Review of 2023 Open Day

As a break from our regular Wednesday posts we present this week a look back at our Open Day.

We had six games on the day covering a wide selection of periods and scales. One of the selling points of the Maidstone Wargames Society is if you’re into it we probably play it.

We start with Stephen’s Road to Damascus Saga game. Saga has proven very popular at the club mainly the Age of Vikings, but Stephen presented a Crusades game for the open day.

The game boasted some new scenery in the form of an Arab Manor house.
The Arabs were victorious on the day.

We now move to the English Civil War. We have a number of members who regularly play Field of Glory, between them they have many armies of different periods and scales.

For the open day they put on an 15mm ECW game for a change.

I don’t know who won on the day but their were many excited exclaimations that can only mean some fortuitous dice rolling!

A new game to the club has been Strengh and Honour, this has been played as a 2mm Ancients game to give a sense of scale.

Here we have Roman Legions taking on the Celtic hordes.

For the open day I finally got my Naploleonic Balloon game up and running. But then failed to take any pictures of it as I was busy running the game.

A phot was taken of all 10 balloons on the battlefield, the game needs a little bit of tweaking but much fun was had in being blown around by the wind all day. Hopefully this might make it to be a show game one day.

Moving to the Franco-Prussian war and the Battle of Spicheren, this was a pet project of member Tony G who thought they’d try a new period for the open day. Tony did this in 6mm and wanted to represent the terrain dominated battlefield.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more hilly, wooded landscape to have a battle.

Tony also made the towns and villages using paper models for the buildings. Quite a challenge at this scale.

And onto the last game of the day, Tony F and Phil decided they had been neglecting the first age of middle earth for their Lord of the Rings games.

This gave Phil the excuse to paint up some real big beasties, much to worry of Tony F, but luckily there were enough Elven heroes knocking around at that time to meet the challenge.

I’m assuming this is Elrond going toe to toe with a Balrog? Phil definitely went big with Balrogs, Beasts and Trolls in abundance.

I do feel however that this picture should be part of a caption competition!
As to the game I think it was declared a no score draw at the end of the day.

Thanks to all the members who put on games, and to those who visited us on the day.

If you are interested in joining the Society please feel free to visit us on any of our regular meetings. The club Diary can be found here. Any further details about the club can be found on our website.