Bash Day 2016: bloody good show!

By popular demand, our inaugural Bloody Big Battles mini-convention, "Bash Day", was held on Sunday 10 April 2016. I feel confident in saying that popular demand now requires an even bigger and better repeat event next year if not before. It was brilliant!

Bill Runacre's game of First El Teb.

The photo doesn't do it full justice - it was gorgeous.

The event ran from 9am to 6pm. Gamemasters were in from around 8am to set up the 11 scheduled games. A total of 30 players then took their allocated spots to play one game in the morning and a different one in the afternoon, apart from a few lucky players who managed an entire three-battle mini-campaign in the day. Six of the games were one-to-one, the rest being multi-player.

A wide range of wars was covered, and the battles ranged in size from tiny (Laing's Nek - 2,000 a side?) to massive (Koniggratz, >200,000 a side):

• Balaclava, Crimean War 1854
• Montebello, Second Italian War of Independence 1859
• Solferino, Second Italian War of Independence 1859
• Bull Run, American Civil War 1861
• Wilderness, American Civil War 1864
• Dybbol & Als, Second Schleswig War 1864
• Langensalza, Austro-Prussian War 1866
• Koniggratz, Austro-Prussian War 1866
• Loire campaign, Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871 
• Laing’s Nek, First Boer War 1881
• First El Teb, British Sudan Campaign 1884

You can find good reports with loads of excellent photos on the blogs of a couple of the participants:
Two Marshals blog;
Wargaming Addict blog.

I was amazed and delighted by the creative talents on display. We had recruited gamemasters from Oxford Wargames Society, the Wargames Association of Reading, and the Dunstable Generals. The effort people had put into the terrain and troops produced some stunning games. My own battlemats for Solferino and The Wilderness were rather plain and functional by comparison - I will have to up my game for next time!

Equally striking was the high calibre of the participants. I had thought about reporting the results of the games in this post, but as more than one of the players said, it really didn't matter who won - it was about refighting interesting historical battles with like-minded enthusiasts. I had never met most of the players before, but without exception they turned out to be really good guys. I guess there's something about the format of the event and the nature of the game that it attracted people with similar good attitudes for similar reasons. The post-battle rendezvous in The Plough was most amicable and convivial.

So I'll finish with a huge thank you to all the game masters who laid on such fantastic games, and to all the players - who came from as far afield as the USA, Indonesia, and even Scotland - for making it such a successful and memorable day. As far as I could tell everyone had a really good time, all the comments I have heard have been thoroughly positive, and we definitely must - and will - do it again.

Bash On!

===

As a loosener for Bash Day, I also managed to get a game in on the Friday evening before. Scott and I fought an ACW battle, Chickamauga (1863). He had just walked the battlefield three weeks earlier so was excited to play it and able to give good comments to refine the scenario. As the Confederate player, he was able to overcome the command and control problems of fighting in wooded country, and the difficulty of attacking a defender in cover everywhere. Although we had to finish the game a couple of turns early, and there were still plenty of twists and turns left in the game, his sound plan looked like beating my essentially reactive one. Scott really liked the scenario and felt it captured the feel of the battle. It's in the files of the BBB Yahoo group now, and also in my Chickamauga album on Flickr.

Let's call Chickamauga a defeat for me. I also took part in the Koniggratz game at Bash Day and managed a draw. My updated score for 2016 is now:

Played: 13
Won: 7
Drawn: 3
Lost: 3