The Wargamer

In a break with tradition, the preparations for Britcon have been running well ahead of schedule this year, and so the early starters who arrived today were presented with the spectacle of a near-complete arena. The team have been busy though, printing out and putting up the vast array of signage around the venue, and making sure the details of all the competitors are spot-on so there are no hitches with the competition draw tomorrow evening.   The draw at Britcon is based on a rolling start with players being paired up as they arrive. Games commence between 5pm and 9pm with the only proviso being that they are ended by midnight, so we can prepare the draw for the next day. This means that the real die hards can achieve a match lasting 7 hours !!  No hiding in corners here.

As the competitors drift in, strangely enough, it seems to be those who travel the furthest who arrive earliest, with a good smattering of Scots coming “south of the border”, and even a New Zealander arriving today. Wherever they came from, all seemed keen to get started and the end result was a series of practice battles running throughout the day, with some even carrying on now as we write this at approaching 9pm in the evening.

Several of the traders have been getting in contact with last minute requests and news – and one even arrived today, hoping to do some business with the early arrivals. The show will see a number of new releases by some of our regular traders, as well as the appearance of some new exhibitors coming along for the first time this year.

Donnington have been getting rave reviews for their New Era range (sculpted by a different sculptor to their existing ranges), and are selling them for the first time in Field of Glory unit-sized blister packs (as well as single figures). They also have a newly launched "mix and match" Medieval baggage train sets – the last time you saw so many things loaded on a horse, you were seven years old and playing Buckaroo!

Also on a Field of Glory theme, Magister Militum gave us a bit of a headache by asking for more space – their first shipment of the astoundingly detailed – and rubbery - Miniature Worldmaker terrain arrived earlier than they expected direct from Australia, and Richard & Zoe wanted to make sure they could bring as much as they could to the show. After a bit of last minute floorplan redrawring, we just about managed it – which is probably bad news for the bank balances of a few of our competitors.   

Curteys Miniatures have just released a 28mm Macedonian Successors range and will be showing mounted and dismounted generals, Companions, Cataphract and Agema commanders and armoured phalangites at the show – and we are all hoping that the Armoured Elephant will also make it to the show at least in “green” form. They also have promised preview figures for forthcoming releases from Kingmaker Miniatures’ Late Medieval range, and some new C13th Medievals.

Kerr & King will as always be providing both prizes and trophies for the Flames of War competition, and keeping with tradition they are also putting the finishing touches to a new battlefield objective marker to be given away free to all the players in the Flames of War Tournament. They also plan to have a couple of pre-release buildings from their latest City on a Box set for sale over the weekend.

Products for Wargamers sell a vast range of hand-made scenery and accessories, but they have recently launched a popular range of figure cases and Britcon sees some new accessories added to the range. They have also done well recently out of the launch of a number of new rulesets recently  - or more accurately, they have been selling loads of pre-cut MDF bases as gamers try to cope with the inevitable flurry of rebasing and new figure buying that new lists and rules always seems to entail!

Lesley's Bits Box sell mostly GW kits and figures, but recently the rather-too-addictive Wings of War World War I aircraft has been a hot seller for them, and there even were a few games going on today in the hall as people looked for something a little less taxing than serious practice games!  A limited number of copies of the Wings of War (German-language-rulebok) "all in one box" DeLuxe starter sets have recently been appearing in the stock-lists of UK retailers and Lesley tells us she expect to make a serious dent in their stocks of this set during the week!

Anyways, the pizza delivery boy has just arrived, so now it’s time for the hard working Britcon team to take our break – more updates tomorrow when the real action starts!