KEGS Con 2026

 I'm a bit late posting this, but I went to KEGS Con in Chatham this year. Attendance seemed good and there were a decent number of games on offer in the morning and afternoon. Since I was a bit late arriving, my options were a bit limited, but I was lucky enough to get into a challenging and interesting game of General D'Armee. I was a little worried about the scenario, which was French vs Austrians but separating the two was a wooded ridge. 

I thought the ridge would really slow the game and prevent the two sides from really getting going. It was a real knife edge battle, and I think that if the game had continued another couple of turns, the French would have prevailed. But the Austrians had a real chance.

The French are advancing into the woods in the north while the Austrians advance along the road, culminating in a cavalry battle in the narrows.

Position at the end of the game with the French holding the woodline in the north, while attacking towards the pass. The Austrians had attempted to charge out of the woods to the south but were stopped by deadly cannister that prevented the French line from completely collapsing. The end game situation was decidedly worse for the Austrians because of how the central brigade was dealing with a number of routing units.

My afternoon game was The Full Nelson, which is an upcoming Too Fat Lardies game. So we were doing some playtesting on what might be close to final rules. It was British against the French using some gorgeous 1/600 scale models.

The rules look good, and I will definitely purchase them when they become available.

Canadian War Museum

 I followed up my trip to the Canadian Tank Museum with a trip to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, so it was a bit of doubling down. Accompanying me was Alain, who was a former director of the Museum. His primary interest was in what has changed since he ran the place and what had stayed the same. And I kind of had the same interest because it had been a while since I went, and I wanted to see new stuff.

One of the new exhibits was Canada and the American Civil War, which I found very interesting. I also found it cool that they have a video featuring Rob of British Muzzle Loaders, which is an excellent history Youtube channel. It's great that they take advantage of a Canadian with an extensive and practical knowledge of the weapons of this time period.

My one criticism of this exhibit, and of the museum in general, is that the museum loves text. There's a lot of words, which I like to read, but it got a bit tiresome. Really, when I go to a museum, I want to see stuff. I can read books and watch videos anywhere, so I want to see things in real life. I get a proper idea of textures, colours, and so on, which books and videos just won't give you.

Another benefit of going with Alain is that we went to the Museum's used book shop. If I had more funds and my knee wasn't putting up a fuss, I would have picked quite a few books. It's well worth a detour and poke around what they have.

Anyway, here are some pics I took. It's well worth checking out yourself if you are in Ottawa.

Just in case I get the itch to do Korean War CoC...

With terrain model for a battle featuring Canadians

Tanks a Lot!

 I had no idea that we have a tank museum in the Toronto area! To be fair, Canadian Tank Museum wasn't always known by this name; it is also the Ontario Regiment Museum. Given that it was sort of on our way to Ottawa, I added this as a stop on our trip (it is in Oshawa, right beside the airport).

The date of our visit (August 8th) was the day they were holding their Korean War observation. This meant that they highlighted 6 vehicles in particular, where the Priest SPG is confirmed to have been in that war, and the other vehicles were possible. 

They had laagered these vehicles in a separate area and we had a good look at them before the start of the main show. The vehicles are a jeep, a truck, the Priest mentioned above, a Sherman Easy 8, a Centurion 5, and a T34-85.

After that, we went over to the main building where they put a bunch of vehicles out into the open to make room so that you can move around to see the vehicles inside. 

There's a video where you can see how they park all of those vehicles in what seems like an all too compact space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0laT02Ar_pU 

The highlight for me was the US-made version of the Renault FT-17 tank that they are restoring. 

Finally, they put on a show featuring the Korean war vehicles parading around, although the T34 had to cut its parade short due to mechanical problems. 

The Sherman popped off a couple of rounds, which rattled my ribs. 

The finale was a simulated tank battle between a Leopard 1 and an M60.

The museum is well worth a visit, especially on an event day.

Zulu Ibuthu Three

 Just a quick post for pics of my latest Zulu unit. I actually completed it a couple of months ago but forgot to post about it. Presenting the inDlondlo:

Hot Lead 2026

 It was March, which meant that it was time for my annual pilgramidge to Stratford for Hot Lead. For a change, I had preregistered for my games, which made things super smooth in terms of entry and for not having to fight the crowd to pick my first game.

Speaking of which, my first game was the Battle of Kernstown (ACW), which was Jackson's first independant battle. The rules were Two Fat Lardies' They Couldn't Hit An Elephant, which I had not played before, but is similar enough to many of their other games. The Union army was severely hampered by command limitations and inferior troops, but we (I was a Union commander) managed to wreck the Confederate's plans with a reckless but genius placement of our cavalry brigade.

After a couple of turns. The hands are actually the Union cavalry commander working his brigade to the flank and rear of the Confederates occupying Kernstown. I'm in the lower right marching to the other Confederate flank.

Union troops capture Kernstown and prepare to defend it against the Confederates to the upper left.

The Confederates moved quickly to capture Kernstown. But the Union cavalry deployed on their flank and moved to threaten them from the rear. This threat diverted a significant part of the Confederate centre to deal with them, which in turn let a Union division to evict the Confederates from Kernstown and set up to confront the rest of the Confederate centre. Meanwhile, I was on the Union right doing a long march to occupy the hills on the flank of the Confederates.

I've reached my destination and start a bruising counterbattery.

At this point, the Union artillery started to pound Confederate centre from three directions. This was basically the rest of the game. My thanks to Brian for running an excellent scenario and game.

The Confederate artillery is getting pounded from three directions.

With nothing left in Confederate centre, the Union apply the coup de grace by advancing up the hill unopposed.

Next up was a game of General d'Armee set in the first day of the battle of Lipzeig in 1813. I like these rules but unfortunately, we barely got going before we had to pack up. The figures were beautifully painted 28mm.

The third game was the Mystery Game. It turned out to be Muskets and Tomahawks set in the 7 Years war. I was commanding a couple of units of Huron defending their village. One of my units were outside of the village and played a huge role in its defense, starting with a lucky but effective volley to drive off a unit of British militia and then launching a devastating attack from the woods on a unit of British lights. After 3 turns, they were wiped out.

The British forcing their way into the village. My warriors are to the lower left returning from having finished off some British light infantry. I also have a unit of lower grade warriors in the village defending it (but not very well).

Despite what seems to be small movement values, the game moved along at a good clip. It was too bad that we were slow starting the game and therefore, couldn't finish it. My thanks to David for running this interesting game.

I went in looking to add to my 15mm Zulu armies. I found a couple of packs of Confederates that I will repurpose into irregular British auxillaries and, because they were cheap and why not, a bunch of Dervish and Egyptions.

Capturing a Fort

 Last weekend, I went to a large game of Dux Brittania. The scenario was that the Saxons were attempting to capture a British fort. There were three Saxon players (I was one of them) and two British players. Each player had two leaders with two units, and one bow unit. One of the four units was elite, which for the Saxons, proved to be decisive.

The Saxon plan was to have one player threaten the gate while the other Saxon player and myself aimed for the opposite corner. In the pic, we're quite a bit into the game. Up until previous turn, things were not looking good for the Saxons. Instead of moving quickly, the ladder carrying units had been a bit leisurely. This allowed the British players to get into position to defend the walls. Additionally, the warriors assigned to batter the front gate got decimated by arrows and the warriors defending the walls hurled stones and other objects inflicting shock.

Then the dice turned. The elite Saxons managed to throw up a ladder and get a foothold at the top corner. Down in the lower corner, a fortunate volley of arrows opened up gaps in the defending British and four ladders of Saxons proceeded to fill those gaps. I had the three ladders at the very bottom of the picture.

 After the initial storming, the Saxons then wiped out the defending Britons on the wall. It was a case of better troops overwhelming the ordinary.

With the original wall defenders wiped out, the Britons ran or surrendered.

Zulu Ibutho Two

After taking about 18 months or so to finish my first Zulu regiment, I cracked on with doing a second one right away. 

I've had a wet palette for a couple of years and not really used it. My style has pretty much set to using paint out of the bottle and slap it on thickly. One of the downsides is that I end up wasting a lot of paint drying on the palette. But for some reason, I decided to try out the wet palette again, but not to do mixing. Instead, I discovered that it helped thin out the paint to a consistency that helps me paint much quicker through better flow and waste less paint through drying. Wet palette veterans are probably laughing at me, but it's never too late to learn a new technique.

Anyway, here is the new ibutho, the isAngqu.

And a close up