Partizan Wargames Show.

Yesterday (Sunday) Paul and I headed down the A1 to Newark Showground for the first of the Partizan shows of the year. We like to go to the local wargames shows to spread the word about Pennine Megagames and hopefully attract more players. Whilst Newark is not really part of the Pennines it is pretty close to Sheffield; hopefully we’ll get more gamers to the games we run there.

The game we took with us was Stalingrad: Block by Block, a mini game born out of two previous games. Given I had a very nice 6 foot by 4 foot map of Stalingrad from my Case Blue game that didn’t get used I thought it would be a good excuse to use it. Paul is running a game in September, Hold the Line, based on the invasion of Poland; the mechanisms of which he used for last years Czech Mate game. I thought to myself it would be nice idea to run a game with his mechanisms based around the city fight.

Paul was kind enough to give me the polystyrene cubes and stickers needed so I got to work and knocked up what was needed. We ran the scenario as a participation game, so players could try out the mechanisms in advance to give them a taste of what to expect if they attend out events.

The game proved very popular with the attendees of the show, lots of people were asking questions and taking photos, so much so that the two of us were hard pressed to run the game and chat to everyone at the same time at one point… We were the only none toy soldier based game there so we stood out as doing something a little different. Paul game design was described as ‘inspirational’ and I was pleased to see several people bring their friends over to show them saying ‘This is the game I was telling you about, I’ve played one and it was really good’.

The game should get a few more run outs this years and there are a few tweaks I want to it, some of the rules need tightening and it would be nice to come up with a set of scenarios for the board that are suitable from anywhere from 2 to 6 players so we can be more flexible about the size of game we can run in the day. It would be nice to be able to give people a taste of the layers of command that the megagames have, one of their stand out features for me, but it is difficult to do in small scale for obvious reasons. I have some ideas of how to do it but it will need more work.

I managed to do a little bit of shopping for myself (oddly no books) and managed to chat to some gaming friends I hadn’t seen in years. The newer venue for Partizan is much better than the stygian gloom of the old one too. All in all a great day and both Paul and I agreed it was the best reception Pennine Megagames has had at a show.

I’m quite looking forward to the next show for us which will be the Phalanx show at St. Helens in June.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.