Throwback – Lead Belt Nottingham 2010 – Day 4

Last day of our trip to the lead belt and we headed to the outer area of the Nottinghamshire, to Mansfield to be exactly. Why head out there? Maelstrom Games had their facilities there, back in the day one of the largest wargaming stores, maybe only second to Wayland Games in the UK.

What made it interesting was not only the vast range, but the incredibly large gaming hall with 72 (!) tables, that hosted two tournaments at the same time. Epic 40.000 and Warhammer Ancient Battles on that day we were there. But not all, they even covered a bar, lounge and even more gaming tables. I think one of the things that impressed me the most, that even although the vast amount of tables and this not being club rooms, the amount of terrain was high and the quality of it more than just presentable.

Andre would use the chance, that this was our last day to buy a large Atlantikwall terrain kit, which would be quite the pain in the back on our way back due to its size.

As for Maelstrom Games, we weren't aware of all the trouble that was going on behind the scenes and how customers were tricked out of their orders, leading to their bankruptcy in 2012.

We headed back to Nottingham, as we had a final meeting on our tour, with Urban Mammoth (the owner John Robertson is located in Scotland, so he arranged for Mark Brendan and Jake Thornton, aka Quirkworthy, to stand in), who unfortunately went out of business the year after. They released a cartoonish skirmish called Warheads and had plans for a Urban War spin-off in 6mm, called Age of Tyrants. We talked about both systems and the planned releases.

To introduce these two, Mark Brendan worked on Void and Warheads, as well as writting stories like Tenebrae for Games Workshop. As for Jake Thornton, he wrote Dreadball, Mars Attacks, Reichsbusters and was involved in the 6th edition of Warhammer Fantasy as well as some of the Army books.

To put Urban Mammoth in perspective, they released Urban War, a 28mm skirmisher, and Metropolis, the matching mass-combat system. They picked up the Void and Celtos ranges from I-Kore, and later sold those ranges to Scotia Grendel and Brigade Models. There were plans by John Robertson to pick up Age of Tyrants again, but that didn't work out and now he's working as a freelance sculpter for other companies.

Our journey came to an end and we stayed a bit longer for a final round of drinks at the Nottingham canal, realising that the preparty of the weekend began - our signal to head back home now. A few years later, during my stay for Warlord Games Day, I would have more time to explore the bars and pubs along the canal. We returned the same way we came, headed to Dover, up on the ferry and back through Belgium towards home. On our ride home, it was a bit more "snuggy", as packed the car quite full with our newest acquisitions. On sunday morning around 5 a.m. we we're back in Koblenz. Oh what a week. There is no loot picture, as with some of my other journeys, but the things were covered in most of the reviews of the late 2010 and early 2011.

It's a bit sad, that we didn't take more pictures casual pictures, but it was 2010, a brand new Galaxy S would have a 5 MP potato cam and I didn't own one for another year. But the trip was great fun and it was a superb experience to meet all these interesting people and what they participated to the hobby. Especially outside of a fair or show, with a bit more time to really talk. If you remember my kick-off article from January, we had quite a bit of plans for the year. A few of them were realised, like reducing the stock, but one of the plans was to arrange another tour to the lead belt. This time as a gentlemen's tour, with BOYL 2020 as a main event (and thus finally paying a visit to the Ansells and Wargames Foundry) and before Brexit makes such a journey even more difficult. Well, then came 2020, so we have to see when the event schedule will pick up eventually. But that was one of the reasons, why I started this series of throwbacks, to make up for the lower event coverage and I think these nostalgia motivated journeys worked quite well so far.