Back from SELWG

I managed to make to SELWG this afternoon as planned, after a quick dog walk and then a morning at a concert my son was playing in at a local theatre in Sutton...the Sutton Youth Brass Band since you ask.  Really good concert which by way of a wargaming connection included a brilliant version of  Hymn to the Fallen from Saving Private Ryan as part of the performance.

Anyway quickly drop wife and son back home and scoot across South London to Crystal Palace by 1.30.

SELWGs always been a favourite show,  partly because it's local but also because there's always a nice buzz about it, but this year I found it a bit flat.  The show is held at the huge Sports Centre there and takes up a main ground floor and a sizeable first floor balcony.

The ground floor

...and the 1st floor

 

As you can see it looked fairly busy when I got there but the ground floor was noticeably quieter than usual with a number of familiar traders missing.  More room to look at things and less problems caused by crowds of punters but it was shame to see the gaps.  By about 3pm a number of people had packed up and gone...

Game-wise there were a good number of interesting looking games going on although nothing that really made me stop and go 'wow'!  Admittedly they were all a lot better in terms of terrain etc than anything I could do so maybe I'm just being curmudgeonly and a bit unfair!

Some photos [apologies as I've no idea who or what these were, but they all looked really good!]...

The only one I can identify...a demo of the revised PBI rules from Peter Pig!



I found a lot of the traders seemed to be becoming very generic... apart from what seemed like relatively few figure manufacturers [Ironclad Miniatures, Essex, Foundry and Magister Militum were there]  a lot seemed to be selling pretty much the same products.  Lots of stalls seemed to be mainly made up of boxes of Warlord Games/Perry/PSC figures and 4Ground buildings.  Again I'm probably being unfair but it did mean there was a very samey feel to each of the stalls.

Shopping-wise I picked up some French and British Home Guard infantry and a couple of vehicles from Peter Pig, some 1:100 plastic kits from Zvesda and a couple of 4Ground houses.  I'd had my eye on a copy of the Heroes of Normandie board game and saw a copy sitting on a shelf in one of the stalls and stupidly didn't pick it up and of course it was gone when I came by later.  A quick browse later on eBay turned up a copy cheaper than the stall and with free P&P so no harm done...in fact I then discovered the seller lives about 5 miles from me so either they'll drop it round or I'll pop by and get it!