Crisis 2017

We completed our little jaunt to the Netherlands and Belgium with a visit to Antwerp and the excellent CRISIS wargames show organised by the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp. Unlike last year it was unseasonably warm rather than gale force freezing winds and horizontal rain so it was rather pleasant waiting for our taxi and the trundling to the event premises on the Scheldt. Like last year I had arranged a queue-buster ticket (nothing of the sort exists but I had negotiated to go in at the side door to avoid standing in a very long line of punters, including a certain acquaintance of ours Dave Docherty. We were ushered to the info stand by the legendary Willie Bogaerts where I paid our entry, bought some 'coins' and the two figures that complement the free give away set. Katherine then said she wanted to go round on her own as I walk too slowly so off she went, as did I. I will give a bit of a summary at the end of this post but will start with a run through of the photos I took of many the games. If your game isn't featured its either because the photo was crap or I couldn't find you, not because I was conducting any kind of trial by photograph by a died in the wool 28mm historical fanatic. Also, I don't have all the club names to hand as I'm writing this but will edit the post when I find my programme.

A rather excellent little Darkest Africa game. The boats and mud fort were cool.

A close up of the mud fort. I also liked the mud huts. I think they are Grand Manner, some at least as I have a  few just like them at home in Darkest Underthetableland.

One of my favourite games was this French Revolutionary War game set in Flanders in 1793 by Jan and Peter of Der Alde Garde club. Actually, they ARE the club, all two of them, and always put on a great game. There are more photos later on but I was especially taken by the fortress which Peter had scratch built. I had a good long chat with Jan (hello Jan if you're reading this) about the FRW and the 1799 Helder campaign.

Quite a colourful Crusades game 'Jerusalem', by the South London Warlords. It was very pretty but a bit the array of labels at the back of each unit tended to be a little distracting.

The Warlords again, this time with Daleks in 54mm. I liked this as I am a bit Dr Who fan (the old ones that were actually scary....to a seven year old at any rate!). Totally random fact, I have a Dalek in my Prussian SYW army too.

This and the photo below are of a good looking French-Indian Wars game featuring native Americans , Rangers and Colonial Militiamen by the Dortmund Amateur Wargamers.

Victorian Sci Fi on Mars. Not my thing but it looked good.

The pride of the French 'navy' on Mars.

And the Imperial Germans. Kaiser Bill's Martian fleet.

An excellent 54mm Ancient game representing the Battle of Plataea by a group called PMDC.

The long lines of very nicely painted Hoplites looked the part.

....as did the hoards of colourful Persians.

Old Pikey's Hell's Highway.

The Battle of Trenton 1777. The snow had a certain realistic sparkle which turned out to be because of on closer inspection turned out to be salt crystals scattered over the table.

An ancient game using To the Strongest. Wine too!

The following few photos are of The League of Augsberg's 1690s game. As always, very colourful and some excellent tabletop ephemera.

The absolute star of the show for me was this refight of Poltava in the Great Northern War, by John and Diane Sutherland. Thousands of Warfare Miniatures figures and an excellent piece of product placement as the game was right next door to the Warfare trade stand. How good is that? The game looked magnificent. All the terrain was scarce built by Diane. The playing surface was that outdoor carpet often seen on decking or patio areas, painted for effect, and very good it looks too.

The Swedes overrun the first redoubts.

Russian reinforcements advancing en masse. It looks a little worrying for the Swedes.

Home made measuring sticks constructed from Wilko's chopsticks by Diane. You may recognise her nail polish.

More Russians.....

....and more Russians!

The Russian camp with, yes...more Russians!

!!!!

I think this is the Kurphaltz Feldherren Wargames witgame entitled 1655.

Afghanistan 1879'ish but I can't remember if this is by the Two Fat Ladies or the Ligue de gentlemen  civilisateurs using Osprey's TMWWBK (The Man Who Would be King).

Tin Soldiers of Antwerp put on the Battle of Dorking using their own rules which I really must try as I bought a copy last year.

Two loves of my life, my wife....

...and some beer. We bumped into Dave D again in the bat.

The Leicester Phat Cats put on this Blood and Plunder pirates game.  Note to self. Find my sloop and finish it.

Back to Der Alde Garden and their Flanders 1793 game. The figures are all Eureka 28mm .

So there you have it. Apologies if I've misidentified any of the games. Overall I would say that Crisis is a well run event by a friendly and helpful club (TSA). It is sooo much better than Salute is these days; indeed its better than many UK shows I can think of. Then again many of the games and most of the traders are UK based, and one wonders what will happen to the show after Brexit? Certainly talking to several UK manufacturers they said that depending upon the level of custom controls (which is likely to be high) then it would not be worth their while to attend as their margins would be eaten into by customs charges and the mountain of paperwork that they expect will be required to take their stock to Antwerp and then account for their sales on the way back.  Crisis therefore could in a few years time be yet another casualty of Brexit, dependent upon what sort of 'deal' HMG manages to blunder through.

Enough politics. Mats. An abundance of table top terrain mats. There were at least three traders selling them. Tiny, Deep Cut and another one. Many of the games also utilised a terrain mat instead of sculpted terrain pieces. Much easier to carry and they can be just as effective. I have several and use them all the time.

Swag. Not much really. I finally got my flags off Flag Dude that I ordered at Salute this year. I also collected a couple of pre-orders, one from Early War Miniatures (rubber stuff.....er roads etc.) and Warfare miniatures (some limbers and other ephemera). I also had a good rummage on the Trent stand and picked up some Vendean rebels ro add another dimension to my FRW collection. Oh, and katherine was quite taken by the Deep Cut river sections, so I took advantage of this to buy a set (two actually).

We left around 2pm and went into town for lunch. Who did we meet when we were coming out of the restaurant? Why Dave Docherty of course.

All things being equal we shall be back next year as this was the end of an excellent trip.

The British Invasion of North Holland and the Helder 2017

The second British invasion of North Holland began on Tuesday when we disembarked from the ferry without a shot being fired and drove north to the towns of Castricum, Alkmaar, Krebbendam, Calantsoog and Shagen. Facing little opposition from the Batavians and without any sign of the French we were able to park up and mooch around each of the towns. After one false start we found the church that features in the painting of the Anglo-Russian defeat at Castricum. It has been added to since 1799 but it was easy to figure out its original configuration. Also, a local confirmed it for us.

There was also 'het huis mit der kogel', embedded during the battle. We are trying to sell our place at the moment and wish we could say we had a feature wall with cannonball!

A painting of the battle of Castricum showing the church. 

On to Alkmaar, it is a very lovely old town, even if the ring road was annoying. We found another 'het huis met de kogel' or the house with the bullet in this case. It is actually a large cannonball embedded in the side of a house from the time of the 1557 siege of Alkmaar by the Spanish. Nothing to do with 1799 but Alkmaar did see major combat during the Helder campaign, as part of a large sprawling battle that culminated in the defeat at Castricum. Anyone with Hovels 28mm European houses should find the next pictures of interest. I have half a dozen to do.

Moving on, Calantsoog is at the southern end of the beach that the British carried out their opposed seaborne landing from a flotilla of small boats. 

What struck us at once was the sheer size of the sand dunes, which dwarfed the houses in the current town and in 1799 were reportedly around 50 and up to 300 feet high in places. Our visit was on a nice  sunny but very breezy day and the sea was cutting up pretty rough. The landings took place in August but the weather had not been good so it was easy to imagine the troops struggling ashore in heavy seas. 

These sand dunes are enormous and  extensive, running for miles along this coastline both north and south. Some were heavily wooded, but most were not, and were broken up by numerous cuts and defiles through and around several lines of dunes with clumps of horrid razor grass all over the place. I was brought up on the coast near Blackpool and am familiar with navigating seemingly vast (when you are 11) tracts of dunes without anything upon which to register on in terms of direction, etc. (Apart in my case for Blackpool Tower). The troops must have found it heavy going, advancing in the face of dogged if futile Batavian resistance, unable to maintain contact with units to either flank and being forced to break up into smaller units to get round or over the dunes. What is more, most of the land to the east of the road running parallel to the sea was subject to tidal flooding, and there was a massive part man-made, part natural feature running parallel to the beach called the Zande Dyke,  so the area of operations was very restricted, reduced even further by more dykes and so forth which hampered the British advance and Batavian reinforcements. Indeed the whole area today is covered in polders and dykes which in 1799 would not have been so well developed, leaving the terrain extremely difficult to traverse, and wet.

What was also in evidence and came home to me while we were travelling was the very small area over which the campaign was fought. Advances were measured in almost WW1 terms. After the early success of the landing everything went downhill and after a number of attempts to push south, despite some success, the Allies were finally defeated at Castricum and forced to negotiate the terms by which they would depart Holland.    

The evacuation of the Allied army from Den Helder.

I did take some more photos but for some unknown reason they won't upload to the blog. We shall be returning in the New Year to finish our explorations.