Back in May, I trekked down to Newark with DaveD and MartinC. We had an overnight stay, with a few beers and some food.
The day of the show we used Dave's 28mm Sudan collection and a set of quick play rules he'd written up to play a large 'get the toys on the table' game.
I helped out by commanding the Imperial forces towards the afternoon of a hectic and hot day. We had a lot of interest in the table and collection - resulting in much chatting with other hobbyists. I also tried to 'police' the table, removing measuring tapes and dice, etc. This led to us having a very 'clean' looking game for most of the day.
Loot wise, I got some great deals on 15mm Team Yankee West Germans. An estate sale had bags of stuff at very reasonable prices. I think I ended up with around four times the RRP value of what I spent.
A very interesting and enjoyable weekend was had with Martin and Dave down at Newark for 'The Other Partizan'. My first time at this show and it was really nice to see various retailers and tables which don't travel as far north as us.
Firstly, a slight diversion! We started the morning with Martin and I taking a quick walk over the road from our hotel to the Polish Wargave site. While the cemetery is mainly filled with Polish war dead, there were other Commonwealth graves as well. A very nice location and something I didn't know was there. There was also a memorial to the aircrew lost trying to supply Warsaw during the uprising there. The graveyard was well kept and the Polish grave stones look very smart. Mainly the headstones appeared to be for aircrew, but in one section I looked at there were Poles, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders:
Onto the show after a quick breakfast...
Game wise, Dave had put on a massive Sudan game (similar to the game of his which is covered briefly in this months interactive Wargames Illustrated!). Myself and Martin were the Imperial commander. I'm not doing a full on battle report, having done a short video instead:
Martin has a battle report here, while Dave has his split in two parts, here and here.
Dave's collection is impressive in it's detail and scale. We had a lot of people stop by the table to ask questions and talk about his collection. There were a lot of great games on display (and to be honest, I didn't see them all, being caught up in playing and shopping!).
Shopping wise, I picked up a selection of stuff:
Magnetic sheeting, the new hardback Battlegroup rules, the first book in the 'Armoured Hussars' series (about the Polish 1st Armoured Division), some spray paints, cork chips, flowers, ultra mat varnish, a resin Normandy Barn, Railway station and MDF barn... 15mm wise, there was very little to chose from.
However, I did spot these:
Which are a small scale set of mini's from Vanguard. They have been painted up to look like 40k models, but the vehicles themselves are not 40k models. The APC's are based on British 432's, for example. The larger tanks have different hull shapes to the 40k ones, etc. The infantry were teeny but the detail level on these was superb. A definite future project for me I think!
Also of interest, I spotted this at the Old Glory stand:
Again, not something that fits with what I'm doing currently... but maybe a project idea for later. Really cool mini.
And also these:
Which also caught my eye. Possible 1/3000 Naval games in the future? Anyone know any good rules?
So that's it really, I'll stick some pictures I took from the game and the show below!
