Battle of Keren at Salute 2014

Saturday morning saw us arrive at Excel bright and breezy. Fortified by some of McDonalds finest pork style products we set to assembling the Keren game

Set Up

 A models eye view from the foot of the mountain

 And from the top

 Steep innit?

The British commandeered the BBC materials and set up their own "Broadcasting House" near the mountain, from where they broadcast mournful Italian Opera interspersed with calls to surrender designed to break Italian morale. When James discovered this he had to include the model on the table and Martin duly obliged.

 James tweaks his masterpiece

 Big, innit?

 Stonk!

 Some minor explosions pepper the mountainside

As a surprise for James I made a cake and hewed it into a similar shape to the mountain. Its a bit yellower than I intended. I was going for that "Old Skool made by your Mum for your brthday in the 70s" vibe. James was especially impressed that the soldiers were "correct" - Airfix Italians and Revell 8th army. It tasted alright too.

 The display table - complete with Bren

 

 The team hard at work on assembly

James surveys his masterwork

The game begins

With set-up and fettling complete we were ready for the masses.

 The Askaris weather the initial bombardment

 The Indians begin their advance

 The lack of mortar support meant the Indian troops found it tough going

The game attracted a crowd from the moment the doors opened

At this point my camera died. Stupid camera.
So what follows from here, ae rather low quality iPhone pictures.

Sorry about that

Low quality second half pictures

 The view down the mountain

 

The Wellesley bombe swoops in

 Italian re-inforcements

 Still drawing crowds

 Northstar Nick surveys the scene

 Information table

James puts a lot of effort into providing information for visitors to give the game context. A big contrast with all too many games that have little or no information about what you're looking at.

The Yorkshires break into the fort

This was a terrific day out. Spent most of the day chatting to people and explaining the setting of the battle. But we still played the game through, though at times there were so many people around we had to suspend play to allow some pictures and talk to people.
The game looked spectacular and I lost count of the number of people who were impressed by the sheer scale of the mountain and the effort James and Scrivs had put in
Feel very privileged to have been asked to help James out

Other versions of the day can be found on
Steve's Blog
Scrivs Blog

And I expect on these two shortly
Martin's Blog
Matt's Blog

If you missed it the game will be at Partizan in a few months and Crisis in Antwerp later in the year