Vietnam project update

Slowly but surely, and despite a very busy March at work, I continue adding pieces to our Vietnam project. I managed to make some sceney pieces, including some first attempts to have bamboo thickets using  BBQ wooden sticks and scale railway flock ....

 

Training the New Recruit in Through the Mud & the Blood

A lovely Sunday for me today, played my first game in three months, got a new recruit for our legion of local TooFatLardies faithful and had a decent lunch at the Real Madrid's stadium cafe to celebrate Father's Day (actually its is tomorrow, but I prefered to avoid the usually overcroweded restaurants on March 19th).

I made my good action of the day, training Alfredo, a new recruit in the 'arts' of the Through the Mud & the Blood, the TooFatLardies WWI platoon-sized skirmish rules. Well new recruit may be an exageration after all, as Alfredo was one of the founders of our club back in in the early 80s... but only recently he has returned to the hobby.

Anyway, Alfredo being only slighltly familiar with the rules, I decided to go for the first training scenario of the companion scenarios book Stouts Heart, depicting a British 1917 platoon with its four sections (rifles, Lewis gun, bombers and rifle-bombers squads) that has to take a well defended cross-road strongpoint.

Stalingrad Campaign: Conclusion

In the biting cold of a grey-clouded afternoon, the last bullets were fired... 9 months after it started, the Stalingrad Campaign played by the Lardie section of the Club Dragón in Madrid concluded last night, the longest ever played... and here the (historical) moment when our umpire took the last "Tea Break" card from the deck...

...and guess who won...(put the computer speakers at highest level!)

The many angles of a wargamer

I borrow this from Grog News blog, I found it particularly funny

Talking about which, are you rally open with your friends, relatives and work colleagues about your hobby?

Stalingrad Part VIII & IX: The End is Nigh...

After along spell since December in our Stalingrad campaign due to the Christmas Holidays and other personal obligations, over the past two weeks we have played two additional turns. The first was a night turn which brought very little news or action, as both sides were truly exhausted and invested the dark hours in reinforcing weak units and consolidating their lines, in the eve of the definitive assault of the Factory Building (the key objective of this campaign)

A general view of the Factory and surroundings

The Phantom Menace (3D) disappointing experience and more

This is an off-topic comment for this blog, a sort of a film review. I went to see this afternoon the Phantom Menace in 3D with my 12 years-old kid. You should know that we're both Star War´s die-hards and when the film was shown the first time in the theaters (1999), he was not even born yet. We have seen the whole 6-films saga many times in DVD, but he's never watched not a single one film in a large screen. So I thought yesterday, after arriving from a long 5-day business trip, that it would be nice spending a father/son afternoon, and sharing a common interest (...I'm not a PS3 guy, I'm afraid)".

After the school finished today at midday and sharing a "nice" lunch (...at McDonalds...), with all the excitement we hit the cinema at 16.00...lights off...Star Wars theme...  "In a Galaxy, far and away...."  Well, in the end a real very disappointing experience. The new 3D tricks are no good at all, do not add any real value to the watching experience.

Danger ahead....

... for my gaming plans and of course my pocket. Our friends at the TooFatLardies HQ are cunningly planning to hook me into a new period... all the information here ... Damn Lardies!!