Alumwell and more.

I reckon that I have been attending the Alumwell show for 25 years this year. Of course back in the day it was in Walsall at what I think was the Alumwell school. Several years ago it moved venues to the Aldersey sports centre in Wolverhampton but is still referred to as Alumwell as it is the same club running the show. 

Following the move I did fear for the shows suvival but it has gone from strength to strength each year. It remains a firm favourite for Stoke club members to attend and its always great to catch up with familiar faces like Jeff, Mark, Barry and Jon. I had my usual preorder in with Peter Pig, bits to round out the ECW stuff plus the beginnings of the rebuilding of my Wars of the Roses collection. I also stocked up on basetex, got a good little military biography of Cromwell and bought some more dead for my US and German PBI armies.

After chatting with Jon we arranged a long over due game at my house and so on Tuesday he came round for a run through of PBI. We played 2 platoons onto 1 with just infantry to get the mechanisms sorted and finished with a recreation of the film 'Fury' with 3 Sherman M4/75's up against a Tiger 1. The Tiger managed to destroy one of the Shermans before receiving an immobilisation result from a rear shot before the Sherman on the road in the above picture made a daring run upto the Tiger and achieving a second immobilisation hitting the Tiger in the side from close range. 2 immobilisations in PBI means a destroyed tank. So a slightly better result than in the film!

I am making a few scenery bits for both PBI and Longships at the moment. I love the S&A scenics hills and templates that Simon makes especially for Longships, link here but I have always tried to make my own scenery. I am attempting to copy the style of hills S&A produce. They retail at £8 for 2 which is pretty good value but I have all the supplies needed for my own so I can save myself a few pounds making them myself. Here is one of the hills waiting for texturing. They cover an area of roughly 12"x 6". They will be covered in sand, painted brown and drybrushed before static grass is added. The rules require a designation between a gentle and a rough hill which I will use a more gravelly texture to denote the rough hills.

Back to Alumwell. Here we see Martin taking a couple of new recruits through PBI. The new demo board is lovely, built on the same basis as a paste table so that it hinges in the middle to fold up for carrying.

This is I think the Battle of the Marne using Kallistra figures and their Hexon terrain. At various times I love the Hexon terrain and then cant get past the obtrusive hexes. The figures are lovely though and their WW1 rules, Raging Empires use a hex based movement and shooting system not dissimilar to Square Bashing.

With my current ECW kick this large 28mm ECW game grabbed my attention. Lovely figures, lovely teddy bear fur terrain. I took lots of pictures of the units to use as reference for painting my Piggie figures.

 1214 Battle of Bouvine by the Society of Ancients events team, which seems to consist of Phil Steele. Lovely looking game but I have no idea what, where or who this battle was about.  Want to know? Look here.

Obligatory shot of the hall. I had a great day, playing on the PBI demo game, perusing the traders and bring and buy and chatting with Martin, Stewart and Nigel for long periods.

Next up will be Salute, helping out on the PBI demo game. Paiting continues with the ECW, ACW and AWI all getting a look in. The main push is ECW though. More soon...