King Goodwill Zwelithini KaBhekuzulu's visit to Brecon

I was extremely lucky to get down to Brecon this past weekend for 4 days for King Goodwills visit to Brecon with some of his family and Royal Ambutho .Whilst there I met up with Ian Knight who introduced me to Kate Birbeck who very nicely signed my copy of her book " Rifle and Spear with the Zulu ,I also managed a behind the scenes visit to the South Wales Borderers Museum who for the next month have their genuine collection of zulu war VC's on display. The King sat and watched various bands and choirs and talks from Ian Knight ,Mike Snook ,JohnYoung and Jabulani Maphalala and then the A coy 24th foot re enactors took on the Kings Amabutho in a recreation of Isandlwana all very noisy and well put together . The Zulus were quite mischievous as well they drowned out one of the welsh choirs with their war chants as in the movie zulu then during the reenactment they stole the colours before the battle ,afterwards as walked back to our hotel the Zulus layed siege to a group of terrified boy racers who tried to drive through them . A great weekend and I even managed to track down some more graves of Rorkes Drift Defenders which I will put in another post .

on gaurd in and around the museum

The Zulus were great spending alot of time with passer byes 

The Royal Welsh Band

The Colour Party 

The Zulus start to take over the event

The CaldicotMale Voice Choir attempt to outsing the Zulus ,they lost

The Zulus trying to get an early victory

excellent show from A Coy 

Mike Snook

The KIngs praise giver 

The King 

His Senior Indians

Ian J Knight 

Professor Maphalala 

King Goodwill excepts his warriors salute

The  BRits relax around Isandlwana 

The Zulu Scouts advance 

Sneaky bilghters got very close

The Main Impi waits

The Right Horn encircles the camp undetected 

a clash of warriors 

Both fall gallantly 

Prepare to fire 

The Zulus start to take casualties 

The Left Horn smashes into the British Flank 

Its all over

Time to save the colours gentlemen 

John Young

Lowering the national flags 

Cruel Seas -USA v Italy

Played our third game of Cruel Seas using our house rules ,to try most of the rules , John used all his yanks and I put out all my Italians , lots of fun the U.S just managed a points victory .Next game will include aircraft to try out the rule adaptions .

Islands and coastal cliffs for cruel seas

Ordered some scenic bits for cruel seas fron Total System Scenic  ,I got 3 islands and 2 corner section of coastline cliffs with beaches for those commando raids ,fantastic delivery and lovely detail on the scenic items .10/10

set out on the warlord game mats

more impressive then the cardboard one that comes with the game.

Cruel Seas First Games

Manged to play cruel seas using our house rules last night at the club ,we got in 2 games the "ships in the night " and the "Torpedo Run" scenarios from the main rule book . The first game was fast and bloody but all my 2 vospers just managed to escape but with very heavy damage and the Torpedo run finished with one of my vospers sitting floating along with no damage points left waiting to be resued or captured and the other being forced to leave the table with crew and bridge hits but luckily one of its Torps managed to hit the tanker which although ablaze was still under power so technically a German victory .The house rules certainly made the game more realistic and fun . Next week Johns Yanks take on my Italians .

ships in the night

the brits run while they still can 

Torpedo Run

Torp away ,destined to miss

@nd vosper makes a daring run to fire its fish 

boom

Fairmile D's for Cruel Seas

Bought a couple of Fairmile D MTB's from Heroics&Ros to see what they were like compared to Warlord Games offering and to be honest they are not bad ,not as much detail as teh Warlord ones and they dont come with the cards but at £11 for 2 compared to £30 for 2 from warlord I think I can live with them and the cards are available from the facebook groups that are dedicated to the game.I also bought some aircraft as well again around .75p -£3.00 each here the warlord ones are £10 for 3 .

140th Anniversary photo book .Ian Knight/David Walker

After the last post about my AZW book collection I recieved lovely book from Ian J Knight ,basically a album of photographs taken at the 140th anniversary re enactment this year, other than a small introduction by Ian there are nowords just colour photos taken on the day .A really nice book available directly from Ians web site but it is a very limitedprinting if you want one.