July 29, 2004

Historicon Report

No, I didn't actually get to go, but all my buddies did, so here's some 2nd hand account based on conversations and such...

I did end up getting some toys, since Jeff was picking up my copy of Battlestandard Ancient Rules (aka BAR), along with the limited edition Alexander model that came with it. BAR is meant to be a more tactical version of WAB. I am about 1/2 way through the rules, and it is a simple "clean" rendition in the WAB mode with some interesting twists. A playtest is sometime in the future.

All my buddies are there on their terrain/painted figure business, and they claim that business has been good (in fact, in terms of revenue might be the best year ever). They are not sure about the official attendence number, but various web report seems to indicate that it feels more crowded than usual.

The dominate theme for most games seems to be WW2 based on the number of games put on (not surprising considering that the theme for the con is D-Day). Flames of War seems to be catching on as THE rising ww2 ruleset. We'll see if it can do for WW2 what GW did for fantasy.

Other notable releases that caught the fancy of my buddies and I:

  • Battlestandard Miniatures released their 28mm Macedonians. I do not have a great desire to game this period in 28mm, but Jeff caved and got a Mac Army. They could serve as later Successors w/o much change I guess so my Carthaginians could be taking on another opponent.

  • Molniya Miniatures released their Timurid Mongols (!) Consider that Timurids are my very first 25mm Ancient army that I started building since 1985, you can imaging the excitment. They are not quite up to the Foundry/Perry standard of sculpting, but they are good enough for me (and beggars can't be chosers). An order is in the making, and they will go together with the packs of Old Glory Ottoman figs that I purchased at the con.

    Other useful rumor/info is that Historicon might have to move from the current location due to the hotel going into receivership. It wouldn't really happen until 2006 but this would make the HMGS discussion of to move or not to move a moot point.

    Will definitely try to make Historicon next year...

    Posted by msoong at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    March 15, 2004

    Cold Wars (Part I)

    Last summer I made y first journey to a East Coast miniature convention, and I had a real blast. My buddy Jeff and Freddy normally come out East twice a year: Historicon in the summer, and Cold War in the winter. Cold War is the smaller of the two, and normally happens around this time of the year. Since I happen to be on a once in a lifetime sabbatical this time around, I decided to come along.

    One main reason I decided to come to Cold Wars is to demo my new "play miniatures online" program called Little Cyber Wars. I won't bore you with the details of the program here, since I have created some marketing literature on my new yahoo group which discusses the program in a lot more details. If you are interested please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlecyberwars/

    We flew in at around 3:00PM, and by the time we made the 90 min car ride to Lancaster it's already dinner time. A quick stroll around the gaming area shows that nothing much is happening. The only game of note being setup is Dave Waxtel's Crimea War game, which is one of the "main event" at the con (Cold Wars and Historicon normally have "themed" games. For Cold War this time it's Wars of the later 1800's. It'll be D-Day for Historicon '04).

    Posted by msoong at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    Cold Wars (Part II)

    The LOTR (By Games Workshop) is quite popular, even in a supposedly "historical" convention. Glancing through the program the only fantasy events that I see are LOTR game using the GW rules as well as the trading miniature game (No sign of WH fantasy in the program at all!) Some dealer (associated with On Military Matters I think) is actively pushing the trading miniature game, giving demos at their booths and running more than one events. I haven't given that one a try yet, but I understand that the rules are downloadable online so I'll give it a look see later. There might be ideas that I can steal for my new LOTR secret project.

    Posted by msoong at 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    Cold War (Part III)

    40mm

    Last summer I commented in my Historicon report that the 40mm ACW figures put out by Sash and Saber seems to be a hit. This time around there are two more 40mm vendors showing their wares: Perry brother's 40mm Nappy range, and RLBPS's new range (to me anyway) that covers the whole gamut, all the way from Romans to WWII pilots). It's good to see that all three vendors seems to be compatible size-wise and on quality as well. The RLBPS especially are a pleasant surprise to me since I've never really played with their 25mm stuff before, but their 40mm stuff seems to look much better. A new sculptor perhaps? (Since I would think that it'll be harder to do a good looking larger fig than a smaller oneĀ…)

    The impulse was there to get some Nappy figures to do skirmish games, but since I need another Nappy scale like I need a hole in the head, (plus the $6 a pop pricing, with the exception of Sash & Saber whose regimental packs comes out less) the urge was quickly suppressed.

    10mm

    Going to the other extreme, Old Glory debuted their new 10mm line. It starts with ACW, Nappy, and some ancients range, with ECW to follow soon before Historicon. The per figure price comes out to be < 15 cents a piece I think, so would be a great way for me to do some "lesser" periods on the cheap. One idea was to use these figures to supplement GW figures for their excellent Warmaster rules. A quick inquiry to Old Glory indicated that they currently have no plan to do a fantasy range (drat!) but their upcoming dark age stuff can easily be used to model various human troops (Goth for Rohan type, Byzantines for Gondorians, Huns for Southrons, and I can use some 15mm Sassanid Elephants for Mumaks, then we are in business, all I would need then are the Monster types).

    Posted by msoong at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    Cold Wars (Part IV)

    During the day I mostly hung out in the dealers area, doing booth babe duty for Little Cyber Wars. I am sharing a dealers table with Dan and Freddy, for whom selling painted figures is their main thing coming to the convention. Dan (and the rest of us by necessity) carried a large number of boxes all the way from California to latch on to the sales frenzy. Judging from Dan's first day, business is good, and then economic slow down (at least in the tech industry) didn't seem to affect gamer's pocket book. Some of the vendors who , handles British imports are making noises about the bad exchange rate, but most are holding steady on their prices for now (so it seems to me).

    Posted by msoong at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack