Messrs Hyde, Priestley (The Weasel), Stallard (trying to hide) and Sawyer playing with my toys in John's marvellous wargames room. But what is Henry doing and what is The Weasel saying?
Well, it was a fun weekend. And now I'm paying the price - I'm shattered, and to say that Monday morning is an anticlimax doesn't begin to cover how low I feel.
We (Col Speirs and myself) arrived chez Stallard at about 12:40 on Saturday. What an amazing house! If I tell you that the downstairs loo has a print of a WW2 Eastern Front battle-scene on the wall and a copy of Battlegames within reach of the 'throne', you might begin to get the flavour of the place! The others - Rick Priestley, Alessio Cavatore, Henry Hyde, Duncan Macfarlane, Paul Sawyer (not forgetting 'walk-on' appearances from Alan and Michael Perry and Guy Bowers) arrived in dribs and drabs.
John's games room is an Aladdin's cave of wargaming (and 1:1) goodies (so, just like the rest of the house really!). A good time was had by all (except Paul, whose dice-rolling was monumentally awful - his forces spent half the game failing to arrive on the battlefield, and then were destroyed in a single round!). Lots of chatter about all sorts of subjects (wargaming not least amongst them), a lot of banter, good food, etc, made for a great afternoon's gaming, even if the Romans did lose spectacularly. Moral of the story - don't play on the same side as Col, and never let Paul even look at your dice, let alone touch them. Oh, and never let Rick 'The Weasel" Priestley umpire and play for the opposition at the same time.
Then it was out for dinner - John, Col, the Perrys, Henry and his wife, Jasper Oorthuys (editor of Ancient Warfare magazine and Kirsty, Guy Bowers, and myself - I think that was everyone. Why is it that the smallest people always get the biggest portions? Rick's soup bowl was about big enough for him to swim in! And anyone with an appetite like Rick's really does deserve to be much, much, bigger in all dimensions. We had lots of fun.
Sunday morning came around, all too soon, and setting up for the Partizan show. The game was almost a mirror image of Saturday's (perhaps because the Sassanid general was non other than Col 'The Jinx' Speirs), with the Sassanid Savaran cavalry being gutted, sliced and diced, by the heroic legions, followed, shortly afterwards, by the rest of his army. AVGVSTVS to AVRELIAN worked pretty well, and gave a fast, fun, game - two of us playing with, umm, getting on for 500 figures, finished the game in a fairly relaxed three and a half hours - a goodly chunk of that time being spent chatting. We did have a couple of small 'issues' come up, but that's what play-testing is for. They are fairly minor and solutions will be written into the rules shortly, when I've figured out the best way to word them. The rules are getting a lot nearer being ready for external play-testing. Most of the diagrams are now drawn, we just need some shooting and combat examples to illustrate how it all works. I didn't see much of the show - I don't even know whether it was busy - by the time I got to have a bit of a wander, the rush (if there had been one!) had died down.
I came back with a bombard and a box of plastic Wars of the Roses infantry from Perry Miniatures. Hmm. Those aren't Republican Romans, or Epirotes (perhaps sitting next to Michael at dinner wasn't such a good idea - he's clearly put some sort of geas on me). The bombard is actually for my entry in a 'Group Build' on The Guild forum (even I couldn't force Romans to fit an 'English' theme!), and the bill/bow men are, well, an impulse purchase - I've often fancied doing a spot of medieval skirmishing, and they seemed like a good idea at the time (but it's easier to blame Michael!). But they'll make a nice change of pace from Romans. And they may help me decide whether I can really contemplate doing a medieval project 'seriously' at some point - i.e. can I make a decent job of painting livery, heraldry and all that stuff?
I'll post a report on one or other of the weekend's battles once I've had a chance to look through the photos, decided which is the best battle to cover, and tweaked the exposure on a few of the photos.