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.

Open Monumentendag was a nice day

The open Munumentendag at the Dutch Artillery museum was great.

A nice sunny day (well, most of the day, it ended in heavy rain) resulted in a lot of visitors (a lot more then expected!) at the museum, the various information stands from the museum and other organisations, the displayed guns/trucks/material etc and of course also at the NCO mess were the wargames were located.

Some 6 wargames tables were presented; two WW2 games, two ACW games (28mm and 15mm), one KNIL game (from the year 1905) in the Atjeh war period and of course our 1511 game: Siege of Venlo.

The nicest thing (at least we think so) is, that visitors aren't the "normal" wargamers but whole families who spent their saturday at the Open day and have no clue what wargames are, how they play and what it represent. So we were talking a lot ( really a lot!) to people, explaining what wargaming is and show how rules work etc. You get the picture. 
Some visitors probably thought that wargamers are weird (grown men playing with miniatures) but a lot also liked it very much, admired the tables, talked about the modelling aspect and find the history part interesting. 

So thanks for the Dutch Artillery Museum to invite us and special thanks to Ludwig van Dijk who organised the whole thing for us. Of course, we hope to visit and participate again next year.

And then some pictures (what is a blog without them); starting with our table and then from the other ones.

Our game is situated in the early renaissance period during the Guelders War. We used Pike&Shotte.

Other pictures fromthat day (some from Arthur, hope he doesn't mind that we use them here also as some of ours were not good).

From the 28mm ACW game:

 They used these Osprey rules. And the author was playing them!

15mm ACW

WW2 pictures (both using Bolt Action)

and pictures of the KNIL game using home made rules.

Not a wargames club but the Nederlandse Stichting voor Modelfiguren presented for the first time their stand. 

For more information goto: https://www.modelfiguren.nl/ or their facebook site De Tinnen Tafelronde