The Other Partisan 2023

 We attended the 'Other Partisan' earlier this month under the banner of Wargames Developments Display Team (North). I really like Partisan, one of my favourite shows and it was good to be running a game again there as well. 

Big queues to get in for the 10am opening.

And the hall was rammed by11. I gather numbers were up this year, but as ever, things thinned out very quickly after lunch. This seems to be an increasing trend in recent years, although I didn't notice the same thing at Joy of Six last year, perhaps because I went along in the afternoon!

Here is our table. After its outing at COW in the summer, I took 'World War One in Three Turns' along as a participation game. John, James and Tim helped me run it, we took it in turns through the day, as it needs two people to run it really.

The Manouvre Group crowd were on the table next to us, lots of 1/144th scale modern vehicles.

There were many other impressive participation games, most of them much bigger than ours! Oh well, at least ours didn't take long to set up,

This one is a 15mm Black Powder participation game, Battle of Toulon in 1793.

And the wonderful Star Wars 'Battle of Scarif' which has been around a few shows.

This 'Giant Risk' game really caught my eye, a sort of 'Battle of Dorking' type late nineteenth century invasion of Great Britain.

Plucky Brits prepare to defend old blighty.

WW1 in Three Turns has some takers. John and Tim take Harry Sidebottom through his paces. The hat is my original hand made WW1 Service Dress cap, it is in pretty good nick for something well over a hundred years old with beautiful hand stitching inside. 

Pwll Melyn, 1405, another participation game courtesy of the Lance and Longbow Society.

L&LS were set up next to the Northamptonshire Battlefields Trust table.

Which rather incongruously had Chris Kemps 'Operation Totalize' NQM game set up next to it!

This was primarily eye candy, the actual game bit was Joe Eakins taking on Wittmans three Tigers. I managed to destroy them all in five shots.

NQM QRS and game intro.

As always at Partisan there were loads of big demo games. I ran around and took photos of some of the ones which caught my eye.

St Mere Eglise.

A big game featuring a balloon hanging over the table!

Once Upon a Time in Siberia, set in the 1920s.

Siege of Hennebont, 1342.

Operation Resolute. A huge 20mm Cold War game.

Buccaneers eye view of the proceedings.

The Plains of Lalsot, 1787.

And a very chilly looking winter game.

'Fox killed in the open', a Beda Fomm game.

The Defence of Calais.

Here is Calais, being bombed by a wicked Stuka.

Never Mind the Billhooks at sea. 

James and John running WW1 in Three Turns. We had steady trade all day and ended up running the game 12 times. Losses varied between 19,000 and 26,000, and the majority of participants did manage to break through the German lines eventually.

The players all appeared to enjoy themselves and it was good to be running a public game again after a long break.

A 1918 tank attack putting in a strong effort against the German third line.

And a hideously unfortunate attack where almost everyone was forced back to the start line be weight of fire, leaving just a single battalion to assault the third line. They rolled a 6 and the Germans ran off. Medals all around! 

This was the actual action bit in the NQM game, the Firefly on the left taking on the German tanks on the right.

I was fairly disciplined with my shopping, mainly picking up more magnetic basing supplies and some books on the US campaign against the Westwall. I was on the hunt for some supplies to go inside truck models and was very pleased to come across these. It saves me picking apart some of my existing supply base models to free up some oil drums and ammo crates.

Early war Miniatures resin vehicle cargo packs. These are just amazing value compared to buying individual oil drums and ammo crates.

In each £3.50 bag you get four groups of five oil drums and four piles of ammunition crates, half cast in dark resin and half cast in light, not that it really matters as I'll be painting them

They fit neatly into the back all almost all my open backed trucks. This big Lancia can even take two. This will be a very easy way of designating fuel and ammunition supply columns, and I can also use them as terrain. The only trucks they don't fit are my Peter Pig Gaz AA - the fuel drums are OK but the ammo crates are too long. They fit in my Zvezda Gaz AAs, so problem solved.

Another great day out, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

Partisan 2017

We went along to Partisan recently under the auspices of Wargames Developments to run 'A Platoon Commanders War' converted to hexes. As ever, it was a great show with lots of eye candy, and we had a decent number of players for our game too, getting through several runs and well over twenty players. By and large I shall let the eye candy speak for itself.

These two were from the rather magnificant Too Fat Lardies 'Cambrai' game.

I was also very taken with these RJW pre-dreadnoughts.

These two are Copredy Bridge.

And a rather lovely rendering of Bunker Hill.

Another Cambrai game, this time put on by Kallistra. I was so impressed I picked up a copy of the rules.

Ah, and here is the real action. The players deep in thought as the try to figure out how to get their platoon over all that horrible open ground. This version of Platoon Commanders War is true 1:1 scale, with one figure per man, but also a 1:300th ground scale, so 12" is 100 yards (or rather, each hex is around 33 yards). Played with 6mm troops, this demonstrates just how empty the modern battlefield is.

Looks like the best way to biff the Hun is left flanking and bags of smoke. I'm sure that will do the trick.

A very satisfactory day out as ever, and I may have had a slight shopping accident (well with Zvezda kits at £12 for four, it would have been rude not to buy any). If anyone is interested in playing Platoon Commanders War on hexes, it will be appearing at the Conference of Wargamers, The Joy of Six and Partisan II later this year.

Partisan II 2016

I went along to Partisan II on Sunday, along with the Wargames Development Team (North), to run our participation game on Roman politics 'Cursus Honorum'. I'd not been to the show at the new venue and I was pleasantly surprised by the hall at the Newark Showground. It was light and airy (despite the August day outside), and reminded me a bit of the EIS in Sheffield. The show is divided up into 'zones', participation, historical and display with traders around the outside.

The WD table in the participation zone, John in attendance. Down in the demo zone there was amazing eye candy games.

I was very taken with this WW1 African beach landing game, based on Tanga I believe.

There was also this very nice Western Desert game.

TFL running a Sharpe Practice session (there were a couple of other games being run using SP as well).

A magnificent 1859 game, rather grander than my 6mm efforts in this period!

Down in the participation zone was an amazing game about the fighting inside Fort Vaux at Verdun.

Unfortunately this picture of the overall layout is rather blurry.

The inside of the French barracks.

Considering it was August, the show was well attended. People coming in the main entrance at opening time.

A general view of the hall.

Phil Steele setting up his Naseby game for the Battlefields Trust. I played this at COW a few years ago. I though thte idea of putting the terrain on the inside of the folding pasting tables was a brilliant idea as it combines portability with protection.

Highlight of the day was Graham Evans adaptation of the Waterloo 1815 mechanisms to play the Battle of Northampton. Very clever and inspiring as I have been scratching my head about how to adapt it for set piece battles in other periods. I managed to play it once(it is very quick) and Jerry played it several times.

Overall,  a very decent day out. Jerry thought the numbers were down on the earlier Partisan and we didn't have many takers of the game (half a dozen players in total) this time. It may have been a feature of the sheer number of games, but also ours was multi-player which may be have limited the interest. Next year we are looking at a single player game, which might work a bit better. It was very nice to catch up with lots of people I knew, and I'm looking forward to going back in future.

I had some moderate shopping success, getting some planned items, along with some unplanned ones (but as those Zevzda 1/100th boxes worked out at £2.50 each, they were virtually crying out to be taken away). The only slight disappointment was the catering, which didn't even have staples like Mars Bars (although I gather the breakfast bap was excellent). I'll know to pack more sweets next time.