A Wargaming Odyssey
This is a long running and continuing journey around a collection of ideas, projects, games, models and a variety of wargaming related themes from my own imagination and from others. As I have been described as having the attention span of a forgetful goldfish you can rest assured the resulting subject matter will be diverse and (usually) entertaining! "He lived in a frenzy of enthusiasm — but nothing lasted for long with him".
Tuesday, 15 July 2025
The Nelson Touch
Monday, 7 July 2025
The Zulu War
Been after this for a while and its arrival is doubly welcome following the recent Mike’s Models 15mm Colonial collection
As is my usual modus operandi when embarking upon a new(ish) project, I carried out a quick trawl through eBay for some suitable background material. My library for this particular Colonial adventure takes frugality to new levels as it consists of three, now four, books! The volume you see above I was particularly pleased to get hold of as it is one of the more useful Osprey hardback compilations.
The title contains material previously published as Campaign series 14: Zulu War 1879, Elite series 32: British Forces in Zululand 1879 and Elite series 21: The Zulus. Written by the renowned Zulu War experts Ian Knight and Ian Castle and featuring artwork by the late Rick Scollins and the late Angus McBride, it is east to see what I was so keen to grab a copy of this 2004 publication.
15mm Colonials
The Zulus War collection I posted about recently - the unpainted horde of Zulus with a smattering of British and Boers - should be with me shortly so I will at last be able to enjoy some Colonial games (once the rebasing has been completed and the Zulus painted that is!).
Needless to say, the Portable Colonial Wargame and Dominion of the Spear and Bayonet will feature once I get to the tabletop.
Sunday, 6 July 2025
The Lure of the Sublime Porte
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
Thoughts on The Portable Ironclads Wargame
Monday, 30 June 2025
WW1 Aerial Card Game
Laurel and I braved the thirty degrees plus heat on Sunday to visit our usual boot sale. It was quite small in terms of the number of sellers and buyers, presumably the weather warning deterred many from attending. Despite the paucity of sellers I managed to pick up the small card game you see above for the princely sum of £1.
Dogfight was released in 2015 and was designed by Martin Wallace - a designer of many boardgames (I own his excellent version of Waterloo) and personally known to a number of readers of this blog (sadly I am not in that number!).
The game is a type of Trumps style game where the applicable aircraft rating - determined by any one of the five action cards you see above for - is compared to the opponents with the highest score being the winner. Simple but effective although as mentioned, there is a meatier set of rules available from BGG which would sit rather more comfortably with the WW1 aerial enthusiast.
The artwork on the aircraft cards is very nice and would be useful for painting colour schemes for the aerial model gamers amongst us.
All in all, a nice acquisition for a £1 and a game that can be easily played anywhere and with a very quick set up time.