Posh Lard 2023 Report

Far too early on Saturday morning I set out to drive down the A1 to Peterborough for the latest Posh Lard. Peterborough being roughly southeast of Sheffield and this being November I was driving with the morning sun in my eyes virtually the whole way. Still that was better than the lunatics in SUVs on the same road going back in the dark!

The George Alcock centre at Fletton is a nice venue. For those of you who've attended Ebor Lard, it's very similar to Green Hammerton Village Hall. It wins on having on-site caterers but loses in that we weren't able to take in the closing stages of a village cricket match at the end the gaming session!

Wanting to get back to Sheffield before it was too late, I didn't stick around for the traditional post-event curry but it was pleasant to chat with like-minded gamers throughout the day.

I again ran my Harpers Ferry game and the players (Pippa, Carl, Lewis, Peter, Kevin and Chris) were great. 

Surprisingly the first game progressed so quickly, with the insurrectionist players taking about an hour to get the hostages from the paymaster's office to the engine house, we had time to go on and play Act Two.

The Federal forces managed to get into the engine house led by Marines Luke Quinn and Matthew Ruppert, with Lt Israel Green close behind. Eventually Green found himself face to face with John Brown and attacked with his sword. 

Historically Green had brought his light-weight dress sword in the haste of leaving Washington. His initially thrust at Brown's torso was ineffective as the sword bent after  hitting Brown's belt buckle. Green then beat Brown unconscious with the hilt of the sword. In our miniature version the same thing happened - I'd decided in advance that Green would be treated as if trying to capture his opponent in terms of the Brawlin' rules. This worked really well.

After the first Harpers Ferry run-through, I had a chance to take some quick pictures of the other games.

New Tribes Beyond Us was a Strength and Honour battle put on by a couple of members of the Peterborough club. 

Nice tiny (2mm) units.

On the next table was a Sharp Practice Peninsular War game called Ducrot's Day Out. 

I liked the models for this game...

Another good looking game was this, using the What A Cowboy engine to run a pirate skirmish action.

I liked the cliffs and the ship, which was obviously based on Gary Chalk's templates in Wargames Illustrated years ago.

Finally we had the Peterborough club's Chef du Pont game covering the hinterland of Utah Beach in June 1944. This game was previously seen at the Joy of Six in the Spring.

Posh Lard is a nice event that should really be better attended. I think there were fifteen players but it could have easily have accommodated another half dozen even with just the games we had and I reckon there was room for at least another game, probably two. If you can come to a future Posh Lard, I'd recommend it.