More VC activity detected!

The Viet Cong forces continue their buildup. A couple of weeks ago I introduced to all of you my first Vietnam period painted figures and today I have finished a support weapons squad, heavily armed with RPGs, Chinese LMGs and some US-captured weapons. All are from The Assault Group "Up Country" range.

Anibal's Wordle

I saw this afternoon this curious application in Big Lee's blog and then in Sidney's Roundwood's blog. It is basically a tool that searches a piece of text or, in this case, their respective blogs history of posts, to create what it's called a "word cloud" (see image below) or the most repeated words in the blog, grouped "artistically" and with different sizes relative to the number of times they're repeated.

I found it really-really curious so decided to give a try to my own blog, et voilà this is what i got:

Not surprisingly GERMAN and BRITISH (slightly unbalanced in favour of the former) are the two most relevant words, considering that my main focus of interest is in WWI on the Western Front.

If you want to give a try, just go to the Wordle website.

Panzer Strike

On Saturday February 5 we played an Eastern Front scenario in the aftermath of the Kursk Battle. The game depicted a German strong armoured counterstrike against a lightly defended Soviet position, aiming to gain some time for the main German forces to pull back. The objective of the German players was to control the area to the East of the table above the second stream  (see map below) with at least two operative AFVs. As usually, the game was played with the TFL rule set Troops, Weapons and Tactics for platoon-sized engagements.

VC activity detected!

I reckon that Vietnam has traditionally being a somewaht alien period for me and have been comnpletley unattracted by it. As many wargamers that I know, we are reluctant to game on periods that we feel are too close in time to us, and I'm no exception. Furthermore the most modern period I have always wanted to play was WW II.

But then, TFL published another excellent ruleset last summer called  Charlie Don't Surf and I could not resist the temptatiom of buying the rules and have a read... a very bad idea.

Ypres 1914

Last Sunday 26 December we held one of our monthly "long games" (usually played at night on Fridays, but this time shifted to the afternoon time, taking advantage of the Christmas holidays). Using Through the Mud and the Blood we organised a large WW I action, located in Ypres around mid-October 1914. The game involved 2 full platoon-sized forces per side together with a wide array of supporting elements (cavalry squadrons, artillery...) entering the table randomly in different turns.

Winter Sports

TFL's Christmas Special 2010 was released a couple of weeks ago and included two real jewels for Mud & Blood players: a mini-game system simulating small trench raid actions ("Winter Sports") and a very good recreation of the British Tank Corps in 1917. I was specially attracted by the former and I quickly organised a game in our club a few days ago.

Jumping off into a new project for 2011

2010 has been a very good wargaming year for me. We have consolidated a very committed group of Lardie-dedicated fans in my club and I can agree that we master extremely well both Troops, Tactics & Weapons and Mud &Blood. We have painted a large pile of 28mm figures for both periods (just take a look in this blog to the previous entries) and we have also improved dramatically our gaming table environment with the acquisition of new terrain boards (just arrived) from En Cobertura.