Spare a Shekel sir, half a shekel, quarter...........

Well my wallet has been hit yet again and my patience tested to the limit. First off my little wound markers arrived with a second class stamp on the box, in high dudgeon and despite knowing what the reply would be I felt I had to register a complaint as the firm in question had taken £5 for postage and spent as I deduced earlier, 75p.

I was put through to the boss or one of them and of course was told that the other £4.25 had gone to pay the guy who had picked the markers, put them in a little box and stuck my address on them and then left them somewhere convenient to be posted. And it really was a second class stamp as it took ten days to get them to me. Now at that rate I wouldn't mind a picking job, if he picks a paltry four items an hour that's a good number, if he ups his quota that's a lot of oodle. Sure, so much for the box, maybe a quid or £1.50 for stuffing it, but £5.00 is bang out of order. Especially as there are other wargame firms out there which are way more realistic in their postage rates. I am going to pay more attention in future with these.

Next hit was a young girl mucking about in the PO who caught the wires of my drawing tablet and PC in her foot and made for the door at high speed. I just managed to stop the tablet hitting the deck but the PC went down with a clang, little, eh, um, girl. When I had restored order I found the computer was goosed and me with dozens of maps to draw, off to the computer doctor who just happens to live a longbow shot away. He turned it around in 24 hours but it cost me for a new hard drive and labour, £90!

I just do not have enough time at the moment, the author of the Mongol maps has still not finished, I have two other large projects waiting, I have to reset the basically 'new' computer and I want to paint my Churchill and Quad Flak and I am away for the weekend!

Bolt Action at the club, British vs Germans 750 points. I seem to be getting stuck with my Germans, Simon has Russians and the other night he asked to try the British, the consequences of this of course is that the British are lagging slightly behind on new equipment as I dream up nasty surprises for the Soviets (quadruple autocannon for instance). We went for 750 to try and complete a game during club hours and it seems to work, at least until we learn more of the rules and then get faster turns. I took three squads, a mortar, two MMG's and my trusty Marder, I much prefer mobile AT guns. Simon surprised me and didn't take a tank, he did take an excellent Humber MkIV armoured car though along with two squads of infantry, a sniper, 6pdr AT gun, MMG and an artillery observer all veteran to my regulars. I had made three objective markers so we went for Point Defence, I was the defender.

I put down my gallant defenders but left one squad and the Marder off table in reserve, I used to wonder why bother, but in fact it is a good ploy, a bit like playing chicken as to what exactly is off table and where will it arrive, Simon kept his armoured car off table. The game started off fairly predictably as the British carefully advanced taking advantage of cover, I sat and waited, the AT gun came up at a smart pace but there was actually no targets for it and although it did take the odd shot at a house nearby which had an MMG team in it, overall it was pretty ineffective. My MMG in the house opened up and thereby became the target for the artillery, this came in a turn later and although mainly covering my boys in dust it wiped out my mortar team, bad start, I was relying on that to move the sniper or target the AT gun. Luckily for me after that Simon had no luck at all with the artillery as it failed to turn up before we finished due to being delayed.

Only the right hand objective was being threatened so I brought on my reserve squad to cover it and it got up close and personal with the British heading for it, I lost the firefight and the squad. I did have success with the Marder though, I kept it out of sight of the 6pdr and lined up for a shot on the Humber as it supported the attack on the objective, bang, one dead armoured car. Like Simon's artillery this was its only success, after that it could not hit a barn door and I was counting on it killing off the Brits who had captured the objective. It was obvious at the end of turn five that the game was going to be a draw, I could not get the objective back or even contest it, although on second thoughts I could have drove the Marder at it, but that's not my style.

The game went well apart from both of us losing die control after all the lucky first shots, my blue dice are being officially retired now, I have that nagging feeling about them and like the yellow dice I now wont touch it won't go away. There were quite a few new subtleties turn up in this game which you have to watch out for, loading HE or AT in your anti-tank gun for one and having to remember you cannot fire and move a heavy weapon due to the set up time, that snookered me a couple of times.

My new wound markers for heavy weapon and smaller teams.

Elsewhere there was an historical Kings of War game, it looked good as there was hundreds of troops on the table but as they were wall to wall I didn't see much chance for tactics or manouvre, on another table a large Cross and Crescent game in 10mm was in sway and of course our resident boardgamers although I didn't get to see what they were playing. I hope to have the Sdkfz 7/1 up and running for the next post, I only have the crew left to do.

Kings of War