ACOTS 2021 Planes, Trains, Games And People

The view of Adelaide from Virgin Airlines

                              Larry surveys a 1/72 collection of boxed figures whilst eagle eye Alan rummages through Larry's bargain boxes.

                     Alan doesn't miss the rare plastic toy soldier gems hidden among the dross.

A hominid hand reaches for a banana and discovers boxes of toy soldiers. A major evolutionary jump occurs in the prehistory of Man.

                                             A quiet and congenial interlude under the canopy...

                                                    'How'd that flamin' thing get in there?'

                              The hardware of war about to be turned into baked beans cans is rescued and destined for toy soldier collector swags.

The crew feed their faces with Angie's salubrious and swelling selection of satisfying morsels.

                                           The magnificent mastication continues. continues.

                        One of Larry's less happy moments, perhaps brought on by a politically provocative comment from myself.

                        More munching of the mounds of food which found an ample moustache no barrier.

                                                 Mmmmm

                                          Host, Bob's benign beasts and best buddies...

                                             1/72 Napoleonic battle with stylised terrain..

                                                                  Glenelg beach

                                                              The outside battlefields..

                           Tony like a duck in a pond...In the background  Steve explains the rules 

                                             As happy as Larry...

                   The games in the shed with part of Steve's ample collection in the background...

                                               My Americans take cover to resist the British attack.

                                                        French allies get in a first kill.

 Friday featured another magnificent swap meet at Bob's with Bob providing half or more of the figures.

Tasty, tantalising meals were provided by Angie and Sue.

A 1/72 Napoleonic game was played at Bob's place and the 54mm tournament was at Steve's place.

The latter consisted of eight of us playing three games each against three different opponents. I played Tony who defeated my forces, Larry, who I narrowly defeated and Nigel who I defeated by a good margin. The overall champion based on wins and substantial wins was Dave Palmersaurus. Larry came second and I had third place.

The rules were simple and effective. Movement and ranges of short, medium and long were measured with chop sticks; this sped things up somewhat. We had move/move shoot/shoot - in other words both players did moving and then shooting. This is something I don't do in my rules and likewise the roll for initiative each move. The move move /shoot shoot means there was no penalty for moving and shooting, something I thought unhistorical for the period. However, the games went very smoothly and the rules were easy to understand.

In two of the games I was the Yanks and French and in one the Brits. There were Indians on both sides but they were mostly fairly ineffective, although Nigel's Indians kept passing morale checks and held up my flanking assault.

My trip home was marred when I picked up my bicycle from the Melbourne airport only to find I could not put it on the Broadmeadows train as work was being done on the rails. It was 10 PM and the 'replacement coach' driver refused to take my bike on board, Consequently I was stranded in the Western suburb and spent five or so hours riding until I got to Melbourne central Flinders Street station at 5AM and then reached my parents house on the other side of the city at 6 PM. I slept for five hours before resuming my rail trip home. It had been dicey because I didn't know the Broadmeadows area and had no lights. All the while I had to balance and keep on my pack rack a large backpack full of hundreds of toys soldiers! Oh well, it was good exercise.