11th - 12th May, The Centre, Milton Keynes

CAMPAIGN 2013

Yes - that was us just outside John Lewis's ...

Thanks to MKWS for the extra table.   It was down to me to come up with the plan as Trebian is away for his holidays ... 

I decided to use the Society space for our 54mm Bosworth participation game, and the extra tables to help publicise the Naseby Project's open day next month ( see Naseby Open Day ) - this is a publicity and fund-raising event so if you can get involved it could help a great heritage project edge closer to achieving its goals).

We were perfectly position in both cases ... next to Rupert's Blewcoats who helped promote the Naseby day and explain the battle, and next to DBMM and HFG demos for the DBA (with Phil Barker and Sue Laflin joining in on the Saturday) ... So full marks to Neil and his band for theming it nicely.

(the Battle of Bosworth presented as a DBA game in 54mm)

There are still a few enhancements that need completing with the game but I focused mostly on adding in some captions for this outing: members of the public love the big figures and without a wargamer's eye for detail, appreciate the extra information more than they notice that I haven't fitted all the new spears, yet.

Elsewhere around the show there was a really good range of display and participation games, covering a lot of the history and breadth of styles that today's wargaming offers - from Megiddo to Sci-Fi, and whimsical what-ifs like Peterborough's Napoleonic invasion by Montgolfier balloons game ...

(Bosworth: Richmond's army)

Many thanks to Graham Fordham for scaling his printed cloth 'Fluttering Flags' up from 15/28 to 54mm for the project.

(Bosworth: Richard III's army)

Although we played the game several times each day, at a public event like this most of our time is spent explaining the concepts and talking about the historical battles.   

In the games, Richard had a consistently poor weekend habitually rolling well below the Earl of Richmond (later Henry VII, of course) whoever played him and whichever dice were rolled.

(scenes from a disappointing weekend for the last Plantagenet king of England)

It is, of course, all in the deployment - a vindication of Mike Ingram's theories (though usually DBA is unpredictable enough to allow Richard to rewrite history on a regular basis).

Hastings and St Leonards put on an epic Megiddo ... hundreds of figures (though I understand one less mare on heat than might have been the case) ...

Bedford Gladiators put on a very impressive Command and Colours game on the now familiar hexagon terrain system from Kallistra ...

... and right next to our 54mm DBA was this splendid DBMM 6mm demonstration.   You might say, the Alpha and Omega of the DB approach.   Of course, this was extremely useful when explaining ideas of scale to browsers (each 80mm of frontage representing around the same in each game - just a different approach to denoting what soldiers are fighting in the line) ...

Even bigger than the SoA 54mm knights were these jousting fellows (splendid 90mm toy shop figures similar to the one I used in Greyhounds in the Slips).   Ancient and Medieval wargaming was indeed very well represented at the show in all its engaging variety.

(wargaming at Campaign 2013: something for all the family)

This was as good a selection of our period as you get at many a bigger show - and nicely presented to encourage newcomers and browsers to get involved ... rather fewer of the 28mm sprawlgames, rather more variety of scale, size and concept.

Outside our period, 20th century wargaming was well represented, air, land sea and under it.   There was some Krush the Kaiser and some Bolt Action, but I really like the Huntingdon club's 1:35 scale Stalingrad Crossfire game ... OK, it was big ... but not because it was sprawling, but because the toys were, well .. big.   Indeed, almost adhoc in scale ...

(BT tanks lurk round the corner from Univermag in the Stalingrad crossfire)

Hard work, and a long day (especially the Saturday), but well worth it.   Wargaming should do very out of this, and most of the sceptics seemed won over ...

Thanks to everyone who took an interest ...

DBA Northern Cup at Triples next.