FIGZ 2026

It was years ago that we (Alde Garde) put on a wargames demo at FIGZ, in fact we must go back to 2019 for our last wargames demo at FIGZ!

Holidays, COVID, two shows planned on the same day etc are the reason that we could not attend FIGZ. And we really missed it.

So we were glad that after that many years (7 to be precise) we were welcome at the show to present our early 80 Years War demo (played with Pikemans Lament).
Due to the available space, it was a smaller demo then at Geel but that didn't matter as it played as nice as the bigger one.

As always FIGZ is simply great, maybe smaller then most shows but that is the beauty in our opinion. There are modellers presenting their new made models (and showing how it is done), a painting competition, stands of small manufacturers with great stuff and some other retailers of games, figures and models,  a layout of Waterloo with hundreds of 20mm figures and last but nog least some wargames tables with various periods as theme.
But; most importantly it is a friendly show, more of friends meeting once a year and talk about last year, their projects, new material etc. Maybe you can compare it with a clubnight. 

If you want to visit next year (June 6th 2027), look at their Facebook site (FIGZ) or their new website figz.nl .

We use Pikemans Lament rules for our demo but instead of one we use 3 companies each. The used statistics for the are:

Pictures are underneath; starting with some of our table

the wargame section 

Organisers stand

Waterloo in 20mm

From Remco,a hobby in itself; collecting Romans from the comics of Asterix. Now almost reaching a 1000 pieces.

Compagnie d'elite; resin models

To our regret we had some very bad pictures of the modelling part so these could not reproduced 😌

Scale World Geel

Wow, I noticed, it is a long time ago that we published here on our blog. Sorry for that but on we go.

On the last day of May, it was again to Scaleworld Show in Geel (Belgium). Organised already for years by the modelling club KMK (the Blue shirts), it was a modelling show but for some years also wargames find their place at the Show.

First of course, a great "thank you" to all members of KMK for organising this show; this year they had the extra problem of a venue (Thoman Moor school) which is in transit with buildings being torn down so a lot of modellers and wargames had to be placed somewhere in the remaining buildings.
But they succeed in doing it, put on a great show and the members of the club stayed friendly and helpfull all the way; our sincere thanks and congrats to the club!!

As said, the majority of the visitors are modellers and they presented a lot of quality models in a lot of catagories; from air, land and sea, small and great, historical and fiction.
We took pictures of some models but when we saw the pictures of models on the facebooksite of KMK we think it would better to give you the link https://www.facebook.com/kmk.scaleworld/?locale=nl_NL and look for yourselves.

So, all that remains are some pictures of the wargames that were presented by various clubs. And sorry that we didn`t noted the names of the various clubs.

This club we know, the bottles betrayed them; the Red Barons from Gent with their Franco-Prussian game played with the new rules "Kepis and bayonets"

The Berlin wargame of De Witte Ridder club

And then some pictures of our wargame: the early 80 Years War (around 1575) situated "somewhere"in the Netherlands.
Figures 28mm and mostly from TAG (The Assault Groep) which are specific for this period and they are looking great!
We used Pikemans Lament as rules but of course some specific adaptions for this period were used. Also we used more companies then the rules suggest in using but in our humble opinion, they worked very good.

Demo wargaming and history for school

We received a request if it was possible to present a wargame demo to the senior class of the elementary school where Hermien, the wife of Peter, is a teacher.
The class had closed a project about famous persons in history so our wargames demo should have a connection to that. 

After some looking at the list of our available demos we decided to present two demos; the first one about the Eighty Years War in connection to William of Orange and the second one about the French Revolution in connection to Napoleon Bonaparte (although our demo would be situated in the Low Countries 1793 while Napoleon would be fighting in soutern France at that time!).

 So, last Wednesday in Peters livingroom, we set up two tables (each 6*4 feet) with terrain and figures (we already had prepared beforehand some simple to understand rules for both periods), picked up 19 children at their school, split them in two groups, one for each table, and introduced them shortly to the two periods, the figures, the rules and the game.
And we have a go with it. After some time, we switched the groups of course.

We hope that the children had a good morning with us, seeing their reactions we did succeed with our goals but of course some liked it more then others. Some loved the game (esp throwing the dice and moving figures around), grasped the simple rules very quickly and even understood some of the formations used.
So as introduction I think we were succesfull.

Some pictures of the visit underneath.

Crisis 2025 in Sint Niklaas (Belgium) is over

 The first Saturday of November was en is Crisisday. For years in Antwerp and now in Sint Niklaas. Although smaller and with no British wargames traders anymore, the show is imho great and worthwhile to goto.

Of course we had a demo with us and this year we took our (expanded) French Revolutionary game with us. Rules used were Balck Powder2 with some houserules. Figures as always a mixture of various firms although most of them were Eureka and Trent (former Emperor Toad) for the Dutch.

The scenario, situated in todays Belgian territory, was a simple one; a by the French revolutionaries besieged (Dutch occupied) fortress and an attempt by combined Austrian and British troops to relieve the fortress. The relieve attempt prompted a part of the Dutch troops to try a breakout.

So, up to some pictures of our game:

Maybe you recognise our fortress as it did already duty at our earlier 1692 table, but as the design lasted for some centuries with very little adaptions it can also function in the FR period.

So, underneath some pictures of other games and impressions of the show.