The Partizan 4 page brochure that you get at the door says “Welcome to Partizan 22, in what we hope will be a ‘getting back to normal’ kind of year.”
Well, it felt exactly like that. The placed was full of traders, punters and very attractive games, which clearly had a lot of time spent on their presentation. Everyone was very friendly, there were loads of smiles, so hopefully both punters and traders got something out of the day.
I did notice plenty of wargame luminaries floating around, more than I have ever seen gathered in one place before, which just adds to the sense that Partizan does sit in the Premier League of shows.
The first 500 people through the doors got a free figure, this one being King Stephen and the brochure says that at the October show, they will be doing the Empress Matilda figure. The opening graphic to this post shows the figure painted up as per the front page of the brochure.
Counting up the tables on the brochure floor plan, I make it 45 traders, 8 societies, 31 demo games and 32 tables in the Participation zone.
I have to say that every game table was inspiring in one way or another and there was plenty of scale and subject diversity here, which is nice to see.
I totally forgot to burn my credit card before leaving home, so a note to myself for next time.
My big purchase was an investment in the latex road and river sections from Early War Miniatures. They look excellent quality and the guy said you could scrunch them up and they will return to normal. While I won’t be doing that, I do play under a glass roof, so I am hoping that these will offer me some protection from the dreaded warp.
Besides that, all those smaller things that I never knew I needed entered the shopping bag! I am rather chuffed with the Die Cast 1/72 Brümbar for £6.
My son told me to pick something up as a gift, so I expanded my WWII 20mm AB figures with a bag of riflemen.
Mrs. Wargamer took up positions in the cafe area and had clearly had too much sugar by the time I got to the table as she seemed genuinely excited at my haul of goodies …… mind you, she is hoping that we do Chatsworth House on the way home, so I suspect method at play here!
Anyway, as always, thanks to everyone who did something towards making this show such a great day out.
I have selected just a few of my pictures in an effort to keep the image quality high and your bandwidth use low. In no particular order and not attributed (sorry) they just give an impression of the goodness that table hosts had put on …… just for me to be able to turn up and enjoy, how fab is that! (Please click on the images for the best view).
I have added this because (a) a body of horse looks great, but (b) you see these sort of shots and think that the photographer has photo shopped the bases to blur into the cloth, but this is a straight photo, with bases cleverly done to match the cloth.
A nice game, given plenty of space for Bonnie Blue Flag rules, which I have enjoyed and nice to see again in action. I must get mine to the table again.
Quite a few games had a bridge involved somewhere. I love that at shows they have the table space to have rivers ten times wider than I could hope for at home - but a bridge filled with troops is just visually tops.
I love this scene with the small vignette (lady in yellow) and the smoke from the chimneys.
Ships at shows are just getting more beautiful. I’m sure this is a collectors item, I read somewhere about a gamer buying two galleons from an antique’s dealer, I wonder if these are they?
Finally, I included this because it was a great example of 28mm’s being played out in a 6 x 4 type space and able to include very visual terrain and still have space for the game. The game mat adds a great deal to the overall effect by being highly textured, but with a very short pile.
Resource Section.
I am building up my COMMANDERS site with various snippets on games and projects etc. LINK
https://commanders.simdif.com/Dear_Diary.html
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