Show Report: VIVAT 2018

Saturday, November 10th, it was once again time for VIVAT, our nice little wargames show with a sole focus on historical gaming.

So I packed up my painting stuff, the glass cabinet, a bunch of minis and my camera and in the early morning I was off to Purkersdorf. The weather was as November-y as can be.

After just under 2 hours of setting up Nikfu and Virago kicked off the show with Nikfu's traditional opening speech. A very nice speech actually. 

Now for the tables.

As always the unfailing lads of Tabletop Wien West had brought their Blood Red Skies table. Silly me, I mistook it for a Wings of Glory table at first. Anyway, the guys once more displayed their great skill at well-presented demo tables and how nice these aerial gaming mats look.

Of course S-Games.at was present as well, with the usual tasty array of Warlord, S75, and Flames of War products. 

They also ran a nice looking Eastern Front table using Flames of War products and rules.

The Hungarian delegation was present again this year, which is always extra nice. They ran a very large game of The Great War:

Nikfu and James ran a game of Crescent and Cross, the Saga 1 supplement:

Come to think of it, the only game on the day which covered the medieval-to-20th-century era.

Speaking of the 20th century, here's Virago's and Annatar's What a Tanker! table. Normandy '44. Bocage country:

What a Tanker! is a great participation game in how quick and well-flowing it is and for its multi-player capabilities.

Last, but surely not least, Lexman and friends presented a Jugula table! It was great seeing a Jugula game for once, especially a so well presented game too.

I actually took the time to watch half a game play out, because I was so curious about the rules (and because I loved the arena). Seems to be a nice game. It's a shame that interest for it seems to have veined so much pretty abruptly after the initial hype. It was Studio Tomahawk's follow-up rules set after the blockbuster smash hit that Saga was (and still is).

All the figures used here are from Foundry's excellent Gladiators range. 

In the best tradition of these show reports I entirely forgot to take photos of my own table.

However, here's the look I took away from the day: 

Just two second-hand Osprey books on random topics. :-D At some point they'd come in handy I assumed.

This year's VIVAT was a very relaxed affair. Given how the Austrian historical wargaming scnene isn't only rather small, but also a bit fragmented VIVAT always has a tightly-knit feeling about it, and other than other shows I attend is almost more of a meet-up of familiar faces, plus a few new guests every year. Good chats, good food (basically having a large room attached to a restaurant for a show location does have its perks), good games, good fun. VIVAT is good. It was especially nice to see some of the chaps (El Cid and Moiti) who had travelled all the way from Salzburg. Looking forward to seeing them at Austrian Salute in March 2019!

As always many thanks to Nikfu and Virago, who organize the show, to all the people who provide the location, to all the guys who brought and ran tables, and to all the guests who dropped by. VIVAT is not a huge show, but it's consistently nice.