Irregular Wars Wargaming

On the recent occasion of gentlemen in bowler hats and sashes marching through towns across Northern Ireland (12th July), I took the opportunity offered to take a few days of work and have a small family holiday. Destination: Clew Bay. Now, I've been fascinated by Clew Bay for some time, principally as it was the home and stomping ground of one of Ireland's most interesting leaders - Grace O'Malley. Please ignore the fact that the ROI seems to have annexed Co. Armagh for the purposes of this map (?!)  Grace O'Malley, Grainne Ni Mhallie or Granualie in Irish (1530-1603) was the daughter of the O'Malley chieftain Eoghan Dubhdarra and a contemporary - indeed almost an exact coeval - of Queen Elizabeth I whom she met with in 1593. From her family lands on Clare Island and the neighbouring parish of Murrisk (south shore of Clew Bay), Grace led a life of maritime trade and depredation (read piracy), travelling as far abroad as Spain and North Africa. Her majo...

If you will excuse the pseudo-blasphemous title, this is the first of a number of posts designed to document my current scenery-building drive. With our exodus from Sydney, I had/chose to leave behind my home-made modular terrain boards. The bulk of my hills, the trees and a few other scenery pieces were packed on the boat, but the boards themselves were a bit bulky and heavy for the boxes. This loss allowed me to rebuild my scenery collection anew (ala Neronian Rome or London in 1666). Rather than modular boards, this time I thought I'd make up a single grassed battle table, with a variety of moveable scenery pieces that I could use for all my games. As a first step was the procurement of some 3mm thick mdf to make the scenery pieces. B&Q didn't have any in stock, so I settled for hardboard. This won't have as clean edges as mdf, but as I plan on sanding the edges and then sealing it all with PVA, this stuff should be fine. I then set about marking out templates o...