We faced the 2014 Crisis....

...and lived to tell about it! 

Once more we, my son and his girl and yours truly, visited the largest and most enjoyable of all continental wargame shows, hosted by the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp: Crisis!

Under a clear blue sky in  most un-November like weather we waited in line until we could plunk down our entry fee in exchange for the traditional goodie bag, the free figure and a day of games and chat (and some minor shopping, of course). 

 Usually the goodie bag is emptied of the free figure (a rifle-wielding king Albert I this time) and discarded, since it is usually filled with well-meant but useless commercial advice. This year however the bag contained a veritable treasure of 5 plastic figures, a field-of-fire template, six laser-cut bases and a bag of crisps! And the Crisis Gazette, which I only viewed once back home to discover that it had held a most comprehensive map of the event. If only I'd known....

I had subscribed to the Battle of Keren Game by the Newark Irregulars. Having seen pictures from Salute of this game, I was very much looking forward to it. The table surpassed my greatest expectations! It was an absolutely smashing table, beautifully painted and about 1.80 meters high and filled with lovely figures. 

The game featured a climactic phase in the Battle of Keren, the fall of Fort Dologorodoc, taken by storm by British and Indian troops after a prolonged bombardment. We used the Chain of Command rules and the British launched a susprise attack up the hill while the Italian and Colonial troops were supposed to hold as long as possible. 

 The view downhill

Above you see Scrivs tirelessly explaining how this game came to be. 

 Below you see the view uphill. 

A tremendous amount of research and ingenuity went into building the Keren game. Everything you see here folds up so neatly it fits in the back of a Mini!

Here you see me on top of the mountain (the Italian player actually has to stand on a stool to be able to see his troops) directing my ever-dwindling Italian troops.

HOW many casualties you say you just scored?

And finally the British troops reached the summit, ending the game with my Italians still unbroken and fighting (if largely killed)! My sincere thanks to James and Scrivs for the privilege to play this magnificent game, that not only looks amazing, but delivers a thrilling game as well! 

After the Keren game I immersed myself in the chatting. gaming and shopping crowd. I met a fantastic array of tables, paintwork.

A magnificent steampunky winter landscape

Goblin Town from The Hobbit

An undisclosed Victorian display. 

Most of these pictures were taken by Annemarie and everyone who knows her, knows she loves her purple....

Next year I will built ten houses, sit in the Bring and Buy for an hour and sell them for insane prices. Then I will have more to spend than any other year before....

Vikings pillaging and burning (hopefully in the right order) a hapless Dark Age village

An impressive breach in Jerusalem's walls.. 

Freebooter once again made a great entry with this pirate table full of shipwrecks. It was unplayed at the time, a view I saw quite a lot actually. A lot of games either weren't particiation games or lacked players and/or hosts. Too bad, since there was a lot to be enjoyed playing the games.

Above to the right you can see what wide expanses you can build when you play small scales like 10 or 6mm.

 Above my son makes eyes at the impressive Deadzone table. 

Prodos also presented the prototype  of their Alien vs Predator game. 

I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will release the figures separately....

PS:
My son informed with the Prodos people whether they were planning to release the figures separately and it turns out they are!!!

Ohww Golly, where wil I get the money....?

Some paintwork defied belief, so well was it done. 

The illuminated demon idol and the Amazonian dragon below were just a few examples. 

And finally: Da Loot! 

I came away with the barest necessities this year: the 7TV ruleset with cards, dice and counters and the paranormal exterminators by Crooked Dice, Indians by Redoubt for my Roanoke Witchfinder General project, 10mm musketeers and swordsmen by Pendraken to fill out my TYW army, the B-Team by Foundry just for the heck of it and a Warlord German anti-tank gun to better kill Jasper's tanks next time. 

Many thanks to the boys and girls of the Tin Soldiers, who made this a fantastic day!!!

Crisis 2013

Yesterday, saturday November 2nd, I was once more privileged to visit the Walhalla of mainland European wargaming, Crisis in Antwerp. For the second time in Hangar 29 this proved to be a huge and roomy gathering of a LOT of wargamers and all things wargaming. Dozens of traders, games-to-look-at (not my favorite things) and games-to-play (that's more my COT!) and a million things to spend your meager cash on awaited me.

After parking our car on a parking lot looking suspicously like the 2nd Battle of Ypres after a vivid German bombardment (so better parking arrangements than last year, which were crap, but still somewhat improvised) we were greeted by the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp crews and the smell of hamburgers. As a matter of fact the entire Hangar 29 smelled of hamburgers. I like hamburgers, but it would have been a bit of a bane for vegetarians, I suspect.

The hall is big. Really BIG. And the second hall as well. This makes for pleasant walking around without having to elbow your way through the throng all the time. In fact, the only real busy area was the Bring-and-Buy and its many temptations and this was the only area I avoided after my first attempt to pass through it. The lights were fine in most places allthough there were some dark patches in the second hall.

My first stop (after picking up some books at Caliver Books) was the Chain of Command demo by the great and outspoken Richard Clark of Too Fat Lardies fame. Being a great admirer of his rulesets as well as his demo style I as anxious to try out his new WW2 rules set. No pun in the title this time (until you abbreviate it, but who would want to do that, right? Right.)

Chain (note the absence of abbreviations) is a fast playing and interesting game with a lot of attention for Command and Control that makes for challenging play and hard choices. Our British desert rats tried to dislodge some platoons of Evil Nazis from their position. Unfortunately the Evil Nazis had a lot of Evil firepower and even managed to blow up our Rolls Royce armoured car with their second antitank rifle shot (quote by mr Clarke: "THIS NEVER HAPPENS!!"). One can tell Rolls Royce has fallen into Arab clutches and is not what it used to be....

So we had to abandon our misson eventually due to a lot of dead and disgruntled Britons. Still, we will win the war in the end.

Below mr Clarke at work explaining the Nazis how the rules work (a little too well, I'm afraid).

Below we see Jur chatting with Sidney Roundwood of Roundwood's world who I would have loved to have spoken but unfortunately we missed each other for the rest of the busy and crowded day.

My next stop, after picking up some Warlord Games German paratroopers (for some WW2 ruleset someone managed to sell to me along the way) was the Samurai demogame by Karwanseray. I was really looking forward to it, having seen the terrain and the rules in WSS 67.

Regular readers know me as a great admirer and lover of good demos and this one was as near to perfection as I haver ever seen and played. The terrain -made by Christy Beall, who I must have continually embarassed by my praise for her work- was top class, modular and with interiors included. The figures were extremely well painted and the rules were, after not even a 3-minutes explanation, simple, fast and straightforward.

The concept -written by Guy Bowers as I understand- was as simple as it was creative. Each player plays a ninja on a mission of stealth and murder. Missions are divided at random. Mine was to retrieve an ancestral sword from the castle tower. A tower crawling with ashigaru and samurai, to be exact. Owww....

As a ninja you had to sneak across the table because villagers and soldiers would sound the alarm as soon as they saw you. One of my fellow ninjas got cornered by a Blind Swordmaster like this but luckily managed to kill him, proving that swordfighting is an impractical form of self defence for blind people and preventing at least one cheesy Rutger Hauer film from being made in that universe...

Above and below Guy and Arvid explain the rules while players and audience gather round.

Some wargamers-to-be awed by the impressive table and lovely figures.

Below Joop and yours truly are evaluating the game to determine who really deserved to be called the winner. Was it Joop, who merely walked into the castle gates, killed an unsuspecting messenger and snuck off or was it this stalwart blogger who had to sneak into a castle climbing over the castle walls, kill two ashigaru, evade a raging samurai, climb to the top floor of the tower and climb down on a rope, pursued by said raging samurai only to escape at the last moment one turn after Joop had strolled off the table. You tell me, dear reader... ;)

The referee team stretching their creative ..... things....

I spent most of the day playing and talking to people so I did not see half of what there was to be seen. Some quick snapshots of the 3-dimensional Warmachine Table and the BRILLIANT WW1 dogfight game are a few of the impressions I have taken with me. Doubtlessly dozens of other people will supplement my pathetically imcomplete report of this lovely day.

Before returning home we reclined in the bar to fondle the loot and enjoy the Belgian beer and hamburgers (I already smelled like one, so I gathered I might as well eat one).

Here's the loot I took home with me. Tomorrow's War Alien rulest, War and Conquest because Arvid has told me so many good things about this rather undeservedly obscured ruleset and some WW2 Germans for this WW2 ruleset someone managed to flog me. Oh and of course some Ninjas and Japanese villagers that were my only real impulse buy (honest!) about 25 seconds after completing the Karwansaray demo.

\

Many, many thanks to all the people of the Tin Soldiers, who apparently enlist their entire families to make this day possible, and of course to the people of Too Fat Lardies, Karwansaray and all the other traders and players that made this day possible. 

See you all next year!