SELWG 2019 – A Slightly Delayed Report

I had one more wargames show left to visit this year, the South East London Wargames Group’s SELWG 2019 on 20th October, in the Crystal Palace Sports Centre.

After the relatively fresh experience of visiting COLOURS 2019 in Newbury, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect, which made me feel a bit like a seasoned veteran of wargame shows: the halls were filled with traders and the demo games were exiting, so the situation was reassuringly familiar. Compared to COLOURS, SELWG felt a bit more spacious, which was partially due to the bigger inner height, but also due to the slightly lower number of traders, demos and a smaller crowd. I really don’t mean that as a negative, the location and venue itself was nice, there was a decent range both of games and merchandise. I’d rather say that the whole show was more of a manageable size.

There were many nice demo games, presenting an impressive level of detail, or amazing creativity. Some of them I have seen in COLOURS too, it was nice to take a second look at them (they still looked fantastic!). I could write a lot about them, but let the pictures talk for themselves:

The most exciting part of the show was participating in one of the demo games. I had the opportunity to play Boudicca’s final battle, the battle of Mancetter. The table was simply epic! It was the biggest table I have ever seen, fielding the Iceni tribe and the Romans, but literally hundreds of them! With so big armies, one would expect only roughly painted figures, but the 28 mm figures were very detailed, and I’m not sure if I saw two Iceni who looked the same. Beside the armies there were several scenery pieces with druids, carts and livestock.

The game used cards instead of dice and had three players on both sides. The rules were straightforward and the battle was exciting. I’ve led the right wing of the Roman army, but Fortuna wasn’t kind to me and we suffered a devastating loss.

I also had a nice chat with the representative of Tumbling Dice about naval wargaming. He was super helpful, showed me the different scales used in naval games and explained the difference between the rule sets. I’ve been looking for a naval wargame starter set for a while and after the discussion, I’ve bought the Signal Close Action Fast Play rules and a set of 1:2400 scale ships. There are many reasons for choosing this scale. I was looking for a scale where the ships are still detailed but are sturdy enough, so I don’t have to be super careful when transporting them. At this scale, even a larger collection can be stored in a relatively small place and larger battles can be played on a standard size table. Don’t get me wrong, there are many beautiful minis in 1:1200 or 1:700, on the market, but the logistics of such collections seems to be a problem for me and I would be heartbroken to see such a beautiful ship getting damaged.

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It was also nice to see the Society of Ancients. They are an international amateur society promoting ancient and medieval military history and wargames. They have an impressing knowledge of these periods, and they publish their own game developments. I’ve bought “Roma Invicta?” from them, a game of Hannibal’s war in Italy. The whole game fits into an A4 size folder and the rules seem to be really straightforward.

Haul Report:

1:2400 Napoleonic warships and Signal Close Action Fast Play rulebook. I will paint the ships as English and French, and updates will be posted soon.

Roma Invicta?
Mantic Dungeon Saga – The Adventurer’s Companion. There is always room for a dungeon crawler game. I know that it’s an extension, not the starter set, but it was a bargain. I guess I have no other choice left but buying the starter set too… OK, I can live with that. 😊

A nice mini for my Twilight 2000 character. No, it’s not the teenagers/vampires/werewolves thing, but an RPG in a post WWIII setting.

Scenery bits and bases for my Secret project – something I build and paint for my brother.

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Summary and Learnings:

Demo games are fun! It’s definitely worth to play them. The tables and the minis are very inspiring, the rules are streamlined and simplified, so that anyone can enjoy them without having to learn complete books and the games can take less than an hour.

Cash is king. I’m under the impression that more traders accepted cards here, but cash is still needed. The silver lining is that at least cash helps with controlling my budget. 😊

Wear a comfortable pair of shoes, as you will be walking around a lot at such a show. By the end of the day, I’m pretty sure that I took more than the recommended 10 000 steps.

Bring and Buy: On one hand, it’s a great opportunity to find second-hand games or minis, but on the other hand it’s a good way to sell hobby stuff you no longer need. Next time, I think I should bring some kits I bought long ago, but never had time to paint.

The next wargame show in my calendar is Salute 2020. When I get there, I’m going to play more demo games, and I hope that the Dark Side Of The Moon table will also be there.