Demo wargaming and history for school

We received a request if it was possible to present a wargame demo to the senior class of the elementary school where Hermien, the wife of Peter, is a teacher.
The class had closed a project about famous persons in history so our wargames demo should have a connection to that. 

After some looking at the list of our available demos we decided to present two demos; the first one about the Eighty Years War in connection to William of Orange and the second one about the French Revolution in connection to Napoleon Bonaparte (although our demo would be situated in the Low Countries 1793 while Napoleon would be fighting in soutern France at that time!).

 So, last Wednesday in Peters livingroom, we set up two tables (each 6*4 feet) with terrain and figures (we already had prepared beforehand some simple to understand rules for both periods), picked up 19 children at their school, split them in two groups, one for each table, and introduced them shortly to the two periods, the figures, the rules and the game.
And we have a go with it. After some time, we switched the groups of course.

We hope that the children had a good morning with us, seeing their reactions we did succeed with our goals but of course some liked it more then others. Some loved the game (esp throwing the dice and moving figures around), grasped the simple rules very quickly and even understood some of the formations used.
So as introduction I think we were succesfull.

Some pictures of the visit underneath.

Crisis 2025 in Sint Niklaas (Belgium) is over

 The first Saturday of November was en is Crisisday. For years in Antwerp and now in Sint Niklaas. Although smaller and with no British wargames traders anymore, the show is imho great and worthwhile to goto.

Of course we had a demo with us and this year we took our (expanded) French Revolutionary game with us. Rules used were Balck Powder2 with some houserules. Figures as always a mixture of various firms although most of them were Eureka and Trent (former Emperor Toad) for the Dutch.

The scenario, situated in todays Belgian territory, was a simple one; a by the French revolutionaries besieged (Dutch occupied) fortress and an attempt by combined Austrian and British troops to relieve the fortress. The relieve attempt prompted a part of the Dutch troops to try a breakout.

So, up to some pictures of our game:

Maybe you recognise our fortress as it did already duty at our earlier 1692 table, but as the design lasted for some centuries with very little adaptions it can also function in the FR period.

So, underneath some pictures of other games and impressions of the show.

Open Monumentendag was a nice day

The open Munumentendag at the Dutch Artillery museum was great.

A nice sunny day (well, most of the day, it ended in heavy rain) resulted in a lot of visitors (a lot more then expected!) at the museum, the various information stands from the museum and other organisations, the displayed guns/trucks/material etc and of course also at the NCO mess were the wargames were located.

Some 6 wargames tables were presented; two WW2 games, two ACW games (28mm and 15mm), one KNIL game (from the year 1905) in the Atjeh war period and of course our 1511 game: Siege of Venlo.

The nicest thing (at least we think so) is, that visitors aren't the "normal" wargamers but whole families who spent their saturday at the Open day and have no clue what wargames are, how they play and what it represent. So we were talking a lot ( really a lot!) to people, explaining what wargaming is and show how rules work etc. You get the picture. 
Some visitors probably thought that wargamers are weird (grown men playing with miniatures) but a lot also liked it very much, admired the tables, talked about the modelling aspect and find the history part interesting. 

So thanks for the Dutch Artillery Museum to invite us and special thanks to Ludwig van Dijk who organised the whole thing for us. Of course, we hope to visit and participate again next year.

And then some pictures (what is a blog without them); starting with our table and then from the other ones.

Our game is situated in the early renaissance period during the Guelders War. We used Pike&Shotte.

Other pictures fromthat day (some from Arthur, hope he doesn't mind that we use them here also as some of ours were not good).

From the 28mm ACW game:

 They used these Osprey rules. And the author was playing them!

15mm ACW

WW2 pictures (both using Bolt Action)

and pictures of the KNIL game using home made rules.

Not a wargames club but the Nederlandse Stichting voor Modelfiguren presented for the first time their stand. 

For more information goto: https://www.modelfiguren.nl/ or their facebook site De Tinnen Tafelronde