3 months till Broadside 2014 and some great traders!!!

You would think, not unreasonably, that as you organise a yearly wargame show it would become easier year on year; almost look after itself in fact. You would think wrong.

Readers of this annoyingly sporadic blog will already know that the venue took away the smaller of the two halls and left us with a nightmare of reorganisation to deal with. We dealt with that and we think we have ended up with a better show having had to streamline and reinvent. In fact, we drew up a great hall plan that gave us a lot of options, found an interesting and unique (ish) way of presenting the games on offer and managed to fit in a bigger and better Bring & Buy than we ever thought possible.

We then had another call from the venue management team....something I have become to dread. There were two main points to the phone call, allegedly a 'good news, bad news' situation; their choice of words not mine.

 Good news? The work to alter the small hall into a huge gym has been postponed until July so you can have the hall back. This was not good news at all and they were a little put out when I explained why this was not actually good news. We will stick with the new plan thank you, it will have to change next year and I will not mess everyone around changing things back.....how stupid would that make us look?

Bad news? Due to a slight mix up (define slight) the main hall we use on the Sunday is actually booked until late at night on the Saturday. Usually, the club members meet up at the hall on the Saturday afternoon and set up the show, placing the tables etc. just where they need to be; it also allows some of the traders and clubs to set up early too. The venue staff, whilst generally attractive and pleasant in demeanour, tend to have IQ's somewhere between Courgettes and leaf mould and whilst they are supposed to set the hall up for us actually wander off, go home or get confused with any layout plan that isn't an empty room. I kid you not, one of these staff members cleared out a pile of rubbish from the store room to get access to the tables and dumped it into the very centre of the hall....then went home as it was 5pm leaving everything as it was. Oh how we laughed.

I have been assured that the venue staff will break down the equipment from the Saturday night event and set up ours for us. They are all working until 4am anyway so this should be fine as we have the hall from 8am. I was not convinced and said as much. We had planned to set up the new hall plan, label up each stand and game, chalk out the all important space allocation onto the floor around the strands (saves soooo many arguments between traders) on the Saturday night. We now have to get to the hall before 7am as the staff arrive, make sure the hall is not just set up correctly, chalk up the floor spaces and everything else that needs to be done from an extensive list.....all the time the traders and clubs will be waiting with various degrees of patients and trying to get in to set up ASAP.

Would you like some genuine good news, dear reader? The Flea Market style Bring and Buy now has its own room with plenty of space and disabled access, bring and buys at wargame shows are dying out quickly and it seem that we have one of the last! On top of that, take a look at the fantastic list of traders we have for you....and there are at least three more to come! I am particularly pleased with the number of manufacturers taking part both great and small.

1. Col. Bills.com

2. Early War Miniatures

3. Shellhole Scenics

4. Redoubt enterprises

5. Brigade Models

6. David Lanchester Books

7. WARGAMESNKITS

8. Realistic Modelling

9. Monarch Millitary Books

10. Polly Oliver Castings

11. ToleHaven

12. Lesley's Bits Box

13. Wargames Foundry

14. Cymbeline Games

15. Fenris Games

16. Tablescape

17. Wargame Solutions

18. Red Knight Wargames

19. Armourfast

20. Warlord Games

21. Adler Miniatures

22. Warmill

23. Wargames Emporium

24. Harfields Military Figures

25. Andy's Models

26. Pilum Painting

27. Ainsty Castings

28. Always Darkk

29. Gladius Game Arts

30. East Street Games

31. Engine Shed Toys

32. SHQ Miniatures

33. 7th Heaven Games

34. Essex Miniatures