Thoughts on The Other Partizan….Part 2

A rather eclectic selection but each satisfies a particular requirement in the collection. Needless to say there are cunning plans afoot….

After the rather modest selection of hastily taken photographs that featured in my previous post, I wanted to finish up the Partizan review with the inevitable ‘show haul’ picture as well as a copious amount of name dropping and overall thoughts on the day.

The Haul

I have resigned myself to only painting figures for skirmish level games, for me this means 28mm and forces of around a dozen or so figures a side. I have the Napoleonic Peninsula skirmish set up pretty much organised for painting - I merely need some 95th Rifles and a couple of buildings - and the Crusades ‘Templars and Assassins’ project just needs the figures (I have a few ideas about this but for now it is still checking it what is available). I wanted something WW2 SAS/Commando/French Resistance based so the two sets from the 0200 range absolutely fitted the bill, especially as I own a set of the SAS Rogue Regiment boardgame that is crying out for figures to be used with it. The SAS book you see, although primarily focussed on the desert is part one of the Paddy Mayne trilogy so, in the the interests of completeness (I have the final volume of this series - SAS Daggers Drawn) and for the princely sum of £3.50 I snapped it up. The middle volume is currently en route from eBay and covers the operations in Italy.

Travel Battle has seen something of a resurgence recently and after taking part in a game at the club a couple of weeks back I decide to grab a copy so as to give it a second chance. Yup, I have owned this previously but at the time it was never going to get the attention it deserved. My world is a very different place these days so this has a lot more potential than when I last owned it!

Warriors of Athena covers small scale skirmishes in the age of Greek Mythology, a genre I find very hard to resist! I blame it on seeing Jason and the Argonauts at a young age, closely followed by the 1980s version of Clash of the Titans - I have yet to see the remake. Now I know that Foundry have a large range of figures for this but North Star will have some suitable plastics available in due course - at least for the heroes and their companions - and certainly obtaining the almost obligatory Skeleton warriors would be easy enough.

The final part of the haul was an unexpected gift courtesy of Ray Rousell of Don’t Throw a 1 fame (and, by extension, Big Lee Hadley of Big Lee’s Miniature Adventures renown as they are two of the authors) in the shape of a copy of 1812 The Retreat from Moscow - A Battle Chronicle Wargame. These rules are almost a role playing game designed as a wargame in that the premise is that one has to survive the rigours of the Retreat - either playing solo or collaboratively. It looks really interesting and the potential for using the system for games featuring other retreats is substantial. As a nice touch Ray has finally found a use for all those wagons he acquired from yours truly that were part of Eric Knowles’s collection. 

People 

I touched briefly on some of the people I met up with in my last post but it would be remiss of me to not mention saying hello to veteran wargamers Andy Callan and Henry Hyde. I also bumped into Mark Flanagan which is always a pleasure. I saw in the distance John Armatys - at the time knee-deep in the Wargames Development game of 633 squadron - and also Graham Evans aka Trebian. I would have loved to have said hello but sadly time was against me.

Overview

Despite only being there for around four hours I enjoyed the show. Some of the games were quite incredible to look at and I was rather pleased to see that many of these looked quite possible for club night games. For sure there were a few games that fell dangerously close to falling into the diorama category but that is not meant in a disparaging way. I was quite taken by the age group of the attendees which augurs well for the hobby going forwards as new and younger blood should always be welcome. I can’t help thinking that the trade was a little uneven. There were some traders that seemed to take up a lot of room but what seemed to be little in the way of buying customers. The catering inside was wholly inadequate once the doors opened although outside had a few stalls. 

In truth I found the whole thing to be worth attending but it was quite overwhelming in terms of the crush of humanity present. I managed to get run over by a chap on a mobility scooter - I am quite used to this as the Memsahib is still getting used to her new model - which did little to ease my by then weary feet. There was little space to sit down and recharge one’s batteries before commencing a further perambulation which, for those of us that are either mobility challenged or someway beyond the first flush of youth, was a bit of a disadvantage. That is just me being me I guess.

This was my second visit to the Other Partizan and, if truth be told, although as mentioned I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I doubt very much if I shall be going again. A five hour round trip for a four hour visit, two of which were among the thundering herd, is a little on the wearing side for me so I reckon I shall stick with Tonbridge and hope that some other shows will return closer to home and, more importantly, on a Sunday!