Shed Wars 13th Birthday & the Annual Review

Hi Folks

Despite my promises at the end of last year to keep this blog current I have been a very naughty Eric the Shed ! This year has seen the fewest number of posts since I launched some 13 years ago - yes that's right Shed Wars is now 13 years old. To be precise its birthday was in the middle of December and I have used that date each year as a recap of the previous 12 months activity. This year I missed the deadline and its only by the skin of my teeth that this post is going out on New Years Eve.

As per previous posts here is a short summary of views, hits, followers etc...

Growth this year was around 12% and I reckon by the end of 2025 I'll hit the 2.5 million milestone which quite frankly is staggering. Some of these views are almost certainly bots but I can report that the spikes seen in previous years and the number of inane comments from folks in china trying to sell their wares has dropped off considerably. 

Lets move onto the annual review which unfortunately is going to be rather short and I only got round to a few posts during the year. Why ? Well as I reported in 2024 Mrs Shed and I moved home and this year we started on the renovation of the new property. Our builders moved in towards the end of summer and are still on site. The property has been badly neglected over its lifetime and as a result we have been hot by a plague of issues that needed to be rectified, without wishing to bore you with the details I can say that when the work is completed (hopefully Summer 2025) it will be great but we will be considerably poorer.

Our new home came with its own extensive gardens and woodlands. These have also been neglected over the years and my role as head gardener and chief landscaper has been pretty much full on for the past 12 months. Its been a blast and I feel that we are finally making progress.

That saying Monday nights have seen a continuous stream of games (both table top and board game action) with my regular local friends. We have played across multiple periods and some of the highlights are featured below.

From a painting perspective I was finally able to complete both my Greek and Macedonian / Successor armies. 

Greek Army 

 

Macedonian Army

The two armies represent about 2000 figures in total, and since I completed the Macedonians I have been busy painting the Persians. All told I reckon I have painted in excess of 1500 figures this year. This figure includes the 600 Persian foot which will in appear in a post in the New Year.

Sadly I built no terrain in 2024

As for the games we obviously had to use the figures shown above in a couple of big games. These included the Battle of Chaeronia  - as Philip of Macedon swept aside the Greek states in his invasion of Greece

To The Strongest Greek Engagement - Sparta versus Athens

Keeping the Ancients theme going we fought a very entertaining refight of Mons Grapius (Rome vs Scots)

Another highlight of the year was our retake on the Battle of Lewes (it was so good we fought it twice !)

Which reminds me we still have to refight the Battle of Ely.

My Zulus once again made it onto the table for our epic refight of Isandlwhana. This is a game that never disappoints....its very brutal and cinematic

 

Finally you may recall that I entered Shed of the Year this year. Sadly I didn't get through to the public vote but as part of my application I did produce this short film. I was rather pleased with the final result...

So thats it for a short summary of the year.

What of 2025?

My current Wargaming priority is to complete my Persian Army  - at present the foot is mostly complete and will be shared in an upcoming post, I then have the task of assembling 200+ cavalry and painting these chaps. Yes it going to be another big army ! Hopefully these chaps will be on the table by Summer.

As Summer approaches the house should be done and I can then truly launch the Shed Wars Experience. The new home will have guest accommodation on site so if you are interested in sharing these Shed Wars adventures please do drop me a line on the website - www.shedwars.co.uk

In the meantime I wish you all a very Happy New Year !!

Eric the Shed

 

 

Shed Wars 12th Birthday & Annual Roundup

 

Afternoon All

Delighted to report that Shed Wars is now 12 years old and as the blog approaches its teenage years I am delighted that it is still going strong with more posts, hits and comments than ever before. Indeed I can announce that over 2 million views have now been reported on the site since its birth and with growth of over 7% this year I can only hope that as I post more content growth will continue.

As has been the case on previous years I usually use the blog's birthday as a round up of the previous years activity and comment on next years plans. This post will be no different although the year has been dominated by one major event. This was of course our house move (and shed displacement) at the back end of 2022. We have now been in the new home since Xmas of 2022 and although the building renovations are yet to start I can assure you that Mrs Shed and I are still delighted to have made the move and are still very much in love with our little bit of leafy Surrey.

The refurbishment of the new shed dominated the first part of the year and it is staggering to look back on the transformation of my new man cave - both internally and externally.

External views when we arrived

Outside has been repaired and given a new coat of paint. Landscaping and a new terrace sometime in 2023

This is what we were confronted with when we moved in - an old office. Once emptied its true potential could be imagined.

But before renovations we had to move in my wargames collections

The finished article with an 18ft table

The cupboards at the back hold all my figures and all the terrain is stored under the tables

So aside from some serious shed painting it wasn't until September that I was able to return to figure painting. 

Picking up where I left in October last year I managed to crank out another 850 Hoplites bringing the total to 1000. Current focus is to complete my Greek Army before turning my attention to Successors and Persians.

Although not shown I did manage to paint up a few more Saracens, Crusaders, Normans and English Civil War figures to complement my existing collections. The ultimate goal will be to have around 2000 figures in each focussed period.

2023 was also a momentous year for my hobby plans. With the new room kitted out I decided that I would endeavour to share my passion for this hobby with other likeminded souls (aside from my regular gamers). The Shed Wars Experience was launched in July and for as little as £40/day visitors can take part in my epic battles. All the details are on the website HERE.

In time the new home will have a number of airbnb style units for gamers to stay over and enjoy long weekends in the company of Eric the Shed ;-)

 

To support the launch I invited wargames Illustrated to come down and enjoy the hospitality of the Shed - a grand day was had by all as I put on a ficticious epic battle set in the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrians were commanded by none other than Billhooks author Andy Callan who also graced us with his presence.

A grand time was had by all and following a few inquiries I hope that we will see further guests joining us in the New Year. The diary of planned events for 2024 will be up on the website soon but I am always open to impromptu bookings and ad hoc events from individuals and clubs around the country or abroad. 

As soon as the shed was finished back in the spring I was keen to get the gaming back in motion and this year has seen somer truly wonderful games set out on the new larger table. These includfe in no particular order...

A zulu invasion...

A refight of Salamanca....

Big Billhooks.....

A refight of the Battle of Arsuf...

Most recently ....Pirates

Dark Ages - Normans v Saxons

The Battle of Hattin

and loads more besides....

Since our move to the outside of the M25 I have not seen many of my mates who I used to regularly play with in the old shed and once the roadworks are finished on the A3/M25 Junction I do hope that they will visit more frequently. Said Roadworks are adding almost an hour to journey which should only be 25mins ! For the record I do miss you guys...

For those who live on the outside of the motorway thank you for your continued support and welcome to the new chaps. The shed now regularly hosts six on a Monday night and for the vast majority of gamers fun is had by all. 

I wish you all a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

As for next year a large amount of my time will be focussed on the grounds and house build BUT this should not prevent me from continuing to devise new scenarios, add to my figure collection and build more terrain.

Current thinking includes...

Completing the Greeks, Successors and Persians

Starting on the American war of Independence

Refighting the battles of the Barons war (Lewes, Ely etc)

Starting our efforts to refight all the Battles of the Peninsular War

and following up on our Batytle of the Five Armies hosting the Battle of Pelonnor Fields.

Thank you all for reading this blog, your comments are most welcome and I wish you all the very best for 2024

Happy New Year - and what's happened in December

 Good Morning All

I sincerely hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year ! Here is to 2022, hopefully a year that will be better than the last 2.

Still no news on the BIG thing I wanted to share last month, if anything this has become less likely to happen in the short term but you never know what might happen round the corner. In the meantime lets catch up on what has been happening in the shed.

On the games front things have been severely limited, I tend to close the shed up in the winter months because it is too cold and we reconvene to my kitchen for board games. However the spread of covid means that this luxury has been off the table for the moment, but things are looking up with the very mild weather experienced here in London I am opening up the shed this Monday for a game (s).

The focus of Monday's game will be the Battle Of Giniss fought during the Sudan Campaign and although a small affair it is best remembered as the last battle that the plucky British tommy wore his scarlet tunic in action. Why the Sudan? Well I have just finished painting a further 120 Dervish and have rebased my entire army...

120 figures doesn't look like a lot...

The entire Mahdist force now comprises of around 450 foot, 100 odd cavalry, commanders and a couple of guns

The figures are mounted on 5 x 5 bases with three to a base

My colonial forces will be augmented very shortly with a few Royal Marines and some more Sudanese horse (these were Gripping Beast light Arab cavalry)

A couple of months aga I mentioned I had bought some 3D printed tanks from the Tank Factory. I was so happy with these I bought some more for my VBCW forces. These include a couple more Vickers light tanks, a Char 1 Bis, A Lanchester Armoured Car and something else ;-)

If you are looking for great value 28mm vehicles and tanks I really can recommend them. They do however take a few weeks to arrive.

Back in November I attended Warfare at Ascot Race course and purchased a couple of boxes of medieval cavalry buy conquest games at the Bring n Buy for £15 quid total. These have now been painted and are awaiting instructions (ie they will most likely be pressed into action for my early medieval war projects/crusades. They are very nice figures if a little smaller comparted to fireforge.

AS for Christmas Mrs Shed bought me another 320 plastic Perry Napoleonics !! A french and british infantry Brigade so that a few more figures to paint in the New Year.

I'll start on the Naps once I have finished painting these 80 plus Saxons from Gripping Beast that I picked up on ebay for a great price

In the meantime I wish you all a great 2022 and here is to more games than last year !!

 

Shed Wars is 10 years old today !

Good Morning All

It is the Shed Wars 10th Birthday - I cannot believe that I started this blog exactly a decade ago.

Looking back over the years writing this blog has provided me with an enormous senses of satisfaction but perhaps more importantly it is a wonderful reminder of what a great hobby we are fortunate to be part of.

I'd also like to thank those who attend the Shed and take part in the games . Without their support this blog would mean nothing.

Given that this is a big birthday I was hoping to share some BIG news but sadly I am going to have to delay this until the New Year. Yes there is some BIG news ...all very positive.

In the meantime and as before I'll share a quick summary of the numbers, lookback on what has happened in the last 12 months and try to gaze into the crystal ball for next years plans (without revealing the BIG news).

THE NUMBERS

The table below illustrates the counts over the last 10 years, and they steadily climb. The Last 12 months has seen  some 277,000 views, or approximately 23,000 per month. With no other data to compare this against I have no idea if this is good or poor. I can report that a typical new post generates around 1-1.5 thousand hits in the first couple of weeks so this suggests that my 'regular readership' is about this number. Of which only a third are following. 

Year	Followers	Page Views
2012	80	25000
2013	180	95000
2014	285	230000
2015	373	383000
2016	387	578000
2017	424	789000
2018	551	1140547
2019	454	1260323
2020	472	1386134
2021	493	1664000

I think when we look back on 2021 the first half of the year was very much characterised by the continuation of Lockdown and the uncertainty that this pandemic continues to cause society, As I mentioned last year I am in the very fortunate position of having a degree of financial security and so I decided at the end of last year that I would take early retirement. With this extra time on my hands I have been able to devote more time to the hobby.

So when I began to review the year it became apparent that this was  a very productive year for painting and in no particular order here is a quick summary of what has been added. 

FIGURES PAINTED

Most recently I focused on building up my ECW Collection with more pikes, shotte and artillery. These were all rebased during the year and I can now proudly boast almost 1000 28mm figures in this collection.

 Right at the beginning of the year I added to my WOTR collection (and I am painting more at present) - I can now field almost 1400 plus figures and this probably represents the largest army period I now have in the shed.

As a side project in January (thanks to a fortuitous bid on ebay) I painted up a Plains War project. This included over 100+ mounted braves, c60 foot indians and 4 troops of US cavalry (each 12 mounted/dismounted strong) 

In September I added a further two Cavalry troops and command stands. 

One of my simple objectives this year was to rebase all my Zulus and whilst I was at it I added to the Impi. Over 1000 Zulus can now take to this field ! 

The final side project was the purchase and painting of a small Dwarf Army (c250 figures strong) - we have a plan to fight the Battle of the Five Armies in the New Year and nobody in the group had any Dwarves.

Some odds and ends also hit the painting table including 60 Victrix Vikings

And a few 3d printed tanks for my VBCW Collection.

TERRAIN

The terrain building has been relatively quiet this year with no major projects however I did manage to finish my walled Desert City (aka Khartoum)

and to complement the battle mats made last year I made up several hills.

Despite Lockdown we have been successful in playing games most Monday nights but rather alarmingly I did not document a lot of these but we fought games across most of the genres held in the shed.....these included a couple of games set in the Plains Wars using Black Powder

We refought the battle of El Teb in colonial Sudan

THE WARS OF THE ROSES

But by far the biggest event of this year was our successful attempt to refight all the Battles of the Wars of the Roses. These were all individually documented on the blog and are summarised on this page link HERE

We started this ambition to refight all the major engagements of the WOTR back in 2020 before Lockdown and by October 2021 we had fought the first four battles. When restrictions lifted in May this year we threw ourselves into completing this plan. By October Bosworth (our finale) had been fought. I have just finished writing a couple of articles for Wargames Illustrated on this adventure and these will be published in the New Year.

In the meantime a couple of simple pictures from these games...

The biggest and the best game - Towton

The first game - First St Albans

The last Game - Bosworth

NEXT YEARS PLANS

Much will inevitably depend on the big news I am not going to reveal but what I can say is that next year's wargames focus will be very much on adding to what I already have rather than starting any new periods. Like my Zulu's I plan to bring my Dervish army up to a full 1000 strength (figures are already here) and then I'll be looking to add to my 300 strong Afghan forces. With this accomplished I should be able to host some serious Colonial games.

Other plans include a full rebase and additions to my Crusader and Saracen Armies. I am going to also attempt to develop some siege games in this period.

Finally as a group we are thinking of kicking off a campaign to refight the biggest battles of the English Civil War. This is very much in the early stages of development but you can watch progress here.

And that brings you to the end of this 10th Birthday special. Thank you for following this blog and thank you for your comments. Please stay safe. Wishing you all a very happy Christmas

Eric the Shed