Carronade 2011

I was at Carronade yesterday with my brother in law, so no pictures this week; just a report on the show and a list of the stuff I bought :-)

Carronade is the first of the central Scotland wargame shows this year, the other two being Wappinshaw in Glasgow in June and Claymore in Edinburgh in August.

I was looking for a few things, and got some of them. As always at these events, I also ended up with a whole lot of stuff that I hadn't planned on buying.

The show itself was large and very busy. There was a good range of ages present, and it's nice to see kids getting a chance to view aspects of the hobby other than those decided by a certain company who shall remain nameless.

There were a load of display games, although to be honest I didn't even really glance at them this year. We normally walk round the traders then take another pass over the games, but it took so long to get round the traders we didn't do the second pass. This wasn't because buying stuff from the stands took a long time, but because there was so much to see. Generally speaking, getting and buying stuff was the easy part, almost too easy :-(

My purchases fell into three categories:

• Figures
• Scenery
• Other stuff

Figures

In the "planned to buy" category, I picked up the Warlord 28mm plastic late war British Infantry and the Urban Mammoth Larvons (the snake guys I mentioned in xxx). The Urban Mammoth figures were half price, so that was a nice bonus.

In the "unplanned category" I mostly picked up individual figures that will be useful for the Demon Apocalypse setting. This included Confrontation’s Gorgon, Reaper Undead Priests and some DarkAge and Warcrow figures.

In the "seemed like a good idea at the time" category I picked up a Victorian Science Fiction set containing a cyclist on a steam powered penny farthing and a man and his robot dog. Nice figures (it was the cyclist that caught my eye), but I really no idea why I bought them, as VSF and steampunk in general don’t do anything for me.

Scenery

Every so often I consider the Hexon II Terrain System from Kallistra, but I’ve never bought any. This time I decided I’d pick up a packet of unflocked tiles and see how easy they were to paint and flock, as the pre-painted ones are just too expensive, being more than twice the cost of the unpainted ones. "Making Terrain and Buildings for Historical Wargames" has quite a few examples of using the tiles, so hopefully I’ll get round to testing the ones I bought. Note - I actually quite like the book and got a few ideas from it, unlike its reviewer on Amazon :-)

Other scenery I bought included a Ral Partha ruined Greek Temple and a couple of Architects of War pieces (family graveyard plot and desert well. This is a company I'd never heard of before the show, but there looks to be some interesting scenery on their website). All these pieces should find a home in the Demon apocalypse when I finally get around to painting them. I also picked up a Ral Partha 1:300 science fiction Science Building. I am a sucker for 1:300 SF scenery and, if I ever win the lottery, I plan to start my own business making the stuff. There’s a box full of interesting plastic shapes in the loft, just waiting to be put together in new and exciting ways to bring out their inner building. One day :-)

I picked up a 6 foot x 5 foot dark green felt mat. I have a sand coloured one, but the only green mat I have is an old Subutteo cloth (from the 1970s I think). Not sure if it’s worth anything (general rule of the Universe - if I own it, it’s not), but it was overdue for retirement.

Lastly on the scenery front, I picked up some static grass and a whole lot of MDF bases in 25mm, 50mm and 50mm oval. These are mostly destined for my zombies, with the larger ones hopefully being useful for basing zombie hordes.

Other stuff

I normally pick up a set or two of rules and some books at these events, but this year I didn’t buy any books and only picked up one set of rules: "No more room in Hell (Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse)" from Iron Ivan Games. I’ve had a quick scan, and they look okay. If I ever get around to playing a game with them, I’ll be sure to do an after action report.

Paint was very sparse this year: a few folk selling Army Painter stuff (loads of spray cans and dip), but only two places that I saw selling Vallejo paints, and only one of them with a reasonable selection. I picked up some greens that I was missing and some of the mediums (glaze, matt, retarder).

There was a flea market upstairs, but other than sticking my head through the door I didn’t venture in. I’m not sure I like the car boot sale approach as opposed to the traditional bring and buy. It’s easier to browse at a bring and buy as there’s no pressure on the person on the other side of the table to sell, so you tend to be left alone to rummage.

Final thoughts

All in all, we were there for a couple of hours, but could definitely have stayed longer if we’d wandered back around to view the display games. Our money was spent, however, so it was time to go home.

A good show overall, easily up to its usual high standard. I think there were more traders this year, and the variety of stuff for sale seemed wider than last year.

Wappinshaw’s next (with a load of pictures of the games at Carronade on their website). I missed it last year because of a clash with a family thing, but this year it’s earlier so I plan to be there. It’s not been the largest of shows in the past, but it has a new venue this year, so hopefully that will help.