WAPPINSHAW 2013

For this year's Wappinshaw show, Martin and I put on a table on behalf of the club. As club's fantasy wargames co-ordinator (power drips from every finger..), it was going to have to be Warhammer! DWC's last display at Wappinshaw, which was going to be a historical one, had fallen through due to the various commitments of the guys involved. Last time I'd worked on one of these it had been the clubs first display - warhammer again - in 2011, but I figured enough time had gone by for people to forget...

Bust some poses for the punters lads, we're going on show!

Kev and Dougie had been working on a Flames of War demo table for Carronade two weeks before and looking at their project I knew I would have to go about mine differently. The lads were making a big effort - club resources for flames are still pretty low - at working up a really nice looking scenario from scratch. They went for Arnhem, allowing them to draw on the good supply of painted Germans and Brits available from club members, but making almost all the scenery from scratch. Kev knew a guy who could etch MDF with a laser printer for 'kit' houses, which would save a lot of cash - but money was still required to build and put together the scenary. There was a club drive to buy a tank for a painting competition to build up some funds, but it was all a lot of work, and they started with 3 months to go. As time went on, little was happening, and Geoff was getting ancy - the club had fallen through on commitments at shows before and I could understand that he didn't want us getting a name for ourselves.

Annoyed at myself for this, but no photo of OUR table! Instead, this is the 40k monster which we were next to...

Kev and Dougie pulled it out and put a nice table on, but it was a mad rush to the line - and the organizers stuck us next to the biggest 40k table ever... For Wappinshaw, I knew I'd only be using what was already available at the club. There are a wide range of Warhammer players however, with lots of different armies, some of whom are quite handy with a brush. I put out a call for the guys to bring in their best painted stuff and I got a great response! Chris especially - one of the newer members at the club - revealed himself to be a blessing in disguise. It turns out he is very involved o the painting side, and is even entering the UK Golden Demon competition next year! He got on board massively and provided a beautifully painted elven army - the set from the island of blood box, which he painted in a week (!), and some stunning big set piece models. James Craddock provided the pick of his ogres, Kev put forward his Bretonnians and a lovely green knight, Angus pitched in with some Wood elves, whilst Robert helped out with his huge model collection to give us daemons of chaos, dark elves and Empire. Martin put in his Imperial War Altar - another GW huge model - and about 80% of the terrain. I used my own Vampire Counts to make up the bulk of the 'bad guys'.

The original plan was for the display to showcase the big multiplayer games we have at the club. We'd played this year's massive multiplayer warhammer game only two weeks before, and I used the photos form that to make up a promo poster for the day. The display was to be a snapshot of one of these big multi-race encounters, with loads of allied contingents clashing on a grand scale. Initially I was going to use Kev's battleboard and paint it up for him, but time and resources scotched that pretty quickly. I ended up just using a flat green felt mat, as it looked great under our terrain. Martin really came through on this with his massive collection. Apparently he makes terrain just to de-stress, and he's damn good at it. Lets hope that work really flogs him this year! He'd just bought an Elven watchtower set, fully painted, complete with elven ruins. When I saw this, I knew we had to have it! The scenario took shape - a fading, beleaguered Elven trading outpost in the Old World, a remnant of older times under attack by an evil horde hungry to loot its treasures. The Elves put out the call to aid to their allies and the stage was set. Here's how the 'Battle of Tol Ganeth' panned out:

The battle for Tol Ganeth. The big terrain pieces such as the elven structures and river were Martin's. I made the bridge (wooop!) and bought the ruined roundtower at the far end of the table at the Carronade flea-market.

The Elven army advances from behind the river. Tyrion straddles the bridge, taunting the foe! Nice shot of Martin's tower set. The models on the hill on the opposite bank are Kev's skirmishing Brets set to disrupt the enemy advance.

The battle was set on a diagonal axis across the table. Playing this battle out would have been a mess, but it let us pack in the sprawl of combatants flooding in to the battle.

Robert's Empire gunners prime their shot on the watchtower balcony.

Robert's daemonettes charge in

Chris' amazing thundertusk. The paintjob was fantastic. Chris said he made the base using layers of shredded cork board.

Chris' Elven dragon. His lovely wife helped us out with setup on the day. Dragons are her favourite!

Geoff strapped on the promo as soon as we'd set up. From this end you can see my Fimir mage (had to use him!) lurking in the low trees by the swamp on the left. Its a good shot too of Chris' Mortis Engine, supporting my Vampire Counts models in all its massive majesty. I hope mine looks this nice when its finally done... At the centre, Kev's green knight rides into an ambush in the ruined roundtower by dark elven shades.

Al's flickering tea lights shrouded in smoke look great on the tabletop. Here we used it to make a burning ruin. Across the wide scope of the battle, we tried to set up small vignettes of models or units interacting with each other or setting the scene to try and give a bit of extra depth and tell the 'story' of the battle.

It was an early start at the Kelvin Hall for this one! I'd never been in the sports arena end of the building, but I was pretty impressed with its size (I even snuck in to the indoor athletics arena for a go on the track when no one was about). Angus, Chris and his wife were there for the set up at 8, whilst Martin and Tam joined us a couple of hours later. It was a good turn out on the day from the club as I saw lots of members come along and join us. There was only one hall (although a big one) compared to Carronade with its 3 or 4 the fortnight before, so it was sizeable but certainly not on the same level.  Looking around the hall, I'm fairly confident that we had one of the best tables there on the day, and we got plenty of interest from the punters. We spoke to a number of interested folks too, so maybe we'll see a few more faces around the club in the next weeks as a result.

The day went really well - enough of the lads showed up for us to get a game of the Game of Thrones boardgame on a table we appropriated and stuck on the foot of our display table. That got some interested looks too! I didn't buy anything from the stalls at this one, but it wasn't for lack of quality - I reckon I'd spent enough at Carronade the fortnight before to do me for a while. I liked the Warlord Games stand across from us though - I'm very impressed with their Hail Caesar ancients. Geoff could get us the stuff cheaper at the club however, so I saved my pennies for now. My only frustration with the day was that my crappy phone battery gave out and I didn't get many pics. The main guy who does the Wappinshaw blog was running the table next to us and too busy to get many shots either, so there aren't even many others to goggle at on the web. Here are the photies I managed to get of other tables:

This was a LRPG equipment stall at the front door. This must weigh a ton to wear!

Nice village buildings (resin models I'm told) from the Napoleonic table next to ours, put on by the Phoenix club.

Phoenix club's Napoleonic Table. The guy running this was a nice bloke.

A vignette from the Napoleonic table.

More Napoleonic. This table was huge!

The battle for the People's Palace in A Very British Civil War. Interesting looking system this - I love the tanks and planes.

More from the LRPG stand.

Overall, this was a great day :-) Looking forward to next years - already talk of putting on a Necromunda table, which could cause a stir; I've not seen anything like that on the shows circuit this year so we would definitely stand out. Just need to get interest going again at the club...