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!

Reboot and Pickett's Lard 2019

It's been over a year since my last blog post - and quite a year it's been. I went on a phenomenal trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom, started a new job as a seasonal ranger at Gettysburg National Military (gone are the long commutes to Baltimore), my wife and I bought and moved into an 1840s house in Gettysburg, and we found out in February that we're expecting our first child this fall. Though I was able to make time for my hobbies, my blogging fell by the wayside.

Even though there's a lot coming up with work and real life, I've want to reboot the blog for a while now, so figured now was as good a time as any. In addition to changing the name (which was always a bit clunky and no longer relevant to me) I plan on changing the format of the posts as well. In stead of long, overly detailed posts of big gaming events, expect shorter and more frequent posts focusing on my wargaming hobby, but also history books I've been reading, visits to historic sites, and maybe even the projects I'm working on at the park. We'll see how it goes..

That said, I wanted to share a little write up about the first public wargaming event I ever hosted...

Pickett's Lard 2019

As a big fan of the wargame rules from Too Fat Lardies, I've started running games with the "Lard America" group of gamemasters at the HMGS conventions. A few of the other guys live fairly close and we've met up for games outside of the shows, but for while some of us had talked about hosting a "Lard Day" here in Gettysburg. We've heard of several of these events - casual, one-day gaming events showcasing the Too Fat Lardies games for veteran and new (to the rules and/or miniature wargaming in general) to enjoy. In addition to having space available at my church (where my wife is the pastor), we figured Gettysburg would also benefit from being centrally location and allowing us to partake in some battlefield walks in addition to our games.

After dragging our feet for a while, over some drinks at Cold Wars this past March, we decided to pull the trigger and planned the event for May 3-5. Though it wound up being short notice, we were able to put the event and get 13 people to attend.

After having dinner and drinks with those who drove in on Friday, the festivities began in earnest on Saturday morning with the first of two sessions of games. The morning slate featured a game of Chain of Command set in a hypothetical 1940 German airborne attack in Britain, an early war What a Tanker game set in North Africa, and my friend Tim running a game of Sharp Practice with some of his custom Napoleonic Lego minifig collection.

The morning GMs setting up

A cavalry-heavy Sharp Practice game heats up early

Desert War What a Tanker!

I was able to play in the 1940 Chain of Command game - commanding two German pioneer teams supporting a Fallschrimjager platoon tasked with capturing a compound held by a Home Guard platoon. Since I only had a small force and we didn't roll many of the necessary "1"s I needed to active my teams, I was able to mostly spectate as my friend John and his paratroopers smashed whatever our friend Ed's old men and boys threw at us (including antique Krupp gun captured from the Turks in the Great War). Though we ultimately succeeded in breaking the enemy platoon's force morale - making my wirecutting and demo teams unnecessary - we were unaware that on the fourth turn of the game, the Luftwaffe, lacking faith in our abilities, would bomb the facility before we could seize it for ourselves!

The FJs advance towards the compound

The Home Guard Krupp gun

 After a lunch break, we had a second round, featuring two games of Chain of Command - one set in Belgium in 1940 and the other in Russia in 1942. I played in the latter leading platoon of Soviet partisans which, alongside a platoon of Soviet regulars faced off against two German grenadier platoons. It was my first Eastern Front CoC game and my first time playing with "green" troops. Even with the cover of the heavy woods on our section of the table and entrenchments for my squads,  the firepower of my mate Chris's grenadiers were too much to handle. My medium machine gun team was wiped out almost as soon as it deployed, and despite hitting the enemy Panzer IV, the satchel charge and Molotov cocktails of my tank hunter team only inflicted a point of shock on the AFV (on the other side of the table, my comrade Tim's anti-tank rifle team ambushed a German armored car at close range, causing it to explode - but also causing them to flee as a result). As my partisan's force morale started to waver, I threw caution to the wind and brought it my elite squad of Soviet assault troops. With their 10 sub-machine guns they were devastating at close range (rolling 40 dice when they closed within 6 inches of the enemy), and though they inflicted casualties, failed to break the squad that opposed them. Chris was able to quickly recover from this counterattack and broke my platoon, and as the other two platoons were beating each other into a stalemate, the Germans pulled off a victory.

My buddy Evan (commanding one of the German platoons) surveying our battlefield

A pre-game shot of the afternoon's other game of Chain of Command

With the other group wrapping up their second run of the scenario - the objective having been met in the first round in about an hour - we called it a day and after getting the hall nice and tidy, heady for dinner and some well-earned drinks. Sadly, heavy rains the next day canceled our battlefield walk plans, but everyone still had a great weekend!

The Pickett's Lard 2019 crew (sans our esteemed blogger, who took the photo)

We're looking forward to making next year's event bigger and better, so stay tuned!!