My brother-in-law and I attended Wappinshaw yesterday, so I thought I'd post some of my thoughts on the event, along with the (shorter than) usual list of stuff that I bought.
It was in a new venue this year - Kelvinhall Sports Arena - and it was a great improvement over previous locations (although not as central as the Glasgow Concert Hall). Its old locations had been a badly lit hall and a poorly lit hall. The lighting still wasn't great, but I didn't feel I needed a torch this year and it was a good sized hall.
Size-wise, this was the biggest Wappinshaw I've attended and had attracted a decent number of quality traders, with a good variety of stuff (it didn't, for example, suffer from the "umpteen stands selling Warlorld Games kits" syndrome that was present at Carronade this year).
The layout of the stands, however, left a bit to be desired. There were traders around the edge, but also some in the middle, next to the bring and buy stand and in amongst some of the display games. Given that there were only a couple of traders along the back wall, I feel they could have made better use of the space. It was only because I was looking specifically for Crooked Dice that I noticed the traders in the middle.
Along with the traditional wargames related stuff, there was a stand selling full size (and possibly even larger-than-life in some cases) plastic weapons and armour. As tempting as some of the pieces were, I didn't think the police would have seen the funny side of me walking down Sauchiehall Street carrying a power-sword or heavy bolter.
Some of the new plastic Eldar kits were available. I quite like the Crimson Hunter aircraft, but it was the Wraithknight that seemed to be attracting the most attention. I resisted the Crimson Hunter, as I have more than enough unbuilt kits at the moment, but it is on my "things I'd like to buy" list.
As to actual purchases, it was fairly dull. There were a number of stands selling paint - including Vallejo washes. I would like to think they all read my blog and listened after my complaint about the lack of paint at Carronade, but I suspect not. One of the stands was advertising "the lowest priced paints at Salute", a fact which, while fascinating, escaped me as to its relevance :-) I picked up some washes and some colours I need for an upcoming project. Other than that, I bought the new Time Lost Investigators from Crooked Dice and a couple of their astronaut head sprues. I bought some stowage items from Ainsty for an ongoing project (pictures fairly soon, I'm just waiting for some more bits and pieces to arrive).
We've never stayed long at Wappinshaw, and we baled after about an hour and a half. There were no police sirens as I walked back for the train, so my decision not to buy any full size weapons was shown to be a wise one.
Two months to Claymore, then it's all downhill to Christmas :-(
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