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You may have seen Mikes post that I made the show on my own 🙂 and even managed to meet with Mike for lunch and a chat.
First show in five years without a family member supporting me by being there so chuffed to bits. Nerves went around 2PM but way better than I thought.
The show ground is way closer to me than Mike (just about 100 miles round trip) so it’s about an hours drive A15 allowing making this my local show closely followed by Vapnartak at York and the new(ish) car did its first long run with me in the seat at 61MPG – not too bad.
The queue was past the end of the building when I arrived but I was in within five minutes as the door staff where quick and polite despite the crowd gathering just in the door trying to plan where to go first and the scrum at the bring and buy area.
I do wish the B&B had a one-way route as it got chaotic and was the only place I got ‘backpacked’ and felt a little trapped. Prices ranged from good to ridiculously high (in my eyes) – older GW figures priced at £70 for 5 terminators down to 50p for a pack of 15mm.
Trying to get use to the noise (the show is on one hall with no baffles other that around the food area) I walked the traders first and was amazed by the purchasing scrum – no real sign of cutbacks from what I could see. Two traders I spoke to just before lunch said they were having a good day and were glad they came. As I left a few traders had empty space on the shelves (scenery makers especially) but where sticking it out with the remaining bits they had.
It was nice to see a mix of games – when COGS ran the show it was SciFi and Fantasy only if I remember correctly. The noisiest game was the Teddybear race with youngsters giggling and laughing away at every dice roll – a major contrast to the serious DBA contest…
Everyone tried hard to present a good game – I only saw one naval game with unpainted figures but the players where having fun so who cares!
I did try to play one game but it was a total mess. Between not knowing what game it was (two Chinese skirmish forces, one with a Yeti), set up not matching the description board, getting totally baffled over the character attributes (no description given) and not understanding the movement rules I got flustered and gave up before moving a figure 🙁
I was interested in the DBA games – it was a shame that no one would explain the game as this was a ‘tournament’. TBH I think they missed a trick here as a few people (myself included) where interested but moved on.
I spent a bit of time drooling over the board for Dark Age Kingdoms having been reading the first two Arthur books by Bernard Cornwell but the heavy use of cards (24+ per turn per side) and 100 ‘random’ cards put me off replacing SoBH Song of Arthur and Merlin with them! To be fair, the group had put a lot of work and thought into the rules (esp the expanded hardback version) but not what I was looking for.
I honestly was surprised by the number of rules on show – it’s amazing how little press space is given to rules outside the narrow ‘big players’. One box I looked in had 15+ A4 old style rules that I never had heard of and other stands had piles (literally) of different rules and supplements I’ve never seen in the magazine for years. I did see a few Ganesha rule sets, a copy of One Hour Wargames and even a printed version of the WW2 portable wargames rules so stand that made me smile.
Meeting Mike was a bit daunting but it made for a fascinating lunch (yup got my bacon butty – thanks Mike) and am very grateful that he spared the time out of his looooong day for me. A simple thing for some but I will treasure his time 🙂
Shopping wise I did well (ish) – I avoided picking up things for a dozen new projects I found today and fancied starting but got a few things:
- Two fruit trees and a weeping willow for my ‘stone age’ games. The fruit trees will be a scenario and the willow is for a terrain piece (planned for LAF but held due to home issues again).
- Some IronGate fences, chickens and giant tree stump in resin for my planned SoBH game this year. Turns out IG will shrink some of their figures to 15mm as a bespoke order and the have some great bits for PalaeoDiet – oh dear…
- Some Warbases carts and geese. I think the SoBH game will be a village raid so may use these carts as scatter or build as barricades – not sure yet.
- A pack of Assault Group wolves – wanted some of the wild boars but they did not bring them. Again for SoBH
- Some Pendraken sheep (guess what for) and a mould line cleaner. Alice got one last year at Partizan and been really impressed
- A mix of Kallistra ‘forest bases’. These are thin plastic hexes, flocked slightly darker than the normal hexes that may make a board for the 3×3 portable game. Unsure if I’ll do anything serious with these in ’23 but my budget was OK due to avoiding buying rules.
I did look at 10mm and 2mm figures to replace the blocks but not sold on either TBH. I can see why 10s are doing so well for larger battles – they are a nice balance between detail and size / cost.
Lunch queue was long but quickly moving. We were lucky and spotted a table near the counter – the others that headed to the seating area were not so lucky. More space needs to be given to this in my mind. Selection was limited (though jacket potatoes and a limited vegetarian selection was possible) and my bacon and mushroom bun came with a mushroom (yup one) 🙂 The cakes looked nice and Mike enjoyed his ginormous Bakewell tart. Cost was way below Lincoln (esp for me – I got the teas but Mike kindly got my bun) and tables tidy / cleared quickly.
I refuse to talk about the loo other than to say men can be pigs someday and I was really glad I did not have sanders on – yuk!!!
The only pictures I have are from a six mill game to act as inspiration for the one hour block games:
The board had three large (12+ inches) nuclear ‘mushrooms’ that flickered with tea-lights. Now I know where my dinner ones went!
tl;dr – Show was fun and busy. Wide selection of games and traders. Worth going for. Meet Mike if you get a chance.
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