Partizan 2024: 28mm Middle-earth and 6mm Trojan Wars

Sunday 19th May saw myself, Tom, Pete, Andy and Martin crawl out of our beds far too early and get on the road to the awesome show that is Partizan at Newark Showground. Setting up on the edge of the Lard Zone, we put up our double-headed game format to promote my forthcoming Midgard Heroic Battles rules. It’s all very well telling people that your rules will work with any scale of miniatures, but it’s far better to show them!

So this time we had Trojan Wars in 6mm back-to-back with a battle from Tolkien’s Silmarillion in 28mm. This also neatly showcased the fact that Midgard can be used across the spectrum of historical, mythical and fantasy gaming.

Jon Hodgson (of Handiwork Games and Jon Hodgson Backdrops ) had kindly granted us permission to use two of his pieces as backdrops for the battles, so we had a lovely vista on both games.

Once I had micro-managed every single miniature and piece of terrain into its correct location, we had a quick team briefing and then got stuck into the games. While it’s fun to have two games on show, of course, it’s double the work for manning them, and we try to have games being played as well as being available to talk.

I played through several turns of the Silmarillion game with Pete and Andy in between chatting with everyone passing by, so the battle moved at a leisurely pace on my side of the table.

Tom and Martin took the Trojan Wars game so I apologise for the lack of photos of this – Tumhalad was taking up most of my attention!

I didn’t see the action develop in the Trojan Wars game but understand that Hector challenged Achilles to single combat, and found himself being dragged three times round the walls of Troy by his heels…

Back to the Battle of Tumhalad…the Orcs deployed on three sides of the battlefield, with the Elves of Nargothrond trapped with the River Ginglith to their backs.

Surrounded, the Elves elected to throw their archers forwards and harass the Orcs as they came on.

The game featured an Elven watch tower that had been taken over by Orcs and was now manned by their drummers creating an almighty racket!

Yet more Orcs arriving from the North!

Here we have some of the Peter’s Paperboys Orcs taking part in their first Midgard game. They said that they were worried about feeling a bit flat, but were soon made welcome and no-one mentioned their 2D qualities!

Although the Elven archery felled the front ranks of the Orcs, more came on and Glaurung breathed fire upon the Noldor.

Glaurung piled into the Elven ranks but the Elves held on for a minor victory, having more Reputation tokens in their goblet at the close of play. A few more turns might have settled it, but that’d best be played out at a club night rather than a show!

Thanks for all our helpers for today and especially everyone who came and chatted – I hope we have some Midgard news for you soon.