Battlegroup South Wargames Show.

The rain let up yesterday so I decided to take a run over to the Battlegroup South show at Bovington. I haven't been to a wargame show for years. There doesn't seem to be much point these days as you can see everything on the internet but this one's only twelve miles away and I wanted to grab some more hills so I thought why not.

The show didn't seem particularly busy and the Bring & Buy stall had very little on display. In fact I only ever saw one person at a time checking out the offerings which is never a good sign. The layout of the show is strange with stands dotted around the exhibits in various halls. It's easy to miss some stands and it took me a while to make sure i'd found them all. Once I'd got the lie of the land I had a wander around to see what was there and to say Hi to a few friends.

There was a reasonable mix of traders but it seemed the one doing the most business was The Plastic Soldier Company who always had a queue of people waiting to give them money. Some of the traders I spoke to said they'd been busy, some said it had been poor. Most agreed the numbers were down on Saturday because of the rain.

As you might expect there was a lot of WW2 display games of various scales on show. There was a Gruntz participation game and one for Empire of the Dead but I think that was about it. The quality of the displays varied but some of them were quite good. As usual some of the people running the games just ignored you and some were very friendly and helpful.

So what did I buy? I got a couple of hills to round out my terrain box and I also picked up some rough ground pieces. These can be seen in the photos shown below.

I also bought some more MDF buildings, this time from 4Ground. I'd seen these on the internet and thought they were interesting. I liked how they looked in the flesh but was going to pass until I saw the painted church. It looked very nice even though it was £30. I dithered about buying it but in the end I succumbed and bought it along with a row of houses which were also painted and cost £20. These can be seen in the photos below.

Even though they are pre-painted they come flat packed and have to be assembled. I'll be doing a review of them later this week.

So not a bad trip out, although it was expensive as I bought stuff I didn't plan on buying. It could have been worse though as I was tempted by a set of the pre-painted Gordon & Hague ACW figures. I've seen these online but I was never sure about the quality of the painting. I managed to have a good look at both the Union and Confederate sets and the painting was pretty good although the Confederates were a bit bland. But at £120 a box for about 270 figures I managed to resist.

Here are some random photos I took of the various display games.

Gruntz Participation game

Infinity display game with Warmill buildings

I had to take a picture of this tank not only because I play Soviets in FoW but also because of the paint finish. It's so badly done it makes me wonder why we go to so much trouble to get our models perfect when the real things weren't.