Battlefield 3D Austin Staff Cars

 While my Allied troops have plenty of jeeps, carriers and radio trucks, they don't have some of the smart rides that my Axis senior officers do. So, time for some staff cars!

A pair of very inexpensive Austin 10 staff cars from Battlefield 3D. 1/100th scale naturally.

These are beautifully crisp single piece resin prints, with lots of fine detail.

The windows are decently recessed too, which makes it easier to paint the 'glass'.

I did one in plain green so it will do service for British, US or even Russian armies, while the other has the mid war SCC2 and black disruptive pattern - so good for Europe and at a pinch, the the desert. I added some night visibility stripes on the bumpers (fenders to my US pals) to the green one for a bit of contrast and I figure these aren't going to be in the front line that much.

I'm very pleased with those and a useful addition to my softskin fleet. 

Tigers at Minsk 4 - Tigers at Minsk!

 After the great excitement of the 1000th Blog post, we continue our journey with Norm Smiths "Tigers at Minsk".  This scenario is the fourth in the Tigers at Minsk rules and covers 5th Panzer Division during Operation Bagration and is I guess where the title for the rules comes from in the first place.

 I wanted another game to try out my modifications and this one is rather bigger than its predecessors. For this I'll treat artillery fire as hitting every unit in the hex (it already does aginst vehicular targets), which might make it a bit more lethal, assuming the targets are silly enough to bunch up in the first place. 

Battlefield from the west. Apologies for the sharp contrast of sun and shadow in the pictures, but it was a sunny day, it does improve as the sun moves. 

The Germans have to stop the Russians from occupying two hexes of the hill (left) and taking the road junction (right) within 70 minutes. If at any point the Russians hold these, they win. The terrain is woods, buildings, a hill and one hex has a 'tree line' it which I'm treating as a tall hedge.

And what a horde of Russians.... 3 x T34/85, 3 x T34/76, an SU 76 and an SU 152, plus seven rifle sections and an artillery stonk. They also have infantry smoke, Molotov cocktails (on a 3 or less) and a preliminary smoke screen of three hexes on their baseline. These are from 3rd Guards Mech Corps so I'll treat them as average for morale. With 15 units on an eight hex front this is going to be a bit of a meat grinder.

The defenders look surprisingly similar to KG Sievers. 4 x Panzergrenadier sections and an HMG, but this time they are supported by 2 x Tiger 1s, a Pz IV and a Pak 40. They also have panzerfausts available (on a 4 or less). In my head these are actually rifle platoons and sections of 2-3 tanks/heavy weapons. The Germans also have an entrenchment and two minefields, and set up in the bottom four rows, so everyone is going to be in action pretty quickly.

In these more tactical games, setting up a defence requires some thought, particularly given the firing arc restrictions on AFVs and AT guns. In the end I decided to focus on defending the town, so most of the infantry were there, including one unit dug into the objective road junction. I decided the hill was expendable but wanted to make the Russians pay for it so I put one infantry unit in a reverse slope defence, but I also wanted make sure the entire front was covered with fire to prevent an early Russian dash up the hill out of sight.

I sighted most of the tanks and the AT gun to fire down 'keyholes', so they were protected from flank attack and could avoid being overwhelmed by the enemy. The one exception was the Tiger on the hill, which was in such a dominating position it just had to be done. Its flanks were fairly secure as it had tanks and infantry and/or ATs guns on either side. I sited the minefields around approaches to the objective hex, even though they aren't particularly powerful in game terms (stun or pin on a 4+) they are still a deterrent.

The defence is necessarily quite extended, so most units are going to be making command rolls. For both sides I'll use a commander figure to indicate the focus of command. 

Having stacked the German defences around the town so much, the obvious Russian target was the hill, and they deployed their smoke to cover an advance on the (German) left. There is such a good approach route through woods from the north to the town that I had to put a probe down there too, so one smoke went there. Four tanks (two of each type) advanced on the left, supported by two infantry, one of which laid more smoke, while two infantry advanced on the right through the woods and smoke. 

I wedged both the assault guns between the poplar tree line and the woods, so they are hidden from the Tiger on the hill but can blast the German infantry/MG position around the church. 

I kept three squads and two tanks in reserve offtable, as you never know what might happen!

tbh the assault could have gone a bit better! I did manage to pin some of the Germans around the church, and two Russian infantry and the observer made it into the buildings on the far left only to go out of command. The columns of smoke tell their own tale however as the Tigers and Pak 40s blew the Russian tanks apart. I did manage to get some hits on the Tiger, but they just bounced off, I didn't even get a stun. The Russians were a bit unfortunate with the kill rolls, but three Russian tanks down already, ouch.

In the next couple of turns the massacre continued (you can see the pile of dead Russian tanks and infantry off to the left). I did manage to stun the Pz IV over on the left flank and even called in an artillery stonk on the church, which overshot and landed on the unit on the crossroads, while the firefight for the church remained fairly even.

I pushed the SU152 and the SU76 through the tree line and brought on the reserve T34s. The Pak 40 picked off the SU76 but the stunned Pz IV couldn't fire and the Tiger hit one of the T34s, but just stunned it. Most of the Russian smoke had dispersed by now, but some hung around by the woods on the right. 

The next couple of turns saw a change of fortunes, sadly it looks like I forgot to take a couple of photos in all the excitement. The Pz IV failed to rally from being stunned, the SU152 pinned and then knocked out the Pak 40 (I'm making AFVs roll a to hit for HE fire) and in a shock development, the last T34/85 finally knocked out the Tiger on the hill! I'm sorry there isn't  photo of it bursting into flames. Perhaps things were going the Russians way a bit more now, although it had cost them seven of their eight morale chips.

The Russian reserve infantry pushed aggressively down the left flank and there wasn't anything the Germans could do about it.

The massed Russian tanks knocked out the stunned Pz IVs (you can just see the smoke from them burning) and then rolled over the hill. Their supporting Russian infantry close assaulted the Panzergrenadiers and drove them off pinned. All those explosions are a Russian air strike (random event), the Germans rolled up another minefield as their random event and put it on the road hex (just visible bottom right). The Germans have now lost three units and have two morale chips left.

The Russians managed to overrun the pinned Panzergrenadiers but infantry fire from the town pinned the Russians infantry on the hill. The Germans began to relocate - I had completely forgotten until a few turns ago that vehicles only move in straight lines, so the last Tiger very, very carefully pulled back. Although it may not look it, it is screened from the Russians on the hill by the building hexes (they fill the entire hex for LOS purposes).

And then suddenly - it all fell apart. The Tiger moved into a covered firing position covering the road junction, but the German infantry managed to finish off one, then another Russian infantry. This triggered not one, but two morale checks, and as various Russian units retreated offtable, even more morale checks until suddenly the Russians were in headlong flight and the town was saved with six minutes left on the game clock.

The final tally of lost or retreated units. Four German and no less than 13 Russian.

That was really good fun, and with a longer and larger game gave me a much better understanding of how things are supposed to hang together, and I discovered more things I'd been doing wrong which made more sense in the bigger context. The minor modifications I'd made worked fine, and it was an interesting and thought provoking scenario with plenty of jeopardy for both sides and some very interesting swings in the position. At various points I thought one side or the other was doomed, but it all came down the last few minutes. 

Small games are always going to be a bit luck dependant, but in this larger scenario actually felt like your decisions had a major influence on the outcome too. For a moment there it looked like the Russians were gong to pull it off, and then it just fell to bits under the pressure. Great stuff, I'll come back to these rules at some point in the future but in the meantime I have another project which I will share shortly. 

1000th Blog Post!

 Blimey, who would have thought it, 1000 posts! Particularly given some very fallow periods over the years since I started blogging in 2008. 2011/12 seemed to be particularly poor years for some reason, but I found my feet again in 2013.

Now I'm retired my 'job' is apparently creating content for the blog, so many many thanks to my loyal readers over the years and particularly those who comment. It is much appreciated. 

I've been doing some nostalgic stuff recently, what with re-visiting WRG 1925 to 50, (re) buying Traveller etc so I thought it might be apt to review some of my personal wargaming milestones. 

This is what kicked it all off for me, Charles Grants 'Battle'. I would only have been about 10 or 11 when I got these, and prior to that I'd just been pushing around Airfix figures with some very notional 'rules' which me and my friends had made up.

I was just entranced by the concepts, the presentation and the various illustrations. The 'Programmed Instruction' approach was of course formalised by Squad Leader late in the decade, but this is where it happened first.

The account I loved the most was 'Reconnaissance in Force', as although I did manage to both the smaller scenarios from the book as well as ones I designed myself, I never had enough kit to tackle this one.

The introduction of 6mm figures was a boon for a cash strapped kid, and although we tried a number of rules for the 6mm which came out in the early 1970s, this was the set which stuck. What a fabulous set of rules and they felt a lot more serious and grounded in reality than some of them. 

The 20mm stuff was put aside and we played lots of games with these instead.

Similarly with Napoleonics, we started with Bruce Quarrie and Airfix figures but rapidly moved on to the WRG 1685 to 1845 set with 6mm figures. My friend David and I took it in turns to host games, and we both perfected means of safely transporting our 6mm armies by bike from one end of town to the other.

Here is the hand drawn area campaign map I did for an Imagi-Nations campaign in the late 1970s between Hofenburg and Norvonia, who bore a strong resemblance to Britain and France in terms of their troops if little in terms of geography.

And a load of pre-generated battlefields using the WRG terrain generator to go with it. Blimey, the industry of youth.

As the 70s wore into the 80s I became increasingly distracted by boardgames, RPGs and later on, computer games. Having left University and with work and a young family, computer games were a much better fit for my lifestyle and although I still hung onto a lot of my old figure and boardgame stuff, they didn't get played.

There was a long figure gaming hiatus from the mid 1980s until the late 1990s when I discovered this....

Command Decision (yes I know these are the Army lists, the rules are in the loft). Many thanks to the Mansfield Wargames Club for switching me on to the possibilities of more modern rules which were both realistic but allowed me to fight the battalion+ sized engagements I'd aspired to when I first read "Battle" 25 years before.  

In fact CD2 was rapidly superceded at Mansfield by Spearhead, an even more streamlined set which allowed for even greater megalomania. I  became more aware of the concept of 'design for effect' as a result of playing these and I still think the command system hasn't been bettered for grand tactical WW2 gaming.

Eventually, dragging over to Mansfield became something of a chore and I bit the bullet and managed to find some like minded people at Sheffield Wargames Society (you know who you are!).

One of the big things at the time was the newly released AK47 Republic, and along with being good for modern African games, they allowed me to scratch my long standing itch to play the Spanish Civil War using my 'Mexicanski 36' variant, which proved surprisingly long lived. 

I've been a member of SWS and Wargames Developments for over 25 years now, longer than the period between reading 'Battle' and 'Command Decision' and figure gaming, rules and scenario design now seem to be a permanent fixture of what I do. 

I greatly enjoy recording what I've been doing on the blog, it helps me keep tabs on things and I hope at least some of it is of interest to people out there. One thing I'm not very good at is keeping the rules and scenario downloads section up to date, I just seem to prefer doing game and modelling reports. I'll have a look at what is in the other sections at some point. 

Anyway, thanks for reading, and we will see if I make it to 2000 posts before Google decide to replace blogger with some AI abomination. 

BPM 1/144th Heinkel He-111

 I wanted to add to my existing German medium bomber fleet, so along with the Austers,  I ordered an He-111 from BPM.

It is a pretty crude model, very similar to the APL Ju 88 I bought last year. I wasn't about to spend 16 quid(!) on a resin one, so got the cheaper one and boy does it show. The entire model is very grainy, and as with the Ju 88, comes with the fuselage in two halves and the engines in two halves.

Once assembled it is a gigantic lump of solid plastic, with some fairly unsightly mould lines, gaps etc. 

However, some filling and a large amount of sanding turned it into something far more pleasing. Being plastic, it is fairly easy to sand and I got it much smoother and eliminated the gaps with filler.

While I was at it, I added the dorsal, forward and waist MGs out of 0.5mm brass, which give it a bit more texture. Curiously the canopy has hardly any support struts moulded on (unlike the BPM  Ju 88 and Stuka) - maybe this is an older model? The windows look a bit plain anyway, so I'll have to paint those carefully.

The other annoying thing that the dorsal MG position  is actually open at the rear irl, but for some odd reason it is moulded as having a perspex cover over it. I would have been simple enough to mould it as open and I'm not about to start filing it down. I just stuck the MG barrel through the perspex.

The underside is still a bit crude, I didn't do a very good job filling around the engines, but I don't worry too much about the undersides anyway. I did add one MG to the gondola, which unlike the main cabin has quite nice little windows moulded into it.

When it is all painted up it doesn't look too bad though. I just did it in standard splinter with sky blue undersides. It is based on a real plane, but I can't recall the squadron now.

I painted on all the missing canopy struts by  hand, which was a bit fiddly but worth the effort. The asymmetrical cockpit didn't make it any easier. Once the canopy struts were dry I edged them in black with a 0.1mm micron pen to give them some contrast and depth.

Eagle eyed readers will notice that between photos the number '3' on the fuselage has mysteriously disappeared! 

I had a few decal disasters with this one. The original (Zvezda) balkan crosses disintegrated as I put them on, and the number 3s (also Zvezda) fell off overnight! The decals must have got too old to use or maybe they didn't like the remaining graininess of the surface. The yellow 'D' are Zvezda though and stuck on OK, the rest are Doms Decals.

My other decal disaster was that I usually varnish the decals to make them matt, but I think my varnish must be off or maybe I didn't shake it enough, as it left white streaks everywhere and made the decal surrounds stand out even more than usual. I'm going to have to paint around them with the base colours again. Argh!

I re-did the blacklining on the cockpit struts too and they stand out better now.  

Despite being such a rough model, it came out fine and it is a smart looking plane. Those huge wings give it a very sinister aspect, and of course they were stars of the show in the 1967 "Battle of Britain" film. It can join the Ju 88s and Dornier in my 'bomber box'. 

Tigers at Minsk 3, KG Sievers

 I've spent a lot of time thinking about the previous two TaM scenarios. This third scenario introduces proper combined arms stuff with infantry, tanks and artillery. I made a few minor tweaks along the lines I suggested previously - now high number rolls are always good. I've also introduced a separate morale check for pin and stun recovery based on troop quality instead of what sort of cover they are in (essentially the Crossfire system). I'm not a fan of tactical games which don't include troop quality to some degree, and although it is factored into the overall force morale in the standard rules, I prefer to see individual element morale too. 

I've also differentiated between vehicle MGs and HE fire. MGs were always the preferred weapon of AFVs against infantry, so all tanks etc get 2D6 of VMG out to 4 hexes (500m).  The standard anti personnel factors, I regard as firing HE, so beyond 4 hexes, things like Pz 38s are only getting 1D6 of HE (and SU152s 3D6!), which also requires a successful to hit roll.

The biggest change is in the AT system, I just don't like the maths of the existing one, especially coupled with a D10 which produces the same wild spread of results that it did in Firefly. Instead we now have a 2D6 based to-hit system, base score of 5+ keeping the various tactical modifiers which already exist (as I think those are very clever) plus some to hit  range attenuation in 4 hex (500m) increments which mirror those in WRG

If you do hit something, I've borrowed the AT effect table from Neil Thomas which is D6 based and has an equal chance of no effect, stun or KO. The dice throw is modified by the difference between the AT and DEF values, and I am going to use the Spearhead values ones (having corrected the +1 bias for being German). they have similar differentials to NT, and so now, it really is impossible for a Sherman to KO a Panther or Tiger from the front, although they may stun it. Multiple stuns on the same target now force a morale test, and if failed, the target is KO instead. Think the "bail" result in Flames of War. So you can get a Tiger with lots and lots of hits and hot dice.

Righto, to battle.

Here is the battlefield, somewhere in Ukraine in 1943 (I suspect in the vicinity of Tamarovka and the Vorshla valley). KG Sievers has fallen back to this village, hotly pursued by Russians. The Russians have 40 minutes to reduce the German morale to 0 by destroying four units.

The Russians are quite an interesting force, 6 x T34/76 and 4 x SMG tank riders. The tank riders have to stay mounted as long as possible and attempt to do the 'Panzerblitz assault' thing of charging, dismounting and the CCing the enemy. They are supported by a single fire mission with an observer. I'll treat these guys as average for morale purposes, so pin and stun recovery is on a 4+ 

KG Sievers has four x Panzergrenadiers (high firepower infantry), an HMG and 2 x Panthers. The latter are unreliable and break down on an 11+ after movement. There is also an entrenchment which provides cover in the open for one unit. In my head I think of all these units as Charles Grant style 1:3, so actually rifle platoons and and sections of 2-3 tanks and support weapons. The ground scale doesn't make much sense otherwise.

The Russians can come on from any direction except the German baseline, so a degree of all round defence is called for. Tanks can't enter building hexes unless on a road, and I don't see any roads, so the Panthers wedge themselves behind the BUA, protected from flank shots. Each tank is escorted by a PG section, one being dug in as I don't like the look of those fields to the west. The rest of the infantry are sited to cover the front with the HMG stacked with a rifle section to absorb hits. I'm hoping to use the MG for opportunity fire as MGs potentially have multiple OF shots, so a wide field of fire is required.

The Russians rather like the look of all the cover in the north so move on that way. This also allows them to make multi-hex moves as they are out of sight for much of the way, they only have to halt in LOS. Sadly the arty observer lags behind on foot and ends up stuck on the reverse slope of the hill, but I need him up high to get his observation bonus. I do like the way the terrain masking works in these rules, they are the complete opposite of Phil Sabins 'Fire and Movement' , but they allow for cunning use of terrain.

Sadly for the Red Army, the German opp fire is devastating. One tank rider is shot off pinned and a T34 is hit and burns. The HMG manages to get two shots off before ending its opp fire. I don't bother opp firing the infantry as they can just shoot normally in their turn.

Now they know where the Russian threat is coming from, the Germans redeploy their infantry. The two PG with targets manage to finish off the pinned tank riders and pin another. The  Panther and HMG remove their opp fire markers while the second Panther makes a move of three hexes (being masked by the village) out on to the flank. It then promptly breaks down! I've just realised it shouldn't have changed facing at the end of its move. Oh well.

The Russians and Germans continue to trade shots. More T34s go up in smoke, but one T34 manages to flank the immobilised Panthers and knock them out (frontally the best they can get is a stun). The new to hit/to kill system is working well and plays smoothly. I also manage to get the stonk on target on the MG position where it does absolutely no damage at all. Perhaps I should have rolled the stonk against each target in the hex? In any case, I'm not convinced the few wooden buildings of a typical Russian village provide much cover against artillery fire. I've already reworked the terrain effects so woods and fields don't provide cover vs indirect fires, so I'll differentiate between wood and stone buildings too.

The Russians do manage to pin some of the Germans with the MG, and one plucky SMG unit managed to stay unpinned long enough to even advance an entire hex towards the Germans! But generally the hail of German small arms fire precluded any advance and the remaining Panther picked off T34s one by one. The Panzergrenadier sections have as much firepower (3D6) as an HMG, albeit without the opp fire bonus, so can put up a real wall of lead against the Russian infantry. 

Finally the Russian force morale broke and they fell back towards their baseline. With only 14 minutes left on the clock, there wasn't a hope of breaking the Germans so I called it there.

That was a good run through and so far my changes all seemed to be working OK. It was quick enough to play that I thought I'd try another run through.

The Germans did the same setup, but this time the Russians went for a massed tank assault from the east. The artillery observer headed for the hill again, not sure if he should treated as on foot or motorised?  My thinking was that this direction was the minimum distance to cover, but at least still had some cover (woods, fields) for the tank riders.

The German HMG banged away with opp fire but missed.

To face the threat from this direction the Germans need a big redeployment. Some of the infantry shuffled around and the Panthers swung around the edge of the village, keeping their frontal arcs towards the Russians. Neither broke down this time. 

The Russians essentially pushed forwards in a big clump, trying to get some tank riders within CC distance of the HMG position. German small arms fire once again ripped into the Russian infantry and most of them were forced off their tanks, pinned. The two T34s on the baseline concentrated on the Panther to the left and managed to stun it, which was very helpful. Even more helpful was that it failed to recover. The other Panther picked off one of the lead T34s though. The Russians managed to drop (yet another) ineffective stonk on the church and massed T34 MG fire routed one of the German infantry (with a double 6).

At turn end I managed to roll a double! Some random events. The Russians got a free rally, and Germans a chance to move and fire one unit

I stupidly hadn't noticed that the right hand Panther now had its flank exposed to the the lead T34 (frontal arcs are 120 degrees in these rules) and it was duly hit and destroyed. With the other Panther still stunned and a free rally on one of my pinned infantry, it was time for a general advance, but a hail of lead  from opp firing German infantry just mowed the Russians down. The Germans used their move and fire event to bring up the last infantry unit to occupy the space of the dead one. The Russians were now very close to their break point.

The Panther became unstunned and knocked another T34 out, and by now there were no Russian infantry left so the remaining tanks began to back away as they had reached their force break level. In an amazing turnaround over two turns however, the Russian armour managed to hang on long enough to rout not one, but two German infantry with massed MG and HE fire with 3 minutes left on the game clock! The Russians had finally won!

I really enjoyed those games, they were very quick and decisive but with ample scope for a degree of tactical cunning. The new AT system worked very well too, and didn't feel like it added any great complexity. I think separating the damage effects from the to hit allowed for a richer range of results, and I much preferred the morale rating based unit recovery. It makes it so much easier to translate commercial scenarios into games if you can model some degree of troop quality, particularly scenarios from Crossfire or Fireball Forward where troop quality is the single most important factor.

I will have a bit of a think about artillery and some of the terrain mods, but otherwise I think that is ready to go into something a bit more ambitious as Scenario 4 is a lot bigger than this. I'm having lots of fun with this, so thanks Norm!

En Garde once more!

 Regular reader may recall that we started playing En Garde back in 2023: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2023/05/en-garde.html. Rather like our Gereon Rath Berlin Noir RPG sessions they aren't hugely photogenic so I tend not to report on the them much, but we are still plugging away with En Garde two years later!

Readers of a certain age will recall this being published back in the late 1970s. We used to while away our lunchtimes at school duelling, for a time anyway. It is fairly typical of games of the era and is extremely table heavy, much of it reminds of Traveller, hardly surprising given the publisher. 

Now of course we just while away our time doing it on Zoom instead in a variety of silly hats. We've played several sessions since my report back in May 2023, and it is still an awful RPG as there is almost no player interaction at all, but the character development is lots of fun. Essentially a lengthy extended Traveller style character generation sequence.

Although it it supposed to be about this (sword fighting) , we've managed to play two entire years without a single swordfight, despite Nick going around looking for fights a couple of sessions ago. The regular umpire, Russell, puts a huge amount of effort into the background and develops group activities for us to do. 

There is a regular newsletter, La Depeche, describing our exploits. The most recent major activity was the Siege of Carcassone at the end of the summer campaigning season. This was appallingly bloody and a number of characters died, some of who had taken extremely dubious heroism bonuses in a attempt at glory. 

One problem in the game is that is is possible to be come caught in the 'poverty trap', you don't have enough income to afford an increase in social status, but without increased social status, you can't generate any income. One way out is to seek glory (or death) in battle but increasing your chance of heroic actions at the expense of surviveability. A number of players did this and paid the price.

Some others, myself and Tim for example, did rather well: being showered with booty and medals, although not as much as Pete who received an absolute fortune in loot.

Our gathering this week was the occasion of the funeral of one our number who died at the siege, and as he was a noble by birth, the King himself attended! This generated tons of status points by association and some great opportunities for advancement.

Along with the bulletin are a number of other resources, such as the directory of lovely ladies. Here is my delightful Judith Bonboniere, both wealthy and influential, a great asset to a poor Major of a shabby regiment in these difficult times. I spent a great deal of time and cash wooing Judith, but now she is happy to accompany my 'on the town' and being influential will come in very handy. Many of the players now have lady friends, and the supply is running a little short. I can foresee trouble ahead.

Our session this time took us up toe the end of December 1607. Russell distinguished himself in battle on the frontier and was promoted from the ranks to become a Captain. Tim managed to wangle himself a Lt Colonelcy in the Picardy Musketeers by manouvering the incumbent Lt Colonel out on the back of his medal from Carcassone. Lord Mark popped in briefly but was mainly engaged in trying manouvre a wardrobe upstairs to which we gave helpful advice. Privates Roche and Armatys continued to soldier on in their place.

And what of Major du Moulin? Well, I'm still a Major, but I am now a Major in the Crown Prince Cuirassiers, a rather better regiment than the 27th Foot! A move which consumed a large part of my loot from Carcassone. I retain my position as Brigade Major in the 3rd Brigade of Foot. By deft manouvering of various positions, club members and the favour of the King, I managed to advance no less than three social levels in three months. Not bad going. And now I have my eye on a new prize in January, so watch this space....

First however, the King has announced a swordfighting competition with generous cash prizes, so time to practice with the old Rapier.

It is a great fun, very absorbing and makes an enjoyable change of pace from our usual stuff.