Furness Facebook Wargamers

The Furness Wargamers website has bitten the dust recently.

Welshy, the web designer who set up the original site has been trying to get a replacement up and running, but given his dislocation around the country it's a bit unfair to expect him to get it done.

So the Clubs web presence is pretty limited at the moment, basically consisting of the Furness Wargamers Facebook Group, which doesn't have much activity at all on it, so not dissimilar to the original FW forum, that slowly petered out after a decent start.

There seems to be an healthy gaming community up in Ulverston judging by the Ulverston Gamers group. At least the all too brief existence of the Jabberwocky shop seems to have left some sort of gaming legacy. Plenty of members signed up to the group but not much actual activity, this seems to be true for Gaming Clubs web sites the world over, regardless of the age range of the participants .

Also new to the blogging world is 6Sided, a new dedicated wargames blog site. I'm going to use it as an archive site for my existing material. The new blog is called Tel's Athenaeum to reflect it's dusty archive status. Already had teething troubles trying to import from Blogger, so used my now outdated Wordpress Blog as a source for import.
¶

Osprey Adowa Book

A new Osprey Men-At-Arms book on the Italian Abysinian campaign is currently being written by Sean McLachlan



Some Blog entries on the research process...
Ethiopia
Italy

It also available for pre-order from Amazon and due for release in September 2011.

While nice to get an Osprey directly on the subject, and with the much needed illustrations by Raffaele Ruggeri assured to be good, it remains to be seen if any new\accurate information comes to light on the campaign or battle or whether it'll be a plain old rehash of Augustus Wylde's second-hand account.

Trying to trace a resource that doesn't track back to the now de-facto standard account of Wylde, or the hysterical contemporary news reports, is nearly impossible. With luck both his overseas visits will have dug up some fresh information on this little known war.
¶

Diet 2 Night

Got suckered into playing another online Zombie game after seeing an advert on the Urban Dead login page.



Die2Nite is very different to UD in that you are humans who are facing an inevitable demise in a small desert community (each isolated town only has a population of 40). The goal is to survive as many nights there as possible, each night more zombies attack, and it is a race to find and use a limited amount of resources to build more defenses. Once your zombie food your soul moves to another town and you hope you can do better.

It is apparently an adaptation of an existing french site, which might explain some of the strange selection of objects available and some of their unusual uses. Unlike a lot of games it actually comes with decent tutorials and a wiki.

There are achievements that can be obtained, some automatically just by surviving or dieing. I've already manage to obtain the cannibal one, well you've to eat haven't you! It's currently free to play, but like a lot of games you can get bonuses by coughing up some money.

Still visiting the Urban Dead game, but not much is happening and if any thing the survivors now clearly have the upper hand in an increasingly thinning active population, so it's boring playing a human and futile playing as a zombie.
¶

Roman Clash

Another muti-player Impetus game, this time between two patriarchal Roman forces.

Boniface vs Aetius at Ariminum.

From Furness Wargamers with Spears

Cross Road Blues

A bit early for Robert Johnson, as two early Great War forces clash. 1914 French and Germans close upon the ruins of a small hamlet based at the crossroads.

From Furness Wargamers in Trenches

Full Company

A large Company vs Company game, about three times bigger than a standard Lance on Lance game. Fought over two maps.

The traditional 'Conga line' soon occurred. With kicks and punches doing more damage than the weapons.

From Furness Wargamers in the Future

The Dam started to look a bit dodgy but didn't give way, and no one shot at it to try and help it on its way.



There was no way that the game could be completed in a single night, so it'll be finish on another night, and with the promise of air support to liven things up.
¶

Turkey Shoot

Russians vs Turks (and Germans in Fezes)

Scenario based loosely on the actions in the Black Sea of the Battle-cruiser Goeben and Light-cruiser Breslau, after their escape from the Mediterranean and transfer to the Ottoman Navy.

Turk reinforcements were restricted to only one side of the board and it was up to the two fugitive ships to make their way to safety.

If they had decided to sail straight across then they would probably have managed to get across the tables without coming to much harm, as the Russian big ships were just not fast enough to keep pace with the more advanced German designs.

Instead they decided to circle for a bit, possibly hoping that the remaining Turks could take some of the Russian ships out. After a tussle between the Russians and the Turks, the Germans finally make a break for it.

One final attempt By the Russians at slowing the ships down with a torpedo run from the destroyers failed, and the Germans were then too far away to catch in a chase.
¶