Partizan in the Park.
Every time I put on a display game at Partizan I am amazed by the quality of the other games on and they all seem better than mine. To me Partizan is one of those shows that still has the old fashion look and feel where its the games that come first and there is a seem on community and I just love it. So this time, due to an amazing *bleep* on behalf on Kelham Hall, not Newark Irregulars, with the hall being double booked with a Art Deco Show, we had the fun and I have to say pleasure of playing in a tent.
Now the first thing that should be said is the amount of work that Laurence Baldwin and Richard Tyndall, both of Sloppy Jalopy and Newark Irregulars, have put in so much work to make sure that the show went ahead, especially Laurence, was nothing short of amazing and to get the weather booked for a lovely, hot summers day to me was the finishing touches.
Now I am not going to give you a view of the show because when putting on a display game you dont get a lot of time for that but I will give you my day there. Now I got there at about quarter to eight and even then there was people who was there before me putting up there stuff, not a lot mind you, and I set about laying out the terrain tiles and shortly the other people helping with the game had come in and where helping with getting the table changed from a few terrain tiles to a small corner of England.
Now all of this was done with the Perry Twins and Alessio Cavatore setting up a beautiful looking Second World War Early Desert game, with lovely sculpted terrain boards and buildings, not to mention troops and tanks, God these chaps are Gods of wargaming and for good reason. So like I said no pressure. But we got our display game sorted and was ready to roll those dice and play when the doors opened and fellow gamers entered into the tents. Now I should say that at this point you could feel the warm atmosphere change from quite pleasure to baking hot and any idea of starting the game went as the number of people who started chatting to us about the game and where did the cricketers come from was actually amazing as we have never created this much interest in our games before. If fact we had more people talking and commenting on our game than the Perrys and even they came over and looked.
Now our table was in fact in front of the Warbases stand with the great LOKI from Loki's Great Hall there on their stand all day. It was very good to have such a great character and friend on there as it when the day for me very enjoyable. I had ordered some stuff from Warbases, mainly pavements and them I ended with a Viking tents, wild boars and a Viking Knarr as Mrs PK would it and somehow ended up buying it. Now I have got a idea on how to get this in an VBCW game based around the Sutton Hoo burial but more on than later.
Back to the show and the game. There was a lot of interest in the cricket pitch and the cricketer and it was good to people enjoying them. The best, no actually amazing bit about the cricket teams was the one both by my good friend Burnin' Coal as he had converted the Sloppy Jalopy cricketers into an Indian team named I think the King's Royal Punjab XI and their where amazing. Each player was wearing a turban and he had even converted other figures for the rest of the team and still the unit is a fighting unit, wonderful stuff. Now if that wasn't enough he also made the blinds, screen too which just added more the display.
Now we did actually get some turns in and the players did get involved in a firefight over the control of assets and the objectives there where to complete. There was much fighting over the communication centre, okay telephone boxes as these where the other way to get reinforcements and the socialists from the Leicester City Socialist Council Recce section, which was checking an I on the Duke of Rutland and getting this information back to the Council was so horrified by the fact that the Duke's chaps playing cricket when there was a war on, dont you know, that there advanced and open fired on the chaps in white and even tried to steal the stumps.
The Royalists and the BUF joined forces to work together on getting the objectives with the BUF sending troops to support the Royalist who where being pinned down by the Anglican league fellows just outside the village of Hartson. They also brought up the prize winning Crossley 19.6 Tourer which they used as a road block, can you believe that, still it did get it nearer the Royalists who wanted the car.
And all the time the BUF was fighting the Socialists, the League was fighting the Royalists, the Bradgate Opportunists where quietly going around completed their objectives was no one noticing. They were so good at getting the objectives that no one noticed that the prize winning Bulldog that the BUF commander, Sub-Commander, Lt Col (Rtd) Denis Plantagenet Tollemache wanted to give to Lord Tredgast Strapleton-Mallet, the ninth Duke of Rutland, had also been taken by them.
So all in all the usual amount of chaos, fighting, failing to jump over hedges, actually we had less on that than normal but changing the rules so it was the unit and the individuals that you roll for and general merriment rules that day.
At the end of the game many of the objectives were not completed, the Royalists failed to get the BUF commanders car, got close to but no cigar. The BUF failed to get the prize winning Bulldog bitch for Hartson Village and had not noticed that the Bradgate Opportunist had in fact got it. The Anglican League failed to get Knipper, Sub-Commander, Lt Col (Rtd) Denis Plantagenet Tollemache's own Bulldog but did actually end up with the Crossley which was used as a road block and then let there, so the League took it. There might be a mission to get the Crossley back I think. The Socialist tried to get the cricket stumps and changed into the cricket team to get them but the BUF section open fired and took half of the socialists out and the assault failed and they had to leave the area with no stumps.
But the ones that did the best was the Bradgate Opportunists who quietly moved around the battlefield to there drop off points to collect there packages and also nabbed the prize winning Bulldog, Harts, along the way, gosh the vicar of Hartson, the Reverend John Stoup Wagstaffe, is very upset about this and will he use his influence with the Duke and if this failed I wonder where to whom he will go next.
It was a crackling day out meeting lots of new people and old friends. Good to have a long chat with my good friend Ook, Ian from The Blog With No Name, Dave from One Man and His Brushes and finally my good friend and fine fellow PaulC glad that you had a great time.
So I have to say that Partizan in the Park was a great success and a great day, there was lots of smiling faces and the atmosphere was totally amazing. Actually after a while I genuinely forgot I was in a tent and because of the warm weather, the time of year, etc I think it actually work very well, well done Laurence and Tricks.
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