Historicon 2015

Up until last year, I had never been to a gaming convention in the USA. I was lucky enough to attend SALUTE in London a few years ago (which was awesome), so I always wanted to try one in the states...

Fall-In and NJCon both got a visit from me. But I had heard the granddaddy of them all was HISTORICON....

Let me just say, the convention was not terrible - but for me personally, it was the let down of the century! First of all, it was the worst road trip of my life getting to and from Fredericksburg VA. And then on top of that, the convention seemed to be no better than Fall-In.

I will definitely not be going back! But I did scoop up a bunch of miniatures and terrain of course.

The game tables were what I was most interested in seeing, but I was a bit disappointed there. There were many of them, but the really spectacular ones were few and far between. I was hoping to see the types of awesome work-of-art gaming tables that I am always seeing pictures of on the Lead Adventure Forum, but I guess these are a European thing! The terrain was much more functional and "tournament table" style, like something you'd see in your local gaming store, for the most part.

I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Flames of War demo table

Some cool winter tables. I was particularly interested in these since I've been interested in doing some terrain for the new game Frostgrave...

More FoW

This guy had a cool idea and did a big "display board" to go with his game. He was putting on a Germantown AWI game. At first I thought it reminded me of a high school science fair project... but then I actually liked the idea. I would like to do the same thing if I host a historical re-fight scenario some day. I spend a lot of time reading, might as well share some info about the battle with my fellow gamers!

New "Flint and Feather" Indian minis... cool.

Someone was putting on a demo of how to do scratch built terrain... I wish there were more tables like the one this guy was building!

Probably the coolest table/game of the convention. A huge Conan-type fantasy city.

Castle by Miniature Building Authority.

Magua

Forgot to post my Magua pics!

He was actually completed last month but I never took a picture of him.

I was going to add it to this month's update but I almost forgot him again! And he would have been doomed to obscurity in my display case, never achieving internet fame :)

I based his color scheme loosely on the Last of the Mohicans movie costume, but I only did a yellow edging instead of all the stripes....

June terrain

Well it was not a bumper month for painting, but I did get some good terrain done so I won't beat myself up too much... out of the 4 buildings I started this month, I completed 3 of them.

There are 3 houses by Bachmann from their Plasticville line (O-scale model train buildings). These are pretty good for 28mm. One is a house under construction, and the other two are pretty much identical houses. They all have removable roofs.

You can see from the model in the last 2 pics that the doors might be a tad big for true 28mms, but it doesn't look bad. 

I also finished another log cabin, also from Bachmann Plasticville. You can see from the comparison shot with the Pegasus cabin the difference between the O-scale and 1/72 scale... they look a little silly next to each other on the same board, but each can work with 28mm on their own.

So there we are... 4 new buildings done this month. The cabins will be used for the frontier, and the finished houses will be used to represent the suburbs of Quebec if I ever get to play the Montcalm vs. Wolfe campaign!

June painting totals

This month was the toughest yet to finish my goal of 10 painted models. However, I am going to count it as "done" with the minor caveat that I cheated!

First up: Here are 4 legit models, British Regulars to bolster my French & Indian War troops.

This brings my British up to a nice round 16, with 2 NCOs and one Officer:

I still have to complete the drummer and two flag bearers, and I also have a company of Grenadiers to add to the unit.

For now I think I will just do the drummer and flag bearers though, since I need to switch back to French for a couple of reasons.

First off, I was lucky enough to get a few of my buddies to dive in to the period with me. However, they all chose to collect British forces! Which means that in order for us to have enough troops to field big armies against each other, I need to have as many French and Indians painted as all 3 of their armies. The good news is that we all chose to paint different regiments for the British, so they look pretty cool when they are all arrayed together with the various facing colors.

Secondly, since June is over, this is the point where I begin getting depressed about how much I am likely to finish by year end. The year is half over! Since there's no chance of me finishing my Brits or Indians, I would like to give it the "old college try" as far as getting my French done. As of right now, the French have the smallest number of troops left in the Lead Pile.

Anyway, back to this month's progress... you may have noticed that in my Muskets & Tomahawks game there was an unsightly white blob next to my officer. This a Reaper Bones treasure chest, and was his "precious item" as rolled up in the subplots. It bothered me that an item so precious was unpainted!

As luck would have it I played Mordheim the following weekend and needed a similar item. Yikes! More white blobs in my Mordheim battle pictures....

I took it as a sign that I needed to paint some objectives, Frostgrave, which comes out next month and is definitely on my list of games to try, actually requires that each player have 6 treasure tokens.

So... Voila! In addition to my 4 British Regulars, I got my 6 treasure tokens painted up for Frostgrave, Mordheim, M&T, or whatever game I might need them for.

Here they are with my officer for scale.

Now, that looks more precious! And it brings my painting total up to 10 models for this month to boot ;)

dun dun DUNNN......

Less than a week to go until the end of June.

This is where the rubber meets the road, and I have to say that I am greatly disappointed in this month's progress so far!

I think this may be the first month that I miss my goal of 10 finished models per month.

It's not for lack of having anything in progress....

As you can see, there's plenty of stuff in the works. I just haven't had time to finish anything.

This month was a busy one with traveling for work and a bunch of family things on the weekends, plus I spent a whole Saturday at a convention.

The panic set in last weekend, and I even started feverishly drybrushing a few Bones models I had in the hopper:

They were going to be an Ice Troll, Apothecary, Thaumaturge, and Thug for Frostgrave.

Ahh! Can I ever salvage them now? I'm particularly angry that I went and defiled these two; they would have been nice character models.

Oh well. I can always go back and buy the "real" metal versions if I want to do a real paint job on them. Not likely though, considering the amount of models in the lead pile!

My only hope is to finish off the 4 British Regulars in progress (they are the closest on the desk to being complete), and then pull 6 rabbits out of my hat this weekend. I have a plan... I will keep it secret until then.

At least someone got some painting done this weekend... 

Also got some good gaming in with my son this month. We have been playing a Mordheim campaign, and getting in a quick game almost every weekend. This past weekend we called it quits. He won, of course!

Notice how he cunningly places his Skink warriors up on top of buildings, where it will be difficult for my Orcs to climb up, rather than face them in a fair fight.

He learned this underhanded tactic from my friend James, who also likes to cheat with Lizardmen.

Dastardly!