MADFest 2012

A bit late to be reporting on the Minehead and Dunster Festival of Wargaming, which took place over the 9th to 11th of November last year, but a photo report has just been made available on the Wargames Illustrated website, so I couldn't resist giving the event a belated mention. Check out the link.

A surreal feeling to spend an entire weekend with nothing to do but wargame and drink beer - I remember the same feeling from a weekend at the Wargames Holiday Centre many years ago, when it was still located near Scarborough in Yorkshire. But a wonderful opportunity nevertheless, with full credit going to Nik Harwood for organising the whole thing, along with the magnificent idea of making money for a services charity along the way.

I hope participants will forgive me if I say the highlight of the weekend for me was having the chance to spread out a SYW game on an 8' x 6' table and then umpire a battle using my own rules: a unique experience. I was fortunate to recruit three experienced and enthusiastic wargamers who had never used the rules before, and those gentlemen gave them a thorough workout including valuable feedback. We also enjoyed ourselves immensely.

I'd just like to say those guys are not laughing at the standard of painting on my figures.
They're much too nice to do that sort of thing!

Those GW battlemats were a good purchase.

The festival was fortunate in that Paul Davies, who takes a lot of photos for WI, is a local wargamer involved in the event - hence the opportunity for grass roots wargaming to get a look in on the WI website. It was great to meet Paul and all the other gamers over the weekend.