Happy Christmas & Eleven Years strong

 Good morning all

As the title reads this post is celebrating all things festive and my blog's eleventh birthday !  The birthday was on 6th December

Before I crack on with the annual review let me update you on progress from the 'new home front'.

Seven days ago we moved in proper to the new home. Well actually we have moved into the two bedroom annex that is on site given the main house has no heating, lighting or water and a leaky roof. All of these issues were known in advance and given one option might be to tear the existing house down its not a problem. We were always planning to move into the annex and things have been made much more comfortable with a brand new fitted kitchen and bathroom turned around in under a week. The whole place has also been given a complete redecoration by yours truly (all those painting skills have come in handy). 

The move was hampered by sub zero temperatures for much of the week but fortunately a new wood burner in the annex has kept us toasty and warm and things are starting to fall into place. The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place last monday when we finally completed the sale of our old family home. It was sad to see the the old place go and if the new owner has only a small fraction of the happy memories I have from that house then they are a lucky man.

As mentioned our move was blessed with a light snowfall which of couse made everything look very pretty and our 200 metre long driveway very lethal..

The New Shed following this years first snowfall.

 The new 'drive'  looked very picturesque

So onto the main thrust of this post - it is Shed Wars 11th Birthday and as you can see from the stats below the blog is still collecting followers and new hits

I finally topped the 500 follower list (I think the 2018 number is wrong) and page views are nearing the 2 million mark. Thius has all been accomplished with very little new content or activity.

2022 has been very much focussed on finding our new home/project and as such both the number of wargames and wargaming activities have been somewhat curtailed. Hopefully things will change as 2023 develops.

Highlights of 2022 must include

January's game - The Battle of Ginnis - more Here

I was published twice in the year by Wargames illustrated firstly with a rather good article on the Wars of the Roses games we fought  

Our contribution to supporting Billhooks had not gone unnoticed by the authors and WI and I was asked around this time to contribute to the Billhooks Deluxe ruleset (recently published). Sadly my article was not published in the final copy due to size constraints.

Of course the big event took place in March when we refought the battle of five armies at Imber Court

This was a massive 28mm fantasy wargame featuring over 2500 figures. More Here

A write up of this was also published in Wargames Illustrated.

In April I finished my late Crusader army 

and in May we refought the Battle of Arsuf twice  - more Here

Throughout the year we played more games including US Cavalry vs Indians, the English Civil War and Muskets and Tomahawks. I just wasn't  very good at publishing them.

As the year drew on we became more and more focussed on the house move so things started to ease off in the shed.

Perhaps the last big game in the old shed was our refight of the ECW Battle of Edgehill. here

This was a tight affair but ably demonstrated that my own ECW collection was now sufficient to fight most big battles of the period...

And so an end of gaming in the old Shed. In the past 20 years the Shed has welcomed dozens of players, hosted hundreds of games and seen thousands of tiny men march to the drums of war. It was my den, my man cave, ,my retreat from the pressures of life. It will be missed. However as I sit here tapping out these words on my keyboard  I have a new shed to decorate and a new table to build and a new adventure to begin.

As for the new adventure stay close because I will be revealing some news in the next week or so ...

Wishing you all a very merry christmas and a happy new year

Eric the Shed