LARDwerp 2022
November 5th, Saturday morning, 10 am - LARDwerp starts. I should be around2 pm that we arrive at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp club house, in a northern suburb of Antwerp itself. And as you know from our event coverage, we start with a picture of the parking lot.
Properly filled with various gaming tables, the club house even covers a licensed bar, so beverages and food were secured. This is off for a good start!
Arriving in Antwerpen for LARDwerp 2022
Last weekend it was once again time to travel to Antwerp for the first Saturday in November - but not for Crisis, as it was unfortunately cancelled, so we went for LARDwerp instead. An alternative gaming event, hosted by the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp and the TooFatLardies.
For a while now, we prolong our stay at Antwerp, not only going for the show itself, but having a guy's weekend in the city. And this meant for me, starting on friday around early noon my roughly 3-hour ride to the north of Belgium.
Due to further inconvenient circumstances during the week, I was the only one arriving from our area, so I used the time to listen to the Mechanicum audio book and caught up with our remaining motley bunch of wargamers from the UK, France, Italy and Northern Germany at our usual spot for Friday eveningĀ - the Bier Central.
8th Rhein Main Multiversum 2022
Nidderau is back on the schedule! This weekend (we've been there yesterday) the Tabletop Club Rhein-Main hosted once again after a break the 8th Rhein Main Multiversum.
This time, due to the circumstances, the Rhein Main Multiversum was not as a convention but as an open gaming weekend (so without traders) to accomodate any (possible) restrictions and so on.
A visit to … Bedburger TableTop Freunde e.V.
The gate of the protected knight's estate in Bedburg is as an entrance to a tabletop club in no way an exaggeration of what actually waits behind it. I had the pleasure to visit theĀ Bedburger TableTop Freunde club in August and I can say right away that it was an absolute feast, both from a hobby and a social point of view!
A visit to…ACWF Aachener Tabletop Freunde
As I worked at away from home again, I had the chance to maintain my contacts within the tabletop community and to establish new ones. So I took the opportunity to visit the ACWF in Aachen this week.
"ACWF, that stands for Aachener Warhammer Fans and is a name that dates back to the days when Warhammer was more popular," Stephan, the first chairman of the ACWF Aachener Tabletop Freunde, explained to me as he greeted me on my visit to the clubs premises.
Prelude to Rhein Main Multiversum 2022
The Rhein-Main-Multiversum returns in September 2022 after a two year break.
Internal CONflict Rheinland 2022
Finally - an update in the event category! Conflict Rheinland returns after a 3 years break with a private event, and 2019 was our last visit to the event in Langenfeld. Yet, the return is a bit special, as this is not a public event, as they had to cancel that format about a month ago and went for an invite only meet up of some of the hosts and clubs, that would just do a private get-together.
Torsten kindly invited me to join that round of wargamers and I happily accepted the invitation as it would be my first wargaming event in over a two years (my last wargaming road trip was January 2020 to Nottingham, visiting Warhammer World).
Throwback to Salute 2012 in London
Another throwback! 10 Years ago, I went for my first trip to Salute and it was not just any Salute, it was their 40th anniversary.
This was during my time as editor-in-chief for a large German wargaming portal, and to cover all (or at least most) of the novelties, we put it in our schedule to fly to London, take a lot of pictures, talk to a lot of people and arrange for some review material to cover in the upcoming months.
Most of the shows I participated until then where local conventions, held in community centres or similar and the largest was the Crisis 2011 in Antwerp or Action 2011 in Rheindahlen at the British Army HQ. And people already told me, wait until you see Salute, it's huge! I knew the South London Warlords from their elaborate participation tables on other shows and was eager to find out for myself.
Throwback to Crisis in Antwerp
Under different circumstances, I'd be psyched the whole week, with anticipation of driving to Antwerp, meeting with a lot of people that I wouldn't have seen since Salute (yeah, that didn't happen either). I had quite the plans for this year, as you can read in the Kick Off from back in January. And Antwerp would have been the guys weekend, the final show before a Brexit would make a lot of things in Wargaming a lot more difficult.
At the very first show I went to in 2011 I was driving in the early morning, but very soon we realized, Antwerpen is a city that offers that much, that you need more time. So our schedule for the weekend shifted towards an arrival on friday early afternoon, to have time for a proper tour of the flemish city.
October 2020 review
October had a stronger non-wargaming focus for me than usual, as we're starting our large scale terrain project.