another week, another show : SELWG

 It's been a rather unusual seven ( or eight )  days,  I've been to two wargame shows! Last Sunday the extravaganza the was The Other Partizan -   this Sunday, the slightly more low-key SELWG, at LeaValley Leisure Centre in London. Here is a view of the hall as I arrived, about 11:00am:

traditional 'games in the middle, traders round the edge' formation

Notice a small patrol of Imperial Stormtroopers moving among the punters - maybe picking up some model TIE fighters?   I like the venue, it is the very definition of a light-filled  and spacious area, albeit slightly unusual to have to walk across a running track to reach the central area! Plenty of room for all the games and traders, with the busy  'bring and buy' in the separate upper area - and I think, some further  (possibly competition) games going on in another higher-level area.  Plenty of games to look at, of course, and I photographed some of them, so I will show them in more or less the order I saw them:

First up a nice big ancients game - Hydaspes 326BC, Alexander vs Porus of course, put on by Newbury and Reading Wargames Society and using Warlord Advance Guard rules ( from Caliver Books ).   Alexander and his Macedonians on the left with nice big pike phalanx, Porus and his Indians on the right with an impressive array of elephants! Having just taken far too long to paint about 50 figures for Alexander's army in DBA, I somehow doubt I will ever reach this level.. though once the Persians are done, I think an Indian force has to be next? 

Hydaspes - early doors

 

Nice Macedonian Phalanx

..and those lovely Elephants

On a slightly less grandiose scale, the Society of Ancients ran a Roman Civil War game, Thapsus 46BC, using Impetus rules. I was interested in this, having recently taken part in one of Jon Frietag's remote games using his adaptation of  Basic Impetus  ( see his report - I was utterly destroyed in short order, but it was still great fun! ). The SoA guys were very friendly and happy to chat about the game, and some of the differences in the full version of the rules, so it was pretty interesting. I confess I didn't go into too much detail of my recent experience with Jon's game, in case they had seen his blog ( oh, you were that guy..! ). 

Society of Ancients: Thapsus 46BC  'Impetus'

 Milton Hundred Wargames Club brought a 'Third World War' 1980s game Endlich! Die Letzte Brucke!  ( Finally! The Last Bridge!' ), I think using Team Yankee rules.  I'm always impressed with the huge numbers of track-to-track tanks in such games, but have slight questions about how 'realistic' that would have been? Looked impressive, anyway!

Milton Hundred's 1980s Cold War

Another fine table from Shepway Wargames Club, Dornier Down  : 'September 1940, somewhere in Kent between Lydd, Ashford and Hythe' - with the German invasion of Britain under way, German paratroopers try to free a German high-ranking intelligence officer captured by the Home Guard when his Do17 crashed.  

Dornier Down..

 

at the other end, Germans advance to the rescue

Too Fat Lardies were out in force with three games, one of which was the Dave Brown Memorial Game, a nice-looking large scale Napoleonics game using General d’Armee 2. Simple but effective terrain, I liked that big central hill.

TooFat Lardies Napoleonics

SEEMS ( South East Essex ) usually do something interesting, this time it was a Franco-Prussian War 'large skirmish' type game 'Nach Paris' which used The Men Who Would Be Kings rules - which of course are designed for Colonial settings. But they are the right period, they were simply pitting two European regular forces against each other rather than Europeans vs indigenous forces. That seems quite a neat idea.  Also nice to see the scenario was essentially taken from Charles S. Grant's vintage Table Top Teaser  'Reserve Demolition' - I think I still have the edition of Battle For Wargamers where that scenario made its public debut! 

SEEMS Franco-Prussian 'Colonial' game - clever stuff!

The Retired Wargamers Reloaded group having wowed us all with their Carentan 1944 game at shows last year,  are now back with a new game 'Hold Until Relieved',  depicting Pegasus Bridge on D-Day. 

Retired Wargamers Reloaded : Pegasus Bridge 1944

 

Well, they have done it again, a really great layout - they told me all the buildings are 3D-printed and represent the real buildings at the actual scene. 15mm scale, and gamed with Rapid Fire Reloaded. They won a very well-deserved 'best in show' prize - watch out for this at future shows ( they will be at Salute 2024, I assume!).  Sadly I managed to miss meeting my old gaming friend Tony who is part of the 'RWR' group, I just happened to always be passing their table when he'd gone to lunch or whatever! We'll catch up at a future event, no doubt - I will certainly be interested to see how this ( not quite finished yet, I gather) excellent setup develops. I need no excuse to include a few more pictures of this game:

Gliders landed bang on the objective..

..but bad news for this Dakota

I really liked the way the troops and vehicles subtly merge into the scenery ( just like their real-life equivalents would want to ) and then you come across interesting little scenes, like this column of German half-tracks moving up in response..   

All in all a really nice-looking game, do look out for it! 

Another nice-looking game was 'Escape from Distraction' by The League of Anti-Alchemist Cowboys (are these group names getting a bit out of hand, do you think?) - 'Distraction' being the Wild West town from which various ne'er-do-wells needed to escape, pursued by the forces of law and order and regulated by What a Cowboy rules.

A town called 'Distraction'

Now the next one doesn't look so much, but was a very interesting idea - Mr. John Kersey (1/72 Wargames) with his  Defence of Duffer's Drift 1900 , a game of the well-known book on Boer War tactics. Sadly his gaming buddy had gone sick, so John was not actually running the game, but happy to talk about it, and it seems to me an excellent idea - the book being after all, a sort of instructional manual, why not make it into a game and let readers or potential readers see how they might fair?  John mentioned that he had been invited to take the game to Salute in 2024, I look forward to seeing it there!

Duffers Drift - work in progress, but v. interesting!

Zulu Kraals are very 'in' this year

Central London Wargames Club were demonstrating their new edition Napoleonic rules Emperor of the Battlefield (by club member Ian Godwin)  and were most enthusiastic and engaging, even when I confessed ( to general mock-horror ) that I don't play Napoleonics!  

Central London Club's Rules

 

..and clever dual-purpose table setup

 

As you can see there was a central game table with a 28mm battle, but also two 'side-tables' with 15mm setups, which were used for ad-hoc demonstrations of rules mechanisms. I was immediately given a pair of dice to roll as a unit of cavalry proposed to charge an infantry unit in march column,  on the side table, and I have to say my dice-rolling caused the foot to fail to form square, and subsequently rout!  It was a nice way to involve viewers and show the ( gratifyingly simple ) mechanisms of the rules; full marks for engagement with the wargaming public!

Palestine 1938: Green Howards advance

 

.. and finally, another 'always interesting' group are Deal Wargames Associaton with their 'WW2 or thereabouts'  games - this time A Crown of Thorns, the Green Howards in Beit Faruk, Palestine 1938 depicting an incident in the Arab rebellion against the British mandate in Palestine in 1938, and inspired by the official history of the Green Howards regiment.  The excellent explanatory leaflet (another speciality of this group) says the game 'pits overwhelming firepower, mechanised forces and artillery against a lightly-armed but wily enemy fighting in his own back yard'.  All very sadly topical, I suppose.

Air power to the fore again - good!

  

view from the Arab side

As usual I was pleased to see some nice aircraft over the table - with 20th-Century scenarios you really can't not have air power involved, surely? The period setting just before WW2 made things interesting, with Gloster Gladiators and a Vickers Wellesley making up the RAF strike force, and the same pre-war and non-European environment made for a nicely unusual selection of troops and equipment - all good fun. The game was played with Rapid Fire ( 2nd Edition ) rules, which seemed to suit the relatively limited scale of the forces and should also allow brisk play. 

And that's all I photographed - of course there were quite a few more games! The program listed 37 games in all, so I have showed less than 1/3 of them.  I should probably apologise, I'm afraid I don't really 'get' Fantasy and Sci-Fi games, so I tend  not to feature those  unless espeically interesting or spectacular looking, admittedly I have thus ruled out another 1/3 of the games present.  There was perhaps a slightly  subdued feeling to the atmosphere at the show, but that maybe just my impression, formed by the tendency to compare with the Partizan extravaganza only seven days before.Actually I think the spacious hall made for a much lower 'population density' which was much more relaxing!  Always good to meet and chat with other gamers of course, and I was pleased to bump into David Crook of Wargaming Odyssey fame, we had a good talk and he introduced me to his friend Nick Huband, who showed us  pictures of his  fantastic collection of vintage Peter Laing 15mm WW1 figures - David and I urged him to show them to the wider world on a blog!  Nick's rules for 'Portable WW1'  gaming are included in Bob Cordery's recent  Second Portable Wargame Compendium .     

 As well as 37 games, the program listed 36 traders, and a little light shopping was duly undertaken: 

Persian painting inspiration

 

and what to do with those Persians

pure nostalgia

What a show looked like back then..

..and what the games looked like

As you can see, this ran to a vintage Osprey (very cheap indeed) from the assorted book box at Stonewall Figures, which will give some more inspiration for painting my Persian DBA army,  an expansion for Helion/Philip Garton's  Three Ages of Rome rules which covers Alexander and his successors with army lists and scenarios ( at a bargain price from Paul Meekins books ) and last but not least a lovely bit of pure nostalgia in the form of Shire Publications pocket-sized Discovering Wargames  by John Tunstill, in a 1970 edition. It's an interesting read - within the first couple of pages we are into a quite detailed discussion of ground and time scales for wargames! As you can see, some very 'period' pictures of games too, and a flashback to what wargames shows looked like 55 years ago.. 

Also bought, but not pictured ( just not photgenic )  was a 15cwt Truck, a Bedford QLT and a Bren Carrier (with Indian crew - very useful)  all resin models  from Grubby Tanks for my 20mm WW2 in Italy 'D-Day Dodgers' - I am going for a lorried Indian infantry battalion, so these are try-outs for that, and will hopefully appear on this blog when assembled and painted.  Finally my first 'Speed/Contrast' paint - in a suitable shade of brown as a trial for painting horses  with a bit of contrast, but quickly. To be tried out on the Persians - we'll see how it goes!

All in all a good day at the show, I'd always recommend SELWG if you can get there without too long a trip! I spent a good 4 hours there and could have spent longer, if I had gone for a participation game as well - something I must get round to at a future show. Can I book a place on Duffers Drift at Salute? Many thanks, of course, to everyone involved in running SELWG and its games and traders.  

*** UPDATE **** SELWG have posted their list of prize-winning games as follows: 

Best in Show - Retired Wargamers Reloaded - 'Hold Until Relieved'

Best Participation Game - Prince Rupert's Bluecoats - 'It's a Funny Old Game'

Best Demo Game - Deal Wargamers - 'Uprising in Palestine 1938'

Best Scenery - Milton Hundred Wargames Club - 'Endlich! Die Letzte Brücke!'

All except one of which I managed to include in my report - I seem to remember  Prince Rupert's Bluecoats were 'on a break' when I passed by, should have gone back.  I think it was a game depicting  one of those traditional  English 'football' matches where the whole village joins in and it turns into a drunken brawl - an ideal subject!  

Back to normal reading/painting/gaming now and in future posts, with inspiration somewhat boosted by two good shows in two weekends. Until then keep well, everyone.