The Wisconsin Winter War at Tundra Con

Our friends in the Fox Valley Gamer's Club have asked us to lend a hand with their first attempt at hosting a new local con they're calling 'Tundra Con'. So, The Battle Badgers will be on hand running a little one day tourney on Saturday January 10th, at the Post 38 Appleton American Legion as part of Tundra Con. We're calling this little tournament the Wisconsin Winter War and would love to see you there.

An interview with a Badger

Adam from Tabletop Minions came down to check out the Operation Overlord event, and rather than his soldiers, he brought some different toys, his camera and all the great kit that goes with it. Check it out below!

Adam's Tabletop Minions channel is a great source for all sorts of techniques, including painting, photography, or just plain ol' musing about the hobby. If you're looking to take better pictures of your models without dropping big bucks on a professional studio, be sure to take a look at Adam's light box video.

Thanks again for coming down to see us Adam, and thanks even more for putting the time and effort into this video! We're looking forward to playing a game or two with you up at Flying Phoenix Games next weekend!

Degrees of Success

“Amateurs think about tactics, but professionals think about logistics.” – General Robert H. Barrow USMC

Wittman's Wild Ride on the sidewalk with the bride and groom from next door.

This quote might be a little too modern for the tastes of some FoW players, unfortunately it speaks to our experiences this past weekend very well. If you’ve not heard yet, the joint effort between Outpost Gaming and the Battle Badgers to set a world record this past weekend was unsuccessful. We briefly described the technicality that shot our attempt dead in a previous post, so I’ll not bore you with details. I’ll simply say that it wasn’t for a shortage of effort, enthusiasm, or caffeine that we failed to break the record. We were presented with a choice, and chose to concentrate on the scenario boards, and being good hosts, rather than the record attempt.

72 Hours!?! What the %&!# were we thinking?

There will be no world record for Outpost Games and the Battle Badgers this year. So, what happened? Did the Badgers just wimp out? Nope, in fact we stayed here past Midnight last night teaching Tim and Nick from Great Lakes how to play the game (Tim and Nick left with a free copy of the rulebook, two stugs, and three shermans courtesy of Battlefront). When we first decided to try to set a record with this event, we were presented with a decision, we could either shell out 7 grand to have an official from Guiness on hand, or we could do the record keeping ourselves with some strict rules about what was required. Unfortunately, we weren't able to sell enough cupcakes (I'm an awful baker) to get to that $7,000 dollar mark so we decided to try to do it ourselves....whoops.

To describe these rules briefly, we had to have a 'steward' on hand at all times. This steward is responsible for officiating the event, further all record keeping is the steward's responsibility. We also needed to have two witnesses present at all times. Witnesses had to 'work' for 4 hour blocks, and no further. Meaning that if John was one of the two witnesses between 4 and 8 PM, John can NOT be a witness for the 8 to 12 block. Further, the witnesses must be of majority age. Finally, a steward could not be a witness.

The witness side of things is what killed our attempt. We had 7 players (not including our 2 stewards and 3 record breakers) planning to spend ALL NIGHT with us last night. Unfortunately, 4 of them were under the age of 18, leaving us 3 people who could act as witnesses. This wouldn't work with the rules we had to keep, as we needed at least 4 to be able to rotate back and forth. Knowing this was the case, we chose to pull the plug on the record attempt to allow everyone to get some sleep and provide a better event for all of our guests the next morning.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that we've got a bunch of people playing Flames of War at Outpost right now. We are still running the campaign, and the charity raffle.

We're certainly a little disappointed, but this weekend was really about playing and teaching the game anyhow.

Mixed results - NEWS ALERT

An incredibly exciting day today at Outpost Gaming: incredulously successful airborne missions, followed by horrendous beatings by the Germans on the beaches.

At the end of the attempted beach landings, the Allies only held Utah beach, after some impressive heroism from the US 4th Infantry Division, leaving the Allies in a tenuous position.

Perhaps worse, due to some scheduling problems around the middle of the day, we had to stop our attempt for the Guinness record - we just ran out of people to act as official witnesses. It was probably for the best though, as we were running pretty ragged. This means we'll get a good night's rest tonight, then be back at the shop fresh in the morning to focus on running a great event, rather than the stringent record-attempt rules.

To repeat: the venue will be CLOSED on Friday night, and will most likely close late on Saturday evening as well, before the final push Sunday. If this puts a serious wrench in your plans, please contact us ASAP, and we can try to make arrangements.

Thanks to everyone who has shown up so far; we've had a great time, even with the fatigue.

We'll see you as the invasion continues!

Hit the Beach!

The sun is up here at Outpost Gaming and the Battle Badgers are looking forward to a day on the beach! While our record- breakers were busy raiding away with their airborne forces, Rick went to work putting together some of our beaches.

Erik and Steve prepare to take the boys from Rick's 29th Infantry Division to the beach!

Muh-M-Muh-MEDIC!

The Battle Badgers fondly remember Ryan Pecore NIA (Napping in Action) The weekend's first casualty.

Good thing we weren't counting on this guy to break any records eh?

AIRLANDINGS HAVE BEGUN

It's midnight, and the Allies are falling from the sky here at Outpost Games. We've got 16 people here to kick this event off in grand style!

From left to right counter clockwise, Jesse, Dave, Lee, Vaughn, Kris, Chops, Justin, Eric, Steve, Ken, Nick, Scott, and Pat.