After an horrifically early start this morning, having stupidly decided to catch a train that would get me to Newbury before the show opened, I attended this year's Colours. Yes, three weeks after going to "The Other Partizan" I was at another wargames show!
I had a good day out and bumped into various people throughout the day for chats -
Carole,
Simon,
Simon and
David from the blogosphere; Guy Bowers (editor of WS&S); Annie of
Bad Squiddo Games, Damian of
Donnington/Ancient & Modern; Ian N from the club, who was helping with Simon Miller's game; Dave and Lynda who I know from my (limited and not recent) forays into tournament gaming. And a few others.
After getting in through the doors, I headed straight up to the top floor.
For those who don't know, the show is held in the Dubai grandstand at Newbury Racecourse. For the last few years, all the games and the bring & buy are on the top floor; the traders are on the first and second floors. Previously the games and traders had been on all three floors. the current arrangements does work quite well though, although perhaps the various games don't get as much attention from attendees as they should.
After a quick tour of the games to see what was being put on, I worked my way back down to take a look at the trade stands. I would say that overall the show was less busy than last year, but still quite busy.
After popping outside for a quick cigarette I headed back up to the top floor to take photos of the games. There were the usual bugbears of clubs/groups not having any information displayed about their games and some not even having a sign to say who they were. In one case it was understandable though - they'd been asked at very short notice if they could, after all, put on a game. there may not have been anything on their table to say who they were, but at least they did have some information on the table about their game and were happy to talk. Oh, yes, another bugbear - clubs/groups ignoring people who are looking at their games.
With photos taken, it was time for shopping. I had a couple of pre-orders to collect (books from Paul Meekins; MDF terrain and bases from Warbases). I did have a few things on my shopping list or that i wanted to take a look at if they were there - hunting them down took me a while. Not everything I wanted was available at the show, but I did pick up a few things which I was after or saw and thought "Need! Need!".
I'll be posting pics of the games tomorrow, once Ive had a chance to go through them.
Now for the highly anticipated loot pics:
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| Quite a bit of loot |
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| Books pre-order from Paul Meekins |
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| Rubicon kits, paints, superglue and some airbrush lubricant |
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| Essex - SYW Russians* and a pack of Para command from Foundry |
* commanders, some more artillery and enough figures to do two more converged grenadier regiments.
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folding dice trays from Deep Cut Studios;
the black one was a full price (£6) design, the other was a cheap (£3) one made from offcuts
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| Various Warbases kits |
Phew! Looks like enough to keep me busy for a little while!
