Hammerhead 2026

 As I'm managing to miss both Partisan and COW this year due to various family things, I thought I should at least go along to Hammerhead.

The show was VERY well attended (although it never looks it in the photos). I got there around 10:15 and the queue was back to car park, and I gather from chatting to people it was still like that an hour later. First one of the year in the Newark region I guess.

As I wasn't running a game, I had a run around the traders to pick some stuff up. Then a wander around the games to see what was happening, and bumped into various people I knew while doing so.

There seemed to be fewer fantasy games that in recent years, but there was a different mix of traders to Partisan, so it hasn't quite become Partisan III. Anyway, here are a few games which caught my eye. 

A massive Star Wars game by Forest Outlaws, which was very well attended by participants.

And the inevitable Kallistra game - American War of Independance this time. A lovely setup.

Reveille presented this amazing Lego Alamo game.

The figures were just lovely. And made of Lego...

And a fabulous Dads Army game. 'The Seagull has Landed'.

Snorkers! A newish set of WW2 naval rules.

The Italians and French clash in a hypothetical 1940 engagement. Dunquerke is closest to the camera. Lovely 3D prints, which seem to be taking over the world of naval gaming. 

And on the next table my old mate Kev was running a Russo-Japanese naval game. Nice sea mat.

Peters Paperboys presented this astonishing paper WW2 game. Look closely, everything is made of paper, even all the trees. I once made a card model tank, and once was quite enough, so well done for putting this together.

Huntingdon and Diastrict Gamers put on a Crossfire game. Hooray! Nice to see Crossfire out in public.

A lovely Minas Tirith game by the Boondock Saynts.

Battlegroup Northag with some WW3 action.

And a fantastic Stingray game from the South London Warlords.

Complete with authentic hats.

And really lovely models. Funny, I have dim recollections of playing a Stingray game at Salute many decades ago when it was at Kensington Town Hall.

The DBA competition was in full swing.

The armies all look vaguely Bronze Age.

Arab Israeli Wars grand tactical game under development.

Ramilles in 6mm using some sort of gridded rule system.

Lovely stuff, but I couldn't tell who was putting it on or what rules they were using.

Tyneside wargames Club put on the spectacular Operation Barbarossa game covering the entire eastern Front in 1941! I guess each element is a Corps?

The whole of Russia west of the Urals. Blimey.

I did actually play a game - Wakefield Wargamers 'A Moonless Night in WW2'. This is a quick decision game - you lead a troop of Commandos to attack and destroy a German gun battery. You need to decide whether to split up or go in one group, and have a choice of movement routes (point to point).

Here my brave chaps are working as two groups, bypassing the German occupied town. The round counters get turned over and bad (or good) things can happen, depending how alert the Germans are. My blokes in the river found a motorboat, which lets them bypass some of the German presence at the bridge, while the other group sneaked past the German town which is stacked high with counters.

Forming up for the assault. You have ot take the guns by 0430 to get back to the evac point in time. Having got there, you roll against how many men you have left to achieve success. I played it twice and won both times, but only at the very last minute. I lost a lot of men on the first effort, running into German patrols and getting lost in the woods. The second run was more sucessful.

Finally, I bought a few bits and pieces. I failed to get any Woodland Scenics Blended Turf or red/white German turret numbers, but I did get both a Roman Temple and a lovely Star Fort from Brigade Models. I also added to my Hexon holdings with some mountains - a pair of double hex pre flocked ones, and eight unflocked single hex ones. I'll do some of them as snow, and the others as general purpose arid/temperate.

I had a good look at the Table Sale, which is hugely popular and narrowly managed to avoid an AWI complete pair of armies shopping accident in 15mm (priced at well below lead cost, unlike the inflated figures on the traders stands). I really can't start doing the eighteenth century in 15mm, I just can't. 

It was also great to catch up with people and have a chat. A good day out.

The Other Partisan 2025

 The WD Display Team (north) recently attended The Other Partisan at the Showground near Newark. We took my 'Alexander the Brief' game along for another outing, and I had also had a short shopping list. 

Even though I was there before 9am, a lot of the other games and trade stands were already set up. Given the thick fog blanketing the area, that was quite impressive, it wasn't a nice drive and the fog hung around until late afternoon.

The WD stand didn't take long to set up. This time I actually remembered to bring the old copies of the WD Journal 'Nugget' as prizes, and the battle board, which I'd forgotten for the SOA conference. We were using John As very posh dice rolling trays too (repurposed wood picture frames, pre lined with felt). We had our usual slot near the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society.

I had a quick run around but I was busy running the game most of the day. I'm sure other people will do detailed photo reports. I liked the look of this large Eastern Front game by Derby Wargames Society.

And this fabulous Vietnam game from North Riding Wargames. The napalm strike had little flashing lights in it and a lovely model of a Skyraider (which irl is an enormous aircraft).

Near to us Chris K had set up his Front Scale 'Invasion of Crete' game using brigade sized bases. He ran various phases of the German assault during the day. It was somewhat less lavish than the Corps Scale version I'd played all day at Patriot Games a few days before. (I will report on that separately).

Meanwhile back on our stand we had some takers for Alex the Brief. Although there were four of us on the stand, I ran all the games. It just seemed easier and the acoustics in the hall were awful. This is the setup for Granicus.

In this iteration of Granicus, all that is left of the Persians are their mercenary hoplites, about to be surrounded as Alexander storms across the river. We ended up running the game about half a dozen times.

Darius' flanks collapse at Gaugamela. In these iterations, Alexander never lost a battle, unlike the outings at Partisan and SOA conference, and Macedonian campaign losses never approached the massive ten achieved by John B. The best performance was three battles won and three units lost, which was pretty good.

Darius got to run away a lot. Here is he is fleeing to Bactria after Gaugamela.

The show attendance was pretty good, it was absolutely packed, and the numbers held up well into the early afternoon, but dropped off sharply after 2.30. We packed up at 1545 after one last session. A permanent feature now seems to be the new 'tabletop sale' in the tented area by the entrance. This is run as a series of slots, so there were new things for sale all day. Some of my colleagues came away with amazing bargains (three complete 6mm armoured trains for £3!).

Back at Crete. The Germans manage to capture Heraklion airfield, but at heavy cost.

My own purchases were quite modest. I was disappointed Brigade Games weren't there as I wanted one of their Vauban forts, however I did score not one but two second hand Matildas and a Stuart, as well as some useful Coat D'Arms colours including a good match for RAF Duck Egg green. I prefer paints in pots to dropper bottles. 

The Matilda, Stuart and Duck Egg green were on my shopping list. The Matildas are Zvezda, and I think the Stuart is a Skytrex M5. Hopefully a bit closer in size to my QRF M3s than the PSC M5 whoppers.

Surprise score of the day was this perfect condition boxed set of Striker. Result! I sold my original set in the late 90s, and paid roughly the same for this one as I sold the original for 25 years ago.... I'm unlikely to ever play it, but I'd much rather have the actual booklets than the PDFs I got from DriveThruRPG.

Many thanks to John A for spotting this on the Bring and Buy.

Even better, the funds raised from Striker (and loads of other stuff on the same stall) go to the SeaWatch foundation. Saving the planet while blasting aliens, what isn't to like.

That was a fun show and and I'm glad the numbers seem to be holding up. I did see some people I knew wandering about as well but didn't have much chance to chat. I didn't get to do as much shopping and browsing as usual either, but what I did manage was fine and the people who played Alexander the Brief appeared to enjoy it. My Macedonians and Persians have been living in their 'show box' for several months now, so I'll be glad to put them back in their proper storage boxes.

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.