Crisis 2024 – Part 1

It is finaly back - Crisis could again hosted in 2024, after the last instalment in 2019.

The break had multiple reasons, and after the forced break due to Covid, the aftermaths of Brexit made organizing an event quite difficult, especially as one of the unique aspects of Crisis was the large amount of british manufacturers and traders at the show. In 2022 and 2023 there was a smaller convention at the club rooms of the Tinsoldiers, with support of the Lardies, creating LARDwerp, which we visited as well back in 2022. And due to scheduling conflicts with the new venue, it had to be moved from the first weekend in November towards September.

What is new about Crisis? First of all, it is not just the Tinsoldiers of Antwerp hosting the show, but they joined forced with the HQ Gaming Club and used the 't Bau-huis in Sint Niklaas as the new venue. While it might (currently?) not be the at Waagnatie in Antwerp anymore, the new venue is a proper alternative for the restart. About 15 minutes outside of Antwerp, you can easily get there by train from the Central Station (with the IC-line you can drive every half an hour, and it's about 7 EURs for a weekend ticket), as the venue is just 500m from the local train station. For those of you arriving by car, there are is a parking lot and even some charging stations for BEVs.

The tickets were 12 EURs (dropped to 10 EUR, due to some last minute cancellations of vendors) and visitors under the age of 14 had free entry. Due to keeping the risk and costs as low as possible for the restart, there wasn't a show miniature this year, but that might be for the reason as well, as the show didn't have a topic this year, unlike it did in the past. So we might see that return in the future.

I was allowed to enter an hour before the official opening, to take some close ups of the tables, so the picture with little to no people in the background were from the time between 9 to 10 am. But there was already a queue outside and the show opened up on time, quickly being filled with lots and lots of wargamers.

The venue covered a main hall, a lobby including a bar and food counter, as well as a side hall with more traders and gaming tables.

Among the traders, some familiar could be seen, like Tabletopper.nl, who supported the LARDwerp event as well and brought along miniatures by Rubicon and Empress among others, and quite a few stores from Germany, like Frontline Games, who's a Battlefront Specialist Trader and had a lot of Gale Force Nine terrain with him.

A few cosplayers were around, and this Space Marine is a well-known guest of Crisis! Thanks for joining the show.

Instead of a bring & buy, there was Pain(t)free, with a lot of second hand goodies, among them some real nice Old- and Middlehammer treasures at reasonable prices.

The show provided a good mixture of traders and gaming tables, some were hosted by clubs, others by traders or manufacturers.

While some like HF Wargaming had a 6 hour trip to Crisis (and we will see them again at Rhein-Main-Multiversum on October 26th and 27th near Frankfurt), others like Micro Art Studios, had an even longer journey coming from Poland and being back in about a month for SPIEL in Essen. Among the traders were even a few offering 3d printed miniatures and terrain.

Another familiar face at the show and certainly a regular to Crisis, was Werner Klocke with Freebooter Miniatures. While most will connect them with their pirate skirmish Freebooter's Fate, they brought along Ascending Fate, their new Sci-Fi skirmish, that gathered about 120t EUR on gamefound.

And even more faces from Germany, with Hagen Miniatures, covering various metal miniatures and MDF terrain. We covered some of their ships a while back as a review, as the scale fits for example Black Seas.

Among the MDF terrain, as bit of a surprise, they had ruins and buildings in scale with Adeptus Titanicus and Legions Imperialis and set up a small display.

Gerard Boom / Shifting Lands showed his amazing range of tools and pre-made foam terrain. Just look at that massive Minas Tirith display, along with the last picture where you see the same core building turned into different variants / themes.

A company that changed their strategy a bit, is Titan Forge. I know them from back in the day, when they did alternative resin miniatures for Warhammer, with projects like Pirate Ogres, and now they have moved further into covering tabletop-rpg sets and digital sculpts as well.

And another polish company / trader, Wargamer.pl, had a lot of Anno Domini 1666 with them, which is in core a swashbuckling miniature board game and was crowdfunded in 2021.

The french TGCM Creation, had a very distinctive range of miniatures and games (mostly french rule sets) with them. With busts and models being 60mm and taller, of various humanoid animals.

This was mostly the traders in part 1 of the coverage, in part 2 we will take a closer look upon the hosted games and tables, along with the two trophies - Best of Show and Most Innovative!

Continue - Crisis 2024 - Part 2.

CRISIS 2024 was hosted by Tinsoldiers of Antwerp and HQ Gaming Club