Saturday the 14th of September saw this years Colours Wargames show hosted by Newbury and Reading Wargames Society. This being the club’s 50th year we wanted to put on a great show. The club are not specifically a historical society as we have had to change with the times to keep up membership. Three floors were taken up at Newbury’s racecourse main grandstand, two floors crammed with traders and a third floor full of excellent demonstrations of recreations of battles from history in various scales. Battles included Salamanca in 28mm, Abbeyville in 3mm (a crazy scale if you ask me) and the Battle of Downham Station pitting the Prussian ArmyKorp against the home Brits. The overall winner of best in show however went to Magrathea group and their Burrows & Badgers game, Siege of Lunedin. The Leggatts, father and son, came second with Salamanca.
Attendance numbers were significantly up from last year, to where finding a space to park a car nearly became an issue. The club have been making a pointed effort to make sure the day has something for everyone, including a board game café where families can sit for a spell and maybe build railways across Europe. This was a brand new idea last year which I admit was under used in its first year, but this year it was super popular. In this authors opinion I think clubs need to start thinking about the changing trends in the hobby. Yes it would be great to have a show that was entirely focused to just historical gaming, but I think it would be tricky these days to maintain that. If we want enough people to come and support the show, things like the board games café can encourage a wider demographic to attend, we can then show them the virtues of the more traditional tables and keep the hobby going. It isn't just wargaming, a lot of hobbies are in danger of ageing out and not appealing to younger people. I'm not saying we have a bank of XBoxes and Nintendos set up at the show, but a bit of sci fi and fantasy at the show won't do any of us Grognards any harm. The weather was on our side for the day, sunny but not too hot. Feedback from traders and attendees alike was mostly positive with everyone seeming to have a great day.
Traders of note included Perry Miniatures, Empress Miniatures and Warlord Games. Plenty of choice for someone to obtain some brave redcoats in whatever scale your eyes will allow you to paint them in. David Lanchester books also had the largest selection of military history books you will see anywhere. (Apart from maybe in the private collections of some of you dear readers.) We had a couple of new traders as well, one of my favourites being Beowulf Miniatures. I grabbed one of their wizards towers which will look great on a Mordheim or Oldhammer table. I did manage to grab a couple of other purchases, some Lord of the Rings models for a recreation of Weathertop and some very old school Space Orks that I am looking forward to getting some paint on soon. (Once they are out of their strip bath.)
This author spent most of the day on the Bring and Buy stall, so I did not have a huge amount of time to wander the show, what I did see looked brilliant, and I did get some time away to chat with some friends (including one that came all the way from Norway!) and I also managed to go and play a game with Mrs Lead and the youngest offspring. We had a great time playing a card game called Splendor with a fellow club member and his son. It was a great game that was just complicated enough, but the boys picked it up very quickly. I have orders to add a copy to our wish list for home.
A big shout out goes to the other club members who all gave up their time the day before helping set up and on the day. Some of them have been doing this a lot longer than I have and a lot of work goes on behind the scenes beforehand as well by a few hard working individuals. Shows like this and many others keep the hobby going and allow thousands of hobbyists to have a day out and get a proper close up look at lots of cool toys. Ordering on the internet may be convenient, but nothing beats the fun of getting your loot in person.
Overall then, an awesome day was had by all. There is probably one or two people who weren't happy, but you can't please everyone. Now we all just need to find somewhere to stash all our new toys.
Nb. Grumpy comments will be ignored and definitely not published. Go write your own blog.
