WARFARE : A report from a small corner of the convention

 

Yesterday - Saturday 16th November - I travelled up from darkest Wiltshire to Farnborough to attend the Wargames Association of Reading's convention - WARFARE.  As I walked from the railway station to the venue I was delighted to see a familiar sight from the skies over my childhood, an English Electric Lightning, parked outside the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum.  That is something I will have to visit on another occasion.  I had to press on as I had volunteered to help out at the Society of Ancients stall and had ordered various bits of loot to collect from vendors before heading back to Wiltshire.

Almost the first thing I found after getting into the convention hall was the SoA stand and that is pretty much where I stayed for the day, so this is hardly going to be a full review of all that was going on.  Still, in the immediate vicinity was much to entertain me in between talking to visitors about the society and trying to sell some of the excellent rules and journals on offer.

Attached to the SoA stand was a splendid looking refight of Paraitakene, pitching Eumenes of Cardia against Antigonus Monopthalmos.

Adjacent to the stand was a demonstration game of Rome : Total War - a board game developed from the Computer Game.  It looks like an excellent campaign system to provide context for table-top battles rather than just using the simple battle mechanism that comes with the game.

Across the way was a spectacular game of Bristol Fighters intercepting a Zeppelin somewhere over England

Next to the Zeppelin some rum coves were playing a Pirate Game

and on the far side of SoA stand, Saladin was trying to thwart the Third Crusade

The Paraitakene game was in full swing when I arrived but I was very kindly offered a place in the middle of the Antigonus' line, facing Eumene's central phalanx line which had lost its general in the previous turn of combat.  The rules being used were Impetus, which I was happy to have the chance to try out after observing them in use at Salute earlier in the year.

The game had begun well for Eumenes.  In only a couple of turns his cavalry had steamrollered through the Antigonid left wing, leaving Demetrius with only a handful of light cavalry in isolation out on the edge of the table.

It fell to me to take advantage of the death of the Eumenean general in the centre to restore the balance by charging in.  All went well to begin with, the phalanx getting a couple of push backs, but then my elephant with general attached went head to head with an unfriendly beast which pushed back my pachyderm, forcing my general to take a health and safety check.  Rolling a 6 in these circumstances is not what you need to do in Impetus, I discovered.  My general joined his opponent face down in the dust!

Fortunately for the Antigonids, Eumenes had charged so far in driving off Demetrius' cavalry that it was hard for him to turn around to rejoin the battle, giving Antigonus a chance to roll up the enemy left with his Companion Cavalry while the opposing phalanxes piked each other in the centre.

Antigonus' cavalry working round Eumenes' flank, with only a handful of Persians to delay them falling on the central phalanx.

To the immense frustration of Antigonus - who took adversity and bad dice rolls with much greater equanimity than I can muster - his companions were frustrated by the Persian javelin men, allowing Eumenes to get in the decisive blow against the phalanx and gain a hard fought victory.

Eumenes puts the boot in with cavalry and Silver Shields rolling up the remnants of the Antigonid centre.

My brief participation and longer observation of the game gave me a much better sense of how Impetus works, encouraging me to try it out with my ancient armies when I get home to Hong Kong.

I visited the Warbases stall to swap the Roman villa gate sent by mistake a couple of weeks ago for the full Roman city gate that I had ordered.  This will go together with a couple of wall and corner sections to provide decoration for the edge of appropriate battlefields.  Then on to the Pendraken stall to collect a pile of previously ordered figures for the next painting project, one that will take me from the Steppes of Central Asia to the Baltic Forests.  A quick trawl around the other stands was disappointing as far as books were concerned but did provide some new washes to try out.  Towards the end of the day I found that for all the time I had been at the SoA stall and fighting Paraitakene I had had my back to the Newline Designs stall.  There was not much on display from their 20mm range but I picked up some packs of 10mm ECW figures and placed an order for 20mm Persians, Samnites and Etruscans which should arrive in time for me to pack and bring back to Hong Kong.

The only book to pad out the library from this trip

A Roman City gate, some assembly required

New Washes to try

A modest haul of Newline 10mm ECW figures, plus some small round bases for markers

A larger haul of Kievan Rus 10mm figures from Pendraken

and a Mongol Army pack to keep me going at the painting desk through the winter months

Before leaving I meant to have a quick walk around the whole venue, but got no further than a couple of tables down the row where I started.  First my eye was caught by a well modelled Afghan valley where British and Indian soldiers were advancing into the teeth of Pathan opposition.  I asked if the rules being used were 'The Men Who Would Be Kings' only to find that they were the manufacturer's own rules and they kindly gave me a copy.

A rocky valley on the North West Frontier

An interesting addition to the rule library

The next stall to catch my eye : a terrific brief for an 0200 Hours game recreating an attempt by a French SAS team to capture or kill Rommel after D-Day

The set up for the game was first class

Both these games are more up my son's street but it was good to see some really well done skirmish games being much enjoyed.  

Overall, although I only saw a fraction of what was going on, my impression of WARfare was of a much friendlier, game centred event than SALUTE.  At the SoA stall and while wandering around our corner of the event I had many conversations, mostly with complete strangers but all of which were of interest in unexpected ways - I even met someone who knew that the HK Society of Wargamers produced a YouTube channel on DBMM games!  So, a most satisfying day, rounded off by perfect train connections that got me home in good time for supper.