Conventions

I once hinted about this story, but it came up recently in an online conversation so I'll post it now. I've probably posted about it on social media before.I was at a convention where I spent some money on miniatures. I won't go into any figures here, but if you're in the hobby, then you know what the damage can be. Usually about a couple hundred bucks or more unless you're one of those odd people who manage to somehow wait to buy stuff later.(I actually try to as much as possible, but this event had some stuff I wanted to paint)What was unusual at this convention was that they didn't have bags for us, so they went and got plastic bags like you get at the grocery store. Given that none of us knew this when we got in line, we didn't think to leave the line and, oh, get bags from our hotel room.Purchases made, I took my bag of stuff down to the gaming area and looked around.In one hand I had a plastic bag of models.My son was with me and we were looking around."Hey dude!"There were a lot of people in the gaming

» View Source Article

* Image Credits at bottom I am happy to report that Scrum Con happened, last Saturday, at Davis Hall, College Park, Maryland. Attendance was sold out a week ahead of the date, and adjusted a little with a couple of last minute cancellations and a couple of walk ins.  Davis Hall is a medium sized meeting room in College Park, used by the municipal authorities apparently, and I had never been there prior to this event.  It was full up, to be sure, but not too crowded.  We provided a lunch at reasonable price to mitigate any mid-day exodus in search of fast food, and that proved to be reasonably popular.  We even had vegetarian options!  Yeah, that’s right, we’re hip!  We also had coffee and bagels for GMs in the morning, which is more than I ever got at any convention. ScrumCon was conceived as a fair play, equal ground concept for both RPG and tabletop miniature games.  It was built that way because, frankly, that’s what the Second Saturday Scrum Club likes to play.   So there were equal pa

» View Source Article

Escaped this past weekend for a great weekend of gaming at DundraCon 2019.  Roy Scaife, John Lantz, Dan Kerrick, and Adrian Turner joined me along in the gaming fun.  Oddly enough, we covered the gaming spectrum on this one - playing fantasy (LOTR) on Friday, Sci-fi on Saturday (Star Wars), and historical on Sunday (Napoleonic) ... no gaming discrimination here! :-)Along with the miniatures games covered below, played some great boardgames as well - Giant Killer Robots (using the new factions), Everdell, and the Expanse boardgame (after the show, which I have been binge watching).Many pictures below ... enjoy!Charge of the Mumaks!Finally got some LOTR on the frigg'in table!  Didn't get a chance to play this scenario before running it at the con so wasn't sure how it was going to play out.  As it turns out, worked out great!  The Mamuks looked really good at the start trampling lots of Rohirrum, but Rohan bounced back, isolating and swarming each Mamuk which turned out to be a winning

» View Source Article

Past saturday, WarCon Ghent took place and me and Nemesis jumped in the car to make a visit to the wargame show, our first roadtrip of this year.Held in the village of Merelbeke, the size and the venue are those of the fun kind, not to immense (like, our Crisis show for example) giving you a good chance for a chat and a look at games.There was a dozen traders present (where we found some good deals, see below) and about two dozen demonstration and participation games.  Entry was a modest 7 euros, and as you can see in the video of my loot below, I also bought two of the Gamer's Guild dice to "support the cause".To give an example of the chatting, I was only 15 minutes there when I was talking to someone I never seen before about 6mm and 40k gaming, and how I am blessed with a GF with an intrest in the hobby.The bring and buy had some fun things, while not to large, like this 16+ hentai cardgame...But let`s have a look at the games then...Adeptus Titanicus, a game that intrests both me and Nemesis, was on

» View Source Article

  If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.     Welcome to 2019   Happy New Year to everyone. Welcome to the ninety-second Briefing and the first scheduled Briefing of 2019.   Over the course of 2018, I managed to read Elizabeth Moon’s Paladin’s Legacy quintet, Terry Brook’s Legends of Shannara duology, and multiple Valdemar trilogies from Mercedes Lackey. My holiday reading was the Evermen quartet by James Maxwell and his Shifting Tides quartet. The Evermen cycle features a rune-based magic where spells are inscribed onto surfaces before being invoked through incantation and used by bladesingers for combat and to create multiple forms of constructs. The Shifting Tides is a completely different setting set in an analogue of classical Greece and the wider Mediterranean where ogres, giants, furies, merfolk, sea serpents and dragons are forms taken by shapeshifters – but if they spend too long i

» View Source Article

Another edition of Roma Wargame convention at Angelicum. Mixed with a periodic fair for postcards, coins, medals collectors. Even for us wargame collectors there was something. As painting services, miniature vendors. Soldiers but of a different kind: 54mm for collectors. Wonder how they don’t think to play with them. Even bigger: customised 1/6. I understand why they don’t think to play with them. Something that we are used more: wargame tables. A big, and partially playable, Ostia scenario.

» View Source Article

Join US FOR A GAME OF CLASSIC AND NEW TABLETOP GAMING The Second Saturday Scrum Club, my local gaming club, has moved out on our objective to run a small local gaming convention.  This being our first venture into something like this, we have started small.   You can now register to attend.  As I have mentioned previously, our intention is to make this an inclusive, laid back kind of event that focuses on both roleplaying games (RPGs) and Tabletop games (as we interpret the term, “a game where moving miniatures is a major part of the experience”).   The venue is DAVIS HALL, College Park, MD.  There are two “tracks” .. Roleplaying Games and Tabletop Games.. they are both somewhat evenly dispersed over two shifts 10 AM to 2 PM3:30 PM to 7:30 PM Our Guest of Honor is David “Zeb” Cook, of longstanding TSR fame, and you can both meet and play with Zeb in a specially written sequel  to a classic D&D module he w

» View Source Article

Way back in the mists of time (while still a callow youth) I started my gaming life as a player of Roleplaying Games. A small group of school friends and I got together and started playing the classic RPG, Dungeons and Dragons. The same group kept going for many years playing several versions of DandD and exploring a wide range of other games including my first venture into wargaming with Warhammer Fantasy Battles. We would regularly attend a small Tabletop Gaming convention called Dragonmeet but as the years passed, the group dispersed and my interests moved firmly from RPG's to Wargaming, I stopped going to the show. Its been a fair few years since I last went to Dragonmeet and in the intervening years it has continued to grow and prosper becoming the largest event of its kind in the UK. The show is a broad church with a wide range of demo and participation board and role play games; a bring and buy stall; a Magic card game tournament; guest panels; and traders selling games, dice, models and everythin

» View Source Article

The first saturday of november, and that means only one thing: it`s time again for Crisis, our clubs annual wargame show.Being the largest on the european mainland, we had more then 125 traders, 60 clubs and 2000 visitors this year, thanks everyone for participating!Since yesterday, the build up had been undertaken, and then at 10 in the morning, the doors swung open for the 2019 edition.With this huge a selection of traders, that meant there was a LOT for everyone's taste and wallet (my "scores" are for a post later this week, probably on monday).So here is an oversight of the traders present, with of course the odd comment inserted here and there...But a wargame show is more then just buying, it's all about camaraderie, and of course, GAMES, so let's have a look at the games on show, in both picture and video coverage. Militia Brabantia using home made rules based on the Assassin's Creed videogame Worean brought a small scale ACW battle along Spectre A large table by Alde Garde Two

» View Source Article

But what we did here? If it’s name is Play, then we played a lot. Together with some mates of mine from Rome I tried some games as this confused one about pirates. I arrived at the 2nd place on 5 players even if I didn’t understand all the rules. A game about our feelings and what others know about them. Played by a bunch of rude mates. Fun. Tex Willer is an Italian western comic. I remember that when I was a child I played with another game based on Tex. This one it’s not so memorable. Public playtest for a futuristic race game. Futuristic issue, I think. Memoir ’44 in Normandy. A simple game with strategy. I destroyed the invaders. Next please. An area was dedicated to 2D wargames. I tasted the water of 3 solitaire games about bombing Germany in WWII. At the end I bought a solitaire game about defending Germany from bombers in WWII. A different view. While I was playing around, watching gladiators, visiting stands, speaking with friends and all this kinds of occupations, Andr

» View Source Article

Some live role players were around Play Modena. But the really great thing was to watch some gladiatorial fights by local Ars Dimicandi section. Moreover I follow a lesson on Medieval knife combat, with kinds of move, countermove and counter-counter move. I was distracted by other things so I couldn’t stay here to watch all, damn! I want to live more living history combat experiences.

» View Source Article

Even in a convention based on boardgames, and games in general, you can find something different as mecha models made by artisans as Kallamity. Moreover this was the first time that I saw Dust models in a stand. I like 1946 concepts, even if I dislike historical WWII vehicles with legs added. Some of their mechas could be useful for wargame in 28mm, but soldiers are bigger. On the other things, there were a lot of great and extremely big Gundam models but I haven’t the right photos about them to show to you.

» View Source Article

Now I’m in Lucca Comics & Games. A report will follow. But on this photo I was behind the candy store on the left. After two years I was in Modena Play again. Every edition is better than before. This convention is the best for boardgames, and games in general, in Italy. You can came here to play with new proposal from editors. The modelling area is growing as the miniatures one. For children a pavilion was built. Other areas were for roleplay and 2D wargame. In the open there was space for food, beverages, music and cosplay. I think I will be here for all next editions. In this post a photographic overview of the fair. More next days.

» View Source Article

Here he is, the limited edition model the first 1800 paying visitors will find in their goodie bag at the Crisis wargame show next saturday, 3rd of november, at Waagnatie Antwerp.With our show growing every year in both traders, clubs and visitors, we (finally?) made the figure of the legendary founder of Antwerp (at least, in folklore).Brabo, who can be seen on the city hall square in Antwerp tossing a hand in the direction of the Scheldt river, was a 3th to 4th century roman officer.  When the giant Antigoon terrorised the waterway, he fought and defeated him.  He next cut off the giants hand and tossed it in the river, hence the name "Ant-werpen" of "hand-throwing".Hey, it's a legend of course, but definitly a good sounding one.  The figure has been sculpted once again by Paul Hicks, who has now done all over figures apart from the very first two (Ambiorix, by Pro Patria, and Leopold II, by the Perry's) and cast by Griffin Molds.  The figure comes dressed in late roman armour, and

» View Source Article

So last weekend 30  wargamers descended on my local boozer for a three day binge of wargaming, and I am delighted to report that the 11th BLAM was a total success.The three days of gaming in the pub's small function room saw a total of 13 games hosted. These ranged across a wide set of periods and genre’s. Where else in the wargaming world can you play Judge Dredd in the morning, Custer in the early afternoon and a leading Columbian Drug dealer at the end of the day. If you want to fight Spanish guerilla’s, blood soaked zombies or axe armed men at arms BLAM offered it all. A massive thank you to all those that helped to organize, hosted games, or just took part in this gaming extravaganza.For those of you not familiar with the concept of BLAM this started off life on the Lead Adventurer Forum. This is an annual meet of gamers who share the same passion for great terrain, figures and games. All the participants are regular visitors to this most excellent forum and over the years several great friends

» View Source Article