Border Reiver 2013

Today I attended the Border Reiver show held at the Gateshead International Stadium. It was my first attendance at the new venue and its much more spacious that the Arena, however it did get hot, though thankfully not as bad as it was last year according to others from the club.

The club put on a demonstration game for day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg. We were using 15mm figures from my own collection as well as those from George and Neal. There was a mix of manufacturers on display from Old Glory, Warrior, Essex, Peter Pig, battle honours and Mini figs. Harry did all of the terrain boards while Neal and myself provided most of the fencing and buildings, We were going to use the Fire and Fury rules, but in the end decided to just move the figures to there position as they did historically to try and demonstrate how the battle unfolded on the day.

I did manage to take a number of photographs of the game. I was rather pleased with how it turned out and we did get quite a bit of passing traffic and people stopping for a chat which is always nice.

Initial set up

Union position on Seminary ridge

Sickles and III Corps

Behind the Union lines

The view from the Round tops

Ward's Brigade

Hood's Division begins their approach

III Corps falls back

Rebel II Corps advance through Gettysburg

II Corps falters under the Rebel assault

V Corps occupy the Round tops

VI Corps finally arrives to bolster the line

VI Corps start to deploy

Rebs assault the Round tops

Johnson's Division crosses Rock Creek

Rebel III Corps finally in to action

With running the game I didn't get much of a chance to visit the other games. I was was impressed with the Falkirk Wargmaes display for  the AWI, sorry forgot the camera here. There were a couple of 40K games on display, full of some excellent figures including Titans. The game that really caugh my breath was Blood Bowl. The Custom built stadium was awesome (sorry guys I forgot which club you were) the chaps were very friendly talking about the game and the dstadium and all the fans. Also liked the custom built Treeman for the Halfling team.

Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl

Lastly I have to mention the Wings of War/Glory participation game that was run by Neal from the club. Seems a lot of fun was had and the table was constantly busy throughout the day. Neal reckoned that thery used 35 different planes on the day. He is already talking of improvements for the next show.

Wings of Glory

Wings of Glory

For purchases I was very restrained this year, keeping to what i had made a list for. I did pick up some figures from Andy, 15mm Austrian napoleonics, some Austrian Landwher from Colonel Bill as well as assorted MDF bases and paints. There was one bargain on the Bring and buy which tempted me. A full brigade of napoleonic French nicely painted for £50.00, when I returned with the money they had already gone.

Was the show worth it, yes definatly and I will try and make it next year.