Crisis 2011- Part I

Hoi,

Yesterday I had the privilege to visit the Crisis 2011 in Antwerp together with my Brother and Mark. I think I can talk for all of us when I say we had a blast! Attendance seemed to be even more then last year and the guys from TSOA were telling us all they will have to move to a larger venue next time. Now that's saying something about how big this event has become and for me it's the best show on the continent at this moment in time. Well I'm being a bit narrow-minded here since I have only visited two others (DUZI and Action) but it's pretty great anyway! Crisis is probably also very much the only event I will be visiting any time soon due to the birth of our son...

In this post I'll give you the more boring info first and I'll update an all picture extravaganza later this week. The first thing I'd like to mention here is that pretty much all of my regular gaming buddies were present at this event here in Antwerp; Koen and Michiel came with a group of friends, Jan-Willem (Pijlie) and his lovely wife Emmy were present and I also met up with others like Tom and Bert who I have seen last time at Crisis.As well as Johan, Toby and his lovely wife Baukje, about all the in-crowd was there :-)

Pretty much every time I visit an event like this I bring a shopping list along, this is just about the first time that I actually got most that was on the list and did not buy much more then intended. Even so I was able to blast most of my budget in one go.

So what did I buy?

Since Pijlie published his Dystopian Wars stuff on his blog I knew I was going to get hooked as well since who else to play these games with rather then him? So I got myself the core rulebook, a Britanian Naval- and Land battle group. Let's see when I get time to get cracking on them. I bought some Pegasus craters for my TGW games, for €15,- they are great value for money as opposed to GW craters. I also got the following:

- an Early War Miniatures WW1 AAgun on truck
- a set of armylists by "Crush the Kaiser"
- a box of GW Goblin Wolf Riders
- a Wargames Illustrated Special featuring all kinds of great eye candy.
- 2 casualty counters with numbers on a turntable.
- From Tom's own produced line some Roman dancers and a winged Amazonian figure

Well that's p[retty much all I got but it will get me going the next few months.

For now I'll just mention two more things about yesterday's event:
1) there were some great games the gents (and lady) from "Crush The Kaiser" did a humongous and well build 20mm plastic Great War demo and I got to talk to them at length about their rules, mini's and terrain/ vehicles which was great.

 I have rotated this image in my photobucket and own harddisk folder I swear it, but it won't come up right here, it's not my fault (as Han and Lando would say).

nother demo table was entirely build up of 20mm plastics. It was a game showing a battle of the South American Wars of Independence

ARGH! This one I rotated as well!

2) the second remark I'd like to make is that at the Crisis, Belgians, Dutch, French, German and people of the British Isles come together to re-fight the wars of their forebears against each other, in the most companionable way possible, politicians all over the world should take note of this! And those people telling us figure enthusiasts are warmongers should come and see for themsleves!



cheers Sander