The Muckleburgh collection

 Don't know how often I've been past this place over the years, but it must be 20 years since my last visit - or more. So, Steven visiting and wanting to see the Muckleburgh collection, we paid a visit.

This is the entrance. Over the visit I took 217 photos, so I'll haveto ration the number of pictures in this!

There is always a vehicle of some kind parked out front. The current one is one of the ZSU series.

The outside of the main building doesn't look like much, but it is quite deep!

That nose cone you can see in the buildings pictures belongs to a V1 parked outside.

These are the workshops in a field facing the main building - qute a lot of vehicles parked down there waiting to be refurbished.

This 12 pound naval gun is parked outside the building by the entrance.

There's a Harrier GR3 parked behind the V1.

Plus a few other guns and things outside.

Inside, lots of displays, photos, diaramas, models, etc... I'll let the next few pictures tell their own stories!

Lots of nice ship models, though sadly a lot of my photos of these turned out a bit blurry.

Lots of assorted vehicles and guns to see, though the way they were displayed meant some proved difficult to get good photos of.

And of course there is somewhere to have a cup of tea and a crab sandwich!

Partizan

I didn't do a post on my trip to Salute - watched the Marathon the day after, then spent a few days in Brighton, plus lots of people post about Salute! Partizan, just over an hour from home, prefer it anyway and lots more to say about it!

In fact, Partizan  needs 3 sets of  'reports' - photos of the event, games played and things bought.

Partizan photos:

Lots of random pictures here - I didn't  bother trying to tie names to games or anything, just took a load of pictures:

A participation game with daleks (very nicely painted!)

This one has overtones of Newhaven, even down to having some Sarissa buildings.

Nice fort...

...etc...

The usual mass of mass battle games

Some games with simplified terrain (that look good)

The usual participation games. This is one I actually  played!

I admit it, some I took photos of so I could get a few ideas for my own setups.

And some that just  looked a bit whimsical.

The games:

I took part in 2 games, Steven 3. And Sandra 1 - an even rarer event than my taking part!

The first game was run by John from Harrogate Wargames Club. Strangely, I didn't take his photo, or the other 2 players! Two teams of two, Steven and I won.

A bit like Gunfight at the OK Corral really. Each player controlled 2 characters and the idea was to take out 2 opposing characters.

Steven chased one of them off by wounding him, Steven lost one of his characters but wounded another character - he ended up writhing on the the ground and I finished him off. Good game, plenty of action.

I didn't take part in Steven's second game involving trench warefare and only came after he had finished.

Nice terrain board. Sadly, Steven lost.

Mainly due to this guy who kept killing Steven's pieces.

The final game was the Great Turkey Shoot. We did this one twice.

Steven and I played the first game. It's meant to be 9 moves long. The idea is that British and French hunting parties are sent out to shoot a turkey for the commander's dinner. First one to find and shoot a turkey wins the game. I got it first move before Steven had a chance to go...

So the game started again, except I pulled out and Sandra played Steven. The other two in the picture are David (sitting) and Mike (standing). They designed the scenario based on the rule set.

This game went for the full 9 moves... The idea was to go into the wooded areas and search for turkeys. However, the problem is that you sometimes find a wolf or bear instead. Which happened a lot and there were casualties...

They did find a few turkeys but kept missing. This kept up until the last move when Steven finally managed to bag one! Good game.

(And as for how long it went on for)

Things bought

OK, didn't spend much at Salute, temptations were greater at Partizan!

The main culprit was Crooked Dice. They have recently brought out a range of figures covering just about every pulp fiction/sf tv/cult movie character you could imagine. It's great fun looking at figures and trying to work out the characters they 'don't' represent! These are not Unit soldiers.

That is not the Tardis and those are not the Doctor, Sarah-Jane and Jo...

Actually I haven't worked out what show these are from. My feeling would be Dr Who as well, but if so I don't remember them. I just liked the figures.

And obviously I had to buy these. Figures in this range are far more expensive than my usual expenditure  but there are a lot more figures I'll be getting from there in future. I could easily have spent several hundred pounds on that stand!

Oh, yeah, bought a few paints and bases as well.

So, overall, a far more expensive and enjoyable convention than Salute - not as crowded for a start!