Crisis 2016 - Some impressions...

So last weekend Crisis 2016 took place in Antwerp and I had the great pleasure to visit the show with a couple of friends from our THS wargaming club. A tremendous weekend again from which I collected a couple of impressions.

Our trip started on Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock when I was picked up by my friend Michael. Although we had some traffic jam at Essen and Duisburg our trip went rather well until we reached Antwerp. There are the heaviest roadworks I ever observed taking place and thus we had to take a rather complicated way to the exhibition site. Anyway we arrived and started preparing our table for next morning:

Robert, Michael, Kalle and Georg are setting the frame for the board.

Needful fuel...

After two hours we had our things sorted and we're ready to start a comfortable evening with some beer among friends. On Saturday morning we added the figures and a pretty little table emerged:

Robert's wonderful landscape and his self-made 15mm village

Market day !

A trader's stand.

Same scene from another point of view.

Some other traders on their way.

The gates of Moria?

As you see we brought a smaller table and a smaller scale this time. But how nice and vivid Robert's collection is! Truely I enjoyed our table a lot and many thanks to Robert who put it up single-handedly!

But of course we were not the only people bringing figures to Antwerp. A lot of clubs brought excellent games and there was eye candy all around. Unfortunately I cannot show all those lovely tables but I did me very best to bring a selection of my favourites:

James Morris and his fellow presented a wonderful WW1 skirmish.

Germans try to storm Fort Vaux in June 1916.

Wonderfully detailed interior with lots of LED lanterns.

One of the French dormatories.

Team Yankee by the Iron Warriors Antwerp

Really a nice table and a good chance for me to have a look at the ruleset.

A BMP advancing.

Great Escape Games table for 'The Chicago Way'

Did you bring a knife to a gun fight?

20mm WW2 with 'Battlegroup Overlord'

Pacific War from the Dortmund Amateur Wargamers

Wonderful gaming pieces.

Simon Miller's 'To the Strongest'. A pity that I missed himself.

20mm Romans from the fellows who run FIGZ show

A truly wonderful river.

A Batavian fortification.

Realistic landscape... A beauty.

And another piece of fortress.

Pegasus Bridge in 28mm. Unfortunately I missed the club who brought it.

Stronghold Terrain's 'Dead Man's Hand' display. Pure eye candy by Mirco.

A really entertaining looking game about the Field Gun Competition

Too Fat Lardies' 'Sharp Practise' participation game

These were only a few of the splendid tables presented in Antwerp. But besides this source of eye candy the show was a tremendous place to meet old friends and make new ones. Among them Martin and Diane of Warbases, Wayne from WI, Dave Thomas, Sander, Burkhard, Mirco, Elmar, Willie and Johan from the TSoA as well as a couple of other old wargaming friends. Great to see them and wonderful to catch up with new fellows. I had an exciting chat with James about his WW1 board and an excellent conversation with 'Fat Lardie' Richard about Sharp Practise and his preference for continental shows.

At our table then I ran into a fellow who pretended to make 28mm sculpts himself. Imho he looks more like a blacksmith:

Paul Hicks selling lottery tickets at Crisis.

Joking aside Paul is running a lottery to raise funds for his deeply loved Rugby club 'Chesham Stags' to finance a new club house. For £5 he's selling tickets and on Christmas Eve the lucky winner will be drawn. For him Paul will create a bespoke 28mm green. But more on this in a later post. I think it's a great idea of him to utilise his unique artifical skills to support the Stags and I'm glad to bring forth his campaign with some humble support on Facebook and blogger.

As you see it was a busy weekend but interpersonal the best one I ever had. It was great to meet old friends and get the chance to make new one's. For next year Crisis is definitely again one of my fixed points in the schedule!

Oh... Wait... I cannot finish this review without the picture you all are waiting for:

Of course some goodies found there way into my greedy hands. First I renewed my WI subscription and received the Osprey book and a Young Churchil figure. In addition I bought a Team Yankee source book, some dice for my Bundeswehr force (Iron Crosses at 6, how could I resist?), a couple of Afghans for NWF, some animals by Warbases, a bullock cart of Iron Duke's tremendous Indian Mutiny range and some pieces for this year's 'Secret Santa' and 'Santa Clause' issues. So in this regard a successful weekend as well...