Claymore 2010

ArabianSquire and myself gave the Edinburgh show Claymore 2010 a visit last Saturday. Two (warm) large halls and a smaller Bring & Buy room managed to hold all the action. There were alot of beautiful looking but the vast majority of them (and traders wares) were historical, so there was little more than passing interest. With nothing to sell and no real burning purchases to hound out (aside from a late pre-order ) it was just a vist to get a couple of different games in.

After a scout round the 2 large halls and a bite to eat we had narrowed it down to a 15mm Zombie Game, Doctor Who, Magnificent Seven, and an Air combat game. Given the choice the wee lad decided to play the Air Combat game, as he'd never played it before. To be fair, neither of us have played any air combat games, let alone one set in the Iran/Iraq war.

The game was called "Ayatollahs Aces" - a 1/600th Air Warfare Homebrew set of rules set in the 1980-88 Iran/Iraq war, all served up by The Blues Bears. A fun game, even though we weren't really sure what we were doing - it was kept romping along by our enthusiastic and vocal hosts. By the end of the game (which lasted only about 4 rounds due to time constraints) we'd all shot down some of the enemy in numbers, some of us were dubbed aces and went away happy.

With time for one more game in the afternoon we plumpted for the large scale Doctor Who game. We'd actually played this game in Carronade 2009 in Falkirk, so were treading on familiar ground after the mental confusions of the previous games. Another set of home spun rules but nice and easy to get round. Everyone controlled a group of 4 daleks, trying to hunt down the "trailor" Davros, with random locations revieling either our quarry, cybermen, battle dalek, unit soldiers, sontarans or even the Doctor himself. Great fun with the chaps running the game and a very enthusiastic young set of other players. Arabiansquire managed to defeat Davros in the end, so he was pleased to finish the afternoon on a victorius note (with only a few victory arm pumps).

And finally onto the purchases, with which no show would be complete. I'd already made a pre-order from Pendraken Miniatures for one of their 10mm Dungeon sets. I've wanted a dungeon set for ever and thought about various schemes to get one between buying (@ 28mm too expensive) or making (don't fancy a cardstock one and I've a tonne of mini bricks in progress...) so was easily seduced into the is one. I know I'm treading into the dangerous waters of a new scale but the dungeon pack comes with a 5 rooms and corridors, 17 pieces of furniture, 30 monsters, 5 heroes plus some FREE rules! for £40. The mini's are cuter than fluffy kittens and the dungeon pieces are great (sculpted by Germy - the designer of most my modern/near future cardstock buildings). Also at just a few quid for a new room (£3 for a large room) expanding the dungeon won't break the wallet. Very pleased.

A quick visit to the Fighting 15s stall had me stocked up on a couple of brushes and Coat d'arms paints and I also had the traditional rake through the 2nd hand drawers at the Gateshead Gaming stand and picked up a handful of bargain figures:

Dreamblade figures which scream Doctor Who monster

some generic fantasy RPG/Songs Of Blades figures

Some horror/Zombie gaming figures.

 

Overall an enjoyable day out, with a couple of exciting new gaming possiblilties.