Hazdrubal's Wargaming Blog: Not dead yet!

Its been a while since I updated, over 2 months, in fact, and thought it was time for an update.

Hamilton Road Gaming Group:
Saturday August 20th: Since I semi regularly play games at the Hamilton Road Gaming group, I figured I should run at least one game to repay them for all the games I've played. I wanted something different than they usually play and I decided on 'The Sword and the Flame' and as I was going to run the same game for my regular gaming group, I could use it as a play test. I hadn't played them in several years so it was also an opportunity to reacquaint my self with the rules.

I ran a scenario from Mark Fastoso's 'Colonial Campaign: Ethiopia' book the scenario I chose was the 'The Battle of Adowa: Centre Brigades'.

It was an Italian victory.

It was a good thing I did, I was very rusty and play showed I needed a faster way to resolve melee.

Historical Gaming Association of London:
September 25. I ran my game of the 'Sword and the Flame' for my local gaming group. I decided to run one from a Scenario book. The book I chose was 'Colonial Campaigns: Ethiopia' and the scenario was 'Adowa: The Centre Brigades'.

To win the Italians must accrue more victory point than the Ethiopians, each side gets one point for solely occupying each victory hill. The game is supposed to be 12 turns long, but you can determine by about turn 8 if the Ethiopians are going to win, which is where we got to. By turn 8 the Italians had lost control of 2 of the the 3 hills and even if they kept the 3rd hill, the Ethiopians would accumulate enough victory point to win, the Italians didn't have enough troops to contest one of the hills, they used their reserves to hold the second hill as long as possible, if they could have contested it for one more turn we would have had to play til turn 12.

Council Fires:
Saturday October the 1st, I went to Council Fires, new one day con in Cambridge Ontario. I got there late (1 PM) as the schedule of games didn't have anything I wanted to play. It was to be a buying expedition.

When I got there the 5 Vendors; W&S Hobbies, WGG Distributors, Bayshore Hobbies, Five Arrows and Crossed Swords(?) were set up, RAFM and JDR Games were supposed to be there but I didn't see them. One vendor was doing so little business (or had done so much he was exhausted) and was asleep, he had somethings I was interested in, but not enough to wake him up. I've seen him at other cons and I think he goes to to them to sleep or have someone watch the booth for him when he goes to eat.

As most of my gaming is in 1/72 there wasn't a lot there to interest me, normally I spend quite a lot at W&S Hobbies, but this year his selection of WW2 Stuff was very limited and prices raised stuff that cost $8-$10 in March at hotlead, was $12-$14. I ended up only buying 2 boxes of Caesar miniatures; 1 of Modern US and 1 of Terrorists, and I picked up a box of Italeri ISU 122's from the Bring & Buy

Impressions: A lot of people and a lot of games set up but not many people playing, I know of at least one game that was to start at noon and still had no players by 1:30, the GM was getting ready to pack it up.

There were supposed to be Flames of War, Warhammer and a DBA Tourneys and saw none of them nor the Warmachine Demos, though they all might have been finished by the time I got there, or they had been moved into a different room.

Bring and buy was well picked over by the time I arrived, I mistook one guy selling his stuff as the Bring and Buy,he had some nice stuff but massively overpriced, (he probably ended up taking it all back home) boardgames for anywhere between $20 - $140!!! , he had some nice 20mm WW2 30-40 painted German infantry and 11 beautifully painted vehicles (model kits), in which I was interested in, until I suffered from sticker shock ($110!). That's almost as much as my entire German army cost me and its near 200 infantry and around 40 vehicles.

Advanced Squad Leader Minis:
As I didn't expect to do any gaming at Council Fires I agreed to help my buddy Greg run a game for some friends of his in Toronto the next day.
For full details (i.e. pretty pictires) see Icicle's blog posting ASL Miniature. I believe they were the first use of Icicle's new hills patterned after mine.

Here are my pictures of the game.