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Wednesday, August 31, 2022

TtS Late Romans vs Scots-Irish AAR Intro The Set Up

 Last week we got my Barbarian Conspiracy Armies c367 CE on table for a battle using To The Strongest.

Curt hosted at the Clubhouse but it was my toys in use.  The Romans and some of the Irish darted from the most recent Painting Challenge, but more from a spurt of painting in late June when my wife was away and the temperatures were above 30C.  The rest of the Scots Irish were rebased from a WAB Viking Age project dating back 15 years ago.


I field two armies of equal points for a simple head to head as it was our first time with the rules, although we'd played the ECW development For King and Parliament several times.   Curt and I had a series of texts the day before that went like this.

  • If you have a rough sketch of your battlefield I can prep the table.
  • How's this
  • Sketched in less than 5 minutes over lunch.


  • That’s a good example of ‘rough’. 😊
  • Here's what he did with it



A skilled digital archivist can extract valuable info from the worst digital crap.






























I assigned Stacy (or resident Mediterranean) as the Romans and Curt and Jeremy took the northern barbarians.



Barbarians at the gates


Stacy points to squirrels in the woods while I check rules.





Monday, August 15, 2022

I Have been to the Royal Chelsea Hospital!

 


Blogging and gaming have been on hold due to a sudden influx of real life events, most of which were really good. But it did include a detour into an unexpected location in the form of the A&E at Royal Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

My wife and I were in the southern UK for 3 1/2 weeks until very recently.  It was very much a family based vacation, seeing relatives, going through my dad's effects and catching up with our daughter.  All good stuff until the very last moment.  We started and ended with stops in London for a few days after arriving and departing via Heathrow.  On our very last day we were out on a walk through Kensington Gardens en route to Notting Hill Gate.  We made it to the history section of the Waterstones before my wheels fell off.  

I suddenly came on very dizzy and week, but it was a heatwave and we'd been out walking so I did the standard grab a chair and a drink of water and let things settle.  Only they didn't and I got a very nasty bit of Vertigo - room spinning, unable to walk and then was violently sick.  If you are in that particular book shop and it smells a bit off then blame me.

The bookstore staff were very helpful, ushering me not their staff washroom, calling an ambulance and staying onsite late until they got there.  The ambulance crew were incredible (as were all of the NHS folks I met) but gave me a real scare.  I was thinking heat stroke or food reactions, but they quickly went to stroke.  Nothing like that particular S word to shake you up, even if you are clinging to the floor and toilet unable to move a muscle without throwing up.

A night in hospital, a couple of CT scans, multiple IV drips and multiple visits with docs later I got a visit from the neurologist.  He did some checks and threw me around a bit (literally) and decided that it was most likely benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or BPPV and not a stroke (although he didn't absolutely rule that out).  By the time I was done, we'd missed our flight time.  But my wonderful wife had managed to cancel the flights in time to get a credit (we think), book a new room at our hotel and move our kit and caboodles between hotel rooms without a minutes sleep while I was incapacitation by vertigo or sleeping.

Flights were rebooked at considerably higher prices than we originally paid and we made it home two days late and thoroughly exhausted.  My wife tells me we're on a diet of rice and beans once we've eaten down the freezer and any new hobby projects are on hold for now.  But we are home, mostly healthy and had a mostly wonderful trip.  I post about some of the non-HNS related stuff in a while.