6th August, Edinburgh

Claymore

The annual race to the north saw us get to Scotland in daylight for a change ... and staying over in Linlithgow (birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots ... which it regularly reminds you, but which I shall remember) strategically a few miles short of Edinburgh.
A very friendly town and somewhere worth paying more attention (it has a palace and a loch though not open as darkness was falling ...)...

After our usual scenic trip into Edinburgh, we met up with Paul and the Glasgow team with half an hour or so in which to set up.
(Claymore 2011 ... click on the pictures for a larger image)
The Phoenix team were doing a vast 28mm demonstration game of Magnesia using Tactica II, a big table and a good number of players. I hope I can convey properly the size of this game
(Awesome: the Battle of Magnesia by the Society of Ancients and Glasgow Phoenix Club)
Elsewhere, the show was not quite as thrilling as last year.
Our Hall was pretty good and had the great value 'RAF' Leuchars team doing a Great Escape game, some good looking naval stuff and a genuinely remarkable Chinese battle and terrain display in 15mm.


(more of that Great Escape game)

(ancient China brought alive in every detail)
The Atrium was not the spectacle I was eagerly anticipating after last year. A mix of corporate 28mm and really quite poor Sci Fi. Or was it fantasy? Anyway the part-painted black plastic 28mm stuff on bases that don't match the crude terrain. That's usually Sci Fi, I think ...

Though there were some historical tables that didn't do much better (to think this was home last year to that magnificent Napoleon in the Desert and to an Old School demo!).
It means I'll be giving the photo space to Magnesia which drew a lot of attention and had some exciting moments.

Here is some more of the big picture ...

(engagements all along the line)
(the elephants pushed ahead of the phalanx in this reconstruction)
And here are some close ups ...
(the celebrated confrontation between the Cataphracts and Legions)
(the Argyraspides push ahead and to maintain contact with the Cataphract assault ...)
(Dahae allies skirmish on the river flank)
Excellent. Many thanks to SESWC for another great show.

Yes we will certainly be back.

It was a pity some of the Atrium exhibitors let the show down ... maybe the Warhammer stuff needs hiving off somewhere so there's plenty for youngsters to join in but it doesn't get too central an exposure - in a play space rather than a showcase ...

Nice chatting to old friends and new ones, too

Edinburgh 7th August

Claymore 2010
Edinburgh, Telford College ...

Is Claymore one of the better kept secrets?

Well, not by me - when people ask what it's like, I confirm it is one of the best shows all year. A number of traders seem to agree, and are prepared to go what is more than 'the extra mile' for the event.

The new venue is spacious and lacks the 'steaminess' of the low ceilinged, if more famous, Meadowbank. Yes, it is a show of two disconnected halves. Yes, it is the eve of Festival, so Edinburgh's beds are expensive and mostly already booked ... but the gems are many. A truly first rate selection of games ... beautifully presented, but - as is becoming more the trend this year, it seems, interesting too (more and more, when you ask about the mechanisms, designers are using homegrown systems or freestyle adaptations of more popular choices.

Seldom will the game be just a static figure display purporting to be a game of an equally obvious wargame.

Also, Claymore seems to attract a very worthy coverage, from ancients to 20th Century, from Skirmishes to grand battles like Zama.


This year, the Society of Ancients was presenting the Glasgow Phoenix club's Zama, the centrepiece of the Scottish BattleDay, held over the same weekend as the Bletchley event and my Battle Day Workshop at Sheffield. The game is an enormous 28mm figure game using Tactica II and well over 1000 figures. Despite all that kit, and plentiful breaks to chat to visitors (and interupting SoA Committee members ...)... the game easily played through during the day.


I will post a little more about the game in my 'Zama wrap up' coming shortly, together with more pictures from the Edinburgh variant. Suffice to say that on this occasion, Hannibal won (though maybe not in the fashion envisaged by the Carthaginian when he devised his plans back in 202 BC!).


A great display, an intriguing game, and lots of eye-candy for the visitors.

Many thanks to Paul Innes and his crew, for combining such effective support both for the BattleDay and for the SoA's promotional effort in Scotland (the Zama game has done the other main shows, too - see here for Paul's Zama thread which reports on the game's Scottish tour) ..

For more Zama photos there's the collection I assembled (here ..) or a general collection on the Society of Ancients website (follow this link ...)...

(Battle of Northampton)

In case you hadn't noticed, this year is the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Northampton, and I've included a fair bit of coverage here. It was interesting to see Northampton's fame reaching as far as the firth of Forth - and interesting too to see the battle recreated in miniature, this time following the more traditional site by the river (as shown in the Lance & Longbow Society publication, generally, as shown on the map here ...)... Locals might be more than a little impressed with the impressive vision of medieval Northampton. The idea, of course, is to put the battle site right up against the river, as at the battle of Castillon (probably the prototype for the Lancastrian plan), and opposite the town.

Although they have gone for some pretty grandiose earthworks in this depiction, the scale is probably not wrong - one just needs to imagine this elaborate position dug into the landscape rather than superimposed (dug into the landscape and filling up with water, of course) ... The main issue with this interpretation is that Delapre Abbey ends up on the wrong end of the line, and it is hard to imagine how anyone standing by the Eleanor Cross could have looked into the trenches (over a mile away).

For these reasons, I still favour the solution proposed by Mike Ingram, which Simon Chick followed when building the version shown at the Battlefields Trust Northampton conference. For a fuller account of Mike's reasoning, there is an article on his website (here ... )


Reporting on things ancient and medieval, there were some other impressive ancients games including a big WAB game, and a 15mm Adrianople which just ticked quite a few boxes for me.
More generally, I particularly liked the big 15mm presentation of Froeschwiller (Worth) ... and its mighty depiction of the French position magnifique. I did a 10mm version of this myself a few years back, so know the topography quite well - and Claymore was one of those occasions where you see something from across the room (and in one of the smaller scales) yet it captures its battle so well it is instantly recognisable. That's a big tick.For those of you looking at the picture but not familiar with the battle ... er ... yes, the Prussians won this one - well, at least, took the French positions. However improbably ... having mauled the Prussians and substantially beaten them off, the French fell back, deciding it was just all too precarious.

(Spaghetti Western game from the RAF Luchars outfit)(WW2 Amphibious Assault game) ...I also quite liked the Napoleon in Egypt game. Yes I know Nappies can be very boring - but visually, this one got away from the 'dull green battleboards with every Napoleonic figure ever manufactured on them' syndrome, and presented something interesting and easy on the eye.
I guess, also, Napoleonics in the desert takes you back to a previous era of wargaming ... turning those inspiring pages in your prized copy of Funken and wondering how on earth you could do all those wonderful and unusual soldiers (when 4 boxes of plastics and just 3 or 4 metal manufacturers was all you could draw upon) ... Hmmm ... times have changed. (more stuff that takes you back a generation)

Yes .. a very good show.

Lots to look at. Great games. A good choice of traders - and as Chris (circling for prey in the early morning) can tell you, some bargains to be had on the Bring & Buy ...

Edinburgh, August 1st

Claymore 2009, Telford College, Edinburgh

This was the first Claymore at the new venue– Edinburgh's Telford College.
--> First impressions were positive re parking availability, space, variety of attractions etc. although maybe the jury is out on numbers and certainly loading and unloading (being fair to SESWC, I assume we take 2009 as a learning year) …

The new venue comprised 2 main areas, the hub area at the front of house, and the gym hall a corridor’s length away. We were in the Gym. It always feels a bit cut off to be in the ‘other’ room, but I got the feeling everyone got round, and there was enough trader and game content to make the gym an essential part of the tour.

Deliberate or not, there was very much an Ancients theme to our area, as well as the Callinicum game Glasgow Phoenix were putting on for us, Gateshead club had an adjacent game, Lance & Longbow presented an impressive ‘Fulford Gate’ (stretching the concept of Lance & Longbow, maybe, Dave? … ), and there was a visual very impressive Siege of Troy layout.

(click on the pictures to see a larger version)

I would like to thank Paul Innes and his Glasgow crew for putting on Callinicum. As some of you may be aware from the pre-publicity, this was a transportable version of the big 25mm sand table game put on for the Scottish participation in this year’s Battleday. Having joined in the Bletchley proceedings, I was keen to see another version, and already well-briefed on the battle. As a fan of Arty Conliffe wargames (as well as being an Armati regular, I have been impressed with what I have seen of Shako and of Crossfire …) … I was keen to have a look at the proposed mechanics of Tactica II.

Paul was careful to ensure that the game and info sheets gave a good flavour of the battle and of Tactica’s ideas without giving the unpublished new game away, and I shall respect his concerns. In addition, some of the game mechanisms were scenario add-ins to simulate the historical context.

The game runs to an initiative driven IGO-UGO sequence, with limited manoeuvre, simultaneous shooting but player-defined melee directions: familiar stuff to Armati/Tactica enthusiasts, but with some new subtle tweaks.

How the open movement works, I couldn’t say … working off a given scenario, and with Paul’s penchant for shoulder-to-shoulder deployments, there was not a great deal of player choice beyond go forward/not go forward. That said, I remember Roy commenting at the BattleDay that there was a prolonged archery phase at Callinicum which was largely absent from a number of the Bletchley games (including the Armati games I joined in) … Certainly the horse archery was in evidence in these games. For more about the battle itself, the 2009 battlepack is now available from the Society of Ancients website (here ...)

A feature that certainly seemed to work well was variable unit size, and break levels gear to a link of unit size and morale/training levels. Again, not to much I will say, and no judgements I would like to make after what was just a taster … however it did seem to mesh nicely and gave a good and entertaining picture of battle.

The scenario played quickly despite a large number of players and visitors joining in, and the games were quite tight … comfortably allowing a morning and an afternoon run to completion, and a 1:1 result overall – which reflects both a balanced game, I think, and how marginal (or mostly ‘spun’) was the historically claimed ‘victory’.

(elsewhere at Claymore - the Troy game)

(elsewhere at Claymore - the Fulford Gate game)

I have to admit, with the Callinicum game to play, a hall full of ancients, and Society members dropping in to say ‘hi’, I didn’t get out much – so can’t really
add too much to the above brief survey of what seemed to be a successful show.

In addition to the Troy and Fulford games, the RAF Wargames Club had another innovative looking participation game, and since I snook in a Khartoum picture in my Phalanx report, I can hardly not mention the 'Gold for The Mahdi' adventure with its tomb raiding overtones


(RAF Wargames - Saving Private Ryan)
Certainly a worthwhile venture for the
Society of Ancients.

Thanks very much to everyone who contributed and to everyone who stopped by (and thanks for the positive feed back).
Thanks to SESWC for inviting us, and I hope the new venue lived up to your expectations.

Find Paul's Callinicum stuff (here ... )

See the Bletchley BattleDay pictures (here ... )

(Gunboat in the 'Gold for the Mahdi' game)