Historicon 2011 Report Part 1

Hi Kids, Seems it's all the rage to be posting about the show, and who am I to neglect the fans? Here are some pictures, because I am a river to my people! Let's start the show with a tiny little 45 foot long table stuffed with Old West terrain. The dude in charge said he left another couple tables' worth at home, he didn't have room in the car for it.

The by now world famous and massively posted Gallipoli terrain, imported from the UK for H-con. What can you say except, "Holy Snikies!!" They ran 25mm "Price of Glory" the Iron Ivan WW1 ruleset on games every morning and afternoon.

Close up of the beach at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli.

Close up of the trenches and tunnels the Anzacs used to get close to the Turkish trenches.

One end of a 20 foot long board showing the fighting on the ships, prior to storming the castle. 25mm of course, the One True Scale!

Black Hawk Down-ish game run in the big room, about 6x20 ft. There's a down chpper under that smoke in the center of the shot. Gotta love any gamer who shows up with a 1/48 AC-130 Gunship! Yeah, baby! That's what I'm talking about!

Don't know what's going on, but it sure looks cool.

One half of the armies about tto slug it out in the Dark Ages.

Same again.

Massive terrain including Confuscism, Buddha, Taoism, and quite possibly David Lo Pan somewhere in the Far East.

Another angle of the same. Is that Kurt Russel down there? "You are not put upon this world to 'get it', Mr. Burton!"

Just a neat looking way to convert hex-based wargames to miniatures. It looks way cooler that just any old map!

Most of a map for Force of Force game, Friday night. I got to play a Marine squad, complete with two light mg's. Got spanked the first turn (are you sure there's only one "1" on these freakin' dice??????) but made a big comeback in later turns and taught the terrorists how we do things downtown!

You wanna play a big game o' Battletech? We gotta big game o' Battletech!!!

IIRC this was a 25mm game of ACW in one of the back rooms of the Radisson. Looks like the Blues are pushing ahead.

25mm Eygptian tomb game.

OK, it's not 25mm but it's still pretty good. A 25ft Fighting Sail game. Makes you wonder are they refighting Trafalgar combined with the Battle of the Nile; or are they just using every ship they own?

A close up of one of the SOL's.
I didn't take any pix of the dealer room just cause I'm sure everyone has seen it before. I also couldn't find the shots of the 1981 Angola game I played. My camera is smarter than I am, so it's not that surprising. So why don't more gamers go to these shows? Distance? Lack of cash? Lack of time? Lack of a pain-in-the-butt guy like me hassling you all the time?

Of course, H-con ain't for everyone. But I strongly urge those of you so inclined to make the pilgrimage to the show once in your lives. Even if the only thing you do is hang out and pester people, it'd be worth it.
Stand by for additional pix at a later date, assuming I can convince my camera to see reason.