Broadside and weekend gaming

   What was supposed to be a weekend with a single game in it, turned into one hell of a hobby weekend. Let's start at the beginning, Saturday was supposed to be a game of 40k Apocalypse, a chance for 4 players to get all their big toys onto a table to see the 7th edition out in style, but as the only person that didn't end up bailing, this didn't happen.
   So, instead, on Sunday one of my mates and me took a trip to the Broadside show in Sittingbourne, aiming to try out a couple of things, see some familiar faces and buy some more models, then maybe carry on our Imperial Assault campaign in the afternoon. This went, broadly, to plan;

The first game we go involved in was 4th edition Flames of War. Honestly, (and I am bound to offend someone with this statement) I have have never heard anything good about Flames of War, but the 4th edition seems completely different and we really enjoyed ourselves. So much in fact that my mate bought himself two copies of the starter set so we could replay this game in the future.

The second game we tried was a game that is still in development called Valhalla. It is a good little game, but I don't know if it is bringing anything new to the genre, being somewhere between Open Combat and Saga in complexity and game size, and not being better than either. 

The last game we played at the show was an escape from Jurassic Park game. Described to us as 'like Yahtzee', it was brutally simple but a great show game. And, yes, I got away - just.

   With the limit of 4 hours in the car park, we made our move fairly soon after this, aiming to play some more games at home. Carrying on the weekend's tradition of not sticking to plans, we decided to play Thunderbirds (probably still my favourite board game at the moment) instead of Imperial Assault and, like normal, lost more games than we won.

   The other great thing about the Broadside show was that it had a proper bring and buy stand, so, obviously, this is where my money went. I went with all the best intentions, knowing that with the 8th edition of 40k coming out this weekend and my normal gaming mate really pushing to start playing 40k in a real way again, that I needed to save some money to at least buy the rulebook and a codex but that went out the window as soon as I saw there was some Battlefleet gothic on the stall. A quick trip to eBay and I now have a 1000 point fleet ready to paint. Suffice to say, mistakes were made and 40k looks like it can wait another month. . .

Thanks for reading