Claymore 2026

 Ken Reilly, more famous as the Yarkshire Gamer, asked for volunteers to play in his award winning 1499 Siege of Forli game and I decided to jump in with two feet. As you know I have armies for the Italian Wars and play Furioso rules which is convenient as Ken also uses them.

My missus insisted on coming with me and I insisted she did not drive so we booked for a couple of nights on the Leith waterfront. Our journey north was halted for an hour or more at Langholm as it was their Common Riding, a tradition of horse cavalcades enacting the old custom of inspecting the town boundaries, which involved closing down the main A7 road, I was slightly miffed. The whole town was also closed apart from the pubs so we stopped at Hawick for lunch, our second disappointment began. I expected more of such an historic town. We eventually arrived in Leith and dinner on the waterfront was very nice, although the range of alcohol free beers was pretty poor with stuff I had never heard of, no matter, an early night as I had to be at Claymore for 0800.

I was last at Claymore two years ago, maybe three, before that it was when it was being held opposite the Museum of Scotland and I couldn't even guess how long ago that was. I arrived on time and met Ken and the other six guys  who had agreed to help, the table was stunning, some 2,300 figures in technicolour, banners flying and harnessed for war. Ken introduced the rules as four of the players had never played before (Andrei had come from Croatia to play) and we took our places, I had a mixed force of Landsknechts and Italians in the centre opposite Jason who commanded the Swiss, I knew just how dangerous these men were, Jason did not. The whole point of the day was to showcase wargaming the Italian Wars, the amount of gaming we could get in was simply a bonus.

As the game kicked off around 1000 hrs everyone's cavalry leapt forward while the infantry found their way to the front blocked by the horse, I did not have a lot of cavalry and neither did Jason, certainly nothing like the swarms on both flanks, I was also happy not to rush my foot forward and be crushed by the dastardly cash greedy Swiss. I did however hope to sweep away the Swiss cavalry and their Italian mercenaries and although starting well the combats bogged down and I eventually basically lost. Jason had got one huge pike block closer than the other and seeing there was a hedge to its front I knew from experience that there was a good chance it would not move through it without being disordered, my plan was to position one of my blocks to hopefully take advantage of this possible mayhem.

It was not to be however as by now there was only about fifteen minutes to go until the show ended, so we finished off that round and called a halt. It had been a long day with an hour off for lunch, Ken didn't get much time to himself as he did a sterling job fielding all the questions and visitors through the day, a lot of people were impressed and my lasting memory will be of a young lad and his sister staring in pure awe with mouths open at the spectacle, grabbing at his fathers arm to see what he had seen. Hopefully a convert in years to come.

A huge thanks to Ken for allowing me to take part and to the other six lads who were a pleasure to meet and play against.

Claymore was far better than I remembered and it was busy, there were lots of games in the same mould as Forli, large set pieces to showcase the hobby, there were also many smaller games and quite a few participation games, all in all a diverse mixture. I had the good fortune to run into some of my Old Guard from our big ACW game of a few weeks ago, Robert, Billy and Davy, the bus load of Groupies Robert had promised sadly never turned up, I knew 'Wargaming Celebrity' would not fly and tried to tell him.

Some of you will know I have been taking a fiver to shows now for several years, more than I can remember, so I decided on a heartfelt plea from Ray Rousell 'for gawd's sake spend that fiver' to do just that. I admit the M8 Hellcat cost more than the fiver and the pain was almost unbearable, but I am now officially skint. 

A great experience and I need to get my own Italian Wars back on the table.