Show Business - Joy of Six

Hello! Anybody still there? Yes, I know, I disappeared for two months again. I kept meaning to sit down and write a blog post, and then I, well, didn't.

But I'm here now, that's the main thing, with a brief note on a nifty little show that I visited recently - "Joy of Six" in Sheffield.

Using that die probably counts as cheating

Now, if I'm being honest, this probably isn't something I'd bother with if it weren't conveniently located in my home town and a two minute walk from my work car park. However, I'm very happy that this turned out to be the case and that we took the time to have a look around it.

The event is sponsored by Baccus (manufacturers of 6mm models) and Wargames Emporium (owners of Command Horizon, a 6mm sci-fi game), with the aim of selling their stuff promoting the use of 6mm scale in wargaming. It's not a big show by any means, but it's attractively priced at £2.50 to get in.

The show did have a pretty big and diverse collection of demo games all in the same scale, along with a few traders. It was also pretty quiet, which I liked, even if that probably isn't something the organisers are keen to keep up permanently. There were also some seminars (which we stayed out of since we were new to everything and didn't really know what was going on) and some sort of raffle, which we got a ticket for when we arrived but which I can tell you nothing else about. I might have won it for all I know (we didn't stay too long), but I have no idea what the prize might have been.

I'd never gamed in 6mm at the time of going the show, but having an event that is focused like that was quite nice. We wandered round the games on display, all of which looked very nice, and marveled at the effect of having hundreds of models on the table but still being able to maneuver. We had a long chat with a couple of the guys running a US Civil War game (which I think was the battle of Atlanta) using Black Powder, which led, somewhat inevitably, to our buying some US Civil War models with the intention of running some games using Black Powder.

I'm painting those now, so keep an eye out for my eventually posting something about them (possibly in late 2015, given the rate I seem to be posting at the moment).

I was also pleasantly surprised at how little scenery (teeny-tiny 6mm scenery, at that) seems to be needed to make a 6mm battlefield look sensible. I think that's at least partly because the games we were looking at were generally big battalion affairs fought in open field, but it does suggest that we could get some decent-looking games on the go without too much effort.

So, anyway. All in all, Joy of Six is a nice little show, and hopefully it'll be back next year. It would be nice to think that by then, I'll have a fully painted US Civil War army and will be looking for another project, but what are the chances I won't get distracted again in the meantime?