2015 Sooo Many Anniversaries!

With this year's OML3 event fast approaching my thoughts had turned to which game I planned to put on this time. Being on June 6th the obvious choice would be a D-Day battle - I'd definitely have most of the kit I needed (and could easily add bits from the garage full of stock if needed). As I've been having enormous fun fighting through "Kampfgruppe von Luck" the latest Pint-Sized offering for CoC (more of that later) I'd been reading up a lot on the battles in the Ranville, Breville area and decided that I'd finally paint the Horsa glider I'd had in the garage for 3 years and do something involving a landing zone.



Pleased with how it turned out, I hatched a plan to add two more.
 

The model is a 15mm  Lil' Flying Fokker available from http://www.oldgloryuk.com/wwii-allies/44/157/412/420 with decals from I-94 which I picked up from here http://www.minibits.net/BR-122-p672/ but have since found out are also available at Old Glory.

However........ (I'll try to keep this short)

I had, for a good while been weakening over these http://empressminiatures.com/userimages/procart84.htm and had decided that to commit to that as a project I MUST sell off something first. I decided that my hurriedly (horridly) painted WW1 Battle Honours Turks done for a tournament I held when I had my old shop would be sacrificed to Ebay.

Then I read the TFL Christmas Special on CoCing up WW1 in which Rich Clarke comments that the early war, with predominantly rifles, would play a little vanilla. The idea went a bit cold. But by that time I'd already found the Turks out of the garage. I decided on a whim that if I tarted them up a bit they'd be OK. I may keep them (you know how that is...right?)

After a few highlights & some tufts I thought they were "keepers"

The it went really weird. I tweeted the above photo, Mike Hobbs offered to lend me all his substantial collection of Woodbine Designs Turks & Anzacs to try out WW1CoC and before you knew it this year's OML3 game was decided as "A Ridge Too Far" Sari Bair Ridge - Gallipoli 1915.

Which brings me on to the subject of anniversaries.

In 2015 we have (among others):
Evesham (Barons War 1265) 750 years AND local to me!
Agincourt (Hundred Years War 1415) 600 years
Waterloo (Napoleonic War 1815) 200 years
Gallipoli (WW1 1915) 100 years
Battle of Britain (WW2 1940) 75 years
Gulf War 25 years

There's a lot to choose from all playable with TooFatLardies rules!


OML3 The Lardest Day Under Way

And they're Off!

For those who don't know, each year I organise the Operation Market Larden (or Great Tractor Rally as Rich Clarke likes to call it) event here in the heart of rural Borsetshire.

This year's will be the third and it's already is shaping up to be another cracker. Having sold out the 34 spaces in record time (just over a week) to folks from Devon to Lincolnshire and it seems everywhere between, work is well under way with the planning of games, players for those games & the now customary TFL cakes. Mmmmm cake. Not long now until June 6th!

These have literally gone down very well in previous years!

There will be 10 games this time. Rich Clarke will be showcasing his soon-to-be-released "Fighting Season" rules set for the modern setting (think Afghanistan, Gulf War, ISIS), there'll be Sharpe Practice variants from the War of the Roses, Sudan and Napoleonic Peninsular. Nick Overland is bringing his as yet un-published IABNM variant, Mike Whitaker's Normandy IABSM, Mud & Blood from the Russo-Japanese War, Dux Brit and finally two games of the hugely popular Chin of Command, both of which are not quite the norm. The Custard Guzzlers are putting on a Big CoC variant set in France 1940 and I'll be trying out a WW1 variant.

The format usually follows a morning and afternoon game at the home of Wyvern Wargamers, then off for an evening of curry sandwiched between pub visits. I'm sure there will be plenty to report on after the event.