Old Stuff Day 2013

Bleaseworld informs me, via someone else, that it's Old Stuff Day today. This is where we get to promote old blog posts that we're either proud of or which didn't get much attention at the time.

So what's the deal? Well I'll let Warhammer 39,999 answer that as it was his proposal:

"On this day, each blogger can go through their history and find posts that they’d like to shake the dust off and present again to the community at large. Some suggestions for content that would be good to post: 

* Posts that you considered special that didn’t receive as much attention as you thought they deserved

* Content that people liked in the past, but haven’t seen recently 

* Posts you might have created before your site received much traffic, and now deserve to be reshown

* Or any content you’re particularly proud of!"

This blog is only a year old, so it isn't really worth promoting anything from it. But some of you may remember that I wrote a blog from about 2003 through to 2007. Whilst it was mostly rants about our constantly failing hot water system, observations on my childrens' eccentricities and exposes of creationist nonsense it did include, from time to time, reports of games.
My old blog still exists but, for reasons too involved to go into here, I have made it private. But all the old game posts still exist, so I thought I'd see whether there was anything worth dredging up from the mists of time.
First off is this one, from October 22nd 2005, in which I talk about our 200th anniversary refight of part of Trafalgar:

As planned the Staines Wargamers refought part of Trafalgar last night, on the 200th anniversary of the battle. Click HERE for pictures.


All ships are 1/1200th scale and are from the collection of Tim Moore.

Extra (25/10/2005) - Darth Phil asks "Who won?". Owing to an EGM we had to finish the game early, and the issue was still in doubt, so we would have to call it a draw. Both sides had already suffered losses by the time we finished, the most significant of which was that the British flag-ship for this part of the battle (The 'Royal Sovereign' under Collingwood) had been so badly battered that it was sinking. Given that the player in charge of the British ships had declared that his objective was to 'live longer than Nelson', I guess that means he failed.

From earlier in 2005, the first outing in HOTT of the Ceidonians, in which they fought some Peter Pig Elves. In fact this is the same pair of armies I used to teach my friend to play HOTT on Tuesday:

Despite finishing the Ceidonians a month or more ago, various events have conspired to prevent Cei from having a chance to try them out. But with Maya's elves now complete as well, it seemed a good idea to give them a joint first outing. So the two armies (under Cei and Maya) squared off this morning for their debut game.

It started well for the Ceidonians as their right flank saw off an Elven cavalry charge. In the centre, though, things went very very wrong as some of the Ceidonian knights fell to Elven archery and the steam tank (pride of the army) was destroyed trying to break through a line of spears. However the Ceidonians kept at it, and their general, although isolated, rode down rank after rank of Elven spears to weaken the enemy army. When the Elven hero was isolated and killed by Ceidonian infantry it was all over.

Here are some pictures:


The steam tank advances.


The Elven battle-line.


Elven cavalry attack.


The Duke of Ceidonia charges to glorious victory.

And, finally, the first appearance of a miniature figure of me, from September 18th 2004:

Here it is. The first photo of the Kaptain Kobold trophy figure from Berkeley 2004. That's my Science Museum periodic table mug in my right hand (with cocoa in, naturally), and a copy of the 'Hordes of the Things' rules in my left. People who know me will notice that the figure has a physique somewhat more heroic than mine (and certainly slimmer), and some will notice that even the dressing-gown has received the heroic treatment.

For those that care about technical details, the figure is 36mm from the soles of my feet to the top of my head.

Designed and cast by Sebastian Rogers and (I think) Simon Miller, these are very limited edition - I think only three, possibly four, of them were produced. Steve Price has the original green. And I was given the mould (which I still have). I have yet to cast another ...

I no longer have that particular dressing-gown (although my current one is similar), and the periodic table mug is long gone as well. Saying that, I have another. 

I think that's enough old posts for now. One day I may find some more.