I arrived at Dave's bright eyed and bushy tailed in time for Shaun to (kindly) pick us both up in the car. We headed down the A1 with only one pit stop to stoke up the engines with caffeine. Many thanks to Shaun for the lift down- very much appreciated. And thanks to both Dave and Shaun for the banter on our travels (sorry about the slightly morbid subject matter on the way home- all I can say is that it's good to get it off one's chest! LOL )
The thing a really love about the York show is that it always features a gamut of high quality games on display and has a fantastic array of traders. In short it's visually appealing great for shopping, if a little heavy on the old wallet. The space is also just as important. Although it can be a little disorienting due to the many floors etc it is just the right size; not too big so's to miss the traders and games and not so small that it can be wrapped up in an hour.
It's one of my favourite shows of the calender.
I have to say that with a tinge of regret, that, compared to some years the quality of the games on display was down on the last few years. This was probably a fluke but I did notice that some of the space that used to be reserved for games was now taken up by traders. This in itself is no bad thing but I think that in previous years, the balance between quality games and traders was just right where this year, it seemed trader heavy. Of course, this is just my humble opinion. Add into the pot all the variables that one gets when putting on a show and the chance that it might be different next year.
As far as loot is concerned I pre-ordered 13 packs of the beautifully sculpted, full of character Iron Duke Indian Mutiny 'Mutineers' from Empress Miniatures. There are no duplicates at all in any of the packs which is a remarkable achievement and kudos to Mike Snook for commissioning such a wonderful range and to Paul Hicks, sculpting talent extraordinaire.
Here are just a few of the packs that are on the Empress site as of now. I believe the other eight packs will be going up this week some time:
To go with the Mutineers I also bought the new Unfeasibly Miniatures Blockhaus/Fort from their Exotic Adventures range. I've tried to upload a pic of the fort but the Unfeasibly site won't let me save the pic so all I can do is supply those of you who are inquisitive about it with this ;ink:
https://www.unfeasibly.co.uk/product/blockhaus-fort-outpost-building/
Last, but quite essential I bought some Magnetic Sheets and Paper from Corantini. It is conceivable that I might have spent even more money had Magister Militum had their range of resins present. As it was I couldn't see anything on their stand fit for the Indian Mutiny and I do like to see what I'm buying first when it comes to resin buildings.
OK, onto the pics of the games. As I said earlier I think the over all quality of the games had slipped and there were some notable omissions. I do hope that this is not a downward trend, I'm probably overreacting.
Comitatus- Late Roman Reenactment:
Curteys Miniatures- Cape Wars Participation Game:
The League of Extraodinary Kriegspielers- Bukhara 1920:
?????
This was more of a Display- great nonetheless!:
Leeds Militaria Wargames Society Club-
Dragon Rampant, They're Over the Walls!
Crusade Game (???):
Sci-Fi (???):
The Bunker- The Alamo Participation Game:
Bye for now.
