Historicon 2019

A few weeks ago I attended HMGS's flagship convention, Historion. This was the first time the event was held at the Lancaster County Convention Center, which had received a lot of attention (and hopeful optimism) from the convention attendees in the weeks leading up to the event.

The venue absolutely lived up to the hype. Located right at the main square in Lancaster, the massive building is clean, well-maintained, and located within an easy walk from a bunch of excellent restaurants - and the famed Lancaster Central Market. Within this modern structure, I was surprised to find a fully restored Federal era townhouse that, instead of being bulldozed had been fully-incorporated into the space. Of course with my luck the vendor hall and flea market were on the first floor and the Lard American area was on the fourth floor, but it wasn't too bad (until the up escalators stopped working!). Parking was a little odd to figure out, but fortunately I didn't have to move my car once I arrived, so it wasn't a serious issue

In an odd turn of events, I wound up running a lot more games than I actually got to play at the show. Though I typically run Chain of Command games for the Lard America group, since I wasn't sure how close my car would be to the game site and since my friend Chris wanted to run a session as well, I chose to run a 15mm What a Tanker! game set in north Africa, as I could pack all I needed in smaller (and fewer boxes). Additionally, since his scheduled games were now being run at his booth in the vendor hall, I offered to help my friend David at The Wargaming Company run some sessions of his Napoleonic game, Et Sans Résultat! Though I've played in a few demos, I had never played a complete game, so it was certainly going to be an interesting experiences for the players and myself! Finally, a few days before the show, one of my Lardie mates, John Emmett contacted me saying that our friend Patrick Berkebile had a conflict come up and was unable to run his What a Tanker! game on Thursday night and John asked if I could help run it. I was happy to lend a hand, so accepted his invitation.

This last effort meant that I had to give up my spot in one of the three Chain of Command games for which I had signed up. When some other friends told me they weren't able to get in any games, I have them the ticket for my second, leaving me with just a spot in Patrick's Indochina Chain of Command game on Saturday.  So all told it'd be four games I'd be running and one I was playing, but it was going to be a good con.

My mate and co-game master, John Emmett

Our co-run game

Some 1940 tank action

Upon my arrival, I went through registration and made my way to the dealer hall, where I'd be running the first of my ESR games. Some of the players had read the rules but had yet to play the game. Though I struggled with some of the nitty-gritty of the rules, it wasn't a bad run (I was helped midway through by David and another experienced player) and the players seemed appreciative of the experience at the end, but I knew I could do better on my second run Saturday. After a quick bite, I headed upstairs to help John with out joint What a Tanker! game. It would be a 1940 action set in the invasion of France. Most of our players were new to WAT!, but it is a fun and easy game to pick up, so they were soon virtually running the game themselves. It turned out being a thorough trouncing of the Germans, with 5 tanks being destroyed (3 commanded by the same player) to one French vehicle (the Char B1 seen in the above photo). A fun night had by all and a great way to wrap up the first day.

Friday was a much more relaxed day. I helped Chris get his morning What a Tanker game get set up, and then headed to the dealer hall. I actually didn't need to buy much (I actually dropped off a sizable order with a new painter I'm trying out - Paint My Soldiers!), but after attending HMGS shows for nearly 20 years, I've made a lot of vendor friends, so mostly spent the morning catching up with folks. I was happy to see the fine folks at The Phalanx Consortium running a number of demos in their booth and had the guys from Firelock Games running both the popular Blood & Plunder pirate combat game and their forthcoming WWI skirmish game, Blood & Valor. I've played Blood & Plunder before and enjoyed it (my pirates are the next up on my painting table...hoping to get cracking on them soon) and so have been really enticed by Blood & Valor since it was first advertised. The demo was a quick little engagement, but was enough to get the basic mechanics. A simple game (but not overly so) with enough nuance and crunch of special rules and national characteristics to make it interesting. I'll be really interested to see the finished product, but found it enticing enough to have bought some painted WWI Germans off a friend that weekend!

John Emmett was running a 1940 Chain of Command game Friday morning

Blood & Valor Demo

Another B&V shot

David of The Wargaming Company teaching the finer points of ESR

In the afternoon, I ran a What a Tanker! game set in 1941 North Africa. When my club began playing WAT, we simply used my collection of 20mm late war vehicles and scenery, but some of the guys I usually played games with wanted something different. So, using some reasonably-priced pre-painted 15mm tanks we started fighting the early tank battles in the desert. The early war vehicles lead to very different gameplay from their late war counterparts, and the largely open (though undulating) terrain presents a whole new set of tactical challenges. With smaller tanks and less terrain, the boxes containing all my goodies for desert war games are more mobile that what I'd been lugging to shows for Chain of Command games and since I was unsure at first how close I'd be parking to the venue, I thought the more portable option was the best way to go.

Some action from my desert WAT game!

Most of my players had never played before (though one had participated in a WAT! game Chris ran last summer), but as with Thursday evening's game, they picked up the finer points of gameplay after the first few rounds. What a Tanker! really is a great convention - easy to pick up for players, easy to set up, and an overall low stress obligation for a GM.

The rest of Saturday was spent walking around the show and hanging out with the rest of the Lard America GMs - including going for a delicious dinner at a nearby noodle house.

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast at the Lancaster Central Market, I met up with my dad who had come down for the day for a quick walkthrough at the vendor hall, before I headed to the only game I got to play at the show. My friend Patrick Berkebile has been putting together an Indochina module for Chain of Command, and after seeing his phenomenal table at Cold Wars, I knew I had to get in on one of his games this show.

My Viet Minh soldiers advancing through the jungle

Our support weapons, which did very little to help the assault

I was one of two players running the Viet Minh force and our mission was very straightforward - assault and destroy the fortified French compound on the table. The challenges facing us, however, were many - though we were advancing under the cover of darkness, the French had a system of trip flares that would reveal our advance  to the waiting enemy, and there was a patrol of elite Foreign Legionnaires that was due to return shortly. This sharp, bloody action was over quickly. The French were able to put nearly their entire garrison on overwatch, which meant once my men triggered a flare, my advance squad quickly found itself pinned by heavy fire. Shortly thereafter, the legionnaires appeared on our flank and wiped out another squad. In a last gasp effort to do something I surged forward with my satchel charge-wielding assault squad in a mad rush to the central bunker, but they went into close combat with small French rifle team, but broke and ran. An abysmal tactical failure, but a fun game nonetheless!

Thankfully the quick result of our game meant I had some downtime between commitments, so I conducted a few interviews for the Too Fat Lardies' Oddcast. Then, it was back to The Wargaming Company to run another round of ESR. I was definitely feeling much more confident about the rules than in Thursday's game. Having some players who had learned the basics at Adepticon also helped for a much smoother second run.

I said some farewells in the vendor hall, then regrouped with the Lardies for a farewell dinner in the hotel before heading home. Another great con was in the books!

Cold Wars 2018 - Day One

I've been fortunate to have gotten a lot of gaming and hobby time in lately, so I'm hoping this is the first of several postings.

This past weekend saw the HMGS East faithful descend once more on the Lancaster Host for Cold Wars 2018. Though I always enjoy these shows, I was particularly excited for this one, since I was taking two of the guys from my gaming group, Codie and Wes, to their first wargaming convention. My dad, who missed Fall In! was coming down for Saturday, and my mate, Chris, was coming along both Friday and Saturday.

After fueling ourselves up for the morning with some Dunkin Donuts, we took made the one-hour trek to Lancaster, where me met with Codie (who lives closer and traveled on his own) and headed to registration. I should note, that while the convention remains at the much trouble Host, the show itself has a new planning staff and from the very beginning we were impressed. Instead of the usual table of volunteers filing through the name badges of pre-registered attendees, we found touchscreens attached to small printers. A quick entry of our last name and first initials resulted in the printing out of our name badges and game tickets and were soon handed a nice drawstring bag and dice cup. Three of us had been able to sign up for an afternoon game in our pre-registration, so our next stop was the games table to find something for the morning.

The only upcoming game that could accommodate us was a demonstration of the Shatterlands skirmish game - a fantasy light RPG-style skirmish game set in fictional conflict loosely based on the French and Indian War. I'd seen this game at numerous conventions and had heard a great deal about it, but had never had the opportunity to play. We were joined by 5 others and each given one character for the small learning game. Chris and I were playing the bow-armed Rupani, while Wes and Codie each had one of the firearm-wielding Dumah. Each player was given a  unique character sheet, which is really where the game gets creative. Nearly each trait (Aim, Melee, Shooting, etc.) is assigned a circle with a certain color which corresponds with the type of dice rolled for that kind of action. As hits are taken in certain parts of the body, players tick off circles with a dry erase marker. After a few of these are checked off, there are a several circles covered with the same scratch-off material one might find on a lottery ticket. When the trait is worn down to the scratch off circles, the player scrapes off the silvery material to reveal the new color level - sometimes causing no change, but other times causing a loss in quality. All in all, a rather novel system.

My Rupani warrior

The field of battle for our Shatterlands game (with my character in the lower right)

Shatterlands uses a card activation system, including a reshuffle, so we all didn't get an even number of activations, but the game moved along pretty quickly. Chris on our left flank moved from cover to cover and began taking shots at the enemy when he could. Wes, in the left center of the enemy was also taking potshots at the foe (including my character).

Characters belong to Codie and myself locked in one of our multiple melees

In the second melee, my only hope of success was rolling less than this on 4 dice

The most interesting storyline in our game, was the combat that ensued between Codie and I. Between our figures was a cluster of cover that I immediately rushed to, but Codie beat me to it. Undaunted, on my next activation, I decided to charge into combat. Codie's character got the better of my own, and caused my warrior to go off balance. When it came to my morale check, we found out that my character's courage score was very low and so he immediately fled. The actual result would have carried me off the table, but out benevolent gamemaster (who also happened to be the game designer) allowed me just to retreat to the edge of the table. After rallying myself, I decided to try a second melee. During my advance, Codie took a shot at me, but due to the fact that my character had gone to ground and he rolled poorly, the bullets whizzed by harmlessly. I charged again and suffered the same result. To defeat Codie, I had to roll less on four dice than he did on three. When his roll resulted in a '4', I knew I was toast, and my character fled once again (and once more was saved the indignation of routing off the field by our benevolent overlord. At this point, I stepped away to use the restroom and by the time I return, Chris's fire had incapacitated one of the enemy, a blow to their force from which they could not recover in an introductory scenario. As it was getting near the end of the game's allotted time we called it. Those on the victorious side got to make some improvements to our character cards and the defeated advanced their experience as well. As a thank you for playing, we all got to keep our character cards and could swing by the vendor's table in the dealer hall to pick up a free miniature representing our characters. A nice touch!

After finishing our round of Shatterlands we were looking for something to do before our other game started later in the afternoon, and as fate may have it, we saw that a two-hour demo game of Blood & Plunder had been added to the schedule and about to start. For those who may not know, Blood & Plunder by Firelock Games has been one of the most talked-about rules systems over the past two years. It is a skirmish level game set in the golden age of piracy (mid- to late-seventeenth century). It is a simple, but nuanced, rules system accompanied by a spectacular range of miniatures and model ships. It is most definitely not your typical pirate game, as the emphasis is put on historical tactics and abilities instead of Hollywood daring-do and hijinks. The game first began as a Kickstarter, which introduced the game along with the English, French, Spanish, and Unaligned factions- but I was late to the party. I was going to pull the trigger, but when I heard there was a second Kickstarter planned that would bring, among others, the Dutch into the mix, I was hooked (I should note that much of my research in grad school focused on the imperial rivalries between the British and Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). I made my pledge last summer and had played a demo at Firelock's booth at Historicon, but the figures won't be shipped until later this spring so have been waiting patiently. In any case, I was eager for the guys to see how the game worked. Unfortunately, there was miscommunication between the gamemaster and the staff at the games table, and what was advertised as a game for six, was actually only set up for two. Having played before, I offered to sit on the sidelines. The GM spent sometime going over the background of the game, the forces involved in the demo, and the rules themselves.

Chris's French crew

The Spanish commanded by Wes and Codie

The demo pitched the Spanish against the French, with each side crewing a sloop. The game only lasted a few turns (but was long enough to give everyone a taste for the rules), so I don't have much to report. The first few turns saw the ships come ever closer to one another, exchanging a few shots, which resulted in a handful of casualties on each side (though more for the Spanish) and leaks in both ships. Ultimately, the Spanish brought the enemy ship in with grappling hooks and a series of melees began. The Spanish lanceros cleared some space on the French sloop, while the first French attacks caused considerable Spanish casualties. Our two-hour time slot was coming to an end, and though the losses from the melees were fairly even between the two sides, the Spanish had were having a hard time of the engagement as a whole - so we called it as a slim French victory. A fun, quick fight

After a quick jaunt to the vendor area, we headed to our last game for the day. This featured another ruleset I had previously played but was eager to show the lads - Sharp Practice. Our game was called "Race Across Carolina" and was set during the southern campaign of the American War for Independence. Wes and I were in command of the British forces, which included two units of grenadiers (one from the famed 23rd Fusiliers), three of Highlanders, and two groups of Hessian jaegers. Chris and another gamer had the Americans, comprised of three units of Continentals, two of state line, and two of riflemen. Codie had been unable to get a spot for the game, but opted just to observe.

My grenadiers advancing toward the bridge

The scenario was a classic bridge crossing situation, with the Americans playing the role of defenders and our valiant redcoats being ordered to get at least one unit across the creek at the table's center. As a veteran gamemaster, I appreciate giving a clear objective to my players in a convention game, but in this particularly set up, the object sort of turned into the game's undoing. In making the bridge the way across the creek, the game quickly devolved into a funneling of all troops into a close quarters scrum for one small point on the field - there was really no incentive for maneuver or nuance. To make matters worse, the gamemaster decided to explain the basics of the rules to the American and British players separately, which resulted in both sides learning the rules differently - the biggest impact this had was that for the first few turns, as my road column headed towards the bridge rolled one less die than it should have, meaning that the Americans got in position to cover the bridge with fire much sooner than our troops should have. To be fair, I was rolling pretty terribly for the first few rolls, but even a half dozen or so inches would have been a big help. Furthermore, while Wes and I had been told before the game that our Hessian jaegers were not armed with any melee weapons - even though they historically had short swords and the figures were appropriately armed - we were not informed until a few turns in that the GM insisted the jaegers be treated as line infantry, not as skirmishers and light infantry as we had (perhaps rightfully) assumed.

Our brave Highlanders advancing to provide covering fire for the advance to the bridge

The elite companies exchanging volleys with the Americans

After a long slog through the woods, my jaegers finally arrive on the scene

Oddities and miscommunications aside, we had a pretty good game. For a few turns our two sides exchanged volleys across the waterway, with varying degrees of success. Though our redcoats were taking casualties and picking up shock (one of our units of Highlanders was pushed back at a point), the Americans were definitely getting the worse end of it. After a number of volleys, we broke the riflemen and forced the state line to move to a quieter spot of the line, but the three units of Continentals were a behemoth that could not be bested, and took almost no casualties during the fight. As we neared our last turn, I figured only something heroic could break the stalemate, so in the last actions of the game, but grenadiers charged towards the bridge, into a hail of fire that caused at least 7 kills and harrowing amounts of shock.

This year's Cold Wars offered a Friday night flea market session,  which was going to start in an hour after our game finished up, so we all grabbed some dinner and a beer and debriefed from the days activity before heading to the bring n' buy. Codie bought a few books, and the rest of us opted to save up for later.

More on day two and three later!