Last Saturday, 12th April was by all accounts the warmest day of the year so far in the UK, so how did I spend it? Yes of course, indoors - wandering around a huge and somewhat dimly-lit exhibition hall at London's ExCel Centre, venue for South London Warlords' Salute 52 wargaming show.
Need I say it's a very large show, with about 120 games and a similar number of traders listed on the program. That really is more than I can deal with on one day! So a degree of selectivity and filtering is required, and my 'filter' is to simply stick to 'historical' games only, and mostly pass by the fantasy and sci-fi games, just because I don't play that sort of game myself. So with apologies to those who love the latter formats, here is a selection of the pictures I took of the games I did stop and look at - more or less in the order I saw them..
Well, a big show needs big games, and in prime position right near the entrance was Retired Wargamers Reloaded Gotterdammerung Berlin 45
Depicting the final Soviet Army assault on the Reichstag in April 1945, this absolutely gargantuan table (I am told it was about 20 feet long) was truly spectacular. Just look at all those tanks!
I gather the buildings are 3D-prints modelled on the actual buildings that were there - they were really impressive.
and I particularly liked the huge Flak Tower in the far corner
This display won the award for 'Best Scenery' at the show - well-deserved. I also understand that it will be appearing at some more shows this year, starting with Broadside, Gillingham on 14th June.
After that show-stopper, the expression 'follow that' sprang to mind. But fear not, there were plenty of other great games to see.
A nice 'compare and contrast' moment was provided almost immediately, by the Loughton Strike Force Warsaw 44 game.
More excellent scenery, as one comes to expect from the 'LSF', and the game was being played through with ( I think ) 'O Group' rules. I loved the dive-bombing Stuka;
and the tramcar barricade
Getting away from WW2, Simon ( To The Strongest ) Miller and friends put on a nice-looking War of Spanish Succesion game Louis Quatorze’s Warses, as a playtest of Simon's upcoming ruleset for the period
You can't beat the colourful look of the troops in this period, which exceed even those of Simon's signature Hawaian shirts..
The Gentlemen’s Wargames Parlour group showed their 'VBCW' Like cricket - but with guns - not sure exactly how that worked, but it looked suitably quirky!
Now back to WW2, and a couple of Western Desert games. First Brecon Wargames Club - DAK ATTACK participation game of an LRDG raid on an Axis airfield:
and second, Anschluss Publishing with their The Defence of Tobruk 1941 : Anschluss are another group who always do a very nice-looking table. I bought their 'War on the Ground' rules a couple of years ago, they are really designed for 15mm and smaller scales, but I might get away with playing a smaller action with my 20mm WW2 forces - one day! Notice more Stukas, they seem to be the aircraft of choice at this year's show.
Still in Africa (albeit fictional ) but a few decades later, Weymouth Levellers Wargames Club AK47 game:
Cornwall Wargames Assocation were having all the fun with their Brandy for the Parson participation game of 18th-Century smugglers, including 'Judge Jeffries' doing a Brucie's Play Your Cards Right turn drawing cards for the players, a great idea for a light-hearted game, and note the club members in smugglers 'uniform' striped sailors shirts.
Back to Ancient times and a more traditional approach, Society of Ancients Battle of Gaugamela 331 BC used Impetus rules and great 28mm armies
the 18th Century Imagi-nations Wars of the Gelderland Succession Vauban’s Wars game depicted a fictional siege and looked very nice ( including obligatory wargamers pointing, as this was clearly very much a game being played )
Friends of General Haig showed their Breaking the Stalemate, Iran Iraq War
From desert to snowscapes, Hugo’s Heroes Trangen 1808 , Swedes vs. Norwegians
and including Napoleonic Ski Troops!
From the same period, Garry David Wills/Caseshot Publishing's The Best Army in Europe - the Battle of Pirmasens 1793 , 15mm Game using Black Powder, a really nice looking terrain using Kallistra 'Hexon' system - and roads/rivers by Timecast, I think he told me.
I think this was a scenario from Gary's excellent Throwing Thunderbolts book on the Revolutionary Wars period.
Going forward again by 90-odd years, the Continental Wars Society presented their Battle of Gurguljat 1885, an episode from the war between Bulgaria and Serbia - which you are of course all experts on(!) As ever, a really good setup with loads of information about the battle and the CWS, and complimentary biscuits, something of a tradition!
There were mobile post offices on the battlefield, and a (Bulgarian?) marching band:
and finally, a rather brilliantly simple set of home-brew rules were being used, which I can show in their entirety:
I think these look rather good! Notice the massive simplification of not worrying about casualties but only the effect of combat on morale, because of course the result of taking casualties is ultimately the destruction of a unit's morale (a similar mechanism drives combat in the slightly more complex Twilight of the Sun King/Divine Right etc rules series, does it not?). Great idea, and it allowed the game to be played very quickly and easily, so players still had time to chat to us punters. I joined the CWS myself last year, and it was great to meet and chat wth Ralph Weaver and his associates, including Peter Laing figures expert Ian Dury - nice to talk to you, Ian!
More 19th Century Europe in the form of Yarkshire Gamer's The Battle of Mentana 1867 “Rome or Death” using really nice Gringo 40s figures
Now it seems the theme of the show was 'Highlanders', but I only realised that quite late in the day when I enountered these gents:
Back to WW2 and another spectacular terrain for TooFatLardies What a Tanker participation game Operation Charnwood, Caen July 1944, which was proving very popular
and on closer inspection, there were quite a lot of tanks in there..
Mark Backhouse Strength and Honour 2mm Roman game looked great, note the ingenious creation of woodland from what I strongly suspect was 'bobbly bathmat'...
Peter’s Paper Boys Wofun 10mm Napoleonic - I could be tempted by these, no need to paint!
More monumental WW2 : All Hell Let Loose, Bloody Omaha
And finally, last but very much not least, Per Broden and Wyre Forest Wargamers The Crossing of Düna 1701 Great Northern War game looked tremendous:
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| I loved the floating siege batteries |
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| and the typically GNW forest |
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| and there were some armies in there too! (10mm?) |
Phew - that's all the games I managed to get decent-ish pictures of; by no means all of just the 'historical' setups, and I was there from 11:00am to closing time 5:00pm. As usual, for much more comprehensive coverage I can recommend the fantastic reports by 'Posties Rejects' Big Lee and Ray Rousell - how they manage to get round ALL the games is beyond me!
Of course there's a social aspect to the show, and I managed to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones - had a coffee and chat with long-lost and receently reunited old gaming buddies Tony and Reg, and Tony's son Oliver ( Tony and Oliver were part of the Retired Wargamers Reloaded support team, tasked with setting up and packing away that huge Berlin game!) - more about Tony and Reg in my next post. I also attended 'Reject' Ray's Blogger Meet-Up ; it was really nice to do that, and good to chat to, among others, Andy ( Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed ) and Steve ( General Reeve ) , and very interesting to meet Matt Crump, who told us he is the man who introduced Jon ( Palouse Wargaming Journal ) Freitag to remote gaming during lockdown - quite a few of us have a lot ot thank him and Jon for! Also at the meet up was Chris P aka Nundanket, and we joined forces for a couple of hours after the meet-up to wander and look at the games. Good to see you, Chris!
And of course there was a little light shopping, but I kept it moderate, partly due to time constraints! A couple of Helion books - most importantly Stephan Thion's Battle of Fribourg 1644 which I hope to use for a re-fight and will discuss more in a future post, and I also took a punt on the new Bismarck's Wars rulebook, with a view to trying them on my 1859 Risorgimento armies. That project needs scenery, and I picked up some basic ( and cheap - good!) unpainted MDF roads and rivers from Pendraken, and trees and fences from Heroics and Ros. So now I need to get those painted...
And that's about it - as you can tell, it was quite the marathon day, and my legs and back ached considerably that night! But I'm very glad I went along, and it's been great reading all the other bloggers' reports of the day - partly for getting an idea of all the masses of stuff I missed(!)
If you've read this far, I hope you've enjoyed seeing my pictures, and if you were there, I hope you had a great day. Many thanks again to all the folk who I chatted to, that's what the day is really about..
Next time, I hope to report on some actual Face-to-Face gaming - Napoleonics, no less, with Black Powder rules... Until then keep well, everyone.