Over by Christmas

In the past few weeks we have been working hard here at CTK HQ to get Over by Christmas ready for publication and at last we are almost there. It is due to go to the printers shortly and will be available in the next few weeks - we'll let you know here as soon as it is ready for sale.

It is a stand-alone set of rules, so you won't also need to have Where the Poppies Grow (although of course we hope that you do!) and covers the War on the Western Front from August 1914 to early 1916. The new rules include things such as using mounted cavalry and horse artillery in fast moving open warfare, with new special rules for cavalry charges and period weapons such as trench catapults and improvised mortars and grenades.

Over by Christmas includes full organisations for British and Empire, French, Belgian and German Armies and has special rules for each, reflecting for example the British rapid fire of 1914 regular infantry units and the French "attaque a l'outrance".

Just as a teaser, here's the front cover:

Portuguese in the Trenches

As well as working on the fortified farm, I've been doing some work on the first pieces of the new linked trench system from Early War Minatures. This looks to be an exciting range, with trenches with dugouts available now and the promise of both British and German trenches to come. The trenches, which are vacform, link up very well using an innovative magnet system, although I haven't used this as I have based mine on 2mm MDF because I usually artex my vacform pieces.

I have added extra sandbags from air-dried clay, and will do some trench bridges to cover the slight gaps where the trenches join.

Occupying the trenches in the pictures are the first figures completed from my 1917/18 Portuguese army for the Western Front, using HaT British (ok, Canadian!) infantry and Portuguese figures from the range by Lancer Minatures, which are very good too and well worth checking out.

 

Lewis gun team get ready to fire

 

 

 

 

 

 

News from the Front!

Sorry not to have posted for a while! Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. Here at CTK HQ I've been working on some scenery for our weekly games. At a show last year I came across the old Bellona vacform The Menin Road - those of you who are of a certain age will fondly remember the Bellona series! Anyway, I picked it up for a £1 as in true wargamer fashion I thought "I can do something with that". And now I have, as I've turned it into a fortified farm of the kind often seen on the Western Front, especially in Flanders, in 1917. It should make a good objective in a game, with one side trying to capture it and the other to hold it. Having first based it on 2mm MDF and covered the vacform in artex to give it some texture I took out the middle of the cellar and replaced it with a pillbox from Ironclad Minatures, which handily takes an MMG and crew. I added some sandbags using air-dried clay, and that was it. I also made some knife-rest barbed wire entanglements out of plastic strip and rod, which were a bit fiddly to do! Here's a couple of pictures. Firstly, to show there is an MMG in the bunker:

And here's one of the knife-rests:

I have also been working on several of the new linked trench system bases from Paul at Early War Miniatures, and hope to post some pictures of these soon too. And of course we've been busy on getting Over by Christmas ready for publication, which has taken a little longer than we had hoped, but we are nearly there!

Museum of Passchendaele

As usual, on our way back to the ferry after the Crisis show we stopped off somewhere with a WW1 connection. This year it was the fairly new Museum of Passchendaele in the chateau at Zonnebeke.

It's a very good museum and well worth a visit if you are in the area. Set inside the chateau are various rooms with lots of uniforms and other information about the area during the 14-18 period and in particular the third battle for Ypres in 1917. One of the most interesting parts of the museum is a reconstructed command dugout, which you go down into by a series of steps. There are lots of vignettes in there of command rooms, dressing stations and dormitories, and I can tell you that on a bleak Sunday afternoon, when you are the only people in the museum, the sound effects are very real!

The museum is in the process of expansion (like many other places getting ready for the forthcoming centenary) and from April next year will have a much bigger dugout and reconstructed British and German trenches in the grounds, so should be even better!

I took loads of pictures (as usual!) and some are below. The uniforms are of course in glass cases so some of the pictures suffer from a bit of reflection.

The chateau

French cavalryman

 

Belgian infantryman

 

 

German infantryman

 

 

French infantryman

 

 

German infantry and pillbox

 

 

Dressing station in the dugout - glad I'm not that casualty!



Photos from Crisis

Back from Antwerp now and what a great show it was. Congratulations are due to all at Tin Soldiers of Antwerp (the club who run the show) for another excellent day in a terrific new venue. There was plenty of space, plenty of light and plenty of gamers! If you were one of the many who stopped at our game then we'd like to say thank you for the interest!

This was the last outing for the Race to the Sea game, and it will now go into dignified retirement in CTK HQ. But we'll soon start to build our 2013 show game, which is now likely to be based on a part of the Battle of the Marne in 1914, so watch out for updates - I'll post photos as we build it as ever.

In the meantime, here's some last photos of Race to the Sea.

 

 

Crisis Wargames Show

Just finished loading the car up to go to a show that in many ways is my favourite of the year, Crisis at Antwerp. It's in a new venue this year, which promises to be much bigger with better lighting and even better catering! There are lots more traders too, so if you are in Europe and have the chance to get to Antwerp on Saturday I can thoroughly recommend it!

It will of course be the last outing of the Race to the Sea game, which is appropriate really since the game is also based in Belgium.

See you there Sander!

Photos from Legion Show

Sunday was a very interesting day, as for various reasons I ended up at the show doing the game on my own! Luckily there were several people who joined in during the day so I was able to give the rules a bit of a playtest, and make some amendments. Everyone who played the game said how much they enjoyed the rules and that they gave a really fun game whilst being reasonably realistic. At one point we changed history too, as Keith Park (flying a Bristol F2b) shot down Herman Goering (flying an Albatros DVa) in flames! This lead to a bit of debate over who might have become head of the Luftwaffe in WW2.....

Legion isn't a big show, there were about a dozen or so games and a few traders (but very good ones!) I did manage to pick up a copy of "The tanks at Flers" for under a tenner, which was a bargain! The lighting isn't great in the leisure centre, so the photos below are a bit on the dark side, especially as I had to resort to a brown cloth to cover the table (no prizes for best scenery this time then!).

I was using our new style aircraft bases, made from magnetic pointers - they worked a treat!

Triplanes head in to the attack

 

 

 

Several Albatros DIII's

 

 

A Triplane vs Triplane dogfight develops - and a Sopwith Pup gets involved too!