2024 year review

2024 year review

Well having spent 180 days working back in Wales throughout the year - all of February, half of June, then all of July & August plus most of September; followed by half or October, all of November and the first two weeks in December. As you can expect this has seriously curtailed my hobby for this year 😖 

Totally unavoidable, but I am somewhat disappointed.

Years Totals

28mm Rif War - 16 foot + a mule

20mm foot - 69 + 7 mules 

20mm mounted - 4

20mm vehicles - 4

20mm guns - a 81mm mortar & a 75mm pack howitzer

I did manage six games:

Collecchio Italy April 1945 (2 games)

https://baberonwargames.blogspot.com/2024/01/collecchio-game-1.html

https://baberonwargames.blogspot.com/2024/02/collecchio-game-2.html

San Ingnacio (Mexican Revolution)

https://baberonwargames.blogspot.com/2024/03/san-ignacio.html

Battle for the Peñas de Kaiat (Rif War)

https://baberonwargames.blogspot.com/2024/04/battle-for-penas-de-kaiat.html

Battle for the Montaña Barracks (SCW)

https://baberonwargames.blogspot.com/2024/05/battle-for-montana-barracks.html

The Road to Toledo (SCW)

https://baberonwargames.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-road-to-toledo.html

Reveille 2024

Reveille 2024

Held today, Sunday 24th November at Downend Folk House, Lincombe Barn, Bristol.

Had a great Dad/son day out at this small club event near Bristol. Alex and I havn`t done a wargames show for years, certainly pre COVID, but maybe not since before he did his GCSEs??  

Even though there were a number of traders present - The Square, Andy Grubb, Blotz Terrain among them I was very controlled and only came away with one cheap book.

The show seemed quite busy even with todays awful weather

It was great to meet up and chat to Don Mchugh, Alan McCoubry and finally put a face to Rob Beswick (who I only knew through FB). It was particularly great to see and speak to my old friend from those SOTCW participation games at Gauntlet in Broughton - Will Mcnally who I haven`t seen in several years. I also spoke to Andy Grubb, the owner of Blotz and the guy who runs The Square, all seemed in good humour despite the weather.

Of course the highlights of any show is the games:   

Alan and Don fought Rob in a 20mm WW2 desert bash using Rapid Fire Reloaded.

The game featured some lovely models

Just behind them was a great looking Cruel Seas game featuring some truly stunning ships. The guys running it were incredibly nice and not only chatted about their game took the time to show Alex and me their other fleets - Russian and Italian, very cool.

A 54mm Zulu War game

28mm English Civil War (I think?)

And last but not least my personal favourite of the day a 25-28mm Mexican Revolution bash run by guys from Penarth using Achtung Gringo! The variant of the Crush the Kaiser rules. I spent quite a bit of time discussing both the rules and the period with them.

All-in-all a good day

1st Goumier rifle platoon

 1st Goumier Rifle Platoon

I`ve decided to build my Goumier Tabor (Battalion) along the standard lines of Charles Grant`s classic "Battle" rules. 

So a company will be made up of three 10-figure platoons. Eventually the various platoons will be a mixture of figures from all the available types, but in this painting phase of the project I`m just doing batches of 10 or so at a time.

Two figures from Shellhole Scenics pack FRE5

8 Raventhorpe Goumier (Pack SPEC25)

All together

Helicopter fly-overs

 Helicopters over Spain

The Army Airmobile Force (Spanish: Fuerzas Aeromóviles del Ejército de Tierra, FAMET), the army aviation branch of the Spanish Army. have been buzzing about all day today.

Probably training flights from Alférez Rojas Navarrete barracks (formally Rabassa Barracks) which is situated about 15mins drive from us down towards Alicante. The barracks is the base for The Special Operations Command (Mando de Operaciones Especiales) or MOE and is the command charged with overseeing the various Special OperationsGroups (Grupos de Operaciones Especiales or GOE) of the Spanish Army.

Today`s visitors (25/10/2024)

Goumier support 2

 More Goumier support

81mm mortar team & mule packed tube all by Shellhole Scenics. 

The deployed mortar is a really nice one-piece casting

75mm pack howitzer with Goumier crew

The gun is Raventhorpe Ready to Roll - just excellent 😀

The crew is a huge mix, two are plastic from the Strelets Goumier set, the third man is a Force20 machine gunner; the gun commander is a modified Blitz French officer (from their Goumier command pack) with a Raventhorpe Kepi head 

Whilst reading Bimberg`s book, he regularly mentions eye witness accounts of Goumier accompanied by goats whilst on the march. Then when combing through my photos I came across this sketch.

So I was forced to create a homage

The goum is Shellhole, his goat Retrokit