Partizan Wargames Show 21.05.2023

Hello There! I  admit VERY late but here are the photos I took during the FIRST Partizan show this year!

I had a good look around the show before I even took my camera from the car. I have found in the past that people can be so busy recording or photographing the event that they never seem to experience it!

It also helps to see what you would like to get photos of later.

Here was the first game that caught my eye. Napoleonics is my favourite period of wargaming and this Danube game was set up with some impressive buildings.

Next  up was the Boondock Saints. This Revolutionary War game set in India, was replete with many vignettes and details to pour over!

The trees were made using a material more commonly seen in model railways. This material is a desert plant called seafoam. It is stiff and very fine. It does not usually have the resilience for average wargaming scenery but looked very effective in this game.

A lovely Indian fort was a great centre piece for the board.

The small vignettes were based separately complete with vegetation. This contributed to the overall appeal of the table.

The forces involved and the scenery was very colourful and the club members manning the table where very approachable and helpful. Something that you do not see at all shows.

The inside of the fort was complete with ramshackle shelter and monkeys!

There was a number of very colourful cavalry units on the table as well.

Next up the Iron Brigade. They had a 28mm English Civil War game. Hopton Heath took place on 16th March  1643. Ir was well supplied with explanatory notes and again was very well presented.

The table had many drop on pieces of scenery but like many of the table on the day used printed cloth covering the table. This is effective and has multiple used across many periods of gaming but was a system which was notably repetitive on the day.

In one of the corners of the hall, near to Dave Thomas' stall, were the Westbury Wargamers. They had a large 28mm Ancients battle with large pike blocks a plenty!

I liked the way they had made their palm trees as well.

This was an extended version of the game by Retired Wargamers Reloaded. It last appeared here. I have not included many further photos of this game as many more are in the link above.

The Old Guard put on a 28mm Napoleonics wargame which had so many small details on the table, it was impossible to photograph them all. Here follows some that I cropped to get some better close ups.

The Derby Wargames Club put on a 20mm WW II game set in Russia with aircraft and plenty of armoured vehicles. A welcome change not to see wall to wall Shermans and Tigers!

The ME110 was a nice touch.

Lovely muddied vehicles and plenty of smaller panzers made for a very enjoyable spectacle.

The marshy area was good to see!

'The Bayonets', who did not seem to appear in the show programme, displayed a fantastic American Civil War game. It was not set on any particular battle, although the central bridge did remind me of 'Burnsides Bridge' 

A marvellous overall view with a camp, bridge building, an assault across a bridge and plenty of cavalry on view.

These figuress looked very much like Perrys Plastics but had a great paint job on them.

Lovely Confederate command stand.

This table displayed a combination of Connoisseur figures and some Elite. A more 'Old style' game with the figures to match

Another desert mat covering the board. What looked like a Sudan or Egyptian game. In 28mm and another use of seafoam for the trees.

The dependable Hovels desert tomb. I have my one on a board at home, firmly in the desert in WW II.

The Battle of Gheel was inspired by the Book about the Sherwood Foresters, written by James Holland.

A lot of drop on terrain on a printed mat. The games was well presented but did not have the 'close' feel that I think the battle deserved to be better represented.

This 28mm Ancients game was very colourful with larger units which must have taken a lot of organisation and work to complete.

1st Corps put on a packed and expansive game of the American Civil War, which showcased their range for this period.

The table was covered in 'Teddy Bear' fur dyed a range of colours. This was a change to the majority of other tables. Not everyone 'likes' this material but I feel while it does look very good at a distance it can look much better close up when 'shaved' to different lengths, in different parts of the board.

This obviously takes a little more planning and after using the material to represent a thatched roof on a Russian Izba I realise it is not the easiest material to work with either.

The results here were certainly impressive.

Simon Miller had a game for his rules 'To The Strongest' which showed another impressive 28mm scale Ancients battle.

An American War of Independence game using 28mm high figures from various manufacturers.

A lovely spectacle with plenty of small objects of interest.

A departure from the main here with a larger table with smaller scale figures.

This was a game, in 28mm, which was put on by the Two fat Lardies. I was the same game they took to the open day in the museum in Arnhem.

It was described in the podcast, 'We Have Ways of Making you Talk'. It is a masterpiece of construction with 3D printed buildings based on actual buildings in the battle.

It is difficult to know where to start with a description of to show all the marvellous details in the game. Please just browse through the photos I have taken here for you.

Something that is not easy to represent, SNOW! Here this 20mm game did well with many subtle shades on the table.

Lastly this battle which I neglected to identify the group putting it on. My apologies for that. Using 20mm high figures and also some aircraft for ground support this was very eye catching on the day!

Brilliant idea! I will have to try that myself!

Overall the show maintained the high standards of games, which we have come to expect from the show.

I wonder how the organisers maintain such a high standard?

Book Review - Surtees of the 95th Rifles

Hello There! I have finished reading my latest book. It was bedtime reading and it proved an interesting read!

The book describes the experiences of William Surtees who started off serving in the militia, then the 56th regiment and then on the end of his enlistment joined the 95th Rifles. He became the Quarter Master Sergeant.

He served in Holland, Bremen, Denmark and the Peninsular. The book starts with his enlistment into the 56th Regiment and finishes when he returns to England after Napoleons first abdication.

In the Peninsular he was involved in the Corunna Campaign, Barrosa, just missed the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, was present at the siege and storming of Badajoz, where he lost friends in the fighting, present at Vittoria, Vera and a number of other skirmishes in the Pyrenees.

He eventually received a commission and became paymaster of the Battalion.

The book gives a good idea of the contempt that the British Army held for the Spanish and Portuguese soldiers and civilians. However there are many favourable mentions of Portuguese troops in battle.

A point of local interest for me was that his unit landed at Great Yarmouth twice during his career.

Once ater serving in Holland and marching through Norwich and another in October 1805 after campaigning in Bremen from October 1806 to February 1806. He landed in Great Yarmouth and marched through Lowestoft to Woodbridge, where his battalion was barracked.

The narration was clear and included many 'adventures' and casual references to the more notorious behaviour of the British army in the Peninsular.

This was an easy book to keep returning to and did not need a map to continually make sense of the narrative.

If you wanted to look at some of the more less glorious actions of the Army, which was none the less important, then I can recommend this book.

Visit to the 100th Bomber Group Memorial Group Airfield

Hello There! On another visit, during the Summer, I visited the above memorial which is at the old Thorpe Abbotts Airfield, station 139, USAF. This is situated near Diss, on the Norfolk, Suffolk border.

The memorial is situated in the old control tower on the airfield.

This is the plaque on the outside of the building briefly out lining the history of its surroundings.

Here is one of the display cabinets and its key to show what has been found around the airfield. During its active service the dumping of items and equipment, along with genuine loss of goods, was common. Here are some of the general day to day items that show normal life on the station and on missions.

Personal equipment and stories were everywhere in the display rooms, in the tower, which you could also climb to the top of.

One display showed a number of either genuine and recreated flying jackets worn by the crews from the station. These related to the aircraft names that they were a part of.

There is also an extensive collection of models to show items and aircraft related to the airfield.

We were lucky enough on the day to see a flying display of a spitfire and a spotter aircraft take off. There was a visit by relatives of some of the airmen who had served at the base.

This was a very worthwhile visit and the group have worked very hard to ensure this is an adequate memorial to the personnel who served there.

The Memorial Groups facebook page is here.

'Red' Plaque in Lincoln

 Hello There! Here is another short post from my visit to Lincoln.

While walking up to Steep Hill, in Lincoln I saw a red plaque on the wall of a building.

So not only was the first 'Tank' designed in Lincoln but also built there too.

I thought that the first tanks were built in Lincoln but did not know where and had no idea where they were designed.

Another little surprise from this outing!