Recon 2012

Friday night was a late one, by late I mean I got to bed at half seven in the morning.  And so I was pleased not to be running a game at Recon this year, and was quite happy to roll along at noon after a brief snooze.

The games on show were typical of Recon fare, it generally isn't home to the major players at gaming shows, rather the local grass roots clubs, school associations and the like tend to be more apparent.  A lot of the games were one's I'd already seen, and actually photographed for previous blog posts, so it's a relatively light load today.

Leeds Nightowls had our games from Fiasco there again, The Zulu War in 28mm:

And Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Both of these were stand out games at the show, not maybe the best, but well up there in a small field.

Nearby were plenty of examples of the more homespun gaming; Kirklees rusaders - Salamanca:

The KB Club brought two games, their homespun Sci-fi game - Accelerate and Attack, and a WW2 game using paper and acetate terrain:

Cheating using plastic trees surely!

The Yorkshire Coast Gamers presented Borodino played with DBN, which allowed the game to fit on a 4x3 foot board.

Critical mass games had what was essentially an advertisement for their game system and models.  Their fine if you want that sort of thing, but I was mainly inspired by the ingenious use of plastic flowers as alien trees:

It made for a great looking table.

Curteys Miniatures similarly advertise their range of resin tanks with this WW2 game that has done the rounds of all the shows this year.  I admit it though, I really like the look of this table and the models.

I had a chat with Will of Fire-at-will at the Society of Ancients stand.  the game they'd brought was a simplified DBM Conquistadores game.  His 20mm collection is enormous and universally very nice.  I just wish the SOC would spend a few quid on a more attractive sheet to go under their terrain.

It did look to be stripped from te bed of a tramp shortly before the show, letting the game down.

There were many more games on, and participation as ever was a major feature of the show, even I usually most reticent to get involved was happy to play along and join a game of 7 Wonders (coming second out of five seasoned players).

The rest of the games were repeats or, I'll be honest didn't catch my eye enough to take pictures of - sorry folks but I still like a pretty game, and that doesn't mean one with amazing scenery and figures necessarily; but it should have that indefinable something,,,

Or just be a period/game I dig.

For a small show it seemed lively enough, not heaving but ok, certainly to me it seemed to have picked up a little from the weather blighted previous years.  For me it was looking like a very cheap shopping day, a Saga pamphlet and 16 blank dice (for same, at one tenth the cost of Gripping Beast's dice I considered them bargain of the year and am quite happy to mark the sides up myself) had set me back a total of thirteen quid.

But then I came across this:



A version of Command and Colours, highly regarded - I've played the Fantasy and WW2 variants, and a copy of the Art of Tactic rules, plus high quality colour hex boards and terrain features and over 120 plastic 1/72nd scale miniatures.  All for £50.  I rapidly caved!  After all those who've looked at the very earliest post in this blog will know I planned a samurai collection some six years ago, getting only as far as buying 800 or so plastic samurai.  Now I have a spur to make some use of them, plus a pair of rules to use with them.

So overall a good little show as ever, I hope it continues, but next year I also hope that the games are a bit more impressive, originality is always at this show, but the aesthetics are somewhat lacking for me.