My weekend away

Our wargame was the 1941 Ostfront game in 15mm. You can identify it by the grey-painted early German vehicles and the green order counters in many of the photos. The city of Siauliai in Livonia, south of Riga, fell to the 41st PzKorps, and the 1st, 26th and 38th Infantry Divisions, a battle from our bathtub-scale Barbarosa campaign.

The 1944 late ostfront game with zillions of tanks and the dunkelgelb-camo German vehicles was our friends from Lille.

There were lots of re-enactors and period artisans and artists there. Everything from Spartans to WWII. The singing Czech ladies in their WWII Soviet uniforms were magnificent! The Vikings were a lot of fun! The replica 1870 mitrailleuse was impressive.

I'm in one of the photos scoffing breakfast - yet MORE sausages. I worked out I had six meals in a row that involved sausages... However as long beer-intake periods spaced them apart it wasn't so bad.

https://plus.google.com/photos/112085356860634507139/albums/6061613751952198033?authkey=CILhvYXh9rPK0AE

Note - not my photos!

Hi Digby, are you on #129? The one who is about to poke his nose?

I used to do the board games with miniatures when I was in my teens.  I really miss that stuff.  When I get rich I am making the trip to join you.

LOL


Morsey

Stefan, yes, that's me. I think I was wiping a drop of ketchup off my nose! My friend David is to the right stuffing food in his mouth. He is the guy running our amazing 1941 campaign that uses Frank Chadwick's "Command Decision" rules. The silver-haired guy in the doorway is Olivier, one of our hosts.

Apart from the trans-Atlantic air-fare this weekend away will cost you nothing! If anyone from the group would like to come along I know the French lads from the Lille and Dunkerque clubs would be delighted to have more guests. They seem to relish the pleasure of serving more food and drink than their guests can possibly manage, it must be some sort of local custom! There is no language barrier, many of them know some English and my rubbish school-boy French allowed me to converse fairly well with lots of people.

There is another wargames weekend in January, I can supply details if anyone wants to join in the fun (UK and EU people invited as well of course!)

Thanks for sharing, it looks like a lot of fun! It's amazing how many different eras were shown.
What is the weird guy in the center of #178 representing? Some Russian Levy?

It could just be peasant dress. There were a few east-European groups I could not identify, there were some Mongols, some Hussite types and so on, this guy may have been a member of those. One of the nice things was that when off-duty, people didn't put modern clothes on, but either dressed as soldiers would when in camp, or as civilians. It was great in the evening in the Napoleonic French camp because everyone was in undress overalls and bonnets de police and so on, a very nice feature. There was a lot of authentic cooking going on as you can see with no modern implements (or ingredients) and food prepared over open fires.

The Vikings honey-mead was evil!

From memory what I saw was:

Spartans or Greeks (hoplites and levy)
Romans (I didn't check on whether Imperial or Republican)
Vikings
Mongols/Hussites/eastern horde
A couple of Crusader knights
Renaissance French or Italian city states (c.1400-1500)
Medieval soldiers (could have been part of the above group or slightly earlier)
1760s French infantry
Napoleonic from around 1809-10 mostly, judging from uniforms, plus a couple of Brunswick hussars
1870 French
British Victorian colonial types from the Zulu or Boer wars periods
WWI (German mountain troops, 1918 Sturmtruppen and a couple of sailors, Highlanders, British)
WWII (Mostly vehicles, but one guy bravely wore German PzGren uniform circa 1942)
WWII Russian singers
WWII American swing band

Pretty much anyone can go, its main function is a cultural affair and everyone is welcome to bring along historical periods, weapons, costume and arts & crafts and show them to each other and the public. Its a very engaging way of presenting history and the art of war.