Britain Did Not Stand Alone

In 1982 only New Zealand offered the United Kingdom aid in the Falkland’s Crisis (later conflict), offering warships to participate in the looming conflict and when politely declined by the UK instead providing these warships to relieve Royal Navy vessels from their Pacific and South East Asia stations so they could participate. But was this all the aid the UK received? While the USA, NATO, Commonwealth, et al stood by and offered no help at all – was someone else actually providing significant help? Continue reading “Britain Did Not Stand Alone”

February Is BattleCry 2013 Time!

Come along and attend BattleCry, Auckland’s largest all-round weekend gaming convention. On hand will be all manner of roleplaying, wargaming, cardgaming, and live-action tournaments and events, as well as a collection of stalls and displays of gaming materials. We welcome all comers, from experienced gamers to those of you out there that are merely curious as to what it is all about.

Entry into the venue is free, and we will have a number of likewise free events and demonstration games to keep you entertained during your time at BattleCry. If you are however interested in taking part in one or more of the tournaments being held over the weekend, there is a cost and we encourage you to pre-register and pay as early as possible to ensure a place, with prizes on hand for all such tournaments. Tournaments include:

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Modern Spearhead Rules Back In Print!

MSH CoverFor those who may not be aware I co-authored with Alex Macris the Modern Spearhead Rules that were published in 2000 – these were a development of Arty Conliffe’s highly successful WW2 “Spearhead” rules originally published in 1994. In the last year or so these rules have gone out of print and been difficult to obtain. We are pleased to say that there is now a reprint in progress and they should be available from July, and will be able to be purchased at Historicon 2011.

For full details see the announcement at ModernSpearhead.net.

From the Modern Spearhead website: “Modern Spearhead is an operational level game that is designed to recreate the view and challenges from a Brigade, Divisional or even Army Corps level – The player’s major issues are when to attack or defend, when to issue order changes to formations, and when to commit reserves, rather than focussing on what individual elements (tanks and soldiers) are doing.

Wargaming Periods

Periods are the “Eras” or “Level of Technology” present for wargaming. Having a Greek Army of 300 BC facing a Russian Army of 1944 AD is obviously quite a mismatch and both armies need quite different sets of rules to control how they perform. Hence we have “Periods” in which armies all operated in similar ways, or with similar weapons, and can be ‘played’ using a common set of rules.

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