Newbury and Reading Wargames Society presents....

Colours 2018

It was a warm September day, a slight breeze and not a cloud in the sky. The perfect day to spend indoors with the backpack brigade. Yep it was Colours today.

As I have waxed lyrical in my previous post, this is my favourite show of the year. So I was up at the crack of dawn, baking some breakfast cinnamon whirls and bagging up some toy soldiers to sell. My illustrious wargaming opponent and I were nice and early at the front of the queue when the doors opened, so straight up to the bring and buy and we booked in our goods. I cannot emphasise enough how good a job the team do on the bring and buy each year. All volunteers, the efficiency in which they run it is a credit to the club. I know previously they have struggled to get it right, and I can say they now have it running like clockwork.

So, what did I buy? Well I didn't go crazy this year, it was nice just to enjoy the show and take in the demo games, but I did pick up a few bits.  Some bits of resin furniture from Trevor at Coritani www.magneticdisplays.co.uk. for my Heroquest games. I have bought from him before, nice resin sculpts, not too pricy and have that old school feel about them that is perfect for dungeon crawling.

I picked up a Chibi Raging Annie from Bad Squiddo and an Athena, Goddess of Wisdom to use in Ospreys Gods and Mortals skirmish game. For the same game I picked up some Footsore Vikings and a bag of less specific Black Tree design vikings from Mili-art.

Finally, I had to see if I could pick up a couple of giants in miniature from Wargames Illustrated (they are limited to 500 of each so they won't be around forever) I picked up a "Flash" Harry (mainly because it would amuse the Mother in Law) and an Alan Quartermain. I also grabbed a blister of 28mm scale pigs from Warbases  for a future project I will write about in the future.

The demo games had a couple of good tables of note. I didn't capture them all, but the following caught my imagination. Firstly, a 40mm scale table in full snowscape from Wessex games entitled Retreat from Moscow:

Next was a World War One table in 28mm presented by Adrian Shepherd and friends entitled The Race Across Idlib Provence.

A group call "Friends who like Rapid Fire" presented a most impressive display of 20mm WW2 vehicles much to the chagrin of my illustrious wargaming opponent who is in the beginning of the planning stage of doing his own Rapid Fire demo of Operation Goodwood.

A few Brits and the Hobby presented a demonstration of the Spectre ruleset. The giant scratchbuilt(?) tankers made an impressive centre to the table.

Overall a fun day out. However, I would say it seemed quiet this year. There didn't seem as many visitors. I dont know actual figures, but I didn't get as many backpacks to the face. This was reflected in my bring and buy sales, sadly I had to carry more items back home than I hoped. Anyone want to buy an original copy of Escape From Colditz?