Horrible Year

 It has been just over a year now since the plague hit and we are still suffering from the effects of it and others who have their fingers in the Covid pie for good or ill. 

When the club shut down I hit the ground running, wargaming being not only a hobby but a passion which has sustained me for around fifty years. I at first turned to solo gaming, I then got others involved in choosing army lists, deploying troops or giving orders, this worked quite well and kept me in touch with mates. We also had a 'club' Zoom meeting courtesy of one of the members and his business account, where about half a dozen of us turned up and painted and chatted for an hour and a half, an excellent time as we showed off our latest projects, troops on the waiting list or simply talked wargaming. I also kicked off several Too Fat Lardies Chain of Command mini campaigns, again involving friends, the campaign theme continued with two WWI naval campaigns based on the Goeben and Breslau incident at the beginning of the war as the two ships made their way to Turkey. I seemed to be getting more wargaming done during Lockdown than I did before.

I also threw myself into adding to my WWII collection and went East and added the Russians, this fired me up and before I knew it I planned to build Berlin, well a shadow of the city, OK a couple of streets. Somewhere along the line I also added a British Airborne force for Arnhem after once again watching A Bridge Too Far. After about six months I began to slow down, what was it all about Alfie I asked, face to face gaming was still out as my little part of rural Lancashire was lumped in with the dangerous part and we found ourselves at Defcon 5 or Tear 10 or whatever. As my troop numbers grew and there was still no light at the end of the tunnel I did wonder why was I bothering.

We had to stop the Zoom calls and despite efforts to sustain the meetings they never again happened, I also noticed that our Facebook page had almost died a death as well, blog numbers were also down, a malaise had descended heading into the ninth month of hell. I gave myself a kick in the pants and along with the Berlin project I ran several online games over email using my mapping skills, I took part and I ran a couple for others. Once again these died off and I have to admit a couple of times I did think maybe it was time to give up, I bought an expensive game to play on the PC which took in the Russian front from Barbarossa to Berlin but have yet to really dive in, it did not scratch the itch.

In the doldrums after Christmas Warlord brought out their new ACW Epic range and this seemed to electrify people, I had 5,000+ troops sitting waiting for an outing, so revitalised I once again dived into a campaign and managed to get two players who allowed me to lose myself in one of my favourite wargame periods and allowed me to fight three excellent, nail-biting battles.

After this the dark cloud moved in again, a third Lockdown was taxing me somewhat. Another new project, Early War on the Ostfront, I also with some help and encouragement from other bloggers turned to trying battles using cameras, why not I thought, face to face is still a way off. These turned out to be very good, not as good as having someone across the table, nothing will beat that, but I played against some mates whom I would otherwise never have played and to my surprise I manged to host them fairly easily and everyone enjoyed them, I also played in a couple hosted by Phil Robinson and they again were excellent.

I continue with this blog as I enjoy writing and use it as a kind of wargaming diary and it has helped during the present unpleasantness. I am also involved in a WWII naval campaign which Rob Martin is running and I have a remote Dark Ages game on Saturday against Rob Broom. The 17th May and a small amount of real freedom is beckoning but I don't think we will be out of the wood this year, a dour prediction but I cannot shake it. I will never give up wargaming and will simply have to b****r on.

To end on a happier note, I went ahead and got the last of my vehicles, a StuG D, 250/1 halftrack and a SU-100 are on the way, and that really is it for battles in the East. Oh, and I get my second jab tomorrow, pity I cannot call FREEDOM!