There’s been a long silence on my blog, but after a busy period, I’m back with some good stuff. Fighting Fantasy 3 was a lot of fun back in 2019, but this time it was not just a simple event. In September 2022 it was the celebration of the 40th anniversary of publishing the book that started everything: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. The ticket was pricey, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime event and it was also within walking distance from home, so it was absolutely worth it.
Continue reading Fighting Fantasy Fest 4 – The 40th AnniversaryCategory: Event reports
The Show Must Go On
This one was supposed to be my report about Salute 2020 . Under normal circumstances, you could be reading about London’s biggest wargaming show, the participation games, the traders, the new games presented and all the amazing stuff I bought. But we have this COVID-19 situation and Salute is postponed to 2021.
This must have been a very difficult decision for the organizers, as I’m sure they have invested a lot into the show already and they came up with an great theme (Battle of Britain 1940). This must also be painful for the traders who are relying on the sales revenue and the game developers who wanted to present their new products. It’s a loss for us, gamers too.
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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.
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Colours 2019, Newbury
There is a first time for everything… and in this case, it was my first visit to a proper wargame show: Colours 2019, in Newbury. For those, who are not familiar with it, Colours is an annual game show, organized by the Newbury & Reading Wargames Society at the Newbury Racecourse.
To be perfectly honest, I was hesitant to go: it was a very busy period, I was working my way through a massive backlog of miniature painting, and it took more than an hour to get there by train, but a veteran gamer friend convinced me to take the trip. I didn’t really know what to expect, as the closest thing I recently participated in, was Fighting Fantasy Fest 3, which was focusing on one single line of games.
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Fighting Fantasy Fest 3
There are things in life that influence you: books you read, movies you watch, and people you become friends with. Some of these are just short impressions, while some of them have a long lasting effect and might even become an important part of your life.
Fighting Fantasy was published in Hungary in 1989, starting with “Deathtrap Dungeon”, “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain” and “Freeway Fighter”.
Little did I know then that these books would inflame a new passion of mine. I was still in primary school and my classmates were talking about these new books that you can play. A book you can play? It just didn’t make any sense, but when I opened one of them, everything was clear. After reading the first few pages, there was no turning back: I became a fan of Fighting Fantasy.
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