Colours 2007

Last Sunday I went to Colours, the show in Newbury put on by Newbury and Reading Wargames Club. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so no pics of the games I'm sorry to say. Touching History's AWI set-up was there again and there was an excellent La Vigie game (a French v British game from "British Grenadier!" the scenario book). I had always thought that La Vigie was very hard for the French to win, being a kind of Bunker Hill only far worse. But I gather the French won several times over the weekend, so well done them. Another good-looking game was "The Death of Macbeth" by Aldearn Wargames Club - lots of well painted Foundry and Gripping Beast figures. Unfortunately the journey to Newbury race-course was horrendous; what should have been a quick 1 hour train ride from central London took almost 2.5 hours due to emergency track work. I had to catch a replacement bus from Reading station to Newbury (which left Reading only once an hour, obviously, and didn't even stop at the race-course) and it was then a 30 minute trot out to the race-course. Many thanks to Kerry (Valleyboy, on holiday from NZ) for the lift back to Reading.

The shopping was excellent. Purchases included more Perry/Conquest AWI and Perry Sudan figures from Dave Thomas (the Hessian Von Bose regiment is pencilled in for painting in November, whilst next week will see Conquest's mounted Iroquois); some back issues of "Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy" magazine (and I was delighted to see that the Saratoga issue contained pictures that featured some of the figures I painted for Alan Perry); Caliver's new ACW scenario book "Heartland"; and a copy of Robert Rogers' Journal from the F&IW.

I also bought some products from two companies I came across for the first time. First, some Virginia fencing from "Products for Wargamers" (as featured in the photograph above). These cost £1.50 each and are based on lollipop sticks, which is a neat idea and looks like warping won't be an issue. The ground texture is a bit more detailed than the other bits of fencing I have from "Last Valley". Secondly, I got talking to the lads behind a terrain company called "Tablescape". To date they have been concentrating on WW1 trench pieces and "Sci-Fi" fortifications, but are branching out into proper stuff. The result of our conversation was that I commissioned a replica of an AWI house that featured in the Saratoga campaign. This is the "John Neilson house", built in 1775 or 1776 and which sits at the top of Bemis Heights ridge. It was used by the American general staff for their headquarters in September 1777. I hadn't heard of this building under Ronan showed me some photos on Sunday, just in time for me to then show them to Tablescape. I am very much looking forward to seeing the finished product, and last night perused the British Grenadier scenarios to see what else I might be able to have made. I have posted links to both these company in the links section. A link to information about John Neilson's house is here.

As stated above, the photo shows some Virginia fencing from "Products for Wargamers" with a couple of Perry American riflemen. It's a bit dark because it's pretty miserable here in London today (for a change).