ASOIAF: Nordic GT - Winter War!

King in the North!

 This year it was our turn to organise the Nordic GT for ASOIAF here in Helsinki.

See previous GT results here

Picture credits besides me go to Antti Vaaranen, Oskari Anttonen, Andras Libal and others. Thank you!

ASOIAF: Game with Grant from Yecats MIniatures

 Great to meet and play F2F

If you're into ASOIAF and have an internet connection, you probably know Yecats Miniatures and their YouTube channel. I've visited the channel as a guest a couple of times and as I was on a holiday in UK, we agreed to have a game at his house, near London.

Read on to find out how it all went down!

ASOIAF: Polish Nationals

 Largest Song Tournament in the World so Far!

With some mates from the club we had already discussed for some time, that visiting a tournament in Central Europe and specially in Poland (as they've had several large tournaments) would be cool. After a very positive experience in visiting Swedish Nationals in May, three of signed up for Poland. We expected the tournament to exceed 100 players, but it eventually 171 players from 7 countries battled it out. Many of the pictures are a courtesy from Warfactory Poland.

The Loot

Second half of 2022 on my painting desk & high lights WIP

 House Martell, Ancients & WW2 fighter planes 

dominate the desk

Turning 50 and celebrating 35 years in the hobby with a BANG!!!

 Seven tables set for my gaming mates

Yes, I turned 50 this Summer and held several parties to my friends and family.

I also painted my first wargaming miniature some 35 years ago (I think it was a Chaos Dwarf of a Dark Elf that we used playing role playing games), so I wanted to set up a special event to celebrate these milestones with my wargaming mates. So on I went and decided to organize a (demo) games day at our Nopat & Taktiikka club here in Helsinki.

I brought miniatures and some terrain too, to set up 7 different games, recruited fellow gamers to run the demos and invited 20+ mates to come and play. Read on to find out what was on the menu!

Hobby Year 2019 in retrospect and prospects for 2020

Year of the Song and Fantasy

That's the only way to put it, really. When I think of 2019, it is really dictated by a new game, The Song of Ice and Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game. I played lots of other games too, but this was a clear number one on my agenda, on any metric. Read on to learn how my hobby year 2019 was!

Salute 2019 Part 1.

Meeting friends, shopping and general goodiness

It was my second time in Salute (last years report here) this year and once again I was part of Dalauppror's team in preparing and presenting a demo game. I will post a separate "report" on that project. This post is about everything else in Salute.

Besides running a game and shopping, Salute is an event where I have the opportunity to meet face2face people and friends from my "international wargaming network". In this picture I'm shaking hands with Andy Lyons, whom is organising Saga World Cup this year. I'm organising qualifications in Finland. Read on to see what else was there to see, meet and buy.

Kingdoms in the East completed!

Vladimir Nurja, Prince of Kiev Conquered!

And so it came to be, that my Medieval Russian army marched

to glory and victory of this campaign we had been playing since August!

Winner's diploma

Project Salute: Battle of Stäket 13.8.1719

Nordic Co-operation in military matters continued - invasion of Britain

Dalauppror with his warband of Swedish & British sell-swords are already notorious for their presentation games in Salute. As a committed Great Northern War armies collector I was allowed to join in on this crew and so started my "Project Salute"

Me, myself and the Maestro himself!

Read on to learn what this all meant!

Nopat Club’s traditional summer weekend: Bolt action!

Pacific Theatre Campaign Day 

A great tradition of gentlemanly summer weekend with wargaming, good friends, cold drinks, fat cigars and hot sauna has been established at our club. You can find blurry accounts of previous sessions in my blog.

This time we decided to run a kind of team tournament with a Pasific team.

Concept is based on the campaign day event pack  by Downorder.com - thanks for sharing!

Summary of Hobby Year 2017

A very active Year of Hobby again

What a great year of gaming indeed...

I've played almost 20 different systems (OK, one of them is a board game - Blood Rage, but it oo has cool minis to paint!) and played almost 70 games during the year! Read on learn more about my gaming year, painting results and how this blog has developed.

LOTR Megabattle: Helms' Deep

2000p. Rohans vs. 2000p. Isengard

Conquering England - Battle of Hastings 1066

Nopat & Taktiikka Club's Traditional Summer Cabin Trip

It was once again time to enjoy the Finnish summer by heading to the country side with good friends, dozens of beer cans and hundreds of toy soldiers... and to stay crammed in a small cabin for hours and hours drinking the beer and rolling the dice. The companions were:

King Harold (Sebastian) and his brothers (in arms) Juha and Antti 

-proudly displaying the new Club T-shirt (and Karhu-beer, in English bear-beer)

...and commanding the defending the Anglo-Saxon fyrds

And the somewhat more crazy AND arrogant Norman lords:

Duke William (aka Kalle) and his vassals my self and Aleksis

What madness would follow from this you wonder... read on to find out! (Sorry about the unsharpness of some of the pictures - lightning conditions were very challenging.

Super Gaming Week: Game 1. LOTR

Good shall prevail!

First game of super duper gaming (and painting) week was a 2 vs. 2 LOTR game with my friends Marko (Sharkey and his evil minions), Kalle P. (Isengard with Dunlending focus) as the evil side and my elves and Adrian's (guest player from Turku, whom we new from LOTR Finland fb-group) stout dwarven force led by Gimli and Legolas (whom this time won their body count easily!).

 

Hamburger Tactica - Day 1. Serious Shopping

First day of Tactica started with shopping frenzy,

focusing in to the Excellent fleamarket.

Hamburger Tactica - day 0: Lubeck

This time 4 out 5 from our Tactica-team headed towards

Lubeck instead of doing the @routine tour of Hamburg, as we have done quite a few times already. Change is nice!

Pikeman's Lament @ Little Wars Club in Stockholm

Business and Pleasure

I had a business trip to Stockholm and used the opportunity to visit my gaming pals at Little Wars -club in Stockholm.

As Pikeman's Lament had just been published by Osprey, we played a Great Northern War battle. You can find battle report by the rules co-author Micke here. Once again I enjoyed a great game in a beautiful terrain!

Some further pics and some story telling below.

Bolt Action 2. First go!

Top Secret! Finns vs. Soviets 1000p.

Got to have a first go with BA 2. with my friend Kalle. I was playing my battle hardened Finns against Kalle's Russians, so this was a pretty historical set up - Continuation war 1941-1944.

UPDTED: Day 2. Visiting Little Wars in Stockholm - The Army Museum

The second day of Nopat-Club's "class trip" to Stockholm contained a visit to Sweden's Army Museum. An excellent museum and an obvious choice for a wargamer. After several hours in the museum we settled down to "fika" with our host for the day Micke aka Dalauppror and played a demo game of "La Belle Alliance aka Waterloo 1815" we have brought as a gift for The Little Wars.

Read on to see pictures from the museum and some comments on them.

Bolt Action Tournament

The Final Campaign of Bolt Action 1.0

A detachment of heroes from Nopat Club took on to a Bolt Action Crusade and headed to far away place called Lahti on an September Sunday. The day would not be peaceful...