Another intro I'm afraid

[Jon Suth]

Jon Suth here, mate of Trooper and long-time wargamer.  Have lurked here on and off for some months, but have just signed up.
I've been wargaming for - s**t forty years now, god knows how many soldiers have passed through my hands and now fight for other owners in foreign lands.
Main collections are 20mm WW2, Indian Mutiny 28mm, French Indian Wars 28mm, Zulu Wars 15mm. 
I write books with the wife for a living (she's the Wargames Widow in Battlegames). We mainly write military history and educational stuff, we also write for Foundry now and then. Along with Trooper we're test launching our wargames holiday centre on Crete this coming June. 
Anyway, that's me - I'll bore you with some shots later - mind you I think Trooper has put some of the photos up already.

[Hammers]

Jon Suth here, mate of Trooper and long-time wargamer.  Have lurked here on and off for some months, but have just signed up.

Welcome!

Along with Trooper we're test launching our wargames holiday centre on Crete this coming June. 

Now we're talking! CLAM, anyone?

[Calimero]

Welcome

[Trooper]

About time you got here.

[Jon Suth]

Cheers lads, looking forward to chatting and showing you some of my stuff - and picking up some tips here and there.

[bluewillow]

Welcome

looking forward to seeing some stuff for the wargames holiday centre on crete

Along with Trooper we're test launching our wargames holiday centre on Crete this coming June

I hope to be in crete next year (after visiting Gallipolli) let me know when you open!

cheers
matt

[WillieB]

Welcome John!

We got the F&I wars as a common interest so that's a good start
What about that wargames centre in Crete? Anywhere near Heraklion? I nearly spend all my summer holidays there!

[Trooper]

We are having a trial run of this idea in June this year, and Jon and I hope to launch it for next years season. Its a good venue and will feature a huge table area. Jon and I are scratch building all the terrain for it, and we are busy preparing the troops. Hopefully in the first year we will be able to offer several different themes of gaming, mainly 28mm, with WWII in 20mm, we will be advertising later this year. The centre has all facilities including on site accommodation, food and drink and a pool. I believe it is near Heraklion. We will doubtless post here when we are ready for bookings etc.

[Jon Suth]

WillieB - not just near Heraklion, only fifteen minutes from the airport on the coast road east at Kato Gouves.

For the 2011 opening season we're planning to offer:

20mm WW2 NW Europe (absolutely massive collection)
20mm WW2 Invasion of Crete 1941
28mm Indian Mutiny (very big collection)
28mm ACW (big classic collection of soldiers)
28mm FIW (very large scale skirmish - 4-500 figures a side)
15mm Zulu Wars - enormous collection over 4,000 Zulus alone

Possibles include:

20mm late WW2 with Germans v western allies and Russians
28mm large scale Napoleonic skirmish (one or two huge - 300 figure each - French regiments with all companies and support versus British and guerillas)

In due course we'll add:

28mm Greek City States
28mm Balkan Wars
28mm Cape Wars

We're planning to get underway for real for May and June 2011, then September-October.  The deal is you get yourselves out to Heraklion in Crete, we pick you up.  The apartments are for up to 3 adults or two adults and two kids, you pay the apartment owners for the rental (around 45 Euro per apartment per night B&B) and then you pay us for the four concentrated days of wargaming out of the 7 days.  That way you either get:

A decent break, game and tan with you mates
A viable sell to the wife as she can still have a holiday and you can take her out on the non-game days and treat her to evening meals.  We'll also organise bookings for you from recommended tavernas and try and wangle discounts for the food and drink there too.

[former user]

welcome!

now that's an interesting project, and I love Crete!

maybe You should also offer off-season conventions so that we all can meetfor a wargaming week?
this is such a fantastic idea...

[Jon Suth]

A good idea, particularly now there are (I think) two flights from Gatwick to Heraklion each day - direct.  The weather isn't bad up to around November, then there's rain, not a lot of it, but its unpredictable.  Mind you, our friends over there had an extremely sunny Christmas and New Year. 

We're building two 18 x 6 tables and a 24 x 6 foot table with geomorphic terrain tiles (which we'll make prior to the test week people coming).  I'm currently sending out big boxes of buildings and terrain via couriers and can't wait to see the reaction at customs when they see my suitcase looking like an enormous GW soldier carrier box.

[Jon Suth]

The only downside is that we're 2 hours from Chania, nearest big place to the Maleme drops.  Mind you when you come into Heraklion, come out of the airport and look to the left you can see where the Black Watch slaughtered the paras as they came down.  Also about about an hour from Spingalonga - ignore all that Victoria Hislop stuff, its a cracking Venetian fort on an island (there's another Venetian fort in the harbour at Heraklion).  Very close too is Archanes, the German military commander's HQ during the occupation and the road where the general was nabbed by SOE.  Half an hour from Knossos, but my favourite place is Malia Palace, a vast sprawling site with ongoing excavations. German paras also dropped pretty close to where we're based.  In fact a couple of local blokes captured a para and took him up to one of the mountain villages as a prisoner.  Foolishly they let him go after he'd promised not to say anything, the Germans turned up later and levelled the village and shot a bunch of locals as a reprisal.