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.