Newfoundland Viking Colony

These are my fifth grade students.

For 

the unit on "The Age of Exploration", we learned about the Vikings and the Newfoundland colony.  All of my teaching units for Social Studies include some form of game scenario using miniatures and terrain.

This unit included a simulation on sustaining a colony of Vikings in the new world inhabited by Skraelings.

The students randomly selected a Viking miniature from a cardboard box.  This random draw gave them their station in life: Jarl, Karl, Thrall.  They wrote a character sheet and kept a calendar.

This is the table that they saw to play the scenario.  This is actually mid game and the development purchases have been put on the table.  The original or start table would have been devoid of any man made items.

The Jarl, selected the Karls to go to the areas of resource management in conjunction with goals the colony needed to build the next level of sustainability.  The Jarls got to where the great horned helmet.

The colony would progress from landing a ship, to campsite, to palisade, to settlement, to longhouse, to forge, to shipyard.

Notice the Futhark on the blue cabinet in the background.  Extra credit points were allotted if the kiddos transcribed their Viking's name into runes.

Each turn was a 1/2 month segment of time and the Vikings would be placed on the brown 2x3" cards to indicate the resource activity they were involved in accomplishing.  Dice were cast to collect resources.  The resources were compared to the colony needs for food.  Starvation hits were recorded or  not needed.  Then inedible resources were calculated to build the next colony goal.

Worker placement, resource gathering, goal attainment.

Queen "S" and her adviser, Karl "M"  survey the table for goal achievement.

We got to play at least two sessions with each fifth grade section.  I teach three fifth grades.  This whole process included their research presentation and also some painting table work.   The kids did most of the work on the Viking miniatures.  I sealed them in army dip and did minor touch up on weapons and hair etc.  but mostly the Vikings were painted by the kids.

Thanks for looking in on the blog.  Leave a comment to encourage the kiddos.

The following images where taken by the students as part of the exit ticket for the assignment.  The required performance included a character sheet with 6 months of activity recorded from game time, a photograph of the game (preferably their character) posted to the website SeeSaw.com, their Viking's name converted to runes, and then whatever table level developments that their class accomplished in the goals description.

There Will Be A Great Battle

In Patagonia

The history of Aurikania and Pathagounia

The complete unabridged history in four volumes

With copious notes on the manner of the original manuscript

This is the story of two imagi-nations Set in a time long ago.

Table of Contents Volume I-III:
I  The foundation of the territories and the naming of the provinces.
            A. Ancient Times, see The Island of Marnon and other historical fables.
            B. The War and the division of Auricania and Patagonia
II Early Naval Architecture

Victualing documents from the museum of nautical artifacts. Patagonia 1782.

III  The Royal families: Prominent Families and Individuals
IV The Lineage of the House of Patagonia

V  The Armies

The overhead view of the battle field.  Auricania defending on the left edge of the image.  Patagonian assault began on the right edge of the image.

Opening view of the muster to defense.  Auricanian line and reserves form up in the streets of the Delft Gin Center.

Patagonian assault.  This was a surprise attack during the holiday season.  Preemptive attack on the forces of Queen Marie by the aggressive King Michael.

Nice sunrise view of the Patagonain line troops.

Scouting the enemy flank.

Auricanian banner unfurls on the wind.

The heat of the battle rages.  Cannons and musket balls whiz through the air.

VI The Armies Part the Second
VII  The Rules of Warfare
VIII  The Naval Atlas of the Western Sea and the colonies
IX  The Island of Marnon and early histories including fantastic stories and myths from long ago
X  The solar calendar of the Auricanian and Patagonian hemisphere
Illustrations:
Plate 1: Maps
Plate 2 Illustrations

Plate 3 Photographic engravings

Thanks for looking in.  More edits in a bit.

Recruits Convention Report 2018

Welcome to the Penny Whistle kind hobbyist.

Sit back and enjoy a visual tour of my gaming hobby at the local 

Recruits Convention

Lee's Summit High School

Friday night - had to have played some games but the camera was not brought out to record anything.

Saturday AM:

First game I got in was a Jay Wiley original production mashing Flash Gordon and Star Wars together.  I was assigned the heroic group of Star Rangers led by Dash Dixon.  Here is my band of spacefaring good guys.

The game is called Galactic Heroes and is just like the Western Gunfight game that Jay produces from his own publishing company.

My space women taking out some baddy with a boomerang grenade.

Some more space soldiers sneaking up on my position to the left.

Big Gronk my space monkey getting ready to hold the corner of that building against the space marines.

Microwave gunner taking aim at Stella Starchild....

An overhead shot of the Tatoine-esque space port.

Sand storms obscured the area at times and allowed me to make a pretty good dash for the space shuttle.

Mr. Jay Wiley himself presiding over the game.  A true Master Game Master.  Jay always has the top notch storyline to go along with great figures and super playable rules.

The table left of me with two factions of space robots and soldiers.

The table to the right of me with two more factions of space baddies.

Lance Lazer with a pile of dead Microwave Soldiers

Pretty cool game.  I made it to within a move of the shuttle with one droid in tow but was shot down on the gantry way.  When you get the chance to play a Jay Wiley game jump right in and if he is game-mastering it so much the better.  'Round these parts folks ask WWJD?

DBA Tournament

Played Steve and got killed quick.  Lost a general in the most ridiculous tactical mistake and also rolled bad dice.  1's.. However my poor generalship more than made up for lousy die rolling.

Played Terry and again was beaten down with the loss of a general.  This time the die was even but I still persisted in mistakes.

Was glad to see Terry play.  DBA is such a good game.

Played Steve G. and this time I won with audacious General use.

That's me with the parasol.

Terry and the Cavemen

Terry C. and I had been watching this game get set up and decided to give it a try.  It is a home grown Paleolithic world sand box with the victory going to the team of cavemen that can build a temple.  Temples are built with the resources collected through hunter gatherer activities that are all across the board.

Card driven turns meant that you may get to go ahead of a competitor.

Terrain provided chits that had numeric buying power.

The board definitely had advantageous entry points that I would look at in a future replay.

Terry's leader facing off against a herd of wollies.

Me pounding rocks.

Display Game

This was set up just for the fun of it.  I would have run it but it was not in the program and a late set up didn't attract enough player interest.

Most of this was painted by my fifth grade students.

Thanks for looking in on the blog.  Check back often for more toy soldier fun.