Joy of Six 2026

 Made it to Joy of Six this year, and for once it doesn't clash with COW. WD Display Team (North) put on 633 Squadron, and as I've missed every other run of it this year, I was glad to be able to help out. The venue is close to where I live, so a short 25 minute walk into town. 

The welcome team at the entrance. I encountered a couple of slightly lost people who were obviously wargamers wandering the streets of Sheffield on the way and directed them to the venue. The Sheffield Hallam campus is quite  big and confusing.

Getting one of the halls ready. This show is very different to eg Partisan as it is mainly games with just a few traders.

Very quick Battle of Lens. Huge bases with lots and lots of figures on each, the Baccus demo/participation game. 

Operation Daquet, 1991. The French participation in Gulf War One in 1991. That feels a very, very long time ago now and rather exciting at the time.

I spent an awful lot of time peering at the NATO toys trying to work out what they were before I actually read the game blurb which explained they were French!

Battle of Santiago de Cuba. The Spanish were run by the umpires while the players took the US fleet.

This one was very clever 'Urban Warfare through the Ages' with three boards set up adjacent each covering city combat in different eras.

This lovely Norman era table was set up near the WD stand. I cant remember which battle it was, but the terrain just looked amazing although it was a simple furry cloth over some hills with various bits of scatter terrain.

Sheffield and Rotherham Wargamers put on this rather grand sci fi game.

A beautiful city and some Mechs. I think this stuff is mostly Brigade Models?

The troops line up for battle.

This was also near our table, Gaines Mill (ACW) participation.

The troops deployed, the Union are heavily outnumbered and defending so the players (generally) took the Confederates.

South London Warlords put on this fabulous Marne 1914 game.

The French artillery deployed to confound the Boche.

Froeschwiller/Worth. Another lovely table, custom made this time. It reminded me of Bruce Weigles setups for '1870' (he came to Triples some years ago and put on some games there).

Unlike "1870", the troops are on quite  big bases. These are just skirmish formations, everything else is out of sight for now.

Richard Crawley/Cold war Commanders Calais 1940 game. I just love the custom French style place signs. The scenario is from the Tac:WW2 Blitzkrieg scenario book, I helped playtest a couple of them with Richard.

The toys all laid out on OB sheets. Elements are platoons and manouvre units companies and battalions, rather like Command Decision. iirc 3rd RTR vs 1st Panzer Division outside Calais.

If you look carefully you can see flames and smoke coming out of the German engineers flamethrowers. Figures and vehicles a mix of Heroics and Scotia.

The Ilkley Irregulars put on Borodino using Bloody Big Battles. One of the Tuesday Irregulars (Tim C) played this. Like the the real thing, a rather bloody slog!

Greek City State warfare.

The Battles with MDF team put on a huge demonstration of their 6mm MDF figures, which look very grand en masse.

More of a close up. They do look a bit wooden (sorry!) close up, but to my mind I actually prefer the look of these to the very artificial looking Epic strips which are shoulder-shoulder.

It was only fairly late in the day that I discovered another entire room full of games and stands.

Baccus, as main sponsors of the show, had a huge stand, as well as running the raffle and doing basing demonstrations.

Rapier Miniatures were in attendance and it gave me a chance to have a really good look at their stuff close up. Lovely figures, excellent value for money but very much epic scale '6mm', similar in size and proportions to Baccus. They still have printed catalogues though, which get a big thumbs up from me.

The WD stand for 633 Squadron.

All set up and ready to go. This is the highly portable version of the game using a 1/300th Mosquito. John managed to bring all this down in his rucksack. I added my RAF Officers side cap for period colour.

We managed to run the game 24 times during the day, it was busy in the morning and late afternoon with a bit of a lull around lunchtime.

The bombers reach their target. 23 of 24 missions were successful (the failed one needed anything but a '1' for his last plane and duly rolled disastrously). One very skilful/lucky pilot managed to reach the target with all nine aircraft! That had never happened before. 

I managed to not spend any money on toys during the day at all, although there are some manufacturers whose websites I will be visiting. I need some more 6mm aircraft and I feel a distinct lack of armoured trains... Despite that I came away with a 2mm Mosque (thank you Richard C), a pack of paint pens (thank you John A) and half a dozen dice (thank you South London Warlords and congratulations on the VC).

That was a geat show, nice to be back again. As I said earlier it has a very different vibe to Partisan, Fiasco etc and well worth a trip if you fancy something a bit different for a change.

 

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.