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| The LoA Team have a council of War at their HQ in Greonplaats |
This was my fifth (I think) Crisis and just as enjoyable as before despite the show getting larger and larger each year. Antwerp is a superb city and half of the enjoyment of the experience is getting to come back here as a visitor every year.
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| Here we are! Our set up for the game |
Our routine is well practised. We get to the city on Friday mid afternoon, partake of its pleasures and reach the venue just before 0800 on the Saturday morning. We were trading and demoing BLB3 so the plan was for a busy day.
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| A bit of an unusual shot from the Cossack perspective |
That is exactly how the plan unfolded. Notwithstanding some dark mutterings from some corners of the hall about the show being over traded, our Saturday was steady and profitable, up on last year with the vast bulk of business coming from figure sales, mostly the Great Northern War range. It probably helped a lot that our demo game was a petit but pretty Livonian 1706 scenario.
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| The Swedes attack but run into some heavy resistance |
We met many friends from the Blog and Fighting Talk at the show. Dutch, Belgian, French, German, Spanish and Danish gamers with whom we have internet contact came along and had a chat. I omitted British gamers from this list as if you had been beamed into the hall from the Enterprise you may have imagined you were at a British show!
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| The Swedish infantry push through the centre of the first line of defence |
There were several British clubs displaying games, at least ten UK traders (three from Scotland) and I saw at least thirty people whom I know well from the UK scene attending as visitors.
Belgium is of course extremely accessible by air, rail, sea and road. This accessibility coupled with the size and trade variety of the show makes Crisis a serious rival to Salute as Europe's premier gaming event.
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| Another shot from the Swedish perspective |
Our game was very well received. We played about six turns between the chats and trade interludes allowing some gamers a shot of the new BLB.
The games pitted three Swedish battalions, ten squadrons and four light guns against an entrenched Russo-Saxon force of eight battalions, two detachments, two squadrons, four squadrons of Cossacks, a heavy gun and heavy mortar.
The Swedish Foot cut through the first Russian line but the cavalry were thrown into some disorder by the Saxon cuirassiers and surprisingly the Cossacks!
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| LoA at Crisis 2016 |
An interesting comment came from a visitor who wanted to use BLB but had heard that a game turn took an hour to complete! We walked him through a full turn of the game with some key action in less than ten minutes. I guess that put that little confusion to bed!
We had fun, drank too much, ate too much but the good news is, all I spend was £16 on twenty six dice for our weekender next week. Like the Duke Brothers in Trading Places, I cornered the market not in FOJ, but in d8s! I'll offload them onto the NYSE after the 13th November!
Final little news bite.. a customer, NYW gamer and well known Belgian member of the Alde Garde club became the first on the planet to own our new mounted dragoons! Congrats Peter! I look foreard to seeing them painted.