Time for bit of an update. The last three weeks have been quite busy for me and I have had little wargaming aside from this past weekend. At the end of April, I had to make an unexpected trip to pack up my daughter's flat in Montreal. We had the lease until the end of June but her immersion programme finished the end of March and thankfully the landlord allowed her to terminate the lease early if he could find another tenant, which he did quite quickly. I had never used a storage facility before, they are really quite handy and they gave us a free truck to move. Pretty good deal really, but I am not looking forward to moving her into her new flat in August. I have told her no more moves! We then went on a vacation to Europe with my wife's family and both my son and daughter. The family stayed in Paris, but my wife and I took off to Bruges for a couple of days. Well worth the trip and I really got to learn a lot about beer. Both kids really enjoyed Paris and my daughter is already talking about moving there from Montreal to further her Fashion Design aspirations. We got back to Montreal on Thursday and then had to drive to Massachusetts. I had promised some time ago to provide terrain and troops for the Hougoumont Scenario for the Boston Trained Bands Waterloo game for Huzzah, so Saturday I had to get up early, pack 22 battalions of French and 5 battalions of Allies as well as all the necessary terrain for a 6x8' table and drive to Portland, Maine. More about that later but time to catch up with our Dux Brit campaign.
Our last game was on the 23rd of April. We played the church raid scenario, the Saxon player gets to pick whether we play a raid or a battle and Adam decided to go with a raid, a d6 was thrown to select the raid. By now the Saxons had a string of victories and had captured one of my three provinces, I really needed a victory. As usual you can find an excellent AAR with photos on Adams blog,
the Fencing Frog.
This is a tough raid for the Saxons, I got a fairly good starting position and the Saxons started on the far side of a stream (it would of killed them if it was a river). I was quite hamstrung though by the position of the church as it ended up being placed next to a swamp which really hurt my ability to use my levy in shieldwall (they are really quite useless unless thus protected).
It was a brutal battle with heavy losses on both sides, but as you can see I was able to gain a 4+ victory so gained 2 gold and 2 warriors. Additionally the Saxons lost two of their nobles. The campaign is now as follows, we are hoping to have our next game this Thursday. I believe neither of us are tiring of the campaign, it really is very well designed.
I thought I would also add a few photos from our trip, I add non gaming stuff to my blog once a year and it has been a couple of years so I will allow myself this indulgence.
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| My daughter Jane and her Aunt Wendy in front of guess what! |
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| My son Simon |
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| It was my wife's father 70th birthday the alleged reason for the trip |
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| Made it to the top of yet another church, this time the Sacré Coeur in Montmatre |
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| Two excellent beers in Bruges |
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| Tasty |
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| Bruges is quite beautiful |
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| The Bell Tower in Bruges, it had even more steps than Sacré Coeur |
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| The Romantick Pand Hotel |
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| Even Jennifer was convinced to drink Belgian Beer |
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| Pre Moulin Rouge snaps |
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| Simon enjoyed the Moulin Rouge! |
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| Do I look French? |
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| Sisters in the Rain |
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| Back to Bruges, I did make it to the top |
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| Well worth a visit |
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| My beautiful wife |
Looks like you all had a great trip. I hear you about moving daughters, ,LOL - I think when Kristie was in college we must have moved her in and/or out three times a year for 4 years, and it's three times for Vet school now. Back in the dark ages, IOpretty much stayed put the last 3 years of college and Med school, and if I needed help moving, my friends did it with me (and vice versa!)
ReplyDeleteIt was a nice trip but a bit of a challenge with 8 people especially in respect to restaurant selection.
DeleteI am sort of fortunate as my son lives in Montreal so he was there to help me (he actually moved 95% of the stuff while I worked on the organization! My daughter managed to be in Mexico when we got the call that we had to move out within a week so she escaped the work.
Lovely family and trip! That is the very best thing...celebrating with your family in a place as nice as Paris. Looks like a blast and I'm quite jealous!
ReplyDeleteAh, moving. My son is at IU and it's an 11 hour drive. After putting stuff in storage, we just moved him back from college. I was thinking about how in my day, everything I owed fit into the trunk of a car. The world has changed!
I really had a lot of fun, it was especially rewarding to listen to both kids communicating in French, neither of them knew much until they moved to Montreal.
DeleteI had to take the bus to university a 12 hour trip then across the island of Newfoundland, so I had to be pretty limited in what I packed!
Ahh, it's wonderful to see these photos. It looked to be a brilliant vacation and your family are all amazingly photogenic. Sarah and I LOVED our time in Bruges. We'll have to compare notes the next time we get together (maybe Europe next year?).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words Curt. Yes we are quite excited about meeting up next June in Italy, was it?
DeleteJohn
June yes, but it looks to be 2 weeks in Provence and 2 in southern Spain. I hope you guys can make it out. I'll send along information once the bookings are confirmed.
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