Antwon does Antwerp - Crisis 2014

Getting a day "off" for a gaming show can be tricky...

Getting a whole weekend "off" was going to be challenging!

This is a sizable blog post so bang that kettle on and enjoy!!

The usual finishing off odds and sods prevailed the week before the show, however this time I was weathering the T-55 ARV before being picked up by Lee! 

nice simple paint job, modelled by Phil lovely to paint as usual!

getting down to Dover, and the famous white cliffs looking lovely in the sunshine,

The landing commences....

and after a couple of hours and some awesome directions by yours truly we hit Antwerp,

after we checked in, food was required and speaking zero dutch I did the English thing of pointing at stuff and giving the chap euros!

and as we were waiting for the rest of the chaps to arrive we had a few jars!

and a lovely view in the morning,

so in record time the yom kippar board was set up for the last time,

and it wasn't long before we were starting to gain interest from the punters,

Meanwhile I decided to have a mooch about and found a stall that was 3D printing!

and they had some lovely models,

I then went to find Prodos and they had the prototype bits out for AVP, and it was looking really good, I'm very happy with what I'm seeing so far and the wait will be well worth it,

so I tried to get round all the tables that were at the show and I'll apologise in advance as I didn't get game names or clubs that had made the tables,

A lovely 15mm Russian front board

Gripping beast Crescent and Cross board, I like this one a lot and the models are painted superb!

Lee discovering he's been used a box cover art!

28mm Japan, I think the models are either perry or wargames factory? the River was really well done and the all look was cracking,

The First room of the show, the second room was the same size,

28mm Bolt Action, really simple but excellent work

some MDF stuff that'd I'd not seen before, really well done and perfect for drop zone commander,

at this point some of the lights went off in the hall, so I used the flash on my phone which washed out some of the pictures, but you get the general look and feel

loads of demos were going on and the participation of the punters was great,

I spent a while chatting to the chap at warmill and they have a new set of security walls to replace the previous ones, really well designed and the can transform from a pillbox type configuration into a 2 level firing platform, very clever stuff and will be hitting there website soon.

 
Nick gave me the heads up about this board by stronghold terrain, some of the best terrain for dark ages I've ever seen, painted superbly and loads of detail

More of the same stuff

Freebooters fate board pirate cove, all the monster tentacles were custom made and I spent a while chatting to the chaps about the system as this one has interested me for a while and one that will be on my 2015 pick up list once we've made some progress on the TWO salute boards!

London warlords 28mm WW2 bold action board,

More Demo's going on!

At first I thought it was a show piece of terrain and then I spotted the infantry where the stone road meets the dirt road at the bottom of the picture!

A great looking Castle and it turns out that it was the castle in the town where these guys live, great touch and a great scratch build

Even the Newark Irregulars rocked up with the mountain board which is featured in this months wargames Illustrated, 

Chain of command, I think?

28mm ACW

only one of 2 GW themed boards I spotted,

15mm Flames of war

more 15mm Flames

28mm WW1 board

Pirate monkeys and pig crew, superb models!

A dragon type game, and certainly looks better that the new car crash that is dragon attack wing!

The worsung board, I didn't realise that you could opt to pick up at Crisis, so all the stuff was sitting there, the models are lovely looking and the paint is mind blowing!

stumbled across the ProTools stand, very impressive selection of modelling stuff,

A cracking warmachine board, the snow effect really made it stand out and the conversion on the khador model is lovely,

WW1 28mm,

some of the boards that even though they could be perceived as "simple" I really liked as it shows what can be done depending on your skill set and budget, proving that you don't need a micro detail board to gain some interest,

28mm darkages?

these made me smile, nice conversions,

So I've snapped quite a few pics of the board that we took as it was the last outing for it, the armour will be reused for future projects, and the board and terrain will be recycled for something else,

note Nick's catalogue pose....

So after we broke the board down and got changed back into "normal" clothes we went back to the venue as they had and after party, this was quite surreal but also a good laugh.

The Phat cats demo team earning a well deserved rest!

the buffet was awesome for 15 euro's,

and they threw a live band on that played some very interesting 80's rock....

the Prodos boys mooched with us for the evening and much fun was had mainly at Rob's expense

So the next day it was operation get back to blighty, however it didn't quite go to plan as we missed the 10 am ferry, throwing the whole plan into contingency mode,

ready to engage the FTL drive....

As we got closer to Dover the weather took a turn for the worst and people were throwing up all around us!

so after bouncing around outside for a while we managed to make port,

this kept us delayed for an hour, but also has given me some inspiration for a spectre board!

Overall the Crisis show that is hosted by the tin soldiers of Antwerp is a superb show and weirdly enough alot of uk traders do attend however the European guys also show in force and I found some real gems.

Size wise its quite reasonable and certainly has enough to keep you occupied throughout the day but not too much that you miss stuff like you would at salute, the amount of attendees was a fair few and the time that we spent talking to the punters about the 3rd generation system that we play with took up most of the day and even got a few guys to join in and roll some dice,

as a demo team we felt very welcome and the language barrier that I though we might encounter wasn't a problem as most people spoke good English and I even managed to teach a couple of guys some slang and typical insults that we use! 


Assuming that we are accepted for the show next year we have a much better plan of the travel factor as the journey over was about 12 hours and due to some adjustments so that Lee could zap off and meet up with his lovely wife and go up to Manchester myself and Phil were effectively travelling for about 15 hours but did mong it in a pub for about 3 of those hours!

I have to say a huge thanks to the Demo team that is Nick, Lee, Phil and Ed cracking weekend and had great fun! 

So onto the "loot"

Yep thats it!! some flock and "minions" from great escape games they are for Isla so that I can do a tongue in cheek micky take of some club members that Isla has painted more models than them!

And talking of Isla, I decided to get a club shirt for the "gc" so that next year I'll be taking her to local shows and start her on the dark path of gaming, some might call it child labour, I call its Daddy & Daughter time! LOL

Anyway if you've made it this far well done and a huge thanks for the continued support for all the readers and commenters of my random whaffling.