Park Life..Personal perspective on Partizan in the Park

This is our 200th post. We want to thank everyone who has stayed with us since the start. We are committed to keeping this blog fresh and current for our members. It has been great to hear from many of you how you appreciate our dedication in keeping it constantly updated. The growth in membership is a nice endorsement of the approach we have adopted. Stay with us, we just can't stop talking! Very Best  Clarence & Barry

Tentification.. on a beautiful day like today! Kelham June 1 2014

Change is good. Change is our friend. Learn to embrace it and love it. Oooh.. is that possible for a group as reactionary and conservative as wargamers? Well, they all looked like they were enjoying it to me.
There is nowhere quite like Britain on a summer's day and although we are not yet technically in the second season the bright blue sky, warm breeze and smell of the trees was the perfect start to the oddest Partizan I have attended since 1995. I couldn't stop myself humming a very uncool ditty by ONJ from about 1973 called Long Live Love... 'on a great to be alive day...' and so it was!

Not at all unpleasant.. the interior of the big tent.. looking towards Warfare Minis

We'd had a cracking evening eating and drinking in our usual haunt on the A46 and on June 1 at 0825 our convoy rolled onto the grass at Kelham Hall. Our table was 4 feet away from the Warfare trade stand and the light through the white canvas marquee was a vast improvement on the stygian gloom of Kelham Moria.

Startled rabbit? no, it's DOB setting up!

The access was easy, there were no stairs, no congestion and heaps of that good natured 'let's make today a great experience' kind of bonhomie floating around.

My business was brisk. The best trade result I have had at Partizan so far. The show seemed very busy building from a strong trickle between 1000 and 1100 to a flood between 1100 and 1230. It tailed off at lunchtime as people took the sun outside and got busy again between about 1345 and 1430. From about 1500 thing slackened off. We packed up at 1600 and were out by 1650.

Ade's terrain, Bob, DOB, Gerry & my figures

Our Neerwinden Climax table was continuously busy all day. Dave, Gerry and Keiran did a great job explaining why the French almost always won between 1688 and 1697 until Keiran took over from me on the stand at about 1330. I was then free to lose my glasses, eat a burger, chat outside with Colonel Mike Snook and skive off for a while!

Dragoons slug it out in the corn

The games.. well, I briefly ran around the show. There were perhaps a few less games than is normal for Partizan but what I saw I liked most of. The Perry's North Africa game was lovely, The Derby lads did a very pretty WW1 French v Germans game. Tim's Team had an impressive Zulu Wars set up. The Greek Mountain... Ker.. something.. was big, barren and too high for me to see the top of. I spotted Zombies somewhere (no not in the crowd, on the table). There were some nice WW2 efforts and Colin and Ray remained predictably offbeat by gaming in South America.. Chaco? Shaka? something involving Peru I think.. but no nuns or Japanese Ninja schoolgirls.

Adrian's Walls new bridge - custom built for 60mm wide bases!

I was not molested by backpack wielding trolls and the whiff quotient was acceptable despite a significant magnification in temperature from the sun through canvas. Dave Thomas and Phil sent Duncan Macfarlane on a quest for beer but alas watery coffee was all that was available so the bold boys svelte figures were safe for another week. .

All in all I thought it was the best Partizan for years, probably because of the change in veneue as the games at the show have been on a slow decline for several years (since WI went digital). The Newark Irregulars pulled off a great result whatever the reasons for the disaster in the first place. I think Kelham Hall should be abandoned and somewhere newer and more appropriate sought. The timely end of an era.

We were very happy with the table

I think if it had been raining the story would have been quite different but hey, stop that Baz! Don't be so bloody British! It wasn't raining, the sun was shining and the world was just perfect!