Festive Frolics

Last night the Sherwood Hucknall and Ilkeston Team of wargamers met in Matt's wargames shed to play out a festive scenario of my devising. Sadly one of the four cried off at the last minute, so instead of umpiring (and riding to the rescue with a Kislevite relief force) I was obliged to dig out some ogres and take part.
Here's the scenario:
Seize the Tzarina’s Baubles!

The ties between the Empire and their Northern allies from Kislev are strong. The grateful inhabitants of the northernmost territories know that it is the fierce men of the steppes who help keep their borders free from the ravages of chaos. As a result the good people of Ostermark have a long tradition of gifting the Tsarina two gigantic fruit puddings. The origins are said to lie in the aftermath of a great battle where Ostermark and Kislev fought side by side against a great Chaos horde in the very depths of winter. After the battle was won the Elector invited the Tzar to his tent to share the special pudding his mother had made for him. So taken was the Tzar with the delicacy that the Elector promised to send him two puddings each year on the anniversary of the battle.
Over time the puddings have increased in size and splendour until the present day when a small army is needed to move the gigantic puddings from Ostermark to Kislev. On arrival in the Kislev capital the Ice Queen distributes portions of the puddings to her grateful subjects and rioting frequently breaks out as they fight over the richest portions.

The fame of the puddings, known colloquially as “the Tzarina’s Baubles” has spread far and wide and jealous eyes now follow the convoy as it makes its way through the frozen wastes. This year forces are determined to seize the goodies before they reach the capital…

The attackers will each need a 1000 point army.
The Empire will need 1500 points.
The Empire will deploy on the short edge of the table and must get the puddings off the far edge.
The attackers will come on randomly from the long edges, having got a bit lost in the snow. The attackers must capture the puddings and get them off their own table edge.

You’ll also each have your own secret missions that will get you more points (basically each of us wanted one specifc enemy general dead and to try and keep the other enemy general alive)

Matt as the Empire deployed first then the ambushers moved on from opposite sides randomly. We jury rigged a frozen wasteland using a sheet stolen from my eldest son's bed and used some chocolate tree decorations as the puddings.

The Ostermark Pudding Guard

The trap is sprung

What a lovely pair of baubles!

True to form my Ogres died early leaving Steve's Dwarfs to take on the Empire single handed - which he did rather well. However when the dust finally settled Matt had acheived one of hs secret goals, giving him a hard fought, narrow victory.
A very jolly way to end a years wargaming.

Man and Boy

If anyone has seen my hobby Mojo coud they please let me have it back, it's been missing for a while now and just can't seem to be bothered with anything that involves a toy soldier.

Fortunately you can always rely on kids to chivvy you along, so today my youngest (aged 5) said he wanted to play with his Sherman tank and "kill all my Germans"

So we played a little game while his brother was out.
Here's a few pictures:




20mm stuff. Revel Americans, FAA (I think) Germans, Ready to Roll tanks mostly and some Hovels, Sentry and scratch built buildings.
We used the "Daddy Edit" of the Featherstone rules from his War Games book.
A jolly good fun hour or so of moving and shooting, though tanks are extraordinarily hard to kill in those rules.
I lost, inevitably.

I think I felt the stirrings of my hobby Mojo and may think about finally finishing my Son Bridge for Rapid Fire! project in the New Year. The plan being to collect everything I need for both sides and the necessary scenery to play the Son Brdge intro scenario from the Rapid Fire North West Europe book. We shall see.