The best part about great hobby events is the very first moment you enter the event location and immediately feel at home, just knowing: “yes, these are my people.” That’s it, that’s my report on Fringefest.
Alright then, if I must fill this 800 word blog post.
Fringefest before Salute is – obviously – on the Friday before Salute. If you don’t know about the @fringe.community, they are a collective, mostly concentrated in the UK (though there are smaller fringes (eh, eh?!) outside of the UK too, and the Discord hosts people from all over the world). If I were to summarise the lovely bunch, I’d say it is your indie and narrative wargaming / game design / sculpting / kitbashing focus, but definitely with a twist towards the more artistic and experimental side of the hobby. For a relatively small scene you see a really high percentage of full-on diorama and artistic pieces posted on their Discord, and at times I feel every second person on there has designed at least one game. There is also a regular zine, now preparing for issue 5, that showcases some of the community members and their work.
Spending a big part of my online time on said Discord and having met some, but not the majority of people at previous events, I decided to spend the weekend in London and combine Fringefest with Salute the day after.
I arrived on Thursday and took the short amount of time I had in London outside of hobby stuff to go exploring a few museums. I ended up visiting the Sir John Soane’s Museum – an ideal location to film a live-action Bloodborne movie – and right across the street I also visited the Hunterian. Highly, highly recommended if you are not squeamish about dead people. It’s an incredible collection of preserved body parts, organs, animals, following the life and work of John Hunter. Towards the end it transitions into the realms of modern surgery. If you are on a short visit to London, do go there, it’s free and well worth your time.
We end this museum intermission – back to hobby stuff.
The fest this year was based in an excellent location – a brewery / pub with a large indoor space (Signature Brew), and plenty of food places all around for the hungry ones. It was split loosely into two parts: the daytime workshop and kitbashing slots, and the all-out game madness starting at 5pm.
I did a mixed-media workshop with Terran from @conjuredcraft fame. They gave us the creative exercise to figure out a totem or shrine of a culture of our choosing – and the creations were truly mad. My favourite was the baba yaga hut that needed no paintjob, as it was already perfect.
Here and there one could have a peek at what other people were doing: a long kitbash table where a whole bunch of people got really busy assembling mad new creations; a 6-hour Inquisitor game (yes, the 54mm version – for 6 freaking hours, holy shit!); Jacob of @banhus_miniatures doing a sculpting workshop and rocking the air fryer for curing polymer clay on the spot.
Come evening, the demo games and scheduled games took over. The games I remember being shown and played on dedicated tables: Fae by @fae_miniatures, Haemorrhage by @implausibleknight, Space Gits by @crikeymiles, Aetherpunk28 by @narcoleptic_wizard, Hollowlands by @second_dawn_miniatures, Malignant Flesh by @manglingminis, and a massive PvE Mordheim game on an absolutely stunning board and ambient green lighting. The narrative of the game was set within a Vermintide scenario, with all players trying to reach the other side of the board while being overwhelmed by Skaven, round by round. Closing the night was a loose painting & kitbash competition, where Jon (@by_bolter_and_blade) and Dave (@damp_dog) had the insane challenge to judge the mad creations and paintjobs of all submissions.
During the evening, a few passers-by wandered into the pub thinking it was some kind of pottery event. Some of them stayed, bashed a mini or two with the crew, and were clearly having the time of their lives.
Fringefest came to a close, leaving us tired, overwhelmed and happy, and with a night’s rest before diving into Salute the next day. I will save the Salute report for another time, but reflecting on both events recently with a few friends, it became clear that what really draws me to them is essentially the same thing. The highlight of Salute was not the noisy madness and wallet-breaking shopping spree, but the after-show hangout at the bar, with mostly the same people I’d seen the day before at Fringefest. So we arrive at the opening point – the only point of this event report: it is, after all is said and done and played and bashed, about the people we spend time with and the friendships this weird little community keeps building.
Great photos of the event can be found here, courtesy of Rae (@cool.starship).
Grob's Grotto 