Partizan 2017

Yesterday I made the trip to Partizan at Newark Showground. I’ve always enjoyed Partizan and the new venue is excellent. Despite a soft spot for the warren that was Kelham I have to admit the new place is ideal. Easy to get to, light and spacious. Food is a little basic and pricey but as a vegan I was quite happy with my chips and beans! There was a long queue to get in when we arrived at 10:10 and that was still going at 10:30 when other friend arrived. A good sign! There were some excellent demo games and a good selection of participation games. Not sure how the latter went as it’s not something I’m generally interested in but seemed popular enough and is a good thing to see at shows.

I usually take lot and lots of pictures for show reports but of late that has become less of a priority. I tend to sort my orders out beforehand and then the event is more of a social meet up. Lots of the LAW guys present and good to see Brendan and Timmo. Had a long chart with Harry Sidebottom and picked up the first of his latest Throne of the Caesars series, Iron and Rust. I’ve read the Ballista series and enjoyed them and have been meaning to try these for a while. And it was actually quite nice to have a proper book rather than the Kindle I’ve been using of late for fiction books. Interesting as well to discuss the popularity of ‘Roman’ fiction with publishers and their preference for that over other periods despite the risk of flooding the market. I took a few pictures of the games that took my eye or were in my periods so apologies to the ones I missed out. Nothing personal! 

Graham at Crann Tara had an excellent looking game using his teddy bear fur done for our AMG games at Partizan a few years ago. This time graced with lots of his own range of figures. Excellent looking game. Just along was the Perry’s Egypt game. VERY nice figures. I’ve been following the Steve Jones’s painting of his AWI figures on Facebook and it was good to see them in the flesh in his excellent Bunker Hill game: Dave Docherty’s Sudan game was very pretty. Meant to stop and have a char but kept getting sidetracked! And the Derby Wargames Port Arthur Russo-Japanese naval game looked excellent! The League of Gentleman Anti-Alchemists put on a nice looking WSS game in 28mm:

Too Fat Lardies were in residence with two games. A Peninsular Sharp Practice game and to go with the launch of General D’Armee, Dave Brown’s new Napoleonic rules, a 15mm Napoleonic game.  Some nicely painted ABs in display and the game certainly looked the part. I have a copy of Pickett’s Charge on which these rules are based and was getting very twitchy about my off/on/off/on/off 1806 Napoleonic project! 

And a few more of games I liked the look of! The last is of Simon Miller’s ECW variant of To The Strongest. ECW is a period I’ve never been tempted by. No idea why. It’s just never clicked with me… The table looked impressive though. 

Lots more good games there as well and some pretty participation games as well. If I hadn’t spent so much time talking I’d have taken more pics! 

I had very few needs for the show and a clear mission to not start any more periods or scales! Most of what I wanted I had pre-ordered. This was the haul:

I’d arrange with Graham at Crann Tara to grab some of the new Savoia cavalry, partly in exchange for some 6mm painted Napoleonic British. And he also bought me the extra figures to make up a unit from figures I traded with Peeler in return for food! There are a couple of little packs of Perry 1st Crusade. Some Hospitilars to make up the rest of the Brotherhood of the Swan, and some more armed pilgrims so I can do serfs if needed!

The show figure was Hemingway (no use to me…) and Harry S gave me one of the Ballista figures which I might paint and chuck in with some Saxons! And speaking of which, I wanted some command type figure to go with the plastic Saxons I intend to paint. The SAGA packs were a little costly but Foundry came to the rescue with a nice command pack.

I get a little leeway getting to Partizan as it coincides with my birthday (today!) so my wife has also renewed my Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy subscription. For me this is the only magazine worth getting at the moment. And I also finally got the last of Christian Camerons’s Arimnestos books, Rage of Ares. Really enjoy these and it will be good to see the conclusion. 

And there we have it. Another Partizan. Another birthday. All good and only offset by a developing toothache!

A