We were invited as a club to take a couple of games to the new Tabletop Gaming Live Show at the lovely Alexandria Palace last weekend. Alongside John Treadaway and team’s great UFO themed game I was part of the mob putting on Martin’s absolutely spiffing ‘Sands of the Sudan’ game. So Friday saw Des, myself, Martin and Paul finally ensconced in perhaps the weirdest located Premier Inn in the country ready to get along to the Ally Pally early Saturday to finish off setting up. Even though he was travelling up from South London on the train Ian managed to get there before us and pretty soon we were all ready for the first punters of the day.
We had a cracking day, with the two games we ran having both lots of interest and, even better, participating players. What was particularly nice was one young chap called Christopher, that played in both the morning and afternoon sessions as he enjoyed the game so much! Special mention goes to the chaps from Sudbury & District Wargames club, and also Ed and Neil who also loved playing and apologies to all that I didn’t get the names of, we were very busy running the game and taking people through it as well as talking to others. One of the things that I found pleasing was that people who might not have seen a historical wargame before seemed very interested and we might have got a few converts so all in all a great result. Mind you it did help that the game looks like this:
We were all absolutely knackered by the end of the day and after an early night got to it again on the Sunday which was a bit of a washout to be honest with not that many people around although having said that we did manage to get a few people round the table by the end of the day. As for the show itself, it was a cracking venue but I’m not sure that it was really for miniature wargamers. After speaking from some of the wargame traders we found out that the organisers had difficulty filling the vending spots, indeed they reduced the prices twice which meant that some vendors were being charged different prices to others which didn’t go down well. Also, there was a feeling from the figure sellers that they had been sold a lemon, promises of more punters and no advertising about the show in any wargames media or sites, indeed one of them telling us that they had lost a lot of money by attending. All doesn’t bode well for the future of the show.
Anyway, I didn’t have much time to worry about such things as the next day I was off to France to visit one of my South London Warlords chums as he had a new wargames room to christen with a couple of games…..
Tracks and Threads 
Iain just found this what a totally spiffing report and ace pictures of our Sudan adventures.
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My pleasure Martin, it was great to be involved again. Any chance to wear a Pith helmet!
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