Steel Lard 2025

Saturday was a long, tiring, but ultimately rewarding day as dozens of like-minded gamers converged on Patriot Games in Sheffield for the latest Steel Lard gaming day.

Seven different Too Fat Ladies games were presented and all of them proved popular with players. In fact every game received votes in the "Best Game" category of our awards (of which more later).

The most popular game in terms of pre-event expressed preferences was Ken Welsh's Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death! This was an American Civil War Sharp Practice affair depicting a period of hard fighting during the First Battle of Bull Run.

The Louisiana Tigers' battle line

The Louisiana Tiger Zouaves (a bunch of reprobates from the wharves and docks along the lower Mississippi) played a major role in the action.

A grey-clad New York regiment advances
across a wheat-field

Ken's terrain made great use of varying ground textures.

The Stone House - now an historic
monument on the Bull Run battlefield 

A unit of US regulars crosses a wheat-field

By coincidence my own game at Steel Lard was also based on First Bull Run (or First Manassass as the Confederates knew it). Regular readers of this blog will have seen the development of Running From Bull Run over recent months.

This time I set the game up on a four feet by twelve feet table. The reason was two-fold. Firstly I wanted the option of running a large, multi-player battle across the short dimension of the table in the event that any of our game runners was forced to withdraw at the last minute.

Mainly, though, I thought it would be fun to have the retreat run from the battlefield to the Cub Run bridge in the morning and then go on from the bridge towards Centreville in the afternoon.  

The morning set up with Union wagons
lining the road to Cub Run bridge

The other half of the table, in each case, was filled with spare troops and vehicles, some of which would appear in the active sector according to card play during the game.

Running From Bull Run uses a card-driven system to represent the forces of Fate as they make life more and more difficult for players who represent Union officers trying to establish some kind of coherent rearguard from a fleeing rabble.

Because of complicated scheduling and one of our attendees crying off due to illness, I had only one player, Chris Clark, during the morning session.

And you know what? It worked brilliantly. Chris ran all of the Union leaders and I drew and played Event Cards. 

Maddened by thirst on the hottest day of the year, Range's newly 
rallied man dash to the Cub Run to fill their canteens

When suddenly the bridge comes under
Confederate artillery fire

Some US Congressmen (and a journalist) have come
out to observe the battle

In the afternoon session, by contrast, I had two Union players (Terrry Pilling and Stewart Goldthorpe) and two (Ned Willett and James Crawley) representing the Forces of Fate. A different experience but no less enjoyable. 

In this game my own Louisiana Tiger models saw action in a victory for the Forces of Fate.

Elsewhere we had a repeat offering of Ian Garbutt and John Elwen's It's a Shit-Show, a very pretty late WW2 game using the What A Tanker rules. Since this game was offered at last years' event it has seen some development work. Jagdtigers made a menacing appearance!

The results for the Americans were perhaps predictable...

Dex McHenry put on a lovely-looking game of Chain of Command 2 based on the Japanese amphibious landings at Mauban in the Philippines in December 1941. 

I understand the fighting was hard in both games. I believe the Japanese were thrown back into the sea in at least one of the actions.

Rather like 6mm games, the terrain really dominates a 15mm Chain of Command presentation. Dex's was very impressive.

Incredibly popular at many Lardy Days are the Kiss Me Hardy 2 games presented by Charley Walker.  This time we had The Battle of Pantry Bay.

I'm not a huge fan of naval games personally but Charley's offerings are always over-subscribed with players engrossed in the detail of stern-rakes and weather-gauges.

Printed game mats have transformed the look
of modern miniatures games

Ian Hemingway gave is his What a Cowboy-based post-apocalypse game What a Scaver. 

I'd seen this recently at Ebor Lard. Very impressive terrain! The son and heir was one of several attendees keen to give it a try.

Last and far-from-least of our games was Mike Wilkins's The Eagle Has Larded. This was a Chain of Command 2 game based on the BBC TV series Allo Allo.  

The terrain was terrific and I understand the game-play was fantastic. Madame Edith playing her piano on the back of a truck may well have constituted a mobile war crime! 

This game was voted as winner of the Wee Derek Award for "Best Game". Congratulations Mike; well deserved!

I should mention in passing that the Wee Derek "Spirit of Lard" Award went to yours truly. I'm deeply touched although I suspect voting chief Dex may have lobbied on my behalf given my stated intention to pass on the reins to him. Kind of like one of those late-career Oscars where the Academy suddenly realise, "Hey, we've missed out so-and-so". Thanks guys!

Afterwards we repaired to El Paso; a Mexican restaurant not far from the venue. It was loud but the food was tasty; thanks to the Barnsley gang for finding this for us.

Finally beers were taken and tales were spun at the Rutland Arms near the station and another day of very satisfying Lard gaming was complete. My heartfelt thanks go out to all who attended and especially to Dex for agreeing to carry the torch forward.