(Your roving/raving reporter gets help from a friend) The ACT Model Railway Society holds an exhibition weekend each August at the Malkara Special School. The event initially focused on model railways, however, over the years the exhibitors have diversified to include scale modellers, radio controlled cars and boats. This year, the Canberra Games Society (CGS) joined the throng. CGS has been looking for ways to lift our profile in the community The committee decided to go where the punters are rather than trying to attract people to a peciallsed event. CGS put on a series of display games over the weekend. The weekend commenced with two l5mm DBM games portraying one of the Greeks sallies from their camp against Troy. Roger Mackay and Ben Freasier fought out two battles while Craig McGarty gave a running commentary and attempted to keep the two generals respectable. In the afternoon David Williams and Tim Sleigh donned their silly hats and fought it out with Space Marines using Warhammer 40K rules. A clerical error sent the two chapters into capture a rogue cleric; apparently his cookie recipe was to die for! Marine pride, being what it is, would not allow one chapter to allow the other to capture the cleric, so they slugged it out to see who would get him. This first of two games ended it a draw, with Tim killing the bishop whilst the bishop was in David's possession. The second being an overwhelming victory to Tim, leaving David's marines as smoldering puddles. So Saturday finished. Sunday; early to rise, early to Malkara. Doug Walsh, Dominic O'Dwyer, Brad Smith and David Osborne re-fought the first Battle of Bull Run from the American Civil War. Brad, Dominic and David had only played this game once or twice before [Dominic & I had never played it which added an air of authenticity to proceedings - we were as inexperienced as most of the original generals themselves were at Bull Run! - Ed.] but with Doug's guidance, did CGS proud by manoeuvring and fighting their respective armies around the board. [Gave them thar Blue Bellies wat fur by God! - Ed] The game certainly generated a bit of interest from onlookers with crowd 4 deep at times. Very well done gentlemen! The second game on Sunday involved a Full Thrust battle between Chris Burg, Gavin Bowman and Michael Baker. This game also caught the public's eye, with Tim Sleigh's Japanese fleet (Chris) and Gavin's scratch-built fleet duelling in the depths of space. During the game, Chris turned on the charm and talked to the public without scaring them off perhaps a career in advertising beckons for Chris. The game went decidedly to Chris, who handed Gavin and Michael a sound whacking before we packed up our tables, thanked the ACTMRS organisers and departed. Many thanks should go to the ACT Model Railway Society for having the CGS at the Malkara exhibition this year. Well, after slogging it out with the public for a solid weekend, we believe he have made some headway. Our flyers went like hot cakes, hopefully some of them at least weren't used as fire starters! However, we believe that more people now recognise the Canberra Games Society as a gaming force in the ACT This is a positive move, with the added bonus that we attracted some new members to the club. The point of this brief article is that if your club is looking to promote itself, look around for existing events rather than trying to start something from scratch. The Malkara exhibition attracts literally thousands of people from every age group and all walks of life. Go to where the people are! Malkara Special School is a marvellous school for disabled children. Every year they hold their Model Train Exhibition in conjunction with the ACT Model Railway Society. In spite of the inclement weather on the Sunday the crowds turned out literally in the thousands this year. One of the organisers told me that Malkara was able to raise as much money on the Saturday as they did for the entire three days the year before. It was a tremendous effort and the CGS were pleased to have been given the opportunity to participate in such a well organised and popular event. -Ed Back to Table of Contents -- Kriegspieler #6 To Kriegspieler List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Kriegspieler Publications. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com