An Award for my Blog

This has gone viral for sometime and I cannot trace the origin of it. The fact is that Joakim aka The Miniatures Man  and fellow Lardie fan, thinks my blog merits an award and appointed Gaming with TooFatLardies as a candiate to the Liebster Blog Award. Many thousand thanks for this unexpected and totally undeserved honour.


Now, how these awards work? Here are the rules

•  Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.

• Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.

• Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!

• There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do.

Now the difficult part. Accoding to my latest check I follow now over 100 blogs, so choosing five is far from easy and I will be leaving several highly merited guys in the dark. Nonetheless iyt is still nice to name and support some of the guys that (like me) have not broken yet the 200 followers magic figure.

And the winners are, in no particular order

Battle for Neuville - An IABSM Battle Report

The past weekend we took a rest from the eastern front and moved our forces to the beaches of Normany in June 1944. We played this time "Battle for Neuville" from the IABSM companion book Where the Hell Have You been Boys?, a collection of 21 scenarios of the battles around Omaha and Utah beaches in Normandy.  And those were not the only news this week end: the remarkable one was that I finally played a game, after several weeks acting as umpire... so last Sunday "I was happy as a dog with twin tails", as the say goes in Spain, commanding a German kampfguppe.

How did I fare? That's for the last part of this post... and then you can leave your thoughts and comments about my performance.

The View from my Window

A beautiful autumn morning early this week and after a very rainy October and November. I thought it was time to update one of my "view from my window" ocasional series of photos. The first snows of the season fell in the mountains at the back, although the unexpected rise in temperature midweek have melted the white cover away.

It (almost) smells Christmas already...

Vietnam Battle Report: Fix and Destroy... and 90,000 visits!!!

Another excellent weekend full of wargaming fun fro me!!!. While on Friday (local holiday in Madrid) we played another  WWII scenario  of the "Vyazma or Bust" campaign,  today Sunday we returned to the rainforests of Vietnam, playing a new scenario of Surf's Up, the companion book to the TooFatLardies Viertnam-era rules Charlie Don't Surf.

This time we undertook scenario number 5 called "Fix and Destroy": an aggressive US drive on the village of Gok Wan, a firm and well-known stronghold of the Vietcong forces.

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 3 - Pochinok

The third game of the Vyazma or Bust WWII east front IABSM campaign was played today in our club. After two consecutive victories, a reversal of fortune for the Russians who lost in their attempt to control the road towards Pochinok, the gate to regain control of Smolensk. Should the Russians have won this game, the campaign would have concluded today... the battle continues!

Are you a proper wargamer?

This brilliant post from Phil's The Wargaming Site is gone viral over the Internet and I cannot resist the temptation to take the test. The question is whether you're or not a proper wargamer. So there goes the answers to the  questions and judge for yourselves if I merit being called a wargamer.

* Spent at least £500 on figures / tanks - and you get extra kudos for every £500 you've spent
Hmmm... probably close to this sum this year but only because I'm really controlling my budget in these difficult economic times; previous years average probably closer to 700-800€... :-)
 
* Pricked your finger or thumb on a pike block - several times
Ha! Haven't played 30 Years War ever; but this reminds me the 15mm Republican Army I owned back in the 80s armed with needles to replace their weak lead pilum and hasta... ouch!

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 2 - Belyj

This is the battle report of the second scenario of  Vyazma or Bust, an Eastern Front campaign played with I Ain't Been Shot Mum from TooFatLardies. The first scenario saw a defeat of the German forces in the attempt to break the lock in the Smolensk area which would have opened the door to a blitz into Moscow.

The reaction of the Red Army to this unexpected victory was a hasty counterattack with all the available infantry and armoured forces that have left isolated important pockets of German troops. This second game, around the small village of Belyj, is a classic encounter between a Russian column moving north to contact and destroy the enemy and a German kampfgruppe trying to break the encirclement and returning to its own lines.

Vietnam from the other side of the hill (UPDATED)

Following a request from one of my club mates, today I put a question in the TooFatLardies and the Society of the 20th Century Warfare Yahoo groups requesting recommendedreading materials on Vietna, but from the side of the VC/NVA ("the other side of the hill").

I got a good response to a difficult question, and I thought it may be worth sharing with my blog readers the findings so far. Please note that as it was just posted today,  this is an informative post and no recommendations are made. Hope you find this information interesting.

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 1 - Izdeshkovo

1st November  (All Saints Day) is a holiday in Spain, the day I finally put the ball rolling of the Vyzma of Bust campaign in the club, played with the TooFatLardies IIWW company size rules I Ain't Been Shot Mum. This was my first live-fire test with IABSM (although I've been thoroughly reading the rules over the past months), acting as umpire to a group of 5 players also new to the rules.

The similaties of IABSM to Charlie Don't Surf had its pros and its cons, as I missed  some differences in detail innitially (for example killed and shock results). But generally speaking the game went smoother than my initial expectations, also helped by the support of the rest of players.