I seem to be the only one with the book backwards! Nick and Rich brandish their copies of my tome, to which the Lardies so generously contributed.
These guys need no introduction, really, and are no strangers to Battlechat. Rich Clarke and Nick Skinner who, between them, created the powerhouse that is TooFatLardies, have been around in the hobby for a long time and have contributed so much to our pastime and its popularity that it’s hard to know where to start.
But start we must, particularly in this post-pandemic catch-up, and I’m delighted that I managed to get both of them on the show together because, as you will hear, their banter and the way they work as a team is just wonderful to listen to.
We discussed quite a lot in the show, covering what they have been up to in recent months, including their attendance at a quite staggering number of events, many of them Lardy-rules driven, but a number of ‘open’ events too, such as The Other Partizan, SELWG and more. The new Strength & Honour rules for micro-scale ancients by Mark Backhouse, released under the aegis of Reisswitz Press, have been doing well and games have been popping up at a number of public events.
Strength & Honour game seen at The Other Partizan
We also discussed the extraordinary lengths that Rich has been going to whilst undertaking research for the forthcoming Chain of Command Far East supplement, requiring a prodigious amount of reading around the Japanese activities from 1937 onwards and the many opponents they encountered, including all the British & Commonwealth forces, the US Army and Marines, the Chinese and various ‘colonial’ forces too. As always, a huge amount of playtesting has been done to ensure that the vast swathes of territory, extreme and varied terrain and climate aspects have been incorporated into the expansion of the basic rules to give a true flavour of this challenging theatre of war.
But this get-together was really prompted by my fascination with what the guys have been up to lately in the Netherlands, taking wargames featuring quite incredibly accurate recreations of the fighting in and around Arnhem in 1944 during Operation Market Garden and staging a public event in the Hartenstein Museum, right at the heart of the 1944 action. They took just one of the table sections to The Other Partizan recently (see below), but the overall planning and modelling of the project, together with an account of the event itself and what they felt about the impact of these games was on the public, forms the meat of this interview.
Nick showing part of the Oosterbeek game at The Other Partizan
I confess that I have been bowled over by this project, both in terms of its planning and its execution, and the important contribution it has made to how our hobby is perceived by the wider world. See the links below for more information about these amazing games.
We also found some time to chat about the wider hobby, with 3D printing and the online community of wargamers getting an airing. But what I have come away with, as ever, is the passion that Nick and Rich have, first and foremost, for the history that they are representing on the tabletop and their sense of responsibility for doing so as accurately as possible.
Enjoy the show.
Henry
NB This show contains some mild adult language.
The Chain of Command Arnhem videos on YouTube:
Part One https://youtu.be/gdP6jtUKEI4
Part Two https://youtu.be/vjTfoJw5ayA
Part Three https://youtu.be/0xofY4pxEe0
Rich on Twitter https://twitter.com/TooFatLardies
Nick on Twitter https://twitter.com/Dozibugger
TooFatLardies website https://toofatlardies.co.uk
The TooFatLardies Oddcast https://toofatlardies.libsyn.com
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