I haven’t written much lately about my other big hobby, Miniature Wargaming. I still attend our weekly Friday night games at The Bengal Club pretty regularly and a few weeks ago I actually got especially enthused and spent quite a bit of time painting figures (almost an entire corps of Austrian Napoleonics in 15mm).

I guess I’m just not as interested in blogging about it. I think the biggest reason is that it would entail actual work on my part to craft up something interesting and provide all the required photos for it. Another might be that I have a lot of other interests and things on my mind and wargaming has started taking a backseat to them.

So I suppose more than any other topic I write about here, wargaming will be the most “hot and cold”–you may see a spurt of new stuff if I’m particularly gung-ho at the moment, but you’re more likely to hear the wind whistling through this category as it gets no love.

Once again, the Boxer Legation siege game was quite a hit at the convention. Unfortunately, Kaiser Bill was unable to attend this year so we couldn’t use his lovely terrain nor did we have enough stuff for a “double-game”, so I used all my own setup and we ran a regular, single game. In some ways, that was better—it made for quicker games (around an hour each) so we did more of them (3 on Saturday night, 2 on Sunday morning).

As was typical of our games, the Western powers had the upper hand, winning 4 out of 5 games. The final game on Sunday morning, however, was a glorious Chinese victory and an absolute bloodbath for the legation. It was rather spectacular with the lone Japanese officer, Lieutenant Kuroda (photo at right), making his final stand on the steps of the legation, Katana in hand facing a horde of beautifully painted Tigermen. And the relief column had already been spotted (indicated by the Japanese mounted standard bearer), but alas it was too late. You couldn’t hope for a more picturesque scene—very Gordon at Khartoum…

This game always makes for a great convention event. It’s extremely easy to put together and run, the rules can be explained in five minutes, and the players have a grasp of what to do after 15 minutes. It is, however, a lot of work for the game master! Plenty of card flipping and taking figures on and off the table.

The thing I’m most proud of, however, is that this is one of the very few gaming projects I’ve ever done where I actually have completed everything I need to play the game: all the figures, scenery, buildings and accessories. I’m trying to do that with other games I’ve got and that’s part of what my gaming website will chronicle.

But if you’re going to be at the HMGS/PSW Fall Campaign 2010 convention in Glendale, California (in either October or November), be sure to stop in, say hello and play a game!

Click the photo to see a small gallery of photos from the final Sunday morning game (the only one I remembered to actually take pictures of!):

I ran my first series of Samurai Skirmish games using modified fantasy rules called Song of Blades and Heroes. They were a lot of fun, but I think the scenarios were a bit off. The Ninjas sent into the town to defeat the Samurai were way too powerful!

I plan on playing this game a lot more in future.