The dodgy title will become apparent as you read about our little sojourn to the sunny depths of Newark racecourse for Colours 2006. Two of ‘da boyz’ were representing the club, George in the WAB tournament and Clive playing his favourite Principles of War – more of their exploits later.
The day started bright and early with the Shaun and Faye picking Steve and myself up. The car journey quickly fell into its normal path as we righted the wrongs of the world, mainly by ways which involved shooting people I must admit but still. After about an hour of intense discussion we had fixed all the world’s problems and talk turned to matters wargaming. The club’s current love of Warmachine and Hordes was bound to put a strain on the wallet and the normal affirmations were made … you know the ones about only spending a tenner, apart from Steve who was a man with a mission and in his own words came ‘wedged up’ and ready for action! Horror loomed as we turned the final corner and headed for the carpark only to notice that there appeared to be another event on at the racetrack running alongside the wargames show. Now not a bad thing really, so long as the other event was something along the line of a ‘eat all the dead cow you can’ event … but no the event was a dolls house exhibition! Now this conjured up some hideous images at the possible problems when the buying frenzied wargamer walks into the wrong hall, “excuse me love do you do that in 36mm and have you got any bombed houses”. Also we had a slight debate about what would happen when the smellier, less social able of the wargames fraternity heard they were selling all sort of dolls in the hall across the way – but we have a family website so I will leave that to your imagination.
Shaun managed to blag his way past the door crew by claiming he had been in the day before, which was true but only half the story. The door monkeys seemed less impressed with my argument that I shouldn’t have to pay as I had been here the year before … which leads me nicely into the first observation that we made (well to be honest Shaun spurted it out first … then made the observation but again that is another tale). In something akin to the ‘twilight zone’ it appeared that we had walked into the largest ‘déjà vu’ situation since the last English football team penalty shootout. We appeared to have stepped back a year – the show was EXACTLY the same but with weird little changes that you’d expect from maybe stumbling across a parallel dimension, all we needed was George to step and admonish us to “Smoke me a kipper and I’ll be back for breakfast” before going forth and thrashing all the opponents before him in the WAB tournament.
The only noticeable change we noticed that was the 54mm English Civil War game had morphed into a 54mm American Civil War game … now one might think this is a slight exaggeration on our part, I admit I had been up 6 hours already, 3 of which involved me throwing myself off a 6’ skateboard bowl in a vain attempt to recapture my ebbing youth, but my judgement was as sound as it normally is (… quiet at the back there) BUT we are not exaggerating.
Most of the games appeared to be the same ones as last year (maybe a couple were tweaked a bit but not by much) and as for the stalls you didn’t need the floor plan if you had any sort memory at all. Maybe it just peeved us a little, certainly not many of the punters seemed inhibited by this bizarre time warp and to be honest it does seem to be happening more and more often around the shows but still.
So what was new … well we came across Moonfleet Minatures who manufacture aliens of various descriptions and became the first of a few stalls to make me break the ‘only a tenner’ admonition of earlier. The purchase was some fish aliens on a stall which was also selling the new Two Hour Wargame Sci Fi rules 5150 – it was destiny so look out for the fishy blighters at a table near you very soon. I also accidentally added to my Orboros army with a woldwarden and some wolves as well as two case trays to fit the Horde stuff. It was at this stand at the end of the day where Shaun found the deals of deals going on – buy a starter Skorne pack and get a unit pack or warbeast pack FREE – bugger that my ‘tenner’ pile was depleted by then!
As the sun sank and Shaun collected his takings from the Bring & Buy we headed out the door and back to the car – the show was weird in a way, but normal ‘we came, we spent, we left’, buying more toys to fill the void made by selling stuff at previous shows and making sure that the universal ‘wargame force’ was left in equilibrium … next time there is a big show, lets go retro and make a ‘CONVOY’.
Rich
