to the game (shortly after 9pm), I was left with 4 unbroken infantry units and 5 generals. Having started with 16 infantry regiments, 12 cavalry regiments, 3 Cossack regiments and 4 artillery batteries. And a reinforcement of 5 Austrian cavalry regiments.

OMG! She's Alive!

aka the hitmen you hired all failed!

It has been rather a long time since I posted last, mostly because I haven't been doing anything hobby-wise since Salute. Until today, that is.

The other day, someone on the club's email group was proposing a multi-player Gaslands game. Just over a year ago, I had painted up a bunch of cheap cars with the intention of making some junkyard terrain pieces. But, inevitably, never got around to doing so. Today I finally made a start on doing so.

As well as the cars, I had cut a bunch of EPVC bases. I glued most of the cars onto these (leaving a few loose, to be added on top of piles later). I then left them for a couple of hours for the glue to cure. It was at this stage that I realised a big mistake I'd made - on the multi-car bases, I should have pre-textured or at least painted the central areas so that white didn't show in the gaps between cars. Oh, well.

I made up some basing gunk - a mix of brown acrylic frame sealant (from Poundland); some bird sand and a little bird grit (both from Wilko) and a splash of water to help make it a little more fluid for spreading. And then I got on with the job of adding gunk to the bases, including in the narrow gaps.

And here's the workbench after all that was done:

I also decided to test glue a strip of scouring pad onto an old painting stick (aka tongue depressor) to see how well the glue would hold it:

The plan is to make up a bunch of hedges for the club's terrain box. If this glue holds the strip firmly, I'll cut a load more and get them glued to sticks, trim them unevenly, add basing gunk, hit them with brown spray paint  and then flock them.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday in the UK, so my plan is to join in a big game of King of the Battlefield at the club - my Russians deserve an outing, having missed the games earlier this year. Of course, that means there won't be any progress on the terrain until Tuesday.