Vapnartak Show 2016 - My First Wargames Show!

Having not long returned from my first wargaming show - Vapnartak - in York, I thought I'd share the pictures I took, along with any thoughts that occur to me while I meander through this. This may be quite a heavy post, as I'm leaving the pictures full size when they upload to hopefully give the best level of detail.

First up, ArcWorlde! I had a great chat with various members of Team Warploque - so great in fact that I forgot to take more pictures of the lovely new starter box that is coming to Kickstarter on 23rd February.

They were also kind enough to let the Arcane Dragon out of it's cabinet for me to have a good look at so to work out how to build mine.

Helpfully situated next to Warploque Miniatures was Steamforged Games (them lot behind Guild Ball), so I parked myself to the side of their turning cabinet and proceeded to snap away.

Once I'd taken those pictures and completed my planned purchases (resisting getting the new ArcWorlde stuff until the Kickstarter), I started wandering around and just taking pictures of whatever looked cool. 

This first lot are all tiny plastics done up nicely by South London Warlords.

After that I sort of stopped concentrating on names and just went for what looked big or impressive.

Goons/Robbers in superhero masks!

I believe this is a large game of Star Wars Armada, including light up Star Destroyers.

I mentioned purchases earlier, didn't I? Well, after looking at the trader list prior to the show, I earmarked both Warploque and Steam Forged as my initial targets, so picked up a Cocklegriff and Corsair, the new Fishermen Captain for season 2 of Guild Ball.

It was then mentioned to me by someone that knows he is a bad influence that one of the stands downstairs had a load of Darksword stuff. Darksword are a company that I have limited experience with, only previously owning one model but wanting lots of them. I ended up (mainly thanks to that stand being crazy busy and it being difficult to look through the miniatures) with just three - Cersei, Daenerys and Jon Snow, all from the George R R Martin Masterworks line. The line is based on representation in the books, not on TV, so I'm looking forward to working on them.

I really enjoyed my time at the show, even if I had to cut that time short due to having to catch a train to get home. 

However. The event was dominated by historical gaming - I'd say 80-90% of the traders were focused on the various eras and scales of it and unfortunately, that's just something that doesn't interest me. As someone who has changed from a gamer to a painter (due to a lack of opponents within a decent radius) I was also slightly disappointed that while there were several tournaments going on, there was no painting competition at all. 

Will I be going to more shows? Definitely. As long as they're sensibly located and timed. Grumble. Salute is on at the busiest time of the year for me at work and at the wrong end of the country. Grumble.