Pudsey Recon - Aftermath

Snow very nearly killed of the show, but at least some of the traders and most of the display games made it to what was a very quiet show.

With 4 inches or more of snow still on the parking lot I arrived and awaited Neil; only to get cold and bored after five minutes and decide to start setting up without him. Of course he was already inside! Excitable lad! his terse text reply not making it apparent he'd been there sometime already.

Anyway, confusion over, we set up our game, and what a mighty display it was too; gaze upon it in wonder:

Neil's moment of Glory

The terrain was my collection of Fat Spider and Hovels Peninsular War houses, Scratchbuilt ruins, Model railway trees - upgraded by Neil,a massive hill - made by the club for gamesday and fixed up by me, some Birdcage sand for the road and my terrain cloth over a board to finish the whole affair. Models were a mix of Perry plastics and metal, Victrix plastics, Front Rank and Foundry. For rules it was Song of Drums and Shakos.

But before talking in depth about ourselves what else was there. Well as mentioned any trader with a long or arduous journey to the show seemed to have thought wiser of it, but as most of the display games were from nearer locations I think the bulk of these still made it.

Not photographed were Malifaux, Warmachine/Hordes (same as last year), Flames of War, Something involving snowmen, The Hordes of the Things competition and board gaming. Other than that the following caught my eye:

A new range of 15mm Sci-fi was promoting itself heavily, the models were pricey, but tolerable and very nice. The terrain is also available and the Arctic finish of the display game was attractive. Could I tell you what the game was? No, sorry, sci-fi gaming just doesn't raise my interest that much nowadays. Looked nice though.


Next up, Fields of Glory in 15mm; I cannot remember what period it was, possibly crusades era Eastern Europe. Feel free to correct me.


The other Leeds club, put on their Air War game, set in Vietnam, again. I think the rules are the modern variant of Check your six, but I'm not winning brownie points for specifics on the games here. Next time I should take notes! The best bit about the game I could see was the the playsheet, which was produced for them at a printers and uses a blown up google maps image of actual Vietnamese terrain.

A game called "Every One's a Tiger" was next to ours, and certainly wins the prize for most scenery, and big German tanks too. There were at least a dozen Tiger and Kingtigers on the board, which seemed centred on players trying to drive their allied tanks from one end of the board to the other intact. Some challenge!

Narrowly winning game of the show for me was this one:

A Post-Roman Britain game, it featured generally great terrain (though let down by the felt being used for woodland templates. Fine in a club, not good enough for a show - it should have at least been over sprayed or drybrushed or some such!).

However the models win this game the plaudits; really nicely finished models:

Plus they were playing the game. Which I think is the point.

So how, did me and Neil do?

Well, I think we ended up as the "Dad's and their Lads" game (or more cruelly, the Creche) for the day. With an assured playing time of only forty minutes, it was easy enough to attract people to try our game; helped by the fact we were happy to let anyone have a go.

The consequence of this being that sometimes the forces found themselves with additional troops to contend with; one game featured unfamiliar troop I can only assume were by the colour of their uniforms some new French allies:

Still the aim of the game, aside from introducing the Napoleonics as a skirmish period to interested parties, was for the French commander, Acy, to slip out of Spain after the Battle of Salamanca. With him were a dozen of his trusted allies and a cartload of Gold.

Lieutenant Blunt of the 60th Rifles returned to try and stop the Plan succeeding. With each player having only 20 minutes to carry out their actions the game was set.

On the day it was 3-2 to the French in terms of victories; Aggressive French tactics usually prevailed, but if the Spanish Guerrillas concentrated on stopping the Cart moving, the French soon ran out of time.

By half two things were winding down, but despite the weather it was a good day. I chatted to loads of people, had a good mooch around the stalls that were there, bought very little (other than overpriced tea), but most of all had fun.

What to do next year I wonder?...