I spent my day on Saturday at Warfare '24, one of the largest wargames shows in the UK. It was quite local, taking place at the Farnborough Airport Exhibition Centre.
It's the third year there, and a vast improvement over the old venue in Reading in terms of space, layout, parking and accessibility. No more slogging through Reading town centre traffic on a weekend !
I was there in a "semi-official" capacity, helping some friends run a demo/audience participation game rather than trying to run a stand for my own business.
The participation game was played using the "In Her Majesty's Name" second edition rules, written by The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare. It's a set of steampunk skirmish wargames rules. The scenario was that a desecrated church was being used to summon a demon, and scattered around the churchyard were three piles of sacred bones. Both players had to try to get the bones into the font inside the church. To win, a player had to have a character next to the font at the end of the game to try to control the demon. The demon automatically appeared on turn 8, and if no-one was by the font, everyone lost and the demon won.
Below is the initial setup;
A few photos from various games we played. The roof could come off the church to reveal a nicely detailed interior. Oh, and if Prussian troopers were killed, they came back as zombies.
The marker sitting on the font shows that bones had been put in it. The Prussian commander, Count von Stroheim, is standing on the far side of the font, while the British commander is being blocked by a zombie.
Turn 8 - the demon arrives. The Prussians won this game.
A couple of photos of a demo game that was on the table next to ours; English versus French in the Egyptian campaign of 1801. 28mm scale armies, beautifully painted !
The other side of our table was the start of a massive area set aside for competitive tournament games. This was one of several games in a Mordheim tournament, with particularly well done terrain. It's nice to see a board which looks like it was a cohesive whole rather than the contents of the terrain box plonked onto the table at random !
A more panoramic shot of the competitive games area. It was busy enough that it was hard to see the actual games !
This was one of several novel ideas being showcased; wargames as a grid game. A fast and fun way to fight a battle, without the risk of arguments over whether players are being "enthusiastic" when measuring their moves.
The Bring & Buy was heaving all day. This was a quieter time, and you can still only see the back of the crowd, down to about 3-deep. Most of the day it was a lot more hectic !
Also with a stand at Warfare was The Games Shop, one of several FLGS's we've got in our area. They are based in Aldershot, and are thoroughly nice people 😀
Among the many participation and demo games laid on, there were two that really blew me away. This is the first one; Stalingrad. It had space for 6 players on each side, and was a truly massive board. The attention to detail and work they put in on their terrain was simply incredible.
The second one was equally epic; The Battle of Trafalgar, fought using Warlord Games 1/700 scale Black Seas ships. Every ship that was at the historical battle was represented on the tabletop, 73 ships in total.
Below is the Royal Navy weather column, with HMS Victory in the lead.
Close-up on HMS Victory; yes, they even modelled the famous signal Nelson sent.
The centre of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet. Nearest is Villeneuve's flagship the Bucentaure, sailing parallel to the further away Redoutable, while just ahead of them is the Spanish ship Santisima Trinidad, the largest ship of the line in the world at that time. Compared to the uniform "Nelson Chequer" the Royal Navy used, the French and Spanish fleets used quite a variety of colour schemes !
Among the imaginative demo games was one set on the Moon, set in the near future and played in 10mm scale, with Americans and Chinese astronauts in space suits with balloon-wheeled transport vehicles fighting over a moonbase. I messed up the overview photo I took, but I did get one of the interceptors on their launchpads. Do they look familiar ?
All in all, it was the busiest Warfare show I've seen for several years. The day was very exhausting but hugely enjoyable, both with the variety of games and the opportunity to catch up with several people I hadn't seen for ages. Well worth it !
The photo below was from the end of the day, when most of the public had gone home. It was the only chance I had to get a panoramic view of one of the two trade stand areas that wasn't just a crowd of the backs of people's heads !
