On Sunday, we ventured to a wargames convention for the first time in 9 months, armed with a low four figure bag of spending money and the hope and expectation of having us a jamboree. I was in effervescent mood. And that was where the traditional festival of fun sort of spluttered to a rather inauspicious halt. What do I want from a show? Well, being a traditionalist of the old school, I generally want the following: 1, A proper bring and buy, or at a push a tabletop sale which is free of dealers who are getting a trade stand for a lot less than were they in the main hall. It should be located away from the main footfall routes so that the knots of people who gather there (ideally)  don't slow down entry and exit, and generally become a clot in a narrow artery, so to speak. 2. Vibrant and varied trade stands. Simply having big box resellers making up 30% of your trade stands is lazy. Build it and they will come. but get out there and tell people about why what you've built i...

 In 1985, my parents had moved to a semi rural area of Sheffield, and a large bungalow, taking with them an old neighbour and family friend who was widowed decades previously. It was a little odd, but look, I had a massive bedroom extension, newly built onto the new family manse, which I only had to share with my brother for a short while... It was massive to a 16 year old kid, measuring around 35x10 feet, meaning that I could do some serious wargaming. You can see it here, but back then it lacked the paved driveway:  5 Josselin Court Now, this meant that I was moving from the area I'd grown up in, to a wholly alien environment, where it transpired, there was one bus into town every hour, instead of every 5 minutes and the resulting journey was 45-60 minutes as opposed to 12 which, I thought was fucking barbaric on a Mad Max level - where I was living 8 feet from a Victorian cemetery.  Did I mention I have had a massive phobia around death and cemeteries since I was 4? Ad...

 My Painter contacted me last night to show me the completed 28mm Victrix Ancient British chariots he has just completed for me. I'm really excited about them. As wel las Queen Tracii of the Astespumantii tribe, (who were located it is said close to what is now Basildon and around Canvey Island) there are her tribal druids Vyxsiinex and Heddexx and 27 more local Boy Racers from the tribe. If you are offloading any nicely painted 28mm armoies at Partizan this weekend, please drop me a message as a comment with details. I have moderation turned on, so I can take your details down and delete the commant without anyone else seeing it. TTFN  

 Having finished work, I've just made my way down to the bottom of the two back gardens, to check the state of play with the rat traps I've been forced to use, since the allotments beyond the woods at the rear were closed, forcing the twitchy-nosed little bastards to sponge from gardens.  I have bought some rather effective and lethal to rat neck and human hand alike which  today have made the lower garden look like a genocide trial at the U.N. Three of the little buggers were martyred; two neatly disconnected from mortality with the traps, but the third, laid on it's side with no apparent injury. I presume that, having witnessed two of the family butchered, it staggered away, clutching it's little chest, expiring next to another trap. What a drama-rodent. I've been mulling on whether, given my time all over again, I'd bother with wargaming/roleplaying. And the answer is no, I'd probably not. Why? Well, frankly, since aged 12 when it got serious for me, I ha...

 OK, so in the main post we ascertained that as far as having any kind of genre affiliation, all bets were off when it came to your humble narrator. But how did I embrace the addiction, nay, lifestyle once I had my feet under the table and my fingers in mant - perhaps too many - metaphorical pies? Well, I was very lucky, indeed blessed to 'come up' with one of the greatest wargaming pirate crews the UK has ever and will ever see.  Sheffield Wargames Society, I found out were notorious for ther prowess with both the toy soldier and the pint glass, not to mention been pretty sharp with dealings with the fairer sex, whilst on nights out during weekend-long 'beanos'.  Let me be very clear, in the latter case, I can hand on heart say that this only applied to the single members as the wives of the marriwed members would simply have terminated their husband's collections, as did in fact happen at one Triples when an unnamed member of the club had an argument with his spou...

 Although I'd got my first whiff of the hobby via the Heritage mini games based loosely on D&D and the D&D itself, it was literally a month or so before I was finding out about historical gaming, which, despite what my other posts may convey, is always going to be every bit as important to me. For me, the two, nay three, if we give sci-fi it's own niche in the evolutionary ladder go hand in tentacles. I sometimes get typecast by folks as being a fantasy gamer who dabbles in historical, or the reverse. But the the truth is that I am a trans-genre, an oddity of my time I suppose, when gamers were in individual camps, sometimes quite vehemently and venemously so. I remember the first time I took the late Tony 'Spike' Atkin to Sheffield Wargames Society and he obviously and visibly had a good time, so much so that he was heard to quip that 'Wargamers aren't the wankers I always thought they were - well not quite as big wankers'. He did have a point I sup...