Rorke's Drift, BFE style

At the local con I presented the BFE scenario of Rorke's Drift.  If I may be so bold, I thought it worked a charm.  The Zulus came very close to winning in spite of terrible dice luck in shooting (limited anyway) and having a terrible time breaking into the buildings.  One funny moment was when the Zulus managed to set fire to the hospital and then having another unit impetuously attempting to break in to the same building.  They failed, thankfully for them!

I think the players had lots of fun and I was appreciative of the good spirited play.  It makes such difference.  I have had the odd experience of preparing a game -- with all the terrain construction, painting time and costs incurred -- only to find a player or two simply grumpy, competitive, and rude.  I will be honest, I sometimes have wondered why I bother....

Thankfully, this is rare and here the experience was really positive.

Here are some randomly ordered piccies:

Ancients battle....a big one

The group played a very large Successors battle last week.  We calculated 720 pike-armed figures alone.  Lots of fun and a great spectacle.

Finally, a colonial bash with BFE: Ginnis, sort of...

I used the Skirmish Campaigns Sudan guide for this battle and expanded the scale for BFE2.  Was a great game and the action was fast. The Dervishes focused their efforts on one enemy brigade, and destroyed it, but exhausted themselves in doing so leaving the other brigade to effectively take the objectives.

Here are some pictures:

Waterloo, 2017, using Shako II

We had prepared this game for 2015 and presented it at the two local conventions, but we never actually played the full game, so it was high-time to do so.  All 28mm figures using Shako II rules.  French won....again!

ME buildings finally play-ready

It took me a long time to get these painted, but I am quite happy with the 15 buildings I produced using the wooden drawers from the dollar shop.  At the moment they are bing used for a 20mm WWII game (Safi, 1942, from the RF original rulebook).  I will be using these, however, for 28mm Sudan and NWF battles.  Indeed, I have ordered a bunch of the Perry and Tiger miniatures Afghan regulars and hope to present a game using these in 2018.

A little more done on the buildings...

I added a few more details and then textured the buildings using the old glue and sand approach.  So quick and easy.  I have since base-painted all the buildings using my usual mis-tinted latex house paint.  At about $5 per gallon in all the colours usually needed for terrain, I really don't understand why anyone would pay for custom mixed paint, or even worse, use super expensive hobby paint for terrain projects or basing.

Sudan Buildings

It has been a while since I did some work on my colonial collection.  I have prepped loads of figures for all the campaigns I play, but little else has been done.  Well I finally got going on some new Sudan/Middle-Eastern buildings using little drawer sets from the dollar store. I still have a long way to go on these, but the basic 'slugs' are taking form.  Here are a couple of shots:

The basic approach will be very Ian Weekley.  Of course, mine will be simple, durable, game friendly but I hope also evocative.