Another Fiasco!

One bizarre feature to this year's Fiasco, was its' unexpected sharing of space with the Leeds book of Remembrance for Sir Jimmy Saville; whether this had any effect on attendance, I wouldn't begin to imagine, but in some ways it was hard to tell who was there for what.

Once inside it was just another wargames show.  The space as you can see from above, is big and spacious, with a refreshingly high ceiling making it quite airy despite a lack of natural lighting.  It's the same room as last year, and despite the ongoing gloomy climate there seemed to be plenty of traders around.

What did not feel as plentiful in my opinion was decent games, there were a good few games as pictures will attest to, but other than a couple of Crusades games, little with a real visual impact.  Too many games on a small scale for me!  Still Diving in, first to catch the eye through the door was Pultaneys 13th Regiment of Foot with a Culloden game:

Striking uniforms compensated for the little models lost on a big board.

Leeds Nightowls was represented well, with Mark's representation of the Battle of Delphinium:

Although the felt cloth looked a little plain, I think the simple terrain was remarkably effective, and Mark's figures (virtually all Immortal and Wargames Factory plastics) looked excellent.

Moving on, for spectacle it was as mentioned, to the crusades one had to go to.  One game was part of a rules launch, about which I know, or enquired for, no information.

Still, its simple terrain was well presented and the models were excellent eye candy.  The Crusades are one of those periods I've never pretended to be interested in, but I always go for pretty at shows...

A runner up for spectacle, was this six mil Gettysburg what if from 'Bart Fegg's Club for Naughty Boyd and Girls' (go figure).

Beautiful scenery.  I'm pretty sure this was at Triples earlier this year, and it still looks good, the only problem is again, the size of the models.  6mm gives great scope but I am not a fan of the visual appeal at a show.  But then I do very little gaming in this scale, so it is a personal judgement.

If you wanted to see a crowd, you could do worse than combine cult TV, wargames, shiny toys, and a young woman in a suggestive t-shirt!  This was the winning formula for attention on the Crooked Dice stand, for their 7TV system.

I've heard a  little about these before, they essentially aim to allow the replaying, or fighting of battles as staged in cult tv and movies.  Think Doctor Who (for whom they have a proper license, impressive), Bond, The Avengers, etc.  How popular it was is anyone's guess, put it is certainly a polished product.

More humble, Wakefield's entry, a smugglers game of some sort I believe:

By comparison Barnsley put on a 10mm WW2 game, that looked quite nice, but again pretty small stuff.

The Lance and Longbow society and the Pike and Shot society combined efforts to put on a DBA Aztecs versus Conquistadores game.  To be honest, with the combined efforts of two societies, I would have hoped they could have made it look a bit more attractive.  The camouflage sheeting as a base is an offence unto the god of wargaming!

By contrast, and beack to spectacle, 28mm and the Crusades, the Ilkley Lads put on a refight of Harran in 1104 ad.

Great terrain, great figures.

Out front Legendary Wargames put on a WW1 dogfight participation game.  Nice enough, but lacking in their usual impact, I would have hoped for another big 28mm game here...

On a final pass one more game caught my eye.  I'm not sure who put it on, but it was clearly a zombie game, making I would suggest ingenious use of a set of Gulf  War terrain.

Now that's a zombie horde!

So, I'm sorry to say, I was a bit disappointed by the games on display.  No big epic flintlock period games, only one ancient game and the prettiest items on show were either periods or scales I'm not bothered by.

As for shopping, our club splurged £200 on terrain, which was pleasing, but for myself it was less than £20 on a couple of 20mm Stuart tanks and two Books on the Napoleonic Wars.  The best aspect of the day was as ever at shows, the catching up with friends, and in this case, going to the pub afterwards for a few hours of chat and a couple of beers.

A good day out, by association; but Fiasco still struggles to impress; if it wasn't on my doorstep, I wouldn't lose any sleep over missing it.