Thursday 2 May 2013

Little Wars Centenary part 1 - The Armies muster

As a number of my readers are by now in a veritable lather of anticipation, it must be time to lift the lid on the goings on at the Little Wars Centenary Weekend held at Sandhurst on 27-28 April 2013.
My expose will run to at least four parts:
1. The armies gather - mostly photos of piles of toy soldiers.
2. The first game - a version of the classic Hook's Farm scenario - played indoors due to the pi**ing rain.
3. The second game - played outdoors!
4. The third game - again outdoors.

For the time being I will post only my own photos, but as other attendees' snaps become available I will (subject to permissions) post some of them.
As Wells did in his books, in the captions I will contrive to conceal the names of the guilty by using only initials.  However, the full list of attendees was:
PW, Julian Spilsbury, Andy Hussey, Stephen Thomas, Anthony Morton, Tim Gow, Mike Lewis, Jack Wright, Brian Carrick, Alan Gruber, Mike Snape.  Also present were Mrs GW, Master TW (aged 16 months...) and Graham, young TW's Godfather and sometime colleague of PW.

The armies present were as follows (Funny Little Wars and fictional/'historical' equivalents):
Army Red (Home Service) - British
Army Red (NW Frontier) - British
Naval Brigade - British
Army Black - Svenhasselstein/German
Army Red/Saffron - Tinland/Colonial British Indian
Army Khaki - Turkish
Army Red/White/Blue - US Rough Riders
Army Dark Green - Russian
Forbodian Army - Balkan style

The field of battle.  PW had divided his garden into four areas so that we could have four games running simultaneously.
The protagonists (and their toys) gather.  From left, AM, ML, AH, JW, JS, AG and MS.

The first game was all ready to roll when intense precipitation commenced and we hastily decamped indoors.  This experience revealed a disadvantage of cardboard bases....
MS, Master TW, Mrs GW, G, JW, JS. 
 


12 comments:

Peter Douglas said...

Tim

What a wonderful set of pictures. Looking forward to seeing more.

Cheers
PD

SoA Shows North said...

Excellent ... it begins :)

Phil

Tim Gow said...

Peter Douglas
It get's better - much better!

Tim Gow said...

SoA Shows North
Glad to hear I've built up such suspense!

Unknown said...

Nice to see you chaps had decent weather. Here in Sherwood Park, Alberta Canada we were experiencing a snow blizzard. There are no words to describe it as David Crook said he got a sun burn staining his fence and I was shoveling snow! Anyway looks good Tim ... Jeff

Tim Gow said...

Chasseur
The weather wasn't universally good - but overall it was pretty good.

tradgardmastare said...

A splendid little report of what was a glorious event!I look forward to more...

Tim Gow said...

tradgardmastare
It was certainly glorious! Plenty more to come.

Archduke Piccolo said...

Looking forward to seeing all those shiny to- all that gallant soldiery in action!

Tim Gow said...

Archduke Piccolo
You were right the first time!

Mark Wallace said...

Great stuff! Perhaps add a link in this post to the subsequent installments, just to make them easier to find? Nice to see the great pictures.

Tim Gow said...

Mark Wallace
Thanks. If you click on 'Little Wars Centenary event' (on of the post labels) this will bring up all the posts from the event.