Another Other Partizan Report

Last Sunday I hit the road to sunny Newark, and attended 'The Other Partizan' show. A thoroughly enjoyable day was had, as expected.  Plenty  of interesting and impressive games to see, and I took some photos which I will show here. A great bonus was being  also able to meet my old friend Dave 'St Cyr on Wheels' and his wife; we had not met in person in many months since they moved to darkest Northampton, so really good to see them. Greetings Dave!

Now I have to admit that it's a fair old drive to the show, and I didn't really get going early enough - did not reach the venue until 12:30, and the show finished at 4pm - so it was a bit of a rush around towards the end. As a result, I probably missed quite a few good games, especially in the 'participation zone'. So this is by no means a comprehensive report - but what I did see was all good. I'll show them more or less in the order that we toured the room: 

1st Corps group put on a large game portraying The Defence of Calais, 1940 in 28mm, using Battlegroup rules, I think. Very impressive, the 'teddy bear fur' looked good - it reminded me of real colour pictures of Panzers on the Russian steppe - and the backdrop using printed railway was a lovely piece of work

1st Corps: Calais 1940

 

The Brens are coming..

Panzers on the march

and a rather effective backboard

More 28mm WW2 and 1940 from Chesterfield Old Boys, this time Beda Fomm in the desert :

I always like to see  a nice aircraft model flying over the table, it seems to be rather a trend in fact, and this game had a great example, this CR42 

Newark Irregulars showed their game of Gainsborough, 1643 also in 28mm :

good scenery, and a lovely big cavalry fight!

The 'Anti-Alchemists'  showed their 'Biscotti War, Garibaldi vs. Bourbon in 1860' , a fictional encounter set  during Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily,  using 28mm figures ( Gringo 40s ) and Sharp Practise rules.

Sicily 1860..

 

Garibaldi's Redshirts vs. Bourbons ( and an unfortunate cow )

I especially liked that their information sheet even gave brief historical details of the two types of biscuits! 

Derby Wargmes Society gave us 'Crossing the Berezina 1944' - WW2 in 20mm:

Berezina '44: I liked the forested terrain

 

The Iron Brigade provided more forestry, plus spectacular fortifications in 'Winter is Here' - a Game of Thrones ( sort of ) encounter in 28mm using Dragon Rampant rules. A neat trick was to use mirrors as the backboard, so it looked twice as long!

   

Boondock Sayntes provided probably the most spectacular single terrain piece - a Fortress in their Indian-set game 'Laisot 1785 and the rise of Benoit de Boigne' 

'a mighty fortress...'

and interior - modellers clearly just got a bit carried away!

Equally colourful troops made a beautiful setup

The name de Boigne  interested me, I checked later and realised I have owned  a book about him for at least 20 years ( Fountain of the Elephants by Desmond Young ) and never read it! I must rectify that promptly, from the explanation by the 'Sayntes' he will be well worth reading about.

 Old Pikey's Gaming Group had a very large layout for their 20mm Cold War game 'Operation Resolute' - the obligatory seething mass of Soviet armour, plus some more fun aircraft overhead.  Being at the end of the hall, it also afforded a good view of the whole room, so you can get an idea of the extent of it ( and also the demographic, I'd say. That's one of the Helion chaps on the left, I think.. )

hmmm.. Soviet armour in a bottleneck?

Gothenburg Gamers, who I think had come all the way from Scotland, showed a nice 28mm 'Crimean War' game - but not actually set in Crimea, as this depicted an engagement between Russians and Turks, a reminder that the Crimea was just part of a wider conflict. If I were the Turks here, I wold have been quite nervous facing this Russian column of attack ( and Dave, I think that's you.. )  

Quantity has a quality of its own.. 

 

Bramley Barn Wargames Club put on an interesting game - 28mm Elizabethan period, English vs. Irish.  They used a set of rules, Irregular Wars, which are aimed at re-creating 'smaller actions so common  at the fringes of the European world'.  

    

In this case, the 'irregular' but highly motivated Irish versus the 'regular' English Pike and Shot, whose ranks were likely to be stuffed with 'pressed' ex-convicts, poorly trained and motivated - though the English Demi-Lances shown here  would be the toughest unit on the field. All this very well explained by the Bramley Barn chaps, I thought it  made for an exemplary 'demonstration' game, in an interesting  and unusual period setting. 

Demi-Lances : Tudor England's  Panther Tanks?

Another really good-looking smaller game was from The Legion of Blokes -  'The Race to Caen' , described as 'Epic Scale WW2' , cleverly using 6mm figures with ( I think )  2mm scenery, and the whole thing in a case which folded up for transport! Really neat idea. The 'Epic' part was that it actually depicted a large area of the battlefield - if I remember right, the Blokes said this was all three British/Canadian beaches, and one or two figure stands represented a battalion. This was a great little big game, excellent stuff  ( and prize for top club/group name, which could equally work as the name of a show, perhaps? )

The (very) PortableWargame

 

Grimsby Wargames Society gave us a large WW1 game,  The Battle of Hargicourt featuring the 'Grimsby Chums' , set in August 1918, I think.  A splendid layout featuring another rather nice aircraft in the form of an Albatros DVa ( albeit going down in flames! ). I liked the idea of featuring a unit from their local area - high  time I  researched the history of the Suffolk Regiment?

Grimsby Pals - and Dave photo-bombing me again

 

 

The Rime of the Ancient Aviator?

Having recently visited Shropshire I was interested to see the Shrewsbury Wargames Club's Siege of Stokesay Castle (1645?), ECW in 28mm.  The castle made another 'trophy' piece of scenery to rival the Indian fortress, but I didn't really get  a decent photo. The figures were equally nice, though : 

 

Medway AD43 from Forest Outlaws and Kallistra looked impressive, and perhaps unsurprisingly was a good demonstration of how good Kallistra's Hexon terrain can look when used on a large scale. My own Hexon setup is usually 9 by 9 hexes, which would fit into this table about 6 times - but I can dream!

Medway AD 43 in 15mm

 

Medieval shipping made several appearances at the show :  (1) The Bodkins 28mm Breton War of Succession, Hennebont 1342

and -of course - (2) Andy Callan with 'Never Mind the Boathooks' 

Another minor trend was clearly Zulu Kraals : (1) Cramlington Wargames Group's Battle of Inyzane River 1879  

and (2) The Gentlemen Pensioners 'Death in the Donga - the Prince Imperial in Zululand 1879'

Zulu games, sir - at least two of 'em

Now I'm afraid I'm very old-school in one respect, I am not really bothered with  Sci-Fi or Fantasy games - but how about this for Sci-Fi terrain?  I think it's 'The Invasion of Skaro' by Chesterfield Open Gaming Society,  using Xenos Rampant: I suspect that this featured very ingenious use of 'found objects' and an awful lot of silver spray paint, and it looked great!
 

Invasion of Skaro - ooh, shiny!

And last but very much NOT least,  Nick Hindley's  'Giant Risk' - what a fantastic idea this was! Nick provided the rules  - a 'tweaked' version of the boardgame to add a bit of Napoleonic chrome plus naval elements, ports and forts, all on a single sheet of A4. I took a copy, and hope to be inspired - though perhaps not on such a vast scale.

The terrtitories ( boundaries drawn onto a conventional 'OS' style map of Britain) had been given quirky names - I will forgive him for renaming my bit of East Anglia, as he maintained it was an affectionate term used by his mother, who was born in Ipswich.. 

 

Overall, I think this may just have been  my favourite game of the day! 

All in all, of course a really good lot of games, some really quite spectacular. Maybe a bit  too spectacular? It was interesting to read Neil Patterson's view of the show in his  Aufklarungsabteilung blog - he is of the opinion that these huge showy games with massive trophy terrain pieces have maybe gone too far, in that they are 'demonstration' games demonstrating things that you would be very unlikely to be able to achieve at home or club. I have some sympathy with that view, I admit, and I am rather drawn to the smaller-scale but ingenious games, and those showing an interesting period or foregrounding a particular set of rules - which you might well emulate yourself.  Of course not all the big games are simply static models,  and it's quite inspiring to see large games that are really being played - my favourite example ( albeit not at this show, though they were at May's Partizan ) being the Retired Wargamers Reloaded  Carentan game which I saw at Broadside among other shows, which is clearly being run as a 'real'  game ( using Rapid Fire ) and I think features a different scenario at each outing, on the same basic board.  As long as you keep it simple, large games are entirely possible and quite exciting for a group! Having said that, of course if everyone just brings a bog-standard 'club game', that will be pretty dull -  it's great to see the big games and the amzing terrain, and I was probably guilty of missing a lot of more 'normal' games since I didn't really have time to focus on the 'Participation Zone'  which might have answered a lot of the above questions.Interesting to think about all this,  but I should say emphatically that it was a great show and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the games I saw.

And now the 'retail therapy' side: there were of course, many traders present and pretty much all your hobby needs could be catered for, but I really only had about half an hour to look around them once we'd looked at the games!  Luckily I didn't go along with a particular shopping list, anyway, and maybe the lack of time was good for concentrating the mind.. As a result I made two purchases : 

(i)  From Kallistra, a set of river/stream hexes should  will be pretty useful in my hex terrain setup:  

(ii) from Helion, I finally took the plunge and acquired my own copy of the late Christopher Duffy's By Force of Arms - so now Chris 'Nundanket' can have his splendid Emperor's Press copy ( very kindly loaned, several months ago ) back! 

 

Well worth getting this, I have been very enjoying reading the loan copy, and I am told the Helion version is a straight re-print, Mr Duffy having not been in sufficient health to produce a revised edition.  Hence  I should be able to simply pick up from where I got to.  Autumn/Winter reading sorted..

I think that sums it up fairly well, a great day had, albeit with a bit too much driving! Thinking about it  I broke a personal cardinal rule, as the journey at 2 hours each way exceeded the actual time ( 3.5 hours - and 45 mins of that was lunch!) that I was able to spend at the show. So next time, I most certainly need to get up much earlier and get there promptly!  (never mind,  next weekend is the good old   SELWG show, and that's a much easier journey).  My thanks to all involved be they  organisers, traders, clubs or players, for making The Other Partizan such a grand day out. 

Next time - well, it will probably be SELWG! Until then keep well, everyone.