This past Saturday I decided to make a trip to the Ascot Race Course, Berkshire, in order to attend the Wargames Association of Reading’s annual show “Warfare”. This two-day event is one of my favourite shows of the year, and was doubly exciting as for the first time in my memory it wasn’t being held at its usual home of the Rivermead leisure centre in Reading.
So major change of venue certainly seemed to help the numerous traders have a bit more elbow room than normally, and whilst the Bring and Buy sale location was somewhat difficult to reach – at least without some guidance from the show’s staff – it was definitely easier to reach the main tables so as to see all the second-hand miniatures being sold. Sadly, I didn’t feel the same could be said for the parking though, which was strangely off-site in a muddy, cordoned off area, which also resulted in punters having to cross a well-used main road during a nasty downpour.
Purchase wise, I got off to be a bit of a flyer with “Crooked Dice Game Design Studio”, who had a lovely display of all their goodies spread across quite a sizeable area. A couple of their more recent figures quickly caught my eye, such as a resin Raging Brute and a metal Divine Mortal. Both of these models have already been pinned together and primed in preparation for the upcoming Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (AHPC); albeit the resin ponytail on not-Goro snapped off surprisingly easily whilst I was simply dusting the multi-limbed ensemble down in my grit tray.
In addition, I couldn’t resist picking up the company’s eight-figure strong 28mm Kobold Tribe. These “craven reptilian humanoids” are one of my favourite dungeon dwellers, and as smooth-looking, single-cast sculpts look set to be a lot of fun to paint in the near future. The horde come armed with a mixture of swords, spears and shields, so have already been efficiently based and undercoated ready for the AHPC.
One of my other favourite visits was to “Tangent Miniatures”, where I delighted to be able to swap nine Enemy Commander figures I inadvertently received from them a year ago, for some Enemy miniatures instead. This was superb service, in my humble opinion, as I should have double-checked the order twelve months ago when I first received it. But luckily, the manufacturer were an absolute pleasure to arrange the exchange with. Indeed, I was so impressed, that I ended up buying the remaining Enemy models they had, as well as NY Serpent from their Escape Artists range.
Finally, my biggest buy came from “Pendraken Miniatures”. I already own several of their pre-painted 10mm scenic kits by “Escenografia Epsilon”, so ended up coming away with several more bags when I discovered that the terrain was being discontinued. Despite being a little larger in size than my 1:285 scale plastic “Battletech” models by “Catalyst Game Labs” I figured the different resin pieces would easily allow me to populate a suitably varied 3’ x 3’ battlefield for my upcoming Weird War Two campaign…