My Historicon Game Pix

 

My Battle of Abu Klea game at Historicon

Click on all pictures to enlarge

This year I ran four games at Historicon: Khartoum! played three times and then I had a tactical battle scenario: the Battle of Abu Klea. I had 42 gamers signed up and playing in my games over the course of the four day convention. I was also honored to be awarded a PELA award for my Khartoum! game on Thursday.

I have lots of pictures and it is difficult to cull through them and pick the best pictures, but here we go:

My games were played across three 6ft by 24ft tables, providing table depth and lots of maneuvering space.

Close up view of one of the Dervish Dhow boats. There were 12 Dervish and 1 Leader per boat.

The Dervish fleet moves upstream to Khartoum.

Egyptian artillery crew atop the main gate to the city.

British Camel Corps square in the Battle of Abu Klea.
Note the separate Egyptian square in the background.

The Dervish war bands rush to the city walls with climbing ladders.

The Dervish try to climb over the city walls with scaling ladders.

One of the younger players in one of my games. She asked good questions and held off the Dervish attack via the Nile.

A close up view of the Beja scaling the walls.

Our mascot, Easter Piglet, inspects the game table.

The Dervish attack begins.

Himself gives his opinion on a rules question.

Street fighting inside the walls of Khartoum.

An emir leads his troops into the city

One of the water oases that were on the table.

Egyptian soldiers fight for their lives on the parapets of the walls.

The Dervish converge on the Governor's Palace. Gordon, shown at the top of the staircase on the left, awaits his fate.

A small knot of Egyptian regulars make their last stand.

The world famous Goober the Bear (left) and the less famous Easter Piglet mug for the camera .

Goober and Easter inspect the city of Khartoum.

Bill Mollineaux and Goober (on the right) and Der Alte Fritz and Easter Piglet on the left.

I was very pleased with the way that the games played out and demonstrated the effectiveness of the rules that I used. For "tactical" battles outside the city walls or at Abu Klea we used my War Along the Nile rules, while ladder climbing and hand to hand melees were conducted using some special rules that my game group developed specifically for this aspect of the war game.

It was also fun meeting many of my blog followers and answering a lot of questions about the figures, the model construction and the overall development of the games for Historicon. I am already working up some ideas for next year's games at Historicon.

The End of Gordon at Historicon

 

Major General Charles Gordon meets his Maker, Hollywood style.

Click on pictures to enlarge

I am back home from a week in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where I visited Gettysburg, Fort Ligonier and Valley Forge prior to my four days at the annual Historicon convention. I hosted four games at the convention, winning a PELA award for my Siege of Khartoum game with 54mm figures. I ran Khartoum three times and then changed things up by running the Battle of Abu Klea one time. 

I am pleased that my new rules for tactical battles in the Sudan worked very well and the special rules that I used for the hand to hand fighting/ladder climbing also worked well. The game players picked up on the rules quickly and after several turns of play they were pretty much working through the games on their own.

At the conclusion of my last game on Saturday, I took a few moments to set up some vignettes to post on this blog.

The Dervish surge up the staircase of the Governor's Palace where Gordon
meets them with complete calm.

The Dervish race through the streets of Khartoum in search of Gordon.

The blood thirsty attackers find the Governor's Palace and see Gordon
standing on the top of the staircase.

The Dervish break into the yard of the Governor's Palace in Khartoum.

The Mahdi's army attack the walls of Khartoum.

The Dervish surge over the town's walls.

Hollywood movie poster for the 1966 film "Kartoum"

Sudan tourism. No thank you.

The last stand inside of Khartoum:

Meanwhile, there was an archeological expedition going on in a far corner of the table.

I found some archeological bits in the dealer area at Historicon and used them in my game. These will come in handy in a future skirmish game set in the 1930s.

I will be posting more pictures of my game later this week as well as a separate post that shows some of the other games that I saw at Historicon.

More 54mm Sudan Pix

 

Beja warriors attack an Egyptian square.  Could it be the army of Baker Pasha?

The picture above is one of my favorites and so I thought that I’d share it with my readers.

Here are some more pictures of my 54mm Sudan collection that I snapped last week prior to packing it all away for its trip to Historicon. Over the past month I added 100 more Beja from the painting bench to give me a total of 300 Beja and 300 Dervish/Ansar warriors. I also have painted 36 cavalry and 60 Dervish riflemen. Having a larger Beja force allows me to game the battles of Osman Digna in the RedSea littoral.

I’ve checked into my room at Lancaster and we plan a day long visit to nearby Gettysburg. I will set up my Khartoum game Wednesday afternoon.

Battle of Abu Klea Movie Trailer on You Tube

 

I have just posted my latest movie trailer for one of my games at Historicon this year:

Battle of Abu Klea movie trailer

The Battle of Abu Klea game will take place on Friday evening at 7PM. Stop on by and say hello!

The game features 54mm figures fighting across three 6 x 24ft game tables. Here are some pictures from one of the play test games fought recently. My home table is 6ft by 15ft, so the pictures shown here are on a smaller scale than the Historicon game will be.

Historicon Pre-registration Info for Khartoum! The War Game

 

The Battle of Abu Klea

Historicon will be releasing the Preliminary Events List ("PEL") later this week and I now have the time slots and event sign up numbers for all of my games at this year's Historicon convention.

I will be running the "Khartoum! The War Game" game three times and the Battle of Abu Klea once. With 12 player slots for each Khartoum game and 10 for Abu Klea, that works out to a total of 46 possible player slots that you can fill if you want to sign up for any of these games. I would suggest pre-registering for one (or more) of these games ahead of time to ensure that you will reserve a seat at the table for your game. All three of the games that I hosted at this year's Little Wars convention sold out quickly, so once the pre-registration is open, go for it!

Here are the game times and identification numbers for each game:

Thursday

T10:242  Khartoum! The War Game at 10:00 AM - 12 players

Friday

F10:243  Khartoum! The War Game at 10:00 AM - 12 players

F19:574  Save Gordon! The Battle of Abu Klea at 7:00 PM - 10 players

Saturday

S14:244  Khartoum! The War Game at 2:00 PM - 12 players

When you preregister for the game, enter the game number (for example, T10:242 for the Thursday game) when you sign up for the game. You are allowed to sign up for multiple games so it is possible for one to play in all four games if you can beat the crowd.

I am looking forward to hosting these games and to meeting all of the well wishers and blog followers who have been following the progress of this game journey over the past 12 months.

A Visit to the Marketplace in Khartoum

 

A gentleman from Belgium is searching for some curios to take home.

I set up several vignettes inside my model of Khartoum and experimenting with various styles of picture taking and composition. I like having civilians participating on the periphery of the table top game. It is very difficult to find 54mm (1/32 scale) Middle Eastern civilians to populate Khartoum. Fortunately, a company called King & Country (based in Hong Kong) makes a figure range called "The Life of Jesus" and some of the characters make suitable stand ins for 19th Century civilians. Granted the locals probably would not be wearing colorful robes, more likely all white clothing, but the figures seem to work just fine. Another company called John Jenkins Designs also makes some suitable stand in civilian figures.

Trips to Michael's Stores and Hobby Lobby have been a treasure trove of little knickknacks to use in my scenario. The oriental carpets, the baskets of fruit and vegetables and a few other items have come in handy.

The rug merchant 

A citizen with his hookah is taken to task by a couple of
members of the Khartoum Chapter of the Temperance League.

Overview of the market place

My Khartoum terrain is pretty much finished and ready to go for this year's Historicon games. I had everything that I needed in time for my games at Little Wars, recently. After that show, I set up the city terrain on one of my game tables to see how things were looking. I identified a few things that I want to add before Historicon. These include the expansion of the Governor's Palace to include a pair of building wings (DONE), the town arsenal, and a mosque. Maybe a couple more corner towers for the city walls would be a nice addition if I can find the time.

My Historicon Games Are Entered in the PEL

 

Major General Charles Gordon contemplated the world with disapproval.
He reached the conclusion that it was no place for a gentleman. 

CLICK ON ALL PICTURES TO ENLARGE

Yesterday was the deadline (for inclusion in the Preliminary Events List or "PEL") for submitting game events at this year’s Historicon Wargame convention July 19-23, 2023 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I entered my Khartoum game three times (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) and I added the Battle of Abu Klea for Friday evening. I felt the need to add the fourth game to sort of justify the amount of floor area and table space that are required for my game.

The wargaming world is excited to hear about the number of games
that Der Alte Fritz is going to run at Historicon 2023 in July. Everybody's 
talking about it.

The other day I set up enough figures to form two squares, one British Camel Corps and one made entirely of Egyptian troops. Each square has 32 figures on each face of the square for a total of 128 figures per square plus artillery placed on each corner of the square.

British square in the foreground, Egyptian square in the background.
Dervish everywhere else.

The Egyptian square.

The British square.

Taking stock of the of the figures that I have already painted compared to what I might need to stage the Battle of Abu Klea, I determined that I was in pretty decent shape for the game. The Egyptian square only needs a pair of Gatling guns. The British Camel Corps square needs an extra 16 to complete one battalion and another 32 figures to complete the fourth side of the square. A pair of Gatling guns will also be required to complete the British square.

So I placed an order with Armies In Plastic for the needed 54mm British infantry and Gatling guns with crews. AIP's service is exceptionally quick and so the figures arrived within 2 business days.

Recently arrived reinforcements from Armies In Plastic

I organize my British and Egyptian regular troops in groups of 8 figures per movement tray (from Litko) and 6 movement trays constitute a "regiment" of 48 figures. For my Abu Klea game, however, I plan on using only 32 figures for each side of the square with a Gatling gun or a 7 pound cannon in each of the four corners. When I paint the figures I work in groups of 8 figures at a time. Thus one painting grouping fills up one movement tray and my method gives me a sense of getting things done since it only takes 8 figures to finish something. This works psychological wonders for my mind. I can generally finish painting 8 figures in one or two days, depending on the amount of time that I have available. I am retired to I have some control over how much I paint each day.

The picture of the unpainted plastic figures, above, illustrates 8 sections of 8 figures or 64 figures in total. I generally do not use the running poses, which I consider to be somewhat useless for my units. I don't like figures standing on one leg. The picture shows the contents of 5 boxes of figures (16-18 figures per box), less the running poses that I have removed from the scene.

With respect to my three Khartoum games, I plan on adding some new buildings to the city. I recently finished two one-story wings to attach to my model of the Governor's Palace in Khartoum. You can see part of this improvement/renovation in the first picture at the top of this post.

Stay tuned, more to come shortly.