Partisan May 2025

 Dear me, here I am posting about Partisan and it is nearly July! Well, you can never accuse me of rushing into things. We managed to put together a decent team to go to Partisan this year. I was running Alexander the Brief, and John, Tim, Mark, James and various others turned up to assist. 

The calm before the storm, everyone setting up at around 0930. There was obviously some other big event on the day at the Showground as the main Partisan parking was out on the runway instead of by the venue, although exhibitors could park closer.

The demo game end of the room. Still looking pretty quiet although the queue to get in was already stretching back to the car park by 0950. 

Our stand didn't take much setting up, and we've done this sort of thing many times before. We had a very nice roomy spot, plenty of space to get chairs around the table. I had a bit of a run around once we were set up and picked up a couple of items on my shopping list - some dark blue paint and some 1/144th scale US decals. I also had a look at 'plastic kit mans' stall but sadly his stock of Zvezda stuff shows no sign of getting any larger.

We were next to our usual miscreant associates from the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society. Graham and Chris consider Edgcote and demonstrate world class pointing. This is a great game, I played it at the Society of Ancients Conference last year.

Also on the stand was Chris Kemps Mini - Monte Cassino, played with NQM but using one base = one division (!) to keep the playing time down.

Alexander the Brief all set up and ready to go. It actually looked OK with toys laid out, but didn't have as much kerb appeal as some of the bigger games.

Tim running the game with Marks friend Bob. 

This particular iteration didn't go well for Alexander, reduced to just the Companions, Alexander loses Gaugamela!

In the end we ran the game 11 times, and the result varied from a perfect score of three wins and no units lost, to the efforts of our dear Nugget editor Matthew, who achieved one win and nine units lost....

As ever we had a run of players once the initial shopping rush had died down, then a long, long gap until the afternoon when people were casting around for something to do and we picked up some more players then. The actual playing time was 15-20 minutes, which was great and the player reaction was generally very positive although I could tell it wasn't necessarily for everyone!

I managed to find time to try out Monte Cassino. Although there were a lot of formations on the table, Chris had ruthlessly pared it down so we essentially just ran a Corps attack on the mountain itself. I opted to bomb the monastery (well, why wouldn't you) and the USAAF duly scattered bombs all over Italy.

We did however managed to fight our way up to the top of the hill, 2nd New Zealand and 78th Div took heavy losses, but the outflanking attack by the Poles provided invaluable assistance (along with Wotjeck the Soldier Bear) and our engineers cleared a path for the armour up the mountain. 1st FJ Div held on for a few days but were eventually ejected from the rubble, and the way to Rome was open. Hurrah!

I'm going to have a go at running this as a proper Front Scale NQM game (so the divisions have one stand per regiment), which will obviously take longer and need more depth, but with the OB and key terrain already modelled it would be silly not to take advantage.

Otherwise I had a bit of a look at some other games although I was on the stand most of the day. I only took a couple of game pictures as I imagine there will be zillions of Partisan photo reports.

This one was DAK Attack, which I think was also at Hammerhead earlier this year. LRDG and SAS blowing up German planes.

And this is Zero Hour, a rather attractive WW1 game. Again I think this was at Hammerhead and I somehow didn't manage to play it then.

My eye was caught by this huge Anglo-Sikh War game, presented by the Boondock Sayntes.

There was also this lovely game of Stamford Bridge.

The lone Berserker holds the crossing.

There was also a fabulous 6mm game of Wagram. The view from Essling.

Broader view of the battlefield as the Austrians surround the French bridgehead.

An interesting addition this year was this tent tacked on the side of the hall! I accommodated some trade stands, games and also the bookable Bring and Buy tables which proved very popular. There was a load of decent second hand stuff in the main hall too, and we all scored some bargain secnd hand items. John got two entire boxes of 15mm Russian tanks, Mark picked up a copy of AHGCs 'Tobruk' and I was very pleased to score  a copy of the 1981 edition of AHGCs 'Battle of the Bulge' with revised OB, map etc. An even better reboot that the 'D-Day 77' version of 'D-Day'.

That was a good day out and the show seemed to be busier later than usual, the crowds didn't really start to drop off until 1330 rather than the 1230 of last year.