On Saturday just gone I was fortunate enough to spend the day at Warfare 2024 wargaming show, run by the Wargames Association of Reading, at Farnborough International Conference Centre - and a good day it was, too! The program listed about 27 demo/participation games, 23 tournaments, and over 70 traders in attendance, quite impressive numbers. I arrived around 11:30 am, and stayed pretty much until the end of the day at 5pm, (though of course it was all due to happen again on the Sunday, too) which is a good indicator that I was having a good day. I looked at games, chatted to people, had a bit of 'participation' and of course did some shopping! I also managed to take a few photographs, which I will show a selection of here, to hopefully give you a flavour of the show as I saw it.
I'll show some of the games I saw, more or less in the order I saw them:
First up, the 'Ardammer Group' with their lovely big 28mm Franco-Dutch War 1672 -78 game. I remember these guys from Salute last year. when they ran a big 7YW game with beautiful Zinnfiguren flat figures and the equally vintage Charles Grant rules from The War Game, complete with 'bounce sticks' and canister cones'. This one was a little more current, being played with 28mm figures and Beneath the Lily Banners rules, in a 'what if' battle with William III's Dutch army attacking the French under Marshal Turenne. It was great to see such a big game set in quite an unusual period, a sort of halfway house between the Pike and Shot battles of the Thirty Years War and ECW 20-30 years earlier, and the age of Marlborough and Eugene 30 years later. Troops were dressed in standard uniforms, but infantry battalions still consisted of both pike and musket-armed soldiers.
The figures are mostly from Reiver Castings Franco-Dutch War range, sold by Northumbrian Painting Services who had sponsored the game. All very nice, and I tip my hat to the guys, who had travelled all the way from the Newcastle area to be at the show! Ray from Posties' Rejects reckons this was 'game of the show' for him, and I tend to agree.
The ever-reliable Deal Wargames Society presented “Siamese Fireback Down” – Counter Insurgency in Thailand, 1980. A participation skirmish game, with squads of rebels attempting to capture the crew of a downed army helicopter, while squads of government troops try to rescue them. As ever, their explanatory leaflet was really good, too - I hope other game organisers are inspired to emulate them.
Malvern Old Wargamers put on a 28mm Italian Wars game using Armati rules. The Italian Wars always look brilliant with all those banners and colourful costumes, even though I don't think I'd ever be a good enough painter to try fielding these armies!
Another slightly unusual twist on a very 'standard' period, The Two Wardys 'One Day In August' game depicting the 1942 Dieppe raid, and using Peter Pig's PBI rules. We've all seen plenty of D-Day 1944 beach landing games depicting the highly successful alled landings on 6th June '44, but I don't think I've ever seen a game of the tragically unsuccessful Dieppe action. Interesting stuff, and I think it was pretty much 1 model equals 1 real-life vehicle - a very large 'skirmish' game?
(I'm not sure who the chap with the US Cavalry hat was, but he did a great job of photo-bombing me!)
The host club put on several games and club T-shirts were out in force: this Trafalgar game (1/700th scale?) looked really good!
Joe Bilton put on 'The Barrikady Factory, Stalingrad' in 28mm using What A Tanker rules, with an impressive tank park:
Newbury and Reading wargamers presented a '28mm Crusader Wars' game
Anschluss Wargames can be relied upon to mount very well-presented games, and this was no exception : 'Tobruk - Rommel's Easter Attack 1941' .
I have a copy of their The War on the Ground rules, bought about 18 months ago at Salute and sadly not yet tried out, a situation I need to rectify! Given they are designed for 15mm (or smaller) figures, my 20mms are a bit large, so I would be confined to smaller scenarios - but that's not neccessarily a bad thing.
Huntingdon & District Wargames Society's Guildford Courthouse 1781 AWI game using Sharpe Practise on a quite heavily-wooded table looked very attractive
Another really nice-looking game was by 'Combined Oppos' who showed 'Dawn Suprise Late 1944 : American carrier strike against a Japanese taskforce at anchor' in 1/700th scale
Lance & Longbow Society showed a 40mm 'Medieval Encounter'
Another beach landing - this time Napoleonic style. Steve Deeprose's 'Battle Of Alexandria 1801 – 28mm Napoleonic' was another nice-looking game
Prince Rupert's Regiment of the Sealed Knot gave us their “what a corker” 28mm 1700 battle
and it's always good to see a nice Pike Phalanx - The Society of Ancients delivered 'The Battle of Paraetacene 317BC' using Impetus rules, I think
There seemed to be an emphasis through many of the games of encouraging visitors to participate, I assume this may have been a policy promoted by the host club, and if it was, I think that was a pretty good idea. I did manage to find time to have go, and spent a fun session with Michael Smith and his gaming buddy Tony, playing Michael's Table Top Battles grid-based wargame, in a scenario depicting an imagined 'Great Raid' on Norfolk by the beastly Prussians in 1871. The opposing armies meet at Downham, inland from Kings Lynn:
The armies were 15mm, mostly Irregualar Miniatures with some by Peter Pig, and I think the grid was 2-inch (50mm) squares.
The game was great fun, very simple but fast and furious, with the significant mechanism being to decide firing and close combat with opposed D12 die rolls, modified for troop quality, cover etc - so both players are continuously involved, and combat results either 'no effect', 'pushed back' or 'destroyed'. Playing the nefarious Prussian invaders, I got quite lucky with my die-rolling and was pushing the British redcoats back, though not without losses! [ update - I liked it so much, I have ordered the book! ]
A very large part of the weekend, clearly, was the Tournament area - I didn't take part in that, as I am not very competitive at all(!) and have never tried tournament gaming. But there was a wide range of games being played ( around 20 tournaments listed ) and it was impressively well-supported, as you can see below. That must have vastly increased the attendance for the show and business for the traders.
The third leg of the stool, so to speak is of course Trade Stands, of which there were many and various. So of course, it would be rude not to pay them some attention, and I did a little light hobby shopping.
Most important for current projects was a visit to Commission Figurines, where I was able to collect an order of their 6mm 'semi-flat' MDF figures.
These are an artful mix of Napoleonic and ACW types, which should pass for 1859 Austrians and Piedmontese, with a bit of 'painters license' - for example British Napoleonic Infantry in 'Stovepipe' shako for Austrians, and Russian Heavy Cavalry with 'comb' style helmet for Piedmontese Heavies. We'll see how that works out, and at only £2 per pack it must be worth a try!
For the same 1859 project I've been on the lookout for scenery - not a lot going at the show I'm afraid, but I did pick up some Woodland Scenics foliage which should be handy for home-made trees etc, and a little batch of 1/300th scale Cypress trees from Heroics and Ros ( just to try them out, the classic end-of-day 'how many can I have for the amount of change I've got left in my pocket?' strategem). Plus a couple of packs of 20mm by 30mm bases from Warbases, which should be enough for the initial 6mm armies. For buildings etc, after a recent post I got loads of useful advice, thanks everyone - it was just a shame that none of the traders people suggested were at this show.
And I always come away with some more books..
The Society of Ancients Simple Campaigning has a sort of 'holy grail' (or 'too good to be true'?) title - in fact it is a compilation of articles by John Graham-Leigh, originally published in Slingshot magazine. Each describes a simple (but quite ingenious) campaign game, which can be used to generate 'battles' which can be played out on the tabletop. Examples include a Hellenistic mini-campaign covering 200-100BC in 5-year periods, with a very simple strategic map and a couple of 'big battles' per turn; and a more sophisticated 'Angevin Empire' solo system where the player takes the role of Kings Henry II, Richard I and John trying to hold their widespread fiefdoms together. Others include a Mongol/Crusades/Europeans 13th Century game, a 'Millennium Campaign' covering Europe 1000-1100 AD, the 3rd Century AD 'Crisis of Rome' period, the Assyrian Empire 890-610BC, and 'The Calamitous 14th Century 1330-1450'. All look interesting, and feature simple but quite clever systems with minimal mapping. Of course I don't have armies for any of the above, but the ideas and concepts are quite inspirational, I think - there must be scope to adapt them to other periods!
Also a freebie - Tiger Miniatures were giving away booklets of their simple Striking Tiger 'large battle' rules, and they looked iinteresting enough that I picked up a copy ( I'm afraid their 'Northwest Frontier' gaming table was unattended when I passed, so I didn't get to talk to them - just grabbed the booklet!). It's interesting that they are clearly designed for multi-period use, they give details and some 'army lists' for using their own figures, which range from Burmese/Qing/Korean/Mongols through Renaissance and 'Tudor Irish', and on to 19th/20th Century colonials. They are designed for the use of armed groups of men that work as a unit, rather than individuals, across a battlefield, using tactics consisting of massed volleys, from bow to bullet, and charges to win tactical advantage and overcome your enemies. Which is quite a nice summation of quite a wide range of periods! A well-produced booklet, and there are a couple of scenario suggestions and a painting guide. If you are interested in any of those periods, the figures (in 28mm) look nice, too.
Finally, I took the advice of Mark W aka The Jolly Broom Man, who commented 'buy at least one random thing that catches your eye since it’s good for the soul' - and what caught my eye was
Charles Grant's The Wargamer's Annual 2025 . It's basically a very posh old-school wargames magazine, lots of lovely glossy pictures and maps, and a range of distinguished authors ( including the excellent Norm Smith, who has been a great supporter of this blog and whose Commanders website is always a good read ). This is going to be great for a few winter evenings, I'm sure - I would say for 'pipe and slippers' moments, but that might be an old school bridge too far.. Maybe tea and crumpets?
In addition to the above I met and chatted with fellow visitors, gamers, and traders. In my first five minutes I bumped into Ray, Lee and Steve of Posties' Rejects - see Big Lee's Miniature Adventures and Ray's Don't Throw a One blogs for their reports on the show, which contain many, many more and better pictures than I have here! I also struck up a conversation with John Treadaway, editor of Miniature Wargames magazine - I am quite impressed with what he has done with it, and indeed I am a subscriber, and I look forward to his report of the show. It's great to be in the company of 'like-minded people' at shows - I had a lovely chat with a complete stranger when sharing a cafe table, he was really pleased to have bought a fantastic (28mm scale?) model U-boat, I think from Crooked Dice, it looked splendid and will surely feature in some great games! Many thanks to all involved in organising the show, putting on games and tournaments, running stands, and all the other things that make it run.
So that was it - a thoroughly good day, glad I went along. It had been a bit of a last-minute decision, but I'm very pleased I went for it. I'd certainly recommend it in future, if you are within a reasonable distance!
Now I think I had better get busy on those 6mm figures, hope to report on progress next time.. Until then keep well, everyone.
