Warfare Reading 2014 .

First an apology - sadly there are no photos of the actual show , on the Saturday I forgot to take my camera and on the Sunday I found the battery was flat . Sorry 'bout that !.After a nightmare journey down to Reading - the M6 was closed at junction 22-23 and the diversion was blocked by an  accident - it took us 3 hours to get to the Manchester Ship Canal bridge , this normally takes 1 hour  and there were numerous other road works which slowed us down at one point 'A' feared his his bladder would explode (even with my assurance that bladders don't burst !) when stuck in traffic betwixt service stations . It was 11.45 when we finally arrive at our hotel in Reading - it had taken 7 hours !!!! - not happy bunnies !. However we were up bright (ish) and early and set up our wargaming table for our weekend games - no a bomb has not gone off in our room , we use a couple of 2 foot square polystyrene tiles with a cloth over them sat on the table in our room  - this worked very well .

We even played a couple of moves of our first game before breakfast , it was a Napoleonic 15mm game using General D' Brigade - Spanish versus French . We then leisurely strolled down to the show in the Rivermead leisure complex ,I made my modest purchases and 'A' went into a buying frenzy . 

The show was very busy and as there were no games in the main hall - the organisers have tried to get more traders in this year it was very crowded , the competition hall was also packed with gamers  . About 3 ish were returned to our room to finish off our game and much to my great pleasure I won ! .

A rather poor photo of my moment of triumph - my Conscript Spanish Hussars counter-charge rout and pursue the French Dragoons driving them from the field and forcing morale checks on the surrounding French units which all broke and won me the game - to add insult to injury my Conscripts rallied and were ready to charge again - Superb Discipline !. We then called into the nearby 'Toby Inn' to meet up for a drink with 'S' and Alan you had had a very good day trading . We then went for a curry at a very good Nepalese Restaurant were we had a VERY  hot curry - what we thought were green beans turned out to be chillies  .

Sadly there are no photos of our second game , we re fought the Napoleonic game using 'Black Powder'  (I blame the curry and exhaustion . I won again ) - 'A' was somewhat reluctant as he is a big fan of General D' Brigade and doubted how 'Black Powder' would handle his favourite period but was impressed how quick it played . I awoke early and reset the table for a 10mm AWI game using 'Black Powder', I took the British and 'A' the Americans we played a few moves and went down for breakfast - luckily we did  as the hotel was soon invaded by about 20 railway workers who had been working nights and were going to stay at the hotel and were having huge breakfasts before retiring . We went back to the room and I proceeded to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory ! in this final game . We packed away our figures and scenery into the car and visited the show for the final time to pick up the last few items . The return journey was thankfully quicker and without incident , a successful weekend away and the games added a lot to it , plans are being made for a repeat performance next year.