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.

Sudan Picture of the Day

 

What’s not to like about this picture? Very cool.

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.

New Minden Russian Cuirassier Greens

 

I am excited to announce that the greens for the SYW Russian cuirassiers are finished and are on their way to Griffin Moulds to get the figures into production. My thanks go out to Steve Barber for sculpting the figures and keeping to the style of Richard Ansell's Minden sculpts.

The Russian cuirassiers include an officer, standard bearer, trumpeter and trooper. The three command figures will be sold in one pack and the troopers will be available in a pack of three figures.

My thinking is that Russian Cossacks will be next on the docket and these additions should complete the Minden SYW Russian figure range.

SYW Russian Cuirassier

Russian cuirassier musician

Russian cuirassier standard bearer

Russian cuirassier officer

First Day of Gettysburg July 1, 1863

 

ACW figures from the collection of the late Ian Smith
This is one of the best photos that I've seen of ANY wargame figures.

Today marks the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, fought on July 1, 1863. Most of you know the background story so I'm not going to go into the details of the battle. Suffice to say that this was an encounter battle between the Confederate division of General Henry Heth and the Union cavalry forces commanded by Major General John Buford. Buford's eye for good defensive ground saw him deploying his dismounted cavalry atop of McPherson's Ridge, just to the west of the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Buford held off numerous attacks from Heth's Confederates until elements of the Union First Corps arrived to take over the fight.

Later in the day other Confederate divisions arrived from the north, positioning them to threaten the McPherson's Ridge battle line. The Union forces fell back towards the town of Gettysburg, first to the next ridge, Seminary Ridge, and then ending the day positioned on Cemetery Ridge. It was at the latter site that days two and three resumed the battle, which ended as a decisive Union victory and arguably changed the tide of the war in favor of the Union armies.

I have visited Gettysburg more times than I have fingers and toes to count them. I usually visit the battlefield when I go to Historicon in nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania (just one hour's drive). In 2021 I had the honor of taking my daughter to the battlefield for her first visit and she was thrilled by her visit to the site. It makes a dad proud. So here a couple of the pictures that I took in 2021 of McPherson's Ridge.

McPherson's Barn on McPherson's Ridge - First Day of Gettysburg

Statue honoring Union cavalry general John Buford on McPherson's Ridge

By the way, Fife and Drum Miniatures engaged Richard Ansell to start an ACW figure range that was short circuited by his untimely passing away. Richard made 8 Union and 8 Confederate figures in skirmishing poses. I never put the figures up for sale on the Fife and Drum webstore because of the incompleteness of the range. I have all of Richard's dollies for figure poses as well as the bits for the  weapons and heads. If I were to find a figure sculptor who could make the figures in Richard's style then I would continue the range, or perhaps someone else would like to purchase the moulds and production rights and carry on with a range that would have been breath taking had time and fate allowed.

Fife and Drum Union figures skirmishing.

Fife and Drum Confederate soldiers skirmishing.

Der Alte Fritz, Himself

I find the first day of Gettysburg to be the most interesting of the three days' battles given its nature as an encounter battle scenario. I used to have a large 28mm ACW collection centered around the Union First Corps and Heth's Confederate division using a 1:10 figure to man ratio. It was quite something to behold. It used a variety of figures in each unit: Connoisseur, the original Dave Alsop sculpted Old Glory figures, Eagle Miniatures, some of the old Front Rank figures, Hinchcliffe, Dixon and others. I always felt that the ACW lended itself well to mixing up different figures from different figure ranges into the same unit. It gave the wargame unit a diverse individualistic appearance, a far cry from today's preference for using figures all from the same manufacturer.

I don't game ACW anymore, but it is an historical period that I like nonetheless.