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.