Fall-In, day one (many pics)

Last month, took the weekend to hit Fall-In up in Lancaster, PA.Good times were had. My posse opted out of having a table at Wally's (think flea market) for a change of pace, which lead to a little more gaming time, and a little less stress preparing for the con. Turned out to be a good call, IMHO. But I am getting ahead of myself.

We jetted out at early o'clock Friday morning from the DC area and headed north. No traffic situations, until we got into the building. Pre-reg was a ten-second affair, but one of our crew had to register at the show, and dear heavens, that was a mess. I was told it was a new system, or something like that, but the lines were atrocious and slow.

Once through that, we headed down to their first game of the Flames of War doubles tourney. The Kent brothers were rolling Americans, and did pretty well for themselves. Maurice wrote up the whole event for WWPD, and you can find the report here. Good reading! I took a few pics.

A wall of Russian steel, literally stretching across the board.

Later in the game, things were breaking down for the Russians. Love the windmill.

The building on the left is patterned on an actual French Foreign Legion outpost.

I had some free time before my afternoon game, so the next stop was naturally the dealers hall. One of the first tables that caught my eye was this nifty setup for a new company called The Tactical Retreat. They've working on laser-cut terrain for both 15mm and 28mm, and even mentioned 1/300th. The modular setups and the built-in streets pictured above look like they will offer a lot of opportunities for both modern and scifi gamers to put together some decent terrain for a song.

Pictured above you can see some of the different cut-out windows you'll be able to choose from. I picked up a couple small 15mm buildings to show off, and hope to get them up on the blog, uh, soonish? Gaming and hobby time has been at a premium these days. The company is too new for even a website, but definitely keep your eyes out for them. There's more than a couple lasercut terrain producers now, but I feel these guys have a good angle at a great price.

Alien Dungeon had a lovely table full of make-your-own armies for Fanticide, and this rhino covered in shields was certainly a winner, as are the zebra centaurs above.

My first game of the con was Orbital Guns of Galantros VI, run by the fine folks at WNGA. The above picture, with the spaceships? Actually at the table next to us: Bombardment of Galantros VI. See, their table was the giant spaceship fight, which included both sides dropping orbital bombardments onto our table. We were playing the ground forces trying to seize the orbital guns, and yes, occasionally firing blasts up into their space fight. I've seen this format done before, and the guys running it today did a good job, keeping the games light and moving along briskly.

The figs used on our side were repurposed 40k models, and I was specifically running the Orks. Lot of nice old-school models in there.

Here we are a couple turns in. I've run both trukks up to either bunker, and am already pouring out my boyz to take the facilities. And already taking casualties. The pieplate of a template above represents one of the shots from my friends upstairs. They scattered far and wide, but definitely kept things lively over there.

The turn or so after this, I get off a shot that apparently decimated a flank of ships, turning the tide for the space battle in our favor. I didn't know this until the end of the game.

So my basic strategy was to run up both vehicles,  dumping our a pile of orks, then using the vehicles to sit there and block shots as terrain. Worked pretty well on both sides! I got shot up badly (very badly) but they had to move around my blasted wrecks to dig me out, and that let me get off extra shots into space. At the end of the battle, I was all but wiped out, but as noted above, the shots I did get led to an ork victory in orbit. Fun times! Afterwards, the players chatted with the game runners, discussing how to make the games more fair and more fun. They were open to criticism and very communicative about their designs and thoughts, and I would gladly play with those gents again any con.

After the game, more shopping. Picked up stuff ordered before the con (Eureka, Old Glory.) Finally snagged that Otherworld Hook Horror I have had my eye on since forever. Everyone has an attachment to some ridiculous D&D creature from when they started playing dungeoncrawls, and the Hook Horror is one of mine. I even had the plastic toy from the action figure line. Man. The 80's were weird.

Other game tables spotted while wandering around (one of my favorite con activities):

Pennsylvania Pete & The Heart of Ra - GASLIGHT pulp action

A Day at the Racez - WNGA's 40k-style racing game

I have no idea what this historical game was, but it had a massive setup, covering like 18 folding tables. Lovely.

Finally it was time for my evening, game, a rollicking Doctor Who skirmish. Except I get to the room... and no game. No sign up, no nothing. Well heck. I check the game cancellation list, no luck. Sigh.

So I head over to the other game I was considering playing, the Zombie Cardio con staple. And it's also not there. OK? Maybe it was moved? Maybe I wasn't meant to play an evening game.

While looking for the second game, however, I ran across a tragically-full zombie game, "Rescue Me." Look at that setup!

Seriously, very jealous over that setup.

The end of the night, I reconvened with my crew, and we headed down to board games with the WWPD gents. First, Maurice schooled his brother and myself in Spartacus, and the less said about that, the better. I dig the game, but the beating was savage and swift. Afterwards, we got into the thick of things with Game of Thrones. I pulled team Baratheon, and true to character, I decided to start drinking. Unfortunately, the bar wasn't as close to the gaming area as I'd thought, and I inadvertently was holding up the game in my sojourns to get more cider. Ugh. I hate being a jerk and not even noticing. Will be better behaved next time.

Tune in next time for zombies, Commies, and more!


Number of compliments received for my Supernatural t-shirt: 4.