"How is Historicon looking?" Topic

Just checked out some pictures and read some reports from Thursday and today, and it seems to be a lighter than usual turnout right now. Saturday being "the big day" probably.

But was wondering from those on the ground how it's looking?

Reports and pics please?

Thanks!

Well my Friday evening game was listed as Full early afternoon and when my 7pm start time rolled around, only one person of ten commits showed up.

I went to the registration desk and learned two things:

1) the game was listed as being moved to a different room than the one listed in the paper program book

2) my Friday game was listed as cancelled.

WHATTTTTTT?

I had a great looking table, if I do say so myself, and that influenced enough walk up interest to get 8 players an hour after the scheduled start time . So I,guess that things turned out all right.

My Saturday game was also listed on the registration board as being in a different game room than the one listed in the program. Grrrr.

I'm disappointed to have this kind of experience after driving 800 miles to Lancaster and then find that the "system " is screwed up to the point that nobody can find my game. I don't know what else to say.

I left Milwaukee to attend Historicon. At the border of Ohio and Penn I got a detached Retina and had to turn around. Now waiting on surgery. Had waited three years to go but those are the breaks sometimes. Hope everyone is having a great time. Sorry about your game Fritz. That really sucks.

Well, parking absolutely sucks at and around the convention center. Downtown streets are narrow and traffic can be bad so I hope it moves back to the Host or somewhere with ample and easy access parking. Attendance at the Friday afternoon flea market seemed down, and a couple of us felt that few were buying "armies", just a unit here and there and other smaller items--compared to past years when most of mine sold right quick. I hope Saturday is better. ;-) As usual, some fantastic looking games.

Fritz I have no doubt it was a fantastic looking table

I thought attendance was a little light, but being as it was my first time at the convention center and the rooms were spread out… could be wrong.

Had no issues finding parking in the Steinwein parking garage. BUT I did have issues with the HMGS-provided parking scan sheet. First day they issued one that worked, second day was issued some "ticket" that said insert 2nd, but the machine wouldn't accept it. The attendant had to come out and manually cycle me through the gate, and he said that he didn't know why the ticket was like that, as I should have had the other style one. He said he'd been busy manually letting people out of the garage.

Still, it was was helpful to not have to pay $25 USD for 2 days parking ($11 on Thursday, and $14 USD on Friday), though it wouldn't have been a deal-breaker for my attending.

Dealer area looked a little light on dealers, but wasn't bad. Wally's was pretty light, and my son and I found nothing of interest in the Thursday and Friday sessions.

Food-wise, my son only got some of the hotel's pizza and pretzels – the pizza was acceptable, but the pretzel was not so good). I ate at the nearby Blazin J's, and the chicken sandwich was pretty good – nothing fancy but good enough. :)

I pre-registered for your game Fritz. Was disappointed when I saw it was canceled. Sorry to hear about the mess up.

If my Saturday game is reported to be cancelled, don't believe it because I'll run the game even with a couple of people.

I'm at table 41 in the Commonwealth Hall, next to the huge Wild West game in the. Orner of the room.

Parking wasn't a problem for me, but then I parked on Wednesday and haven't moved my car since then. I really like the Marriott hotel, very clean, modern and upscale. Good food is available in the hotel and nearby.

Thank you for the update. I feel your pain those who had their games etc. messed up.

Fritz, sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems. This almost sounds like they never ran a convention before which I am sure is not the case.

Quatre Bras at 1430hrs

I've seen a couple of pics of Fritz's table that he had set up. It was absolutely beautiful and amazing.
I'm not at the con, and I have nothing to do with what happened but reading how he was treated ticks me off.
Fritz I suggest humbly sir, that you come up to HMGS Midwest's Little Wars next year. It's closer, and believe me, less politics and stuff such as you are encountering. Plus there's this nice German Restaurant down the road from it….
Sehr Gut!

Quatre Bra 1530hrs

Quatre Bras 1530 hrs

@Murphy: I don't attribute my problem to politics, but I do hope that the convention director reaches out to me and gives me an explanation of what happened.

In the pictures above, why are some of the hills such a light tan?

Bobgnar, I'd go with different crops. That board looks seriously customized, and you can see the four ground colors correspond to rivers and roads, not contours. They're someone's property.

Quatre Bras had only rolling hills but game board had crops with different hights for observation obstruction. Wheat and corn.
Liked the game board

It wasn't too bad for me…

As opposed to my game being listed in a different location, I set up my Thursday game in a different room than I was supposed to be in (Hickory instead of Heritage)…

Note to self, use your reading glasses…

But two people found me anyway and with three random folks, we had a good game.

Friday, my game went off without a hitch, added an extra player, too.

Saturday, no one showed up, but a buddy of mine was passing by and we played a cut down version anyway.

My understanding there were several issues with players and/or GMs not appearing when and where they should have.

Fog of War(gaming)?

Parking is not like the Host. You are in the downtown area of the county seat. But the one day I didn't get into the garage next to the hotel, I was in the garage next door on Mifflin Street. And I day tripped every day.

Saw a lot of really interesting games. Most importantly, saw a lot of friends I haven't seen in a couple of years or more due to the pandemic and my last deployment overseas.

I'd give it a 7.5 out of ten.

Thanks to HMGS for putting on the Con. Thanks to the vendors for showing up. And thanks to the great folks who played in my games.

Eric

My sympathies, Fritz. You have more serious troubles right now, but if it's any comfort, your reputation is sufficient to ensure someone finds out how this happened, and maybe even keeps it from happening again.

Hope everyone makes it home safely, and I'm looking forward to seeing most of you at the Host in November.

The game I played, and had 7 players, 2 game masters seems not to have been where it was supposed to be but all found it.

Convention was a hit from my perspective. Arrived Wednesday midday and parked my car for the weekend. Great food options nearby. Liquor options disappeared a little too quickly at night. Nearby cigar bar saved the day.
Ran my game Saturday night and had 5 of 6 players show up and filled in the open slot with those hoping to jump in. Being on-site does make logistics easier. Thanks to all the volunteers for a great show.

TRU

I had a great time at Historicon this weekend. I arrived Thursday and found parking at the Marriott which surprised me as last time here I was at the Prince and Orange Streets garage which is a very short walk to the LCC.

I thought attendance was on the light side, and I attribute that to COVID. I think many people stayed home because of the fear of getting that insidious plague. A large portion of our hobby members are prime targets for COVID. Personally, I went to Wally's Basement for the 8PM Thursday opening and quickly turned around and left it due to the size of the mob of people in there. There was no place to move, and I wasn't going to press my twice boosted luck there.

The gaming, ahh yes, the gaming! The games were wonderful. I played two games on Thursday, 4 (or at least 3 and about an hour and a half of a fourth) on Friday, and 2 on Saturday and had a great time with all of them.

The games I played on Thursday were "Limeys and Slimeys" pirate action with a large group of Pirates trying to intercept the Turkish Sultan and his gold. I was one of the Turks, and we managed to force our way through a huge number of pirate ships. It was fun like most pirate games are.

I also played Fiery Reef, "The Midway of the South China Sea" modern naval warfare between the allied US, UK and Japan, against China. Beautiful 1/700 scale ships and a sweet custom built Chines concrete island base in the Spratleys. I was the Americans. The game is played with cards that allow you to do stuff. It was a wild game, with the Chinese destroying the UK carrier. When we finally got the initiative, after multiple Chinese go's which led to teh destruction of the Brit carrier, our Japanese admiral had a super bomber card that theoretically should have been almost impossible to stop, but the Chinese did. We got intiative again and this time I got to use a bomber card and destroyed one carrier, and again in the next initiative phase I was able to send a really souped up alpha strike from my Nimitz class carrier (the Lincoln I believe) and despite very stiff resistance, I destroyed the second carrier at which point the Chinese folded. The game was fast, bloody, and fun.

Friday was my bug gaming day with 3 scheduled games and one I was sucked into for a little while. I started with a great Dark Age slug fest, the Battle of Stamford Bridge using John Spiess' homebrew I believe, Halberd, Mace, and Great Sword or HMGS rules. The game was a blast. Another great convention game that was fast moving, bloody, and fun. And John's figs were really great looking. You could even see the eyes of the 25/28 mm figs and they werent the typical blotchy way out of scale white and black dots you sometimes see.

My next game scheduled was the "Battle for the Farm" using Blucher rules which I was really looking forward to as I wanted to learn the rules. But since I had a couple of hours break between games a went to watch my son playing in Pete Panzieri's "Anzio" extravaganza. They were short of players and Pete talked me into playing a few turns knowing that I was leaving to go to another game. This game was also a lot of fun, bloody and moved at a very good convention pace. My son was the fleet admiral in addition to running one of the landing forces, and rolled very well and just absolutely demolished the Germans with Naval bombardment. We also had a bunch of successful air strikes and when I left, the Germans were in a bad way.

I ended up playing with one of my club mates, whom I didn't know was in attendance in the Blucher Game. We had a blast, playing while freezing from the billowing air conditioner vent above us. We both really enjoyed this game.

My last game on Friday the big "Test of Honor" Samurai game. My first experience with these rules and period. The game was visually stunning and the game was terrific, again, it played fast, and was very bloody. David Hill was the GM, and I recommend playing in his games after this one. He broke this massive game with like 16 -20 players into about 5 or 6 smaller battles. My part was playing a Waco pirate band teaming with the guy across from against the Dutch who sat next to us. Our objective was to have at least one of our figs touching the stairs to the enormous market building in the game. Each of us had a hero, 3 companions and 3 groups of 3 regular dudes. After playing a few turns we kind of got the gist of the game and I started to think about the victory condition. At around the end of the middle part of the time I sent my Hero into the mix, and he wasn't doing much, having acquired some blood wounds. All of a sudden he went berserk and in in one turn killed like 5 or 6 Dutchmen. David said it tied for the most he had seen. Then as time was winding down my partner said something to the effect of "do you know what to do?" and I replied "I was onto it a few moves ago, and rushed a bunch of guys to the objective. The Dutch needed an attack even greater than that of my hero to dislodge us, and were unable to do so. David said it was the first time the Dutch lost that particular battle. It was a great game.

On Saturday, my son (who is 26) and I played Close Action with Mark Campbell. Mark always runs a fantastic game, and his ships look great. We had a great time, even though I didn't get into the fighting as there was a glitch in the LCC's planning causing us to vacate the room early. My son a nd I always enjoy playing CA with Mark and this was no exception.

My last game was with TMP's Gonzalvo, Peter Anderson. He put on "Massena's Victory – the battle of Calderon October 30, 1850" using Field of Battle 3. FOB is a Piquet variant game system that is card driven and some people don't care for it, but I like it and have never played a bad game with it. Peter's games are visually appealing with lots, and I mean lots of beautifully painted 28mm Napoleonics. We had a titanic struggle with me in the French middle. The battle see sawed back and fourth with, again, lots of blood, until both armies were depleted. The Austrians managed to advert defeat by making a crucial army moral roll, just barely, and a few turns later, the French failed theirs and lost the game. It was truly a great fight.

I thoroughly enjoyed all 8 games and managed to buy a bunch of stuff in the dealer hall, getting some bargains from the Shieldwall Gaming Club (30% off Warlord products), The Miniature Building Authority who were practically giving away some heavily discounted buildings, and from Cotton Jim's I snagged an Epic Battles Prussian Army for just $100. USD I also got some paint from Dayton, some Blue Moon Naps Generals from Old Glory and some Wargames Illustrated mags from OMM.

All in all, it was a great Con.

I went to Origins in Columbus last September (its rescheduled date from having been postponed in June), and attendance was about 60% of 2019. They held Origins at its traditional time last month and attendance was not all that much higher than in September 2021. GenCon was also rescheduled last year, from August to November 2021, and it had maybe 60% of its 2019 attendance. I am attending GenCon in a week and will be curious to see where its attendance falls.

I think COVID's re-resurgence this summer has upset many plans. In late spring, it looked like the spread was down and all those vaccinated were fairly safe. This new variant, although not as deadly, seems to be infecting everyone—I had it last week despite being double-boosted (though very mild). I bet GenCon is at 75% attendance as well. So I would be surprised if Historicon wasn't indeed light on attendance. Next year may finally see the upswing to almost normal.

Lots of attractive games, some new vendors I hadn't seen before, and a great location.