On Tuesday we had some of the guys from Warlord Games down at the club, they’d brought along the new Black Powder rules, which are now at the printers and hopefully will be available to buy shortly, along with a whole bunch of their plastic ECW figures.

I can’t thank them enough for coming down, giving us a quick run through of the rules and then running a demo game for a large number of the members.  (If anyone has any pictures of that game can I have a copy to post up here)

They also brought along a whole bunch of their boxed sets. I went away with two regiments of Scots Covenanters and a Saker, which I’m going to have to get painted up soon, and I’m sure there were others who picked up some goodies to take home.

This years Gamesday game also got a try out, Space Marines and Eldar vs Orks and Chaos Marines, looks like a really good game and hopefully it will go as well on Sunday as it did at the club.

Have a look at the newsletter section of the site if you want to read it.

I’ve posted it up here on the blog section for the moment. If this becomes a regular feature (hint if anyone else wants to write some that’d be great) then I’ll sort out a seporate section for them on the site.

To read the battle report click here.

We also had plenty of other action taking place, ranging from the Warhammer world to 1600′s England and on to Normandy in 1944.

German Panzer Lehr units wait for the order to advance.

Russian Strelkovy and Mortar’s attempt to dig in.

We also had some british units making their club debut.

Here Warren’s Undead host clashes with the Paul’s Chaos horde.

Jon’s Orcs ready themselves for battle.

15mm English Civil War Royalist units advance.

They’re posted on the about section of the site, but I’ll list them here as well.

This annual event, organised by English Heritage, has many attractions planned over the 2 days, including;-

Fly Boys of WWI Spectacular 90th Anniversary Show / Gladiator Show / WWI Trench Experience and Tank Display / The Knight’s Tournament / Traders Market / Big Battle Spectaculars / Music & Dance Stage / Action-packed Family Zone

Full current attendee details (and a review of the 2007 event) can be found on their website:- http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17730

During the 2 days, we will be running the following participation wargaming tables;-

1. Attack at Modder River; a Boer war scenario based around the 2^nd Northamptonshire regiment.

2. WW2 Flames of War battle.

3. A Roman versus Macedonian scenario.

4. An English Civil War battle.

We are the ONLY wargaming club to be awarded the prestigious honour of attending this event, and we aim to work alongside English Heritage to make our involvement a permanent one for as many years as the event is held.

Last years event attracted an attendance of almost 20,000 people.

If you have any questions, please contact the club chairman, Carl King on 07979 281 350.

This year the game we were running was a Dark Angels assault on a Chaos space station in wild space. Lead by Belial himself the Dark Angels were attempting a lightning raid in order to capture several fallen whose presence had been traced to the station. The Dark Angels had to fight their way across the station, facing both Chaos Marines and the human station security in order to reach the Fallen.

(The Station)

The Dark Angels capture force consisted of three full tactical squads with flamers, each lead by a veteran sergeant, plus two 5 man Terminator squads one lead by Belial and the other by a chaplain.

(Dark Angels Preparing to board the station)

(Dark Angels Chaplain leads the terminators into battle)

The station defence force was made up of four 10 man station security squads (essentially cultists), plus three small units of Chaos Marines, all led by a Chaos Sorcerer of Tzeentch and his bodyguard of Chosen.

(Chaos Sorcerer and Fallen)

(The Chosen)

We had time to run the game through four times during the day, and so plenty of people got the opportunity to either hunt down the traitorous Fallen, or to fiercely defend their station against the lapdogs of the weakling Imperium of Man.

(Darrell oversees the boarding action)

Everyone who played the game enjoyed themselves, and all four games were close run affairs, with the game hanging in the balance in each of the final turns. The final score as it were was a 2 all draw between Chaos and the Dark Angels.

(Liam marshals the chaos forces)

The Highlights of the various games were Belial personally capturing all five of the Fallen in a single assault phase, the Sorcerer and the Chaplain both killing the other in assault as the Terminators closed in on the Fallen, one of the security squads cutting down three Terminators in a hail of las fire, and the Sorcerer turning first captain Belial into a Chaos Spawn in the final game, the transformed first captain then being cut down by his own horrified unit.

As ever there was a lot else to look at.Talisman was on sale, resulting in me, David and Darrell disappearing from our table before the doors opened in order to start off the queue at the Black Industries stand, in order to get the first three boxes on sale. In all out of the six of us we took away 5 copies of the game.

There were also previews available of the latest Warhammer and 40K based computer games, the expansion to Mark of Chaos looked very cool, as did Squad Commander.

Black Industries were also running preview games of the forthcoming 40K roleplay game, I got a chance to have a quick read through some of the rules. The system basically allows procession through a series of career paths from Scribe to Adeptus Arbites, and a lot more besides. I didn’t get a chance to play, but from what I saw the system looks good.

In terms of participation games the one that stands out most in my memory (other than our own game of course) was the scratch build Ork Gargant which was absolutely huge.

(Scratch built Ork Gargant)

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank David and Nathan for making the station terrain, and also Darrell, Liam and Paul for supplying the figures used for both sides. Also further thanks to Paul for taking the pictures for the site.

I have to admit I’ve taken a bit of leaf out of the Bedford Gladiators book, thanks very much by the way Dave for suggesting I take a look at WordPress, in terms of basicly running the clubs website as a blog.

Right now there’s not a huge amount of content available, although hopefully that will change quickly, especially as I have the next week off, so I should have enough spare time to get things nicely into shape.

If anyone has any suggestions of areas to add, please let me know and I’ll try and get it sorted out as quickly as possible.