Broadside 2025 : A Jolly Good Show

Last Saturday (14th June) I was able to attend the 'Broadside'  gaming show at Medway Park Sports Centre in Gillingham, Kent, and had a thoroughly pleasant day, I'm glad to say.  

It's a 'medium sized' show, the program listed 21 demonstration games and a very respectable 30+ traders, plus 'other activities' which included book signing by novelist/comic book writer Dan Abnett, a Painting Area and several Participation/Promotional  games.  I do like this size of show, much more relaxed than the likes of Salute and Partizan,  with more space and time to look at the games etc, and this is a really well-run ( by the Milton Hundred Wargames Club) example - it was nice to hear that they had their best attendance yet this year! 

I travelled by car, arrived only about 10 minutes after the show started, but was lucky to get a parking space - there was an athletics event at the sports centre as well, so things were quite busy!  I was slightly surprised to fined that there was a queue to enter the show hall - a sign of the good attendance.

 I had a good look around the games and took some pictures, which I'll show a few of here - though even with a smaller show I seem to manage to miss some games.  Admittedly I don't tend to look too hard at Fantasy and Sci-Fi, though I did try to pay attention to some, honest! A few games I'd already seen at other shows, so took less pictures of them. Anyway, here we go: 

18 feet long?

 

...yes, seems about right!

First  and biggest, Retired Wargamers Reloaded and their mammoth Berlin 1945 game - already seen and extensively photographed at Salute, but I couldn't resist a few more pics! Much easier to get a good look at the table at this show, of course. They won the 'best in show' prize, which is voted for by all the clubs and groups putting on games ( though only by one vote, I gather! ) - can't really argue with that, though there plenty of other lovely setups. 

..how many tanks?

   

Much smaller ( but perfectly formed ) was this game of Gela, 1943 by Canterbury Crusaders Wargame Club. This was being run by Oliver Toms, son of my old friend Tony and (I think) using mainly Oliver's  collection ( Oliver's Army? sorry, that ages me! ) - a nicely 'different' clash of Italians using captured French tanks vs. US Rangers.   

   

The scenic mat they were using looked really good, it's from Geek Villain and is designed for Sicily, so pretty much ideal.   Ooh, I may have to look into that..!   

Very nice to chat to you, Oliver, and a very nice game! 

Skirmish Wargames presented their Wild West Shootout game 'The Last Gun Standing' in 54mm scale, with a great 'main street' setting 

 The game and rules emphasised a 'Hollywood' approach, and sure enough there was even a rooftop movie camera and crew filming the proceedings!  

Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society showed their 'Desert Encounter 1941' with rather nice models and table, and were very happy to chat and explain their home-grown rules ( which you could also buy).   

 

It was nice to talk to the gents running this, and I learned from them that their founder member George Gush (one of my wargaming heroes, as you can tell from the  heading of this blog)  is still around, though very elderly and no longer attending their club. Best wishes to George, for all your inspiration. 

Society of Ancients put on a game of The Battle of Granicus, 334BC : always nice figures, and a clever use of carpet tiles for the terrain and the river. I think the rules were Impetus. 

 

  An interesting piece of Sci-Fi terrain: Battletech demo'd by its makers 

 Next a rather interesting mash-up of past and future, as Friday Night Fire Fight's  game World War Z depicted futuristic combat in the setting of a city clearly inspired by Venice  ( the game perhaps inspired by the  Zombie Horror movie of 2013? I have no idea of this stuff! ). 

The juxtaposition of Sci-Fi vehicles and Aircraft against the historic backdrop was really interesting, what a good idea!  (you may need to look carefully to spot the aircraft among the buildings, but that's down to my amatuerish photography)  
 

 Back to 'historicals' now - SEEMS  presented a WW2 tank skirmish game TANKS in Normandy   using the TANKS rules. 

 

 Real Time Wargames brought their The Ruin of Britain  Dark Ages Battle and Campaign Ruleset - nice battle setup, complete with Holy Grail.. 

 

I like their approach of always including a campaign system as well as tactical rules, and I bought their Italian Wars set a few years ago - though I have severe doubts about ever having the wherewithal to paint Italian Wars armies! 

One of the highlights of the show for me was the Postie's Rejects group's  Rivoli 1796 game, organised by Richard of My Wargaming Habit blog fame,  and notably using 2mm semi-flat MDF figures from Commission Miniatures (which I have also been using for my 1859 Risorgimento project), and Volley and Bayonet rules.    

Richard (2nd from right) Umpiring

The whole thing looked splendid and there were some nice touches in the terrain, especially Richard's clever home-made woodland ( foreground ) made from domestic pan-scrubbers(!) and the use of Brigade Models  2mm scale  Mediterranean Village models to represent build-up areas, a classic example of how 'one scale down' buildings can work on the table. 

 

 

I'm afraid I hit a wrong setting on my camera and took several photos which were not properly focussed, so  my apologies for the lack of close-ups of the very nicely painted and based figures! I would strongly recommend having a look at Richard's blog for his report on the game. It was by all accounts a close game, with the Austrians very nearly reversing the historical result. A great game, very interesting and quite inspiring! 

 Another 'promotional' game was from Brickskrieg, a wargame using toy construction bricks, an interesting idea for bringing younger players into the hobby?  Note that the rules are available as a free download from their website. 

  

 Hailsham Wargames Club were on-trend given the 250th anniversary of the American War of Independence - their game portrayed the Battle of  Freeman's Farm, Saratoga 1777.  

 A nice-looking game, and also topical for me, having recently read Robert Graves' novel Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth,  the plot of which culminates at Saratoga. I didn't ask if Sergeant Lamb was on the table..

 

The next game -Race to the Seine  by Shepway Wargames Club -  had a rather uncanny element of synchronicity for me. The game portrayed the 'desperate race to get as many German troops across the Seine river to regroup following the Falaise pocket disaster' - and only the previous day, I had been to the National Army Museum in Chelsea to see an illustrated talk on the very same subject! 

The talk was 'Gaps and Chaps:a fresh look at the escape of the German army from Normandy 1944', by Canadian military historian Marc Milner, and most interesting it was, too!  (many more of the regular  NAM talks are available at  https://vimeo.com/nationalarmymuseum and thoroughly recommended )       

The game was a splendid sight, a really nice table that fully  lived up to the standards set by the Shepway club's  Dornier Down game last year.     

 

Another really nice looking game was Deal  wargames club's Gradual Sunset, which portrayed Thai army operations against Communist guerillas, 1980-83. I had seen the same game, or variants of it, at the Cavalier and Warfare shows in February and November, so I'll say no more on this one.   

 

Given my early arrival and the  very manageable size of the show, I also managed to have a go at a participation game: this was Robin Hood  by Big on Strategy group  ( a couple of chaps from Milton Keynes, as it turned out ) who were presenting a skirmish game in 54mm depicting Robin Hood and his Merry Men's ambush of a wagon stuffed with ill-gotten 'tax' money collected/extorted by the Sherriff of Nottingham and his evil henchmen.  The rules were from John Lambshead's recent One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargames .  

My objective was to escort the wagon-load of money along the road and off the table edge, while fighting off   Robin Hood's ambush - victory points were also available for killing Robin, the Sherriff and other characters. The rules were very simple and quickly picked-up, with initiative and combat driven by the draw of playing cards rather than dice. That mechanism worked very well, the combat card draws being 'opposed' ( i.e both players draw cards, with the number of cards determined by the characters' weapons, skills etc )  which certainly made for tension and excitement!    Here you can see my opponent (in the blue shirt,  a chap from SEEMS who's name I shamefully didn't get!) mid-draw..  

The game was great fun, lots of laughs, mainly becuase my card-drawing turned out to be just catastrophically bad!  I was certainly the worst player of the day, losing all but one of my characters - if the cards gave a chance of them dying, they would inevitably die! 

I did have one success, though - my last remaining man-at-arms managed to take down Robin himself! 

Though by this time, the Sherriff was already dead by the roadside..  As the game went on and the cards confounded me at every turn, at least we all laughed a lot! My opponent was a good sport (easy for him, he was winning!)  and the umpires David (left)  and Mike talked us through the game and gave some useful  hints, and a really fun time was had - my thanks to all three of them!  

 

And that's all for the games - as usual I will have missed quite a few, either from my incompetence or my lack of interest in some of the non-historical games.  As usual, there are other blogs with many more and better pictures - I can strongly recommend Postie's Rejects  Ray 'Don't Throw a One'  and Big Lee's Miniature Adventures  reports, as ever. 

I did a little shopping, too - a few more 6mm scale railway tracks from Blotz, for my 1859 project, and (influenced by the Rejects' Rivoli game) a 2mm scale Mediterranean Village from Brigade Models - we'll see how that looks with 6mm armies!  

One really nice feature of this show is the 'flea market' area, where you can book a small table and sell off your unwanted 'hobby stuff'.  For me, this seems to work better than the usual 'Bring and Buy' stalls, which always seem to be too crowded and hard to approach, this is all a bit more casual and one can chat a bit with the sellers.   I picked up some books - first an Osprey that will be useful for my 7YW armies.. 

 

...and then a couple of vintage books on the great military engineer  Vauban : 

 The sellers of these two books were the Whitehall Warlords club, and I noticed the biography (right of picture)  is inscribed with its previous owner's name - that being Seamus Bradley. Many years ago (probably about 1987/88) I was a member of that club, and I remember Seamus, who was a thoroughly nice chap and made me very welcome. So it's nice to have a souvenir to remember him by - I am told that he has now passed away.  And of course,I think  they will be interesting to read. 

And that, as they say, was that. I had a thoroughly good day at the show, which was well-organised and well-attended. My only very slight gripes would be about the almost-full car park, and a paucity of catering facilities - luckily I had brought sandwiches for lunch -  but I did later find that there are several perfectly pleasant cafes in Gillingham High Street, only two or three minutes walk from the venue. I will try to remember them next year! 

Many thanks to Milton Hundred Wargames Club for putting on the show, and all the clubs and traders etc who ran games, tradestands etc. Great to meet and chat with a few gaming friends too, of course! 

Next time, I hope to post an 'AAR' showing my first game with the 6mm Risorgimento 1859 Italy armies and Neil Thomas 19th Century Europe rules;  the game has been completed and worked pretty well.  Until then, keep well, everyone.