Broadside 12/06/2011

I spent a very pleasant morning at this new show in Sittingbourne, Kent organised by the Milton Hundreds Wargames Club. The venue was split into two separate halls with a mixture of games and trade located in each. I shall refrain from listing all the trade and games in attendance for no other reason than they are all really well laid out on the clubs website http://www.mhwc.co.uk/ so you can check them out for details.

I set out to arrive before opening as I had a pile of 'kit' to deliver to one of the traders and to also collect the same from one of the others. This was duly transacted and so now I am the proud owner of a pile of Zvezda Art of Tactic Operation Barbarossa kit which will form next years project. Bob Cordery reviewed the same earlier in the year and so check out his (excellent) blog http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/search/label/Art%20of%20Tactic for details of what is in the box.

SEEMS http://seemswargamesclub.blogspot.com/ were in attendance with Mr Fox running a 1/1200th Napoleonic Naval game based on Hothams Action in 1795 and pitted the RN against the French with Nelson commanding the Agamemnon (64). The picture below shows the action at the outset. I should point out that the pictures were all taken at the outset of the respective games so if not a lot appears to be happening that will be why!

SEEMS like the action is about to start....

There was a good variety of trade present with such well known names as Brigade Models, Harfields and Tumbling Dice and a host of others (again, all listed on the Milton website - just follow the link above). I managed to pick up a couple of books from David Lanchester - one of which I owe thanks for to Conrad Kinch and his excellent blog http://joyandforgetfulness.blogspot.com/ in which recent entries have described Mark Urban's book 'The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes' as being well worthy of attention for the budding Peninsular War gamer (especially using Command and Colours: Napoleonics!). This was duly acquired for £5. I also picked up (from the same source) a copy of David Glantz's book 'After Stalingrad' which covers the Red Army winter offensive after the German defeat. This is a little later than my Barbarossa kit but is well worth having simply because he is such a leading authority on the subject.

The following are some of the games that caught my eye whilst wandering about.

7TV - a brand new tabletop miniatures game set in the classic sci-fi and action TV shows of the 60s and 70s - straight off the Crooked Dice price list and with a setting straight out of any of the 60s Bond films (in fact with elements from all of them - the only thing missing was Blofeld's cat!)

A large 10mm 1866 Austro-Prussian game that really looked the part

Carry On up the North West Frontier

Nothing on the table as yet which could be described as a bit of a Suez.....

'Where the Poppies Grow' - the first in the CRUSH THE KAISER series of fast play brigade level wargames rules for the First World War coming from CTK Productions. The rules should be available fairly soon.

There was also a DBA tournament being run and a number of sci-fi skirmish type games (Space Vixens was one of them!) as well as a huge Warhammer 40K game that reminded me of a cross between Stalingrad and Helms's Deep!

I only stayed for the morning but thoroughly enjoyed my time in Sittingbourne. I met up with Bob Cordery during his flying visit and also with my old wargaming friend from my schooldays. Mercifully he was too modest to remind me of the continual beatings he used to give me using our Airfix plastic Napoleonics  and Bruce Quarrie's rules! I always managed to beat him at Waddington's Campaign though so perhaps that evened things out a little!

All in all the MHWC chaps put on a very good show and I hope that it was as successful as they had hoped and that it will feature on the calender for next year.

Very well done to all concerned.