Boys' Day Out!

It's a not a wargames' show without planes on sticks, Nick said as we began our second circuit of the main hall at this year's Cavalier, the annual show by the Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society at the Angel Centre in Tonbridge.

We were both going stag as our wives had better things to do on Sunday - Rachel was away visiting friends in Wales and Clare, having seen the torrential rain, decided she preferred to stay in their flat and do the washing.

I suspect the rain may have put quite a few people off this year as the show, while busy, certainly didn't feel as busy as it has done. It wasn't even as crowded as last week's model train exhibition.

Nick's spending was curtailed by the fact that he and Clare are househunting and so he concentrated on his 1938 Very British Civil War (by Solway Crafts and Miniatures), coming away with a couple of the new background books and a selection of miniatures from Musketeer.

Meanwhile I snagged several pulpy packs of miniatures for my latest insane 'secret project' and was surprised to find a rather random stall selling mini-condition comic book trade paperbacks for £3 a pop. I bought four - two Hawkman, one Wonder Woman and a Marvel monster collection that I've been after for ages. The added bonus was the trader gave me a bulk discount and knocked the price down to £10 for the four books!

At the bring-and-buy I also picked up another bargain - the core rule book for Robin Laws' Feng Shui and a couple of the supplements for the grand total of £5 (£3 for the rules and a pound each for the supplements). You never know, they may come in useful at some stage.

Both Nick and I had painted figures to collect from our painter-of-choice, Neil Wilson. Nick had a heavy box of Saxons to take home while I had a small, but perfectly formed, array of Doctor Who characters (see above) - including the wonderful Heresy 'not-Doctor-Who' figures, which also boast an 11th Doctor analogue.

I also handed over some more figures for Neil to paint up, which included a TARDIS to accompany the various Doctors I now have.

The general standard of exhibition games was as high as ever, although I didn't see any elf/orc/goblin-style fantasy games and only a single Warhammer 40,000 game (I'm sure the local branch of Games Workshop used to put on displays at the show, but not any more), one spaceship combat game and Gary Mitchell's Space Vixens From Mars representing the sci-fi branch of the hobby.

Rather disappointingly he didn't appear to have any of his miniatures for sale as I'd wanted to see them in the flesh and try to gauge how well some of his more exotic aliens would go with my favoured Galactic Adventures In The Fourth Dimension Of The Forbidden Zone (GAFDOZ).

The exhibition, and participation, games were primarily very traditional historic - or pseudo-historic - genres, with quite a leaning towards 18th and 19th Century conflicts in various scales.

Plenty of stuff caught my eye, but without Rachel to drive me home I limited myself to only buying things that I could carry in my backpack - which was a good way of controlling my investments; although I did pick up plenty of leaflets and price lists for things to consider in the future. Of particular interest was Tablescape's line of pre-painted sci-fi terrain (urban and industrial).

They were also stocking a fine range of 28mm sci-fiction troopers, Pig Iron Productions, which I'd seen advertised in magazines, but the pictures in the adverts didn't do them justice. I'm expect - economy willing (ie depending on how much I can sell on eBay) - I'll be getting some of those in due course (all part of my cunning 'masterplan' for game table domination).

I'm sure both Nick and I got home very satisfied with our purchases and with our wallets surprisingly still intact (I know I only spent 50 per cent of my allocated budget, which included Nick's birthday present) - our better halves will be proud!