25 September 2023

Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864 - 'Chinese' Gordon holds the line

This was the first time that the Taiping Rebellion has made an appearance at the club. This horrendous conflict, that resulted in between 20-30 million deaths, is largely ignored by wargamers, despite the fact that it offers a number of interesting troop types, weapon combinations, larger-than-life characters and scenario possibilities.

In this game the followers of the Heavenly Kingdom swept most of the Imperial Chinese forces from the battlefield with fanatical charges. Only units of the 'Ever Victorious Army', under the command of Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, held their positions. Indeed Gordon was appalled by the ineptitude and cowardice demonstrated by the Qing Dynasty conscripts!





















11 September 2023

Cyber Punk Inspired Sci Fi Action

This was a fun game, using Firefight rules, with Forge Fathers (Dwarves in Space) against Orcs/Marauders. The dwarves proved too tough for the Orcs and won fairly convincingly. 

The terrain is largely scratch-built, with amazing attention to detail. It was inspired by Mantic Games terrain crates, the movie 'Blade Runner', along with a number of sci-fi city art books.




















07 September 2023

Russo-Turkish War 1877-78 - Images Found

A number of years ago we had some Russo-Turkish War encounters. I had though that the photos were probably lost, following the move of this Blog from a Webpage. Also, the collection was sold to a wargamer in New Zealand.

Thankfully, this great blog site - 'History in 1/72' - has recorded some of the images. It's a bit of a blast from the past from this under-wargamed period:

http://historyin172.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-russo-turkish-war-1877-78.html





05 September 2023

Napoleonics - Tilting at Windmills

An interesting skirmish level game of Napoleonics using 'Rebels and Patriots' rules, that pitted a French force against a British/Hanoverian opponent, The French managed to secure the windmill objective, ensuring victory. The British were badly let down by their Hanoverian allies who fell back, then ran away, as soon as they could.

The Osprey set of rules seemed to work well for this low level skirmish type game.