Crisis Belgium 2024

[Leman (Andy)]

I visited the Crisis show in Sint Niklaas on Saturday September 7th. This was very enjoyable for me as it was my first show in 6 years. The venue was excellent being the Sint Niklaas Exhibition Centre, known as 'T Bauhuis. There was a very large entrance area with some traders, some games and the main catering facilities (there was also a Belgian specialities food van immediately outside the entrance, which attracted quite a queue). Entrance was €10, which included a wrist band for re-entry. Further in was a very large hall plus another adjoining hall about half the size. Both were filled with games and traders. Very few of the traders were British (thanks Brexit) although Barry Hilton was there with two games featuring the Dutch: the land war in Ireland in the 1690s and the sea war against Britain in the 1660s. The latter was particularly impressive with the Dutch fleet sailing up the Thames opposed by Charles II's RN. The scenery on both banks of the Thames appeared to be depicted in 2 or 3mm and was particularly striking.

On the plus side there were many traders and punters. The variety of merchandise was very wide and the games were impressive. I had a good chat with Barry Hilton as well as a couple of Belgian traders, who specialised in books and scenic items, and also a Dutch gamer from Limburg Province, who was playing a scenario from the earlier part of the Eighty Years War, which looked to be set in the 1580s. There were traders from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Lithuania and Poland, that I was aware of, but there may have been others. There were even a few British visitors, mainly from southern England, Claymore being way up in Scotland.

On the downside only a minority of the traders were stand alone companies: Deep Cut mats, Van Dijk 10/12mm figures, Brother Vinny, Bello Ludi, Micro Art Studio painted mdf scenery, some other scenery companies. However most of the traders were general wargames suppliers selling figures (predominantly 28mm), books, rules, paints, tools, scenic items etc, most of which could be bought at any decent British show. This was good for the EU shoppers, as it meant they could buy stuff like Warlord, Perry, Wargames Atlantic, Games Workshop, Victrix etc, without having to get it shipped from the UK. Amongst all this were some excellent bargains for the EU shoppers, eg I bought a box of Perry Franco-Prussian plastic French Infantry for €20, much cheaper than Perry direct.

In summary I would rate this as an excellent show for mainland gamers, but only leave the island if you're going to combine with a visit to the numerous battlefields in Belgium or northern France.

[martin goddard]

Excellent Andy.
can I use this as a MILL article?
It is interesting to see how the show has coped with the BREXIT.


martin

PS  Any pictures

[Leman (Andy)]

By all means Martin. I'll attempt to post three pictures I took whilst there. Apart from some 15mm scenic items and the Sword and the Flame stand, both Polish, plus some vendors selling Flames of War and its variants, there was not much for the 15mm collector, unless you count Warlord Epic, which is sort of getting there.

[Leman (Andy)]

Some photos from Crisis:

[/url]Crisis 2024 by Andrew Fuller, on Flickr[/img]

Absolutely no idea how to turn this gobbledy gook into an image. Tried removing bits of this foemul but it's just not playing ball. Can someone PLEASE for the love of my sanity tell me how to do these effing foto's.

[martin goddard]

I have little idea of how to tackle this Andy.
Flickr and similar will stop you copying the photos.

If your pictures are stored on your own computer they will be in jpeg form (usually).
That is great because you can send them as attachments to me or anyone else.
I cannot use anything from flicker et al.

I think they will not share any pictures you put on their site.
This is their business method.

If you send me any of your pictures from CRISIS as a jpeg attachment to   martinraegoddard@gmail.com   I can use them.


thanks

martin

[Leman (Andy)]

Oh dear, seems fairly pointless storing photos there then. As for my computer, it seems to have a mind of its own and seems to want to store nothing after 2020.

[martin goddard]

Maybe consider an add on external storage drive? I use them a lot. They are pretty cheap and hold a lot of  stuff.
Just stick it in the USB socket on your computer and job done. They are easy to remove too.
Computers can/are very frustrating. Time to call in your son Andy?


martin

[Leman (Andy)]

Thanks for the help Martin. It looks like a trip to Media Mart in Groningen is in order. Need stuff from the art shop there as well, so will be heading in on Tuesday.