WMMS2014.

On what was hopefully the first of a long succession of sunny March days Mr. Ireland & I made the 40 mile trip to Wolverhampton for our local wargaming show.

Nice to get out & have a look round at the trade stands & demo/participation games though not much to really catch the eye in either department. The highlight of the demo games by some way was a large Yom Kippur war set up in 20mm with some excellent terrain & miniatures. This was run a close second by Hougoumont in 28mm, this seems to have done the rounds of UK shows in the last year but does look good in the flesh; particularly well executed fur fabric turf it must be said.
The continuing dearth of ancients games does continue to puzzle me though, there are some very good ranges of miniatures available after all & plenty of evidence here on the web that there is still an active contingent of gamers who enjoy the period, perhaps its time to actually put the ancients collection under the glare of public scrutiny & bring ancients gaming back to the Midlands.

Not too many highlights in the purchasing department either, a unit each of Crusader Thracians & Polemarch Tarentines purchased from Col. Bills at very reasonable prices ( 20 infantry & 10 cavalry for £40 odd quid) were the only buys this year, nothing else really grabbed me though I did have a serious look at Commands & Colours Ancients by GMT games, didn't bite though, waited until this morning & ordered it from my local boardgame supplier for 20% less than rrp. I'm far too much of a scrooge to do impulse buying these days & at least I can put money in a friends pocket this way.
Interesting to note the growth in laser cut accessories, the number of vendors selling them has been increasing over the last couple of years & some of them are very good indeed, for my money they make very convincing timber structures but don't capture the look of stone or brick or slate very well. This market I think is hitting saturation point.

All in all an O.K. morning out, nothing to get really excited about but with the world at your finger tips its rare that the next new thing slips past the aegis eye; the show seemed well attended as always but we both felt it was a little flat compared with previous years & its hard to escape the fact that the age demographic is decidedly the wrong side of 40, though mercifully incidences of 'soap dodging' have almost disappeared these days.
Enough philosophising for now must go & undercoat figures.