Historicon 2012 - day three

The last day at the con was Saturday. After seeing the glory of the Wally's Basement sales at Cold Wars, we knew a table was to be ours at Historicon. Saturday morning, up bright and early with boxes of minis we no longer needed to unload.

Reaper was a big hit, as was anything Games Workshop. Our 'everything must go' prices combined with a well-organized table kept up majorly busy for a large portion of our session. I'm proud to say I made a pretty penny selling off many an unopened blister, and less proud to admit that pretty much all the profits went right back to the dealers hall to buy myself some new toys. Heh.

Lunch was Wegman's, and man, I wish we had thought of that earlier in the con.

After dumping a fair amount of money at Rebel and Old Glory, we sat down for a demo of Pride of Lions. As my conversion to 15mm continues, we'd been looking into a fantasy ruleset. Mr. McBride was hosting demos of the game, and we sat down to parse it out. At a glance, the game isn't my usual thing: many chits, strange dice, simultaneous movement, and rank-and-file bases (yes, normally my bane, I'm trying to expand my horizons here.) But it has some very compelling features as well. The wacky dice actually have a use. The chits and movement leads to a sort of guessing game about what your opponent will be doing, and what you can do to counter that and press the advantage. Maintaining morale is a key feature of holding your lines. There are also some neat features involving how charismatic your general is, and how they can encourage/compel/cajole their units to fight better. So yes. The demo definitely piqued our interest (and Mr. McBride did a great job explaining things) so this is the second New Big Project picked up at the con. I bought many Dark Elves with some of that money earned earlier in the day, and we were already discussing basing on our way out of the hall.

The other New Big Project from the con was Flames of War. I enjoyed BattleTech, but I'm not sold on going all-in outside of the occasional game at a con. Frankly, I think it's too much bookkeeping to hold my attention. The big Old Glory order was a lot of 15mm scifi and pulp, because I do dream big, really.

Zombies! Cubicles! FIRE!

 

No matter how many things you make time for, you always end up passing some table saying, man, I wish I had more time to check that out.

One more simple but elegant Flames of War table.

Car packed and everything ready to go. Our final event was the WWPD podcast taping. Now mind you, I've played all of two or three games of Flames of War, and lurked through the forums, gathering ideas. So much of this was going to go over my head. But immersion has always been a good teacher, and hey, I heard there was a prize giveaway too. The guys behind WWPD were a lot of fun to listen to, and I totally see why their show is a hit. I'm not a pod-casting fan, in general, but it was hearing all the ins and outs from the insiders. I also lucked out and won a prize drawing! Panzers, yay! Oh, and a calendar for World of Tanks, a video game I don't play. The calendar is, I am not joking, Maxim girls posing in skimpy WW2 uniform-inspired swimsuits on actual tanks. It's both terrible and wonderful. Other guys who won them were joking about having to hide them from their girlfriends and wives. I can say proudly that once I got home, I gave the calendar to my wife as a souvenir. (Yes, I am a lucky man.)

So that's about all I have to say on Historicon. It was fun! I think we can do it in two days instead of three next time. And I hope they improve the bathroom situation as well (not enough of them, and not well-maintained either.) But we all had fun, and I'm looking forward to the next one. And I have plenty of new toys to keep me busy until then...