Collecting Toy Soldiers American History Summer Camp

I had a great week at Barstow Summer Camp with a group of kids that I got the opportunity to share the hobby of collecting toy soldiers.

This week long summer camp featured the American Civil War as our topic of discussion and gaming.  I used the BMC civil war plastic 54mm troops to explore the collection aspect of the hobby and to teach the kids to paint miniatures.

We set up a simple map campaign game.  Each student got to be an army commander.  I had 12 students during the week.

The campaign map.  Click to see a larger image.  I have used this map for three summers.

The battle of Quincy Crossing.  An encounter that occurred on the campaign map.

The miniatures started out as unpainted plastic obviously, but we explored the painting part of the hobby.  The students engaged in this at their discretion and some developed an interest in this part of the hobby.

At the end of the week we had a battle royale with all of the commanders take home army on the map.

3MM Yom Kippur War DBA-esque Variant

I am putting on a 3mm modern game that takes place during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This game will take place in the Sinai towards the end of the war. The Egyptian army has pushed the Israeli forces back east from the Suez Canal. 

Under a SAM missile cover the Egyptians had negated the superior Israeli Air Force. Israeli forces had initially counterattacked the Egyptian forces but were repulsed. The Israeli High Command facing a Syrian attack in the Golan Heights as well shifted resources against them.

The Egyptian High Command reluctant to move out of their SAM cover had stopped their advance. The Israeli army had defeated the Syrian army and was threatening the Syrian capital of Damascus. The Egyptian government was being pressured by the Syrian government to take some of the pressure off. 

The Egyptian leadership ordered their High Command to move east in the Sinai towards the passes in the center of the peninsula in an effort to help the Syrian forces. The Egyptian generals reluctantly sent two reinforced armor brigades against the Israeli positions. The Israeli forces were now able to move reinforcements from the Golan front.  So this is where the situation stands as our game begins, the Egyptian forces are moving to the attack and a strengthened Israeli army is moving to counter them. Hope to see you Monday night.

 

Steve Gross

Swords and Sandals

Week long summer camp for kids. I am using my supreme 54mm collection.

Lionheart

Got to play some Lionheart on vacation with my brother John and his boys Kale and Landon and my son Tony.  Great afternoon of gaming during a rain delay at the lake.

I casually started them off with the base game and then we gradually added all the aftermarket items available on the internet to add complexity and depth to the game.  The images in this blog post are after four base games that got gradually more complex by adding terrain and specialist troops.

The defeated royalty of the gold side try to plan their revenge and how they would of won "if they hadn't lost."  We teased them pretty bad.  "Yeah you could of won if we hadn't beat you."

The silver knights lead away the gold king in a backwards horse march out of the castle proper.

The silver raiders caught the gold king in his keep lightly defended.

Have at you!!

Really happy Tony sat in for a game.  He has not played the wargames stuff in years.  He used to play when he was younger but has sort of lost interest.

The grand game wherein we combined two boards, terrain, 4 actions per side, and all the troop types except mercenaries.

Homemade dice tower can be seen in some of the pictures.

Absolutely love this games flexibility and ease of set up and play.

The Golden hand of god points to where a decisive action must occur.

Thanks for looking in.  Leave a comment if you like what you see.

At the beginning of the battle.