Glasgow Games Gathering

Very late article to give a bit of a write-up on Glasgow Games Gathering (took place on 29th of June), Glasgow’s first gaming show for a little while ran by and organised primarily by G3 Glasgow Gaming Group, a weekly gaming club. The show filled up one large hall and had a nice turnout of traders and clubs and overall, I think it had a nice balance between shopping and actual gaming. I got to the show about lunchtime and managed to get two demo games in, a lot of good conversation, and even won something in the raffle! Another nice touch from the event was the ‘passport’ which was a little card with five spots for a sticker that once filled meant you were entered into a draw for 3 vouchers. 2 pots where for playing a game, 2 for spending £10 with one trader, and one left that could be filled with either.

 Obligatory loot shot

Standouts for me were Gydran Miniatures and CS1. Gydran for their very promising looking Breaching the Rift setting (http://www.gydran.com/). While I picked up a couple of their miniatures with the intention of using them for 15mm SF I am keeping an eye on the game’s development and I’m quite interested in seeing how it develops in its own right. It is a very unique and characterful line of miniatures that is worth a look. I’ll definitely be picking more up down the line.

Second stand out was S.L.A. Industries: Cannibal Sector One (https://nightfall.games/cs1). I enjoyed the demo game enough to dive in and get the rules and some models. Unfortunately the models are a bit challenging. They are caste in very soft resin and while its quite easy to work with (so long as you are careful not to carve off too much while cleaning them, and you will have to clean them a lot, loooads of flash and some slipping too. I’ve seen pictures of models with quite bad bubbles too. Mine are ok so I don’t know what customer service is like but they seemed very friendly) its maybe not up to the standard a lot of modern wargamers may be expecting. Hopefully as time goes by they will improve their casting skills/equipment (whatever it is that makes a good model cast) but right now I would recommend them with the caveat that you will need to put your modelling skills to work to get the best out of them. As far as sculpt quality goes I would put them at around the same level of the good early Infinity stuff, though more 90s edge than anime gloss in aesthetic and posing. The setting has really captured my imagination which I would say is probably the main selling point, other than the rules which seem quite robust at creating interesting and exciting tactical situations with a ‘Ratings’ system (ratings as in tv ratings; camera drones film the battles and skirmishes for the consumption of the general public!) that gives you access to special abilities the more popular your actions make you with the audience (kills and melee mostly!). A few people at the club play this too so I’m hoping to get a game of it soon. I went for the Scav and 9^th factions. Scav’s are big tough smart elite mutants with abilities that focus around their ability to fix and modify their equipment on the fly, and the 9^th is the renegade (The first troops into the zone who got mismanaged and left for dead) version of the ‘vanilla’ faction, the Shivers, who sacrifice a bit of tactical mobility and a medic trooper for tactical knowledge of the Sector and a serious vicious streak (one of the characters can scalp dead enemies for ratings). 

 

So a good day and a really well executed event. I’m really looking forward to next year’s, and, if everything goes to plan, I might run a demo table there next year.