West Midlands Military Show - WMMS 2018

Braved the snow for my annual trip to WMMS - my local wargame show - at the weekend. The overnight snow-fall (c.2-3") had a big impact, and I'd estimate about 25% of traders and 50% of demo games didn't make it. On the plus side it was the fastest drive I ever had there as once I was off our road and onto the city B roads and then the M6/M54 the roads were clear and the traffic light! And the car park was actually usable (rather than having tens of soccer teams in and playing).

It must have been a tough call for the organisers, but I think they made the right one. And all the traders I spoke to thought it had still been worth the trip. So thanks to everyone for making the effort!

The main traders I did make it, Pendragon, Magister Militum and Tumbling Dice, so that was good.

From TD I bought my first batch of metal 20mm ECW. They look good alongside the plastics (if headless!), and nice figures with separate and multiple heads, so I'll be buying and painting up 6-12 units this year (flash not removed yet!).

I'd planned to get some trial medieval 20mm from MM, but they weren't carrying any on the stall, and it sounds like an old range. But TD did 20mm WOTR (which I'd missed), and they looked really nice. Didn't buy any but I think it's where I'll start in the next couple of months.

I'd also planned to get some trial 10mm WW2, but Pendraken only had big unit packs. But MM had smaller packs and nice looking figures so bought some of those. They'll fit OK with my existing 6mm scenery (and I usually used buildings one scale down anyway), so I can see myself doing a Coy or even Bn of WW2 North West Europe next year, and using those instead of the 6mm I'm currently using for IABSM and BKC.

10mm Magister Militum figures with 6mm building (Baccus?)

Other purchases included:

• A couple of nice small stone buildings (grottos) for use as objectives (MM again)
• Some 10mm haystacks from Pendragon for 6mm objectives
• A deviation dice
• Daniel Mersey's Wargamer's Guide to the Desert War

I probably bought less than planned, but more ECW figures!

As I said there were a lot of empty wargames tables, so slim pickings in terms of games to dwell on. The ones that caught my eye were :

• A nice Wars of Religion game from the Wyre Forest Wargamers using "Twilight of the Sun King: Birth of the Age of Reason" - they have an ECW version coming!
• A nice 10mm Lace Wars game by the same group (pics below)
• A nice 12mm Crusade era game using Hexon terrain and Hordes and Heroes rules - nice scale 12mm (pics below)
• The card driven Napoleonic game (NapPoker or something?)

It did strike me that 10mm/12mm was around in far more profusion than normal - just easier to cart through a snow-storm? My brother is heavily into 10mm, and I can increasingly see its merits, but having just finished as shed-load of 6mm I'm not about to redo them! But the 10mm WW2 will be a start. Perhaps I should have (should?) decide to go metric and standardise on 10mm/20mm/30mm!

Some nice MM 10mm Napoleonics....

All in all well worth the trip over, and again thanks to everyone who turned up and made it happen.