We started as a club in 2014, 1 March 2014, exactly. So this month we celebrate our eight years of being a brotherhood of wargamers, a band of brothers, a Church in the name of Bad Puns. We praise the name of our lord (Wellington) and his Son who died for our Sins (Napoleon) but who will return after 40k years.
Here’s Amsterdam6shooters, the movie:
We counted 7 tables: Bolt Action (2x), Chain of Command, De Bellis Antiquitatis, Warhammer, Warmaster, Mordheim… Great atmosphere. Good to be back.
At our very, very first club meeting in March 2014 I organized a big 15mm Romans vs Barbarians battle. Here’s Brabo visitor Koen on a shady picture. How young he looked, compared with those ancient Romans!
As always, I wanted a bigger army so I bought more. Other projects prevailed but last month I finally cleaned a Roman shelf and painted my legionaries. I also played a Roman battle, more to come. Here’s the thin red line.
No Roman army is complete without a testudo. I found a 15mm testudo from Warrior Miniatures (link). Online examples of painted models looked fine.
And re-enactor pictures are inspiring.
Here’s my own painted testudo
Eight units equites cavalry will finish the job.
The grand strategy is to playtest several wargame rules (Age of Hannibal, AdlG, M&G, Hail Caesar, good old big battle DBA), compare and select ’the best’, and get really proficient in it so that I can easily referee and run big battle multiplayer games. Below a recent Age of Hannibal game against Maarten.
Wanna join? I need opponents, big bloody barbarians or rough red Romans. Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant.
Because we originally had no 40K-players or only 40K-players with their own 40-armies, we originally had no 40K club army. That all changed. So we changed our mind. Last autumn we found a second hand, mostly unpainted lot, and because I’m Speedpaintzch The Unclean, I speedpainted the lot. See below.
No nonsense fast painting. I hope you like the finished result, but sensitive painters might feel hurt. In the tutorial I show you the power of minimalism: tabletop quality miniatures in minimal time. Soon available at the club!
The famous Little War TV wargame channel started a couple of years ago and is managed by a group of creative American historical miniature wargamers who make very professional battle reports and vlogs. I studied how they do it and with Maarten, Eltjo, Carlos and Ruben I made our first ‘official’ video battle report. See below.
Earlier this year, I made a few simple clips as tryout, first only family and holiday, later a few club clips. Making videos is fun, it’s a newly discovered hobby, that’s my main reason: it can be just as satisfying as speed- or slowpainting an army. I was not planning a wargame vlog. Not really.
But LWTV presented an official ‘challenge‘ this autumn to to stimulate vlogging. They published a detailed manual, as well. Hmmm – I thought. Useful. Let’s get ambitious.
The results are satisfying. What I’m most satisfied about, I thought, when editing the vlog, is that it reflects what a nice club we are. Eltjo, for example, brought wonderful scenery (“I loved the little trees”, as Bob Ross would say). Alois, Eltjo and Maarten helped me with playtesting the scenario.
D-Day itself was enjoying, Ruben brought a few extra houses and although the recordings ran a little longer than expected, Carlos stayed until the end. The atmosphere was fantastic, as you see in the video. I wish to thank everybody who helped making it.
I’d like to do more club or personal wargame vlogs, now. The 1672 Woerden battle is my next video project, planned next months. Feel free to join, and feel free to share ideas about future video battle reports. With the right planning we can, just like LWTV, produce wargame clips now and then and have fun together, planning, plotting, preparing and wargaming.
Next month a jury of wargamers from Little Wars TV and a celebrity cast from the wargame business (Richard Clarke from 2FatLardies, a studio painter from The Army Painter, the president of the Historical Miniatures Wargames Society, and several acclaimed YouTubers) will vote which vlog will get the Best Quickstrike AAR Caesar Award 2021. I hope they will like this video from our smalltown club in our tiny little country.
Anyway, no matter the result, remember, we’re the best Amsterdam wargame club in the world! Merry Christmas, happy New Year, hope to see you all in 2022!
