Assault on Vimy Ridge

Jusr recieved a belated birthday gift of Assault on Vimy Ridge by Mike Lambo . A solitaire wargame book ,this is the second of his games i have and as with the Battles of Medieval Britain ,this is a simple well produced book containing all the maps and tokens within its 45 pages but again the maps etc are available to download for free on boardgame geek . In this game you are a Canadian Sergeant in the assault on vimy ridge in April 1917 ,the game consists of 12 mission maps that link into a campaign and seem to have a lot of repalyability with the random set up system . Looking forward to playing this soon

BelloLudi WW1 Skirmish Rules

Getting back on my Wargaming feet after along illness and some very intense training programmes fpor work ,I have started to look at the armies I have almost finished and what I am going to do with them.So my WW1 late war Germans and Brits are almost complete and I have been reading through the Too Fat Lardies "through the mud and the Blood" which I do like the look of ,when I saw aadvertisement for a set from BelloLudi in the Netherlands so jumping in after vasking afew promptly answered questions on the face book page I ordered the starter set of rule book ,command Dice and command cards .These arrived very quickly 5 days from ordering to dropping on my door mat including a weekend at that. The rule book is a A5 soft backed setthe first 13 pages contain the introduction and main rules ,pages 14-24contain optional rules for smoke ,gas ,defences ,tanks,aircraft ,troop quality ,pretty much anything you can think of.They are nicley produced and being aimed at new players contain nice clour pics of what I call wargames standard painted armies not the wonderful works of art that most rule books contain which are above the painting skills of most of us .They are aimed at 28mm using forces of around 30 plus a side but can manage larger smaller game sizes with 2 or multi player games ,they even say solo .They contain some nice touches such as the command dice which are multi sided but only numbered 0-1-2-3 and B ,B takes you to ablunder chart which effects your orders ,the optional cards allow yoou to play havoc with your opponants army .The QRS sheet is inside the back cover but you can download a copy of this and all other useful stuff fromthe BelloLudi website ,for a set of rules I had never heard of until last week I am impressed and cant wait to try them out.

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

All I can say about this amazing place is if you are interested in Naval History and you haven't visited yet GO , really this is the place for Royal Navy Buffs .Amongst the many things to see are HMS Victory ,Nelsons flag ship at Trafalgar ,a really fascinating ship it took us about an hour and a half to walk round and listen to the facts abiout the ship ,Nelson and the battle ,beware of aa stiff neck though once we got below decks I was stooped all the time ,there is also the Nelson museum to visit.  nearby is HMS M33 the last surviving ship that fought at Gallipoli .HMS Warrior 1860  at the time the largest ,fastest and most powerful ship in the world .Until December this year there is agreat exhibit "36 hours Jutland 1916 " this alone is worth the visit .There are many exhibits and museums plus attractions for the kids ,take the water bus to Gosport for the subamarine musem and a harbour tour around the modern Royal Navy ships and the Napoleonic forts . A few tips if you are going buy the full navy ticket which allows you into everything except the Mary Rose which is seperate entry price, it also lasts a year ,you do need more than 1 day to see everything properly ,also stay in the Keppleshead hotel a 18th century inn just outside the dockyard gates ,it has free parking and loads of history ,it is a bit run down but clean and the staff and food were great .