Steel Lard 2023 report

This Saturday saw fans of the Too Fat Lardies rules at Patriot Games in Sheffield for the annual Steel Lard gathering. Across the day we had 46 people each playing two games across nine beautifully turned out tables.

Matt Slade brought along The Spy Who Larded Me, a Sharp Practice game set during the American Civil War. I know Jamie greatly enjoyed it and one of the players reported that he now, at last, understood how Sharp Practice scenarios are supposed to be designed.

Also Sharp Practice and also ACW was Ken Welsh's Morning Glory on the Combahee. I'd have loved to see more of this game as integrating infantry action with ACW gunboats is something I'd like to explore with my Mississippi Marine Brigade chaps. Sadly I was too busy to get much of a look at events as they progressed.

While we're in mid-19th century America, it probably makes sense to mention that Steel Lard saw the first public outing of my own Harpers Ferry game. As we've seen here during its development, this covered the events of John Brown's 1859 insurrection at the Virginia town's Federal Armoury.

With only three hours per session, I was unable to fit in the original plan of running the Martinsburg Militia's attack and the later U.S. Marines assault on the engine house. We stuck with the former and it went successfully on both run-throughs.

Another game using the What A Cowboy rules engine was Simon Walker's Death in the Donga. This took the Wild West-themed rules to Zululand and to the events that, historically, saw the death of the Prince Imperial, the son of the deposed Emperor Napoleon III, whilst serving with the British Army.

Jamie played in this game and managed to ensure the Prince Imperial's escape but had his other character slaughtered about halfway through the action.

Chain of Command was, as always, popular with game-runners and players alike. Alex Sotheran ran Oh Sugar, his WW1 adaptation covering the attack on the ruined sugar factory at Courcelette by Canadian troops. In 15mm scale th ground scale and figure scale match perfectly and really give the impression of the relative emptiness of the battlefield.

John Savage also adapted Chain of Command, this time taking it to the Vietnam war with his scenario Walk this Hue. John is a skilled designer and presenter of scenarios and his players were noisily engaged throughout.

A welcome return to Steel Lard this year was Graeme Atkinson's A Rock and a Hard Place, a Chain of Command representation of the Fallschirmjäger attack on Tavronitis Bridge during WW2's Crete campaign.

This game was seen at Steel Lard a few years ago and it was good to see it one last time before it makes its way to Crete where it will be displayed in a museum close to the battlefield.

An always welcome visitor to Lardy Days is Charley Walker. The charming Borders farmer can always be relied upon to bring a game that has the players enthusiastically engaged throughout. This time it was Mayhem in the Med, a Napoleonic naval battle using a streamlined adaptation of the Kiss Me Hardy rules.

Finally we had Ken (Yorkshire Gamer) Reilly with Rome Or Death. Ken needed reassuring that this was allowable as a Lardy game, the Pickett's Charge rules being published by sister company Reisswitz Press. I figured that if people can run Lard-inspired systems of their own, an official Lard-adjacent game must be OK.

The scenario is set during the Risorgimento - the nineteenth century wars culminating in the unification of Italy. It's always good to have Ken at Steel Lard as his penchant for big games contrasts nicely with the skirmishes we usually see from others.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to present more photos here. I was so busy running Harpers Ferry or dealing with administrative matters that I had no time to do a proper photoshoot. 

For some lovely coverage of the Combahee game visit Ken's blog here.

Also Alex has a video of the tables on Youtube.