A Birthday Bash - Billhooks at Berkswell

There has been a lot of hobby activity here over the past couple of months (for example, I recently finished my Wars of the Roses Warwick army for NMT Billhook), but the blog has been lagging behind and somewhat neglected, for which I apologise.

To rectify this, I have the pleasure with this post to report on a rather special event held a couple of weekends ago to celebrate the 70th birthday of one of the members of our little group, The Old Berks.
John Kersey is confirmed as the Oldest Berk!

A short while ago, John suggested that for his milestone birthday he would like to hold a small one-day event focusing on the "Billhooks" stable of rules, with several tables of friendly games taking place during the course of the day.

And so, John hired the village hall here in Berkswell (the official seat/HQ of The Old Berks).

We put out a note on the Billhooks Facebook Group, and I'm pleased to say that several people took up the offer, including the Billhooks glitterati in the form of Andy Callan, his brother Ian, and Stephen Wood. Rob Grayston, author of the recent WOTR supplement for Hail Caesar, also came along for his first taste of NMTB.

The event was very much about friendly games and a relaxed atmosphere, meeting people and chewing the hobby fat.

It was a glorious day in the village, with a clear blue sky, a woodpecker making himself heard in the woods by the car park, and church bells ringing out on Sunday morning as the players arrived.

We set the hall up, and got cracking with some lovely little games.

Above: Peter and Rich in full flow. They got so wrapped up in their game we had to tear them away to have some lunch (which was provided by everyone just bringing loads of stuff, and birthday boy John treating everyone to pizzas from the local Dominoes!)

Below: it's not often that Andy scratches his head in a game of Billhooks, but here he was up against one of the doyens of the Billhooks fraternity, Ian Callan, in a close fought affair.

Below: I had the immense pleasure of playing a game of Never Mind the Naginatas with Stephen Wood who is authoring the rules. It was great fun... I will do a separate post with more pictures of that.

Above: the players (with the exception of Ian who had to get back home before the end).
l-r: yours truly, Rob, Rich, Andy C, Birthday boy John, Stephen, Pete, Andy M.

We finished off with a birthday cake for John and a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday"!

A really great day.

On the day, we also included a "Plastic Amnesty". This is something I have long thought about...
What happens to all those part-used frames, those frames off the front of magazines that aren't needed, and the extra frames left over when an army is "completed"?

I can't be alone in having a cupboard full of these... and so it proved, with players bringing their excess, and us having a bit of a bring n buy, allowing players to pick up the odd frame or spare parts needed for an army. With contributions for frames bought (we suggested £1 per frame, but it was totally discretionary), we raised £110, and donated it to Combat Stress... I'm hoping to take the idea further as there were still a lot of frames left, so maybe we will be able to do something similar at a show sometime... 

As I mentioned at the top of this post, I have been doing some painting and recently "finished" (for now!) my WOTR Warwick army. I will show photos in a fresh post shortly.

I will also show some additional photos from my game with Stephen Wood, using his Samurai rules adaptation of "Billhooks", Never Mind the Naginatas.

Meantime, thanks for reading and commenting.

Best regards...