'Twas the night before Christmas... 40 below...

As we have for the past few years, the Hamilton Road Games Group at the Crouch branch Library in London, ON held a Christmas gathering over hot chocolate, various cookies, and a game. Andy brought the electric kettle and lots of folks brought the cookies of all kinds.
The main table saw the "traditional" game of Wings of War WWI aircraft game. Lots of folks played and enjoyed themselves. The second table saw a star-ship game in the Star Trek universe, which looked interesting, although I never got the time to watch.
The Wings of War game included a home brewed rule for clouds and possible collisions when flying through them. As usual, Snoopy flew his Sopwith Camel and escorted Santa's sleigh across the board.

Quite a crowd around the table for the first game - The Royal Flying Corps escorting Santa past the Flying Circus,

Snoopy, Santa, and a DH5.
If you shoot at Santa and do damage, you take the same damage as well, since you're on the Naughty List!

The home-built Santa's sleigh. That and Snoopy's doghouse/Sopwith Camel were paper models and are rated as one of the historical planes found in the game.

The escorts split off around the cloud.

Some of the Flying Circus - nothing says camouflage like chocolate and fuchsia.

In a later game, Santa was not used, but the Red Baron tried to hunt down Snoopy. I flew the Baron's plane...
...and got blown up. C'est la guerre!

A close pass between a DH5 and an Albatross. The models come painted and decorated and are quite nice. Many are done up as the planes of famous flyers, like Bishop, Richtofen, Richenbacher, and quite a few others. Even Herman Göring! Planes are done for British, French, Italian, Belgian, German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Turk. There is also a WWII set of rules and models and I believe there is a Sci-fi version using Star Wars craft. There are also reports of an age of sail naval game. I'll be on the watch for that.

The deadly laser-gazing tiger kitty... and Rob's Russian Neuport fighter.

All of the photos are courtesy of Andy except for the first one which my wife took before the batteries in her camera gave up the ghost. Among the players were Beth, Katie, Rob, Andy, Kevin, Derek, Bear, Martin, Connor, Niaomi, and Summer.

My wife also showed off one of my Christmas gifts! She made me tank slippers!

Tank Slippers M1A2 under the tree at home. You may be jealous.

So Merry Christmas to all who read this and a happy, peaceful New Year. God be with you all.