A Grand Day Out!

I had an unexpected and unplanned day trip on Saturday. With all the disruption to real life dumped on us by the sycophantic forelock tugging establishment following the death of some old dear the football match I was due to attend was cancelled. An opportunity therefore arose to visit Colours at Newbury courtesy of Phil driving us down. 

Colours is not a show we had attended every year even well before The Plague, but we had gone quite a few times either in tandem or as individuals. Historically then we knew the show to be a fine shopping market, supplemented by some games and a host of competitions for those so inclined. Going at such short notice I did not have the benefit of The List, so my shopping was rather more relaxed. I also had the opportunity to chat with Dan from Wargames illustrated and firm up the arrangements for Wednesday's photoshoot visit. We didn't arrive until after 11.00, so we found the car park very full and on entering the arena found the main trade area rammed with gamers willingly parting with their funds in return for desperately needed goodies! Without more ado we  dived right in among the masses and began our first trawl of the trade stands!

Time flies, they say, when you are enjoying yourselves, and that's certainly true of gamers at wargames shows in my experience. In what seemed like no time we were seeking out the on site catering for a coffee and some lunch. Fortified by our repast it was back to the show, starting with the games on display. I don't think I'm being unfair when I start by saying that Colours is more noted for its marketplace than for outstanding games. There were a number of nice games on show though none which really grabbed my attention: Roundelay Down by Simon showcasing For King and Parliament caught my eye first, followed by Adrianople 378AD with it's fine wagon lager. There was a second nice Ancient game, a 15mm Napoleonic 1813 game, the Wings of War/Glory aerodrome game which were all nice but not exceptional to my eye. Well outside my comfort zone I have to say the Mordheim City Skirmish was really nice.

Colours also has participation games for visitors to join in with. Peter Pig had a nice looking 15mm Mexican American War game and Helion were previewing a new set of rules, Muskets and Springfields. Busiest though by far was Richard Clark's usual Lardy game. Not to my taste as you know but undoubtedly popular with a large swathe of my fellow gamers. As to competition games, well, not much to say as it seemed very sparsely populated to me.

We had a grand day visit to the show, unusually for us staying almost to the close. Despite having no list and wanting to preserve the War Chest for The Other Partizan next month I did make a few purchases: six packs of assorted tufts from Gamer's Grass via Great Escape Games; MDF bases from Warbases; three C18th figures from Colonel Bill; and, on a whim, a bomb marker for our CWGH project just in case the battlefield nuclear option is ever deployed! I made one further purchase, but Phil will tell you about that on his blog I expect.

All in all A Grand Day Out, more valued perhaps by being unplanned and unexpected. When we arrived home, beaten but unbowed, I was delighted to find my order from Front Rank/Gripping Beast on the mat! 

It joins other recent mail orders from North Star and from Foundry of SYW figures to supplement and expand that collection. There will be more about that in a future blog entry by the way. In the meantime I have one or two other things to finish off first.