Today is the 1st of September and we are back from our summer holiday. We had hoped to do a recap before the break however time got the better of us.
From both of us here at XWC Miniatures and Moon Beast Games, we hope you’ve had a fantastic summer full of eldritch goodness
What a summer! Six shows in six weeks, starting with the UK Games Expo and finishing up at the North East Games Expo. It’s weird thinking back to last year where we only managed to get two shows in.
Let's start with the biggest, the one in a league of its own:
The UK Games Expo
This show certainly had its complications. Down a team member, stuck halfway between Beaconsfield and Birmingham for hours on end (one of us had remarked that ‘as long as it doesn’t take three hours to get there, we’ll be fine’) and only managed to complete a partial set-up before the hall closed for the event. We grabbed some ready meals, had a thrilling farce involving parking a large van in a space that couldn’t quite account for it and only finally settled down indoors by midnight, readying up for tomorrow.
After all that you might think we were finally ready (we thought so too!), only for us to rock up a good fifteen minutes after the opening time. Total panic set in as we rushed to get everything together, collecting lanyards, putting out prices, everything.
And then it just went right.
It was amazing. After so much had gone wrong seeing the sheer enthusiasm people had for our stall and our products was a fantastic reward. As our first repeat show we got to meet the people who had brought miniatures and played our adventure from last year, coming back to say how much they’d enjoyed it or showing us pictures of their own painted miniatures. There wasn’t anything quite like it, and that massively boosted our impetus to continue.
Any other setbacks were trivial compared to the great sense of euphoria that we had sitting in Charwell Valley Services on the way home eating the most horrendously unhealthy meal that we could buy having survived the weekend, and not only that, actually being able to call it a success.
We also need to thank our awesome neighbors Critical Canvas for being so friendly over the course of the weekend (https://www.instagram.com/critical.canvas/)
Please check out their awesome artwork!
Rotherham Comicon
We only have good things to say about Rotherham, the people there are amazingly friendly.
Whilst again travel continued to be a unique experience (Chris went trainhopping from Liverpool Lime St. at six in the morning due to a cancelled train and somehow managed to make his way there), the event itself was wonderful.
We also got to meet our (hopefully) future selves in the form of Enter the Black Vault (https://www.instagram.com/entertheblackvault/). We massively recommend their Kickstarter project: (The Bad Patch - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/531104581/tbp2). Awesome books absolutely filled to the brim with brilliant artwork and some pretty unique creatures.
Broadside Gaming Convention
Continuing our pilgrimage up and down the country our next event was at down in Gillingham hosted by the fantastic Milton Hundred Wargaming Club. The club reached out to us after a show earlier in the year and the stars aligned that we were in the right part of the country at the right time as I had a theater trip in Canterbury that very evening (it was a bit of a pilgrimage home, being Kent residents ourselves).
I had so much help setting up the stand on the Friday and they were rigorous in their organisation to the point I would put them on par with the UK Games Expo, which for a volunteer wargaming club is quite something. They thought of everything and got people through the door. This was probably our least stressful show we had ever done.
Chris also got to meet a literary hero in the form of Dan Abnett, the prolific sci-fi author.
If you live the correct side of the North Downs and have any interest in the wargaming hobby, introduce yourselves to the Milton Hundred Wargaming Club, you won’t regret it. Your wallet might, but you definitely won’t https://www.miltonhundred.com/.
Portsmouth & Basildon
The next two shows were Portsmouth and Basildon! Again the other exhibitors made us feel very welcome. Two shout outs here: the first one is for my Aunt, for allowing us to stay in their house despite the fact they weren't in. And the next one is to our neighbour at Basildon, the incredibly talented sculptor idlehandsfx with really incredible hand sculpted busts. Very much worth a look! (https://www.instagram.com/idlehandsfx/)
North East Tabletop Expo
Lastly we had the North East Table Top Expo hosted by Farplace Rescue! The first day of this show will live for quite a while in my memory. Up at sunrise, driving along the A55 coastal road along North Wales, watching the sunrise over the Irish Sea coming over the top of the highest motorway in the country to have our setup in the hall. Then six hours trading for our first day, picking up food, checking into the Airbnb and then driving down to Seaham beach for a quick paddle in the freezing North Sea. Very rarely do you get the opportunity to cross the country in a day, even rarer to do it with both the sunrise and sunset in view.
Epilogue
I’m incredibly thankful to my business partner, for putting up with that amount of travel (not that it bothers me too much, I get a lot of peace on trains - Chris) and the fact that I effectively dumped him off at the train station before scampering off on holiday for two weeks. We have both now had a month’s down period and have reasonably recovered. We have some amazing projects in the works over the coming couple of months and are ready to Start our Autumn show season. So keep an eye on this space.
I’ll give you a teaser…we may be making our first venture into Sci-fi.