Each year, at the last club meeting before Christmas, the Friends of General Haig have a ‘big game’. This is typically a single game in which we can get every player at the meeting involved, perhaps bringing together several collections of figures.
28mm Napoleonics, Russian v. French – Black Powder with Clash of Eagles.
An epic clash of mighty empires in which both sides had many highs and lows. There were exciting moments of squares being formed too late (that rare double 1 when charged by cavalry!), batteries caught in the flank, cuirassiers running amok, and daring cossack charges.
FOGH End of Year Awards – 2023
Following the game, the Friends retired to a local hostelry for a slap-up Christmas meal, washed down with lashings of fizzy-pop (or something like that!). At the end of the Christmas meal, as has become custom, the annual FOGH awards are voted on.
The Pete Howe Memorial Trophy for the Most Spectacularly Disastrous Cavalry Charge
This year the Pete Howe trophy went to Bruce, by popular acclaim, for his audacious but ultimately utterly futile Cossack cavalry charge that managed to attract fire from almost the entire enemy army and resulted in the Cossacks all being lost before they made contact. Well done, Bruce!
The Friends of General Haig Best Game of the Year
There were some very high quality nominations this year with the Friends having put on games at Salute, and Warlord’s open day, as well as many fabulous regular club games. Ultimately though the Friends are always impressed by size, so it was unanimously agreed that the 54mm ACW extravaganza, put on by Mike and Clive, was officially “the best game of the year”. Well done chaps!
FOGH Hobby Resolutions for 2024
With stomachs full, and through the optimistic haze of many pints of beer, plus several bottles of wine, the Friends made their hobby resolutions for the following year.
Pete was perhaps the most audacious with commitments to put on a game at least every month, as well as building new collections for The War in Afghanistan 1935, and also a Mongols in the Snow project. Good luck, sir!
Andy 2 is going to build on 2023 in which he has conjured from nothing a mighty Napoleonic Russian army, by building in 2024 an exquisitely pretty (but perhaps not very mighty) Napoleonic Spanish army. He will also write an article for Wargames Illustrated. We salute you!
Paul will perhaps go beyond any other project, and get married in 2024. He may also do some Bolt Action. Good luck!
John is going to break the habit of a lifetime and build some tricorne forces with a new AWI project on the blocks. He’s also going to add to his Jannissary ortas. Sublime plans!
Andy 1 is going to build an Ottoman army to contest the East with his existing Polish army, as well as also writing an article for Wargames Illustrated. He may finally get around to starting that book he’s been banging on about as well. The mad impetuous fool!
We look forward to revisiting this list at the FOGH 2024 Christmas Meal.
(There may well have been other hasty promises made, but this reporter’s writing skills were impaired, probably due to an unripe sprout, and so these are all the resolutions noted down.)
