What I did on my holidays - The Other Partizan 2019

Victoria and I had originally planned to visit the UK back in May, but with one thing and another the fates conspired to mess that up and we could not make it. But, we booked again in August and with great serendipity our fortnight in the UK coincided with 'The Other Partizan' at the Newark Showground.

Chum Martin picked Victoria and I up on the Sunday and drove us over to Newark for the event. The cost of entry was refreshing after the expensive shows I attend in the US, just £5.00 each to get in, including this years show figure, Karl Marx.

I knew that as I'd not seen a lot of my UK gaming buddies for a couple of years that I would be spending a lot of the day catching up I had pre-ordered most of the stuff I intended to purchase, so in preparation picked up one of the great cotton tote bags that they are producing for the show to hold my stash.

First chat of the day was with Mr Partizan himself, Laurence, then it was off to look at some games. Simon had his great Mancetter game on, as ever the table was groaning under the weight of all the figures and Simon had on a natty shirt, some things don't change.

Mancetta 61CE

  Pretty much right next to Simon was Steve with his lovely Chatterton’s Hill American Revolution game, you'll note Steve is wearing one of the natty shirts that Martin did for us at Salute 2015.

Chatterton’s Hill

Chatterton’s Hill

Chatterton’s Hill

While chatting to Steve, the other Steve and Aly showed up, as did Matt and his new wife Kozue who I'd not met before along with James. It was turning out a busy day! I also had a chance to talk to Wayne and Dan.

Mindful that I'd been here an hour already and had some orders to pick up I popped over to see Rich of Too Fat Lardies to pick up my hard copy of Blitzkrieg 1940. Rich was running a great looking game pitting Dutch defenders against FallschirmJager, who appeared to be having rather a tough time of it. Rich was sporting a very fetching snowflake badge!

Netherlands 1940

Rich Clark

Old mate Mick from our WAB days has also been playing Chain of Command a lot so it was great to catch up with him, not seen him in many years.

I also popped over to see the nice chaps at Warbases to pick up my order, Victoria also had an order to pick up and I suspect presents for me have been stashed away. On the way we bumped into Bob, Janice and James which was a nice surprise as I had not expected to see them.

All this chatting is thirsty work so we took a break in the cafe with Steve, Matt, Kozue and James, also taking the opportunity to say Hi to Jasmin and John.

Some very old gaming friends (well we are now all old) were running a Peleliu 1944 game using I Ain't Been Shot Mum which looked great. I spent a lot of time watching the game chatting to Tim, Barry and Dave.

Peleliu 1944

Dave Wilson

 Then over to the Northstar stand to pick up another order, mainly the lovely new WWII Senegalese, and had a good chat with James, also bumping into Jeremy, Rich and Tony from the Marauders. We stayed here quite a while so also got to chat with Trev and Stephen.

It's all rather a blur but I think I bumped into top chum Tom around this time too also Richard and Sammi.

Rather lovely Gaslands mat from Cigar box.

 I circled back to First Corps to see Simon and Mick pick up another pre-order and rand into my chauffeur Martin coming the other way.

Chauffeur and minder Martin!

 Penultimate stop of the day was at Great Escape Games where I had a chat with Mark and picked up on of the few things I had not pre-ordered, a copy of Seven Days to the River Rhine along with some counters, had a nice chat with Mark and Stuart.

James had also finished his family duties so we got a chance to catch up and exchange the ritual gify of Fornum & Mason Turkish Delight.

James arrived rather late

It was about time for a wrap and I remembered that I needed to pick up some more Renedra bases, whoops, out of readies and they don't take credit cards, had to borrow a tenner off Victoria!

So on to the loot:

• Tote bag
• Karl Marx
• Seven Days to the River Rhine
• Warsaw Pact Tokens
• NATO Tokens
• Blitzkreig 1940
• 12 Crusader Miniatures WWII Germans
• 56 Crusader Miniatures WWII Senegalese
• 1 Crusader Miniatures 25mm AT gun
• 4 First Corps German tank commanders
• 6 First Corps Soviet tank commanders
• 5 First Corps Soviet tank riders
• 1 First Corps T-70
• 8 First Corps Soviet casualties
• 8 First Corps German casualties
• Warbases workshop
• Warbases lean-tos
• Warbases railings (gate short)
• Warbases 5-bar gates
• 4 Warbases horses
• 4 Warbases dogs

I do miss my UK gaming buddies and the UK Wargames shows. I think the US would benefit from more events like Partizan, but I doubt it would support the traders.

Apologies if I forgot to name check everybody, writing this after getting back to the US and the jet-lag is making it all a blur...