Herts of Lard 2026: Caen 1944

My afternoon session at Herts of Lard was playing Simon Hatch's What a Tanker 28mm game on a section of Joe Bilton's Caen 1944 table, which as you can see is an outstanding set-up.

Simon was being helped by his partner, Sarah Hands-Ledger, who was super helpful when I flaked out and couldn't see straight towards the end of the game.

The scenario was to take control of our AFVs and and battle across the rubble strewn streets.  

 

I played the part of British and Canadian armour attempting to push the German defenders from the shattered city.

The Alies started with a couple of Staghound armoured cars, while the Germans had a Hanomag and Sd.Kfz. 234/3 armoured car.

My Staghound lurking in the streets after dispatching the Sd.Kfz. 234/3. Once we destroyed our opponents AFV they got to bring on a Panzer IV each, which turned the balance of the encounter in their favour.

My Staghound is about to dash out of cover and put the wrecked Hanomag between it and the Panzer IV.

That didn't go so well, as in the end one can run, but one can't hide. We both got slaughtered, and both of us were upgraded to a Sherman, which evened the odds. But, after destroying the Panzer IVs, the Germans players got a Panther and a Tiger.

Fortunately, once our Sherman's were dispatched, my colleague got a Hellcat tank destroyer, and I got a Firefly. 

I managed to dispatch the Panther, and we both started hunting the Tiger. 

 

At this point of the game, the pressure of stalking the Tiger, and not getting blown up in the process, meant I didn't take anymore pictures after we started inching down the streets, playing cat and mouse.

However, we were eventually victorious after I managed to get on the rear of the wounded Tiger and send one up its jacksie. This meant I'd achieved my fourth kill of the game.

I was totally sucked into game, and had a wonderful time. I even quoted the first couple of lines of Tyger, Tyger too.

We both had a great day out at this years Herts of Lard, and hope to attend again next year.

Herts of Lard 2026: They mostly come at night…..mostly

Carrying on with my adventures of a day out at Herts of Lard day. My morning session saw me playing in Mike Wilkins's They mostly come at night…..mostly. A What a Colonist, an Aliens 28mm miniatures game. 

 

A mostly co-operative game to escape Hadleys hope. Mostly, because Mike's friend Simon was running the aliens.

Movie quotes abounded, and hilarity ensued. 

 

One of the players was assigned Burke and Hudson as his characters, the other ran Ripley and Hicks, while I got to play Vasquez and Gorman.

Gorman had a mission to disable the safety protocols of the air processing plant, so it would blow up when we left the planet.

  

I had Vasquez cover his back while he fiddled with the controls of the air processor. 

 And, of course Vasquez went full rock'n roll.

Meanwhile, Ripley found Newt, who was then chased by a nasty alien who caught up with her. I managed to get Gorman to run and save her by shooting the alien.

We achieved our mission goals, but ran out of time to play out all the consequences of the mission.  

That meant we finished with Burke about to meet his end, having tried to carry a specimen to our escape vehicle. Meanwhile Hudson wondered why the aliens weren't attacking him? He was infected

It was a fun game, though both Mike and Simon were fretting that out in the open, with ranged weapons, we were too good at dealing with the aliens.

Having given it some thought, I think they were fretting unnecessarily, but that's because I felt this was more of an RPG skirmish than an out-and-out skirmish wargame.

Herts of Lard 2026: Overview

Saturday we went to Rickmansworth for the Herts of Lard games day run by Joe Bilton. He being the maestro of epic wargame tables, as can be seen above.

There were fourteen games and 85 attendees, which made for a lively day of fun. 

Rich Clarke's Getting Lehry.

 

Rich ran a 28mm Coc2 WWII game. The scenario was a Panzer Lehr attack towards Bayeux in June 1944 who must overcome the outposts of the DLI before they can progress.

Phil & Jenny Turner's The Monmouths at Mouen.

Phil & Jenny were running a WW2 game using IABSM in 15mm. The scenario had German forces intended attacking the “Scottish Corridor” to cut off the 11th Armoured Division and destroy it in detail. Can the Monmouths hold out against the Leibstandarte, and save the day, or will the Germans pushon to cut the “Scottish Corridor!”

Rob Purbrick's Sharp’s Partisans. 

Rob was running Sharpe Practice 2 in 28mm. Richard Sharpe, his trusted chosen men, and the South Essex Reg. take on Major Ducos’s fiendish plot to bring down Wellington and his Army.

Simon Stokes's Battle of Cynuit.

Simon was running a Dark Age game using the Midgard rules in 28mm. The scenario was set in the year 878AD, where the Great Heathen Army has come to Britain sweeping all before them. Only
the Saxons of Wessex still stand against them.

John Savage's On the Road to Brussels.

 

John ran a Sharp Practice game in 28mm. Late on the afternoon of 18 June 1815, the battle turns on a sunken farm beside the Brussels road. La Haye Sainte still holds, but only just. The defenders are down to their last cartridges. This is not the moment remembered in histories, but the one before it — when everything might still go wrong.

Phil Threlfall's What A Commando Zombie!

 

Phil was running a Weird WW2 28mm games using a mash up of What a Cowboy and What an Operator rules. An experimental game where a small crack team of plucky British paras/commandos infiltrate a U-Boat pen, to steal or destroy the secret 'ZX Formula' and capture or kill the mad Nazi scientist!

Charley Walker's The Devil Take the Hindmost.

Charley ran a game inspired by TFLs Kiss Me Hardy rules called, The Full Nelson. Napoleonic Naval Action in 1801 in 1/700 scale. A British squadron catches Franco-Spanish fleet before they can relieve the French Army of Egypt, but have they bitten off more than they can chew? 

Johnno Rollinson's Diggers First Day.

Johnno was using CoCv2 to run a 28mm 1941 North African game of Operation Compass. The 8th Army has reached the small port town called Bardia, and it is now the turn of the Australian “Diggers” to have their metal tested against a well dug in Italian forces.

Steven Woodbridge's They’re Coming Through the Trees.

 

Steven ran a 28mm game based on the first day of the Battle of the Bulge.

Alistair Lapping's Encounter at Morningwood Farm.

Alistair's 28mm Sharp Practice American War of Independence game set in New York State. A large SP game where the emphasis will be on formations rather than groups, using some minor rule changes used by the Staines Wargames Group.

Joe Bilton's The Battle of Montcornet.

Joe was running CoCv2 Battle of France game in 28mm. May 1940 refight of the Battle of Montcornet.

French forces under Charles de Gaulle launch a bold counterattack near Montcornet, striking at advancing German troops in a desperate attempt to slow the Blitzkrieg.

 

 A table so impressive that I took a whole bunch of pictures to show how wonderful it looked.

Joe is taking this game to Salute where he'll be run a What a Tanker participation game.

Feast your eyes on the attention to detail.

Finally,I have this last picture of a gorgeous ship, but no idea of what game it was for.

There were two other games, Caen 1944, and They Mostly come out at Night... mostly. I have a bunch of pictures of both of these as, they were the games I was playing, which will go up tomorrow as a separate post.

MekTek 3: Letter's of Comment Explode

The final piece of artwork generously donated by Steve Kyte adorns the cover of issue three.

Again all uncredited articles and artwork for issue three were me, while Alex and an article by Helen McCarthy. 

 

Mechs at Large editorial rant about shenanigans in the media and how not to inflame opinions, and an announcement of the 1990 Eastercon having a Japanese anime stream run by Helen McCarthy (it was great).

Japanima Helen McCarthy talking about what animation was available to buy and watch on video cassettes. Titles available included Robotech, World of Taisman, Speed Racer, Once Upon a Time, Crushers aka Crusher Joe, Warriors of the Wind a cut of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Space Cruiser: Guardians of the Galaxy a cut version Space Cruise Yamato.

Manga, Manga  Me talking about Akira, Appleseed, Grey, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Cyber 7, and Outlanders by Johi Manabe, which has nothing to do with Sean Connery, or Scottish romance. I covered a lot of comics this time, including Dirty Pair by Toren Smith, not Japanese but a homage to Japanese manga, Dark Horses Aliens, and Alien Legion, which all interested me.

Adepticus Titanicus reviewed by Alex Stewart, praising the big box of toys, and the introduction of mecha-on-mecha action in the WH40K universe.

Not listed in the contents was a one page cartoon by me called Saucer Story. 

Little Big Mechs was me taking the BattleTech rules and showing how to convert them for playing on the tabletop with terrain etc. Today that would be unnecessary, but this was the early days of BattleTech, and we had to make do with home made rules. I discussed the problems of converting an area based ground scale hex game into a free-form movement.

Snapshots by me looked at some wargame fanzines that were available in the UK. 

Mech Force was a long article by me about how to expand the game by converting the BattleForce rules into representing single mechs rather than a platoon. Think of this as Alpha Strike done thirty years ago. It was running games using these house rules that spurred me to go on and write Oversized Heavy Mechanized Units aka OHMU War Machine.

PBM Campaign I wrote up the rules I'd written for a campaign game that I had run for the wargame club I was a member of when I lived in Southend-on-Sea.

MekTek LOCs Ten pages of letters from the readers of the previous issue of MekTek. My readers had opinions, and were largely enthusiastic about what they'd read. The next issue would showcase a lot of the ideas discussed here.

Anyway, hope that brief glance of the past has been of interest.

Catch you all on the bounce. 

 

Chop Shop: Ogre 1 One Step Closer

 

Above is the model from last time, given a trim, and to check I took the photo and mirrored each half to judge how close I was to my goal, then, I mirrored the picture again.

Below the pictures on the right show the difference between mirroring using the center line of the tower versus cutting from where the tower meets the front slope. 

 

This was when I noticed my tower was skew-whiff. I hacked away at the tower to make it symmetrical, or at least more or less symmetrical, checking my overall progress towards capturing the original Martian Metals Ogre

Below is a birds eye view showing Keith Falk's Martian Metals Ogre, versus my conversion. As can be seen, my facsimile is going to be a quarter of an inch shorter than the Martian Metals casting.

It is what it is.

At this point I thought it was time to add the bug eyes. Drilling out the holes, revealed why I had been struggling to make the main front glacis symmetrical.

The work continues in the never ending saga of adding and subtracting putty.  

 

And a side shot showing the difference in the tower profile.

 

That's all for now. Catch you on the bounce.

MekTek Issue 2

Again another beautiful piece of artwork from Steve Kyte adorns the cover of issue two.

All uncredited articles and artwork contents for issue two were again me, and was again joined by Alex Stewart, and Simon Kemp who read the first issue, sent me a couple of reviews too.  

Mechs at Large editorial offering pointers to what I was interested in and what I would be writing about.

Japanima Talking about mecha animation shows on American syndicated TV, and how this fed back to influence what the Japanese animation studios were doing.

Manga, Manga  Started with me praising the American mecha comic Dynamo Jo by Doug Rice, which should be much better known that it is, followed by his four issue mini-series of Star Blazers. Also, mentioned were the translated Japanese properties Xenon, Area 88 manga, and Mai Psychic Girl.

Warnography Alex Stewart reviewed Price of Glory by William Keith, and The Devils Hand by Jack McKinney, with again a harsh, but fair review of the latter.

Encounter on Ice was a scenario inspired by watching Mad Max with four mech designs by me for the intruders to give Max's lance a hard time.

Snapshots Simon Kemp reviewed Aerotech, Technical Readout 2, and the Succession Wars Battletech boardgame. While I reviewed Stardate Vol 3, issue 2, and my thoughts on the first three issues of Battle Technology (buy MekTek instead).

Meka of Design was a long article by me breaking down the battlemech construction rules.

MekTek Trio I reviewed the BattleTech Manual comparing the rules against the original BattleDroids and BattleTech box set rules.

MekTek LOCs I published a letter by Sam Lewis of FASA, and two letters by readers of issue 1.

The plan is to put all four of the MekTek issues on DriveThruRPG at some point this year, along with the revised OHMU War Machine rules, which requires some work to make if a PDF.

Chop Shop: Ogre 1 Conversion Symmetry

Symmetry is a thing. One that castings made from sculpts were more of a suggestion, rather than something strictly adhered to. My Ral Partha original Mk5 is mostly symmetrical.

Converting it into a facsimile (word of the week) of a Martian Metals Ogre questions what symmetry means when the originals were anything but symmetrical. So, I took a picture from the front, and then split and mirrored each side, which can be seen below.

As can be seen, I haven't quite got both sides the same. So there's more work ahead.

Catch you on the bounce. 

OHMU War Machine Schrödinger Update

Given the last post about I did about OHMU War Machine was 2023, which itself referred to an earlier post in 2021, and an even earlier mention in 2012. It seems interest in OHMU won't die. 

However, one hurdle preventing some sort of re-issue has been crossed, now I've managed to have my copy scanned.

This is a big help towards proceeding forward with this project.

The question now is, whether this a facsimile of the original, or a revised an updated edition with errata? I'm tending towards the latter, because a facsimile would just be scans of the text as jpegs.

But, as you can see above the pagination will change the look of the book. Let me know your thoughts?

Either way, something is coming as a PDF, but as to when, I'll let you know when I know.

MekTek: A BattleTech Fanzine 1

MekTek was a British BattleTech fanzine produced by me, which came out in 1988. The cover of the first issue was by Steve Kyte.

All the uncredited articles and artwork in issue one were done by me, while the Warnography article was written by Alex Stewart, aka Sandy Mitchell author of Ciaphus Cain.

Mechs at Large was my 'raison d'être' for producing the fanzine, bemoaning the direction FASA focusing on setting, rather than game mechanics (oh boy, did that change later with excessive rules bloat).

Japanima I looked at mecha in Japanese animation, describing the three series that were combined into what became Robotech.

Warnography Reviewed the William Keith's first two Gray Death books, and Ardath Mayhar's The Sword and the Dagger. Alex wasn't kind to the latter.

Thundering Guns described a number of new weapons (Gauss gun; disruptor; fusion cannon; grenade launcher; two sizes of auto-flechette shot guns; medium range missiles; heavy missiles), with a table defining their stats.

Heavier Metal added two variant mech types. The first was armless bipedal mechs, which added the internal arm structure to the torso. The second was the Tetra mech, which was a different way to record a quad mech structure (a record sheet was included). Tetra mech records sheets made it possible to construct quad mechs up to 200 tons (divided into weight classes).

Grunts'n Groan'n When Rock'n Roll'n expanded the infantry rules (mechanized; body armour; platoon organization), and added troop quality too (militia; conscripts; regulars; veterans; elite), and a mechanism for tracking combat experience. A table defined the stats.

Apocalypse Choppers was my way of adding helicopters to the game. At the time this was written, CityTech had just been released, and I had opinions.

So, I'm noodling whether or not to put MekTek up on DriveThruRPG as a PDF, but I'm not sure an old British fanzine from the late 1980s holds any interest for todays BattleTech fan.

Chop Shop: Ogre 1 Conversion Ongoing

 

Above is where I am after cutting back the sculpting putty I applied last time. I realized I made a mistake judging the rake of the front glacis, which you can see below.

It left the model looking a bit of a mess.

I also had to realign the left hand rear track casting, because the body wasn't level. This was probably down to me when I assembled the  model not being careful enough when gluing the castings together.

This setback was a bit disheartening, and made me remember why I put the project aside ten years ago.

And below is the re-profiled front. As I now compare this with my pictures, I realize that I've missed the narrowing of the front glacis at the peak where it meets the base of the tower.

After the epoxy putty has hardened overnight I will adjust this tomorrow.