Campaign 2002 was held in the Milton Keynes shopping centre on the weekend of May 11-12th. On the Saturday we put on a demo game which was organised by Jon Scrivens. The game was called "Frogs of War". Jon and his friend, fellow Tring member Tom Barrett, wrote the rules. It is fantasy game," set in a distant place were various animals fight over land the way humans do".

On the table we had frogs, with their leader Hopler, hoards of rats pouring out from a drain, snakes. As welt as these 'main' races there was also the odd mercenary dotted around including a hamster who shot peanuts from his food pouch, a bat that went round bombing things, a beaver who attacked everything, and a cyborg wolf. Jon made all the figures from Das modelling clay. He has other figures he is working on such as cats and dogs.

The game attracted quite a lot of attention from the public, it being different from the normal wargame. Helping Jon out on the day, (Tom couldn't make it,) were Henry and myself.

Other games on show included a fine 25mm W.W.II game by Bedford Gladiators. Watford were refighting part of the Starlingrad campaign in 20mm. As well as these you could take part in gladiatorial combat, look at a very nice Napoleonic Peninsula game. There were some English Civil war re-enactors showing off their wares. As well as the demo/participation games there were plenty of competition games taking place.

There were plenty of interested people looking around and we managed to dish out most of the handouts we had. It is quite surprising the numbers of general public that don't know the hobby existed or didn't realise how big it is. One unusual visitor to the show was a white rat who was riding around on his owners shoulder, he was happy to pose on our table and take out a few frogs for his artificial brethren.

At around 2:00pm I started to receive text messages from my mate Walter, this went on until he turned up, the only problem being nearly everyone else had gone home.

On the Sunday, due to various reasons we were unable to do our demonstration game I did however manage to make it to the show. I played a couple of games of Zombies with Richard and Graham, (Tony and Richard Swift even showed up for the second game.) Later I watched a W.W.II Ariel combat game being played by members of the Milton Keynes club.

One disappointing aspect of the show was the lack of trade stands, there being only about seven. I suppose it's a vicious circle, to get more traders you need more wargamers and to get more wargamers you need more traders. Campaign is unusual in the amount of non-wargaming public it attracts so its a shame they can't see a larger selection of goodies on offer it could attract more people into the hobby and the more wargamers, the more traders would sell.

I would like to thank the organisers of Campaign for their efforts this year and hope that next year they will get a bit more support.

RWY