Pudsey Recon - The Show Review

So that's Recon over with for another year,  Thank goodness really; I was pretty burned out by the end  of the day.

Being an early arrival to set up my game I didn't get a chance to pick up details of the games on show, beyond what they themselves offered in places.  So I will dive in with info as best I can and as ever you, the readers, can use the comments to illuminate on what was what.

Anyhow.  It was the same venue as ever, but this  year blessed with drizzle rather than a foot of snow.

Games wise, the view of the show on the interweb seems to be that the games tend towards the high end of club games rather than showpiece display games.  That really depends on your club I suppose, but I think that it's a fair assessment.  First of the games I took snaps of, once I got a break from setting up my own work, was this WW2 game from Mailed Fist:

It seemed to be some sort of attack on the most heavily defended part of the Atlantic Wall; gun emplacements aplenty!

Next up was a Gulf War I game featuring French versus Iraqi forces over terrain that appeared to be made entirely of paper:

For the record, Paper roads, rivers, houses; fine.  Hills and berms, not so much.  However the Iraqi T72's were quite nice.

Next up, some film inspired WW2 action with Kirklees' Force Ten from Navarone:

A good mix of off-the-shelf terrain and scratch-built pieces, but you needed to look hard to spot the figures on table.

DBMN (or is it just DBN) is an unofficial variant of DBA for the Napoleonics period.  although only a small scale game (10mm I think) it was one of the nicest, neatest looking games.

I will at this point note that Privateer Press were present giving their usual display of Warmachine to anyone interested, but I wasn't so as ever I didn't photograph it.  It's good they support these smaller shows though, must be worth their while...

Up on the Warlord stand the big news was their Zulu War range.  Produced in partnership with Empress Miniatures, the new Zulu sprues look fantastic:

The technique of attaching the arms in the middle of the upper arm may seem strange, but the Zulu habit of wearing fur armbands makes this a reasonable option that allows for otherwise neked trops to be assembled without a compromise of seams.

These were on display with the contents of the Rorke's Drift boxed set, which is massive!, the two feature buildings are true scale to the figures, rather than scaled down, and quite simple staggering, the models filled a 3 x 2 foot table with ease!

Our club was being courted by Warlord for future events and activities, and it sounds like they have many other things in the offing, the English Civil War version of Black Powder - by the sounds of it a stand alone rules set - is due for Salute next year; however I missed most of this chat, as I was too busy dealing with the punters round my game to catch much of the meeting I was supposed to be at!

Back to the show and the next two games were amongst the most impressive; The firast I think was the Italians in Ethiopia in 1896, but I'm ready to stand corrected:

The scenery was the best at the show, with a large and imposing chasm cutting across the table.  By comparison the figures were not incredible, but perfectly good!

Last up for photo's today was a large late Roman game; again on scuplted terrain, though of a more basic type.

The figures in general were some of the best at the show however, with high standards of painting and basing throughout:

There were a number of other games I either didn't get shots from, or nothing that looked any good on camera.  Next to my display the Lance and Longbow Society had a Wars of the Roses game on, alongside a large reenactor presence.  Upstairs Steve was running a Wings of War demo, there was the Teddy Wild West game on again, a WW2 Bunker raid game, a WWI tank game of some sort and a Napoleonics naval battle run by the Leeds Games Club, among yet others.

There were all the usual traders, but by the time I was free to look around them they were packing up and besides, I'd come to sell on the Bring and Buy, not spend spend spend!  In the event I made a sum total of £73 after some haggling at the end of the day.

I'm pleased to report the catering was as idiosyncratic as ever.  The mint sauce was there for the pie and peas officianados; not for me though!  A random sandwich (Ham and Onion apparently!), tea and Redbull got me through, just.

And my game?  Well it nearly did me in, being sleep starved as I was (why did I go out the night before?).  One photo for today; but a full report on it in days to come.

As ever a good little show to finish off the year; One where I get to see many an old gaming colleague, and catch up, so hellos go out to Neil, Phil, Tim, Chris and anyone else who I had a chat with.  Over the course of the day I realised I've been to five shows this year and done display games at three of them; more than I would normally contemplate in two or even three years!

I'm knackered!  I can't begin to imagine how some people do this every few weeks.