Historicon came and went a week or so ago, as I’m sure you might have heard.

I went down for the day Thursday, then was around Friday through Saturday; I’d planned on sticking around through Sunday, but by dinner time on Saturday I was ready to be home.

Thursday, I got to play in Miles’ SOCOM & Sorcery game. It was pretty perfect as a convention game, I think: the rules kept things moving fast and were easy to pick up. He was a machine running it (or the WWII variant, DAK & Dragons) something like 6 times over the weekend. The scenario was simple: good guys at one end of the table, bad guys at the other. Both needed to get to the pyramid in the middle to get a hold of a professor within it. Monsters and random things happened along the way.

Friday morning, I got there just in time for Graham’s Muskets & Tomahawks game: I’ve wanted to play M&T a try for a long time. His game used a few minor tweaks to make it more appropriate for King Phillip’s war (IIRC: making black powder weapons less accurate and distributing pikes to the Europeans). The table was gorgeous, the minis were great, the rules were excellent. The only problem with the game were the other players. PROTIP: joking about genocide isn’t funny. I had an excellent time, despite the other folks: Graham clearly has a deep interest in and love of the period.

 

I did make it out to the Firelock Games “tournament.” It was a huge disappointment. I was actually pretty disappointed by the Firelock presence, but I think that was mostly due to peculiar expectations. Basically, I expected them to be just like the By Fire & Sword guys, and they weren’t. More’s the pity. They’ve got a lot in common: their game was funded by KS, laser-focused on a specific place & period, their first Historicon. The BF&S guys are 1000% enthusiasm, and one thing that’s stuck with me was _their_ Historicon tournament: they had tables a plenty and armies to go around… it wasn’t actually a tournament, just organized play to expose people to the game. The Blood & Plunder thing was clearly an afterthought. (Which was a shame, because my models for it look great, and I’d been looking forward to pushing them around.)

Is it reasonable to hold them to the Polish standard? Probably not, but that’s how I ended the weekend feeling.

Saturday was the Painting Contest: my fifth. The Painting Contest is actually why I started going to Historicon: Dave Taylor was organizing the first ever contest, and had asked people to come out and enter things.  Historicon was just down the road, so it was super-easy for me to drop off models.  It’s also probably the only reason I’ll brave the drive up to Lancaster for Historicon in 2018.

I did well: of six entries, five placed.

Tercio Creativo/1650 – Rodrigo de Silva – A Tercio Creativo model won me First for Historical Single and Best of Show for a second year in a row.  I was really surprised by this: I feel that what I’ve got here isn’t as good as I could do, and there are some aspects of the model I kinda hate (the dumb dagger on the cape, the papers where the sword touches the ground).  Also, I’m still super-bitter about my Kickstarter experience with Tercio Creativo, regardless of how great their models look.

Trenchworx – A7V – My A7V placed third.  I love this model and am extremely proud of it… but I’m totally content with third, as there were some great entries in this category. This includes my buddy John E.‘s M-10, which came in first, won Best in Theme, and Best of Warlord.  (Between the two of us, I feel like we really cleaned up this year, like John S. and I did last year. ☺)

Asmodee/Hell Dorado – Angelo Casaviecchi – I was going to enter my Demogorgon, but the night before the convention I decided that wasn’t good enough and that I needed do something else.

Seriously. I painted this guy in a few hours; probably about 5 hours or so, tops (break to watch some TV with my blessedly tolerant wife, a walk with the dog, some breaks for varnish to cure and oils to dry).  So, yes: I’m very surprised and pleased with how well this guy did.

Also, a moment of silence for Hell Dorado?

Red Box Games – Tradkarl, Northstar Games/Frostgrave – Barbarians – I entered these guys to have something to enter. I love ’em, but was surprised to see them place so highly.  They’re my tabletop quality.

(I seriously love the Northstar Frostgrave plastic kits, and if you’re doing something Norse or barbarianish not going to Tre Manor for your wizard, you’re doing it wrong.)

Hasslefree – Immortant Drumpf – Not surprised he didn’t place. Was surprised that I only got positive feedback on this guy.

Corvus Belli/Infinity – Anaconda – She got first place in his category, but I’m not going to show photos of this one ’cause I’m going to enter her at NOVA and actually hope he’ll do well.  But I’m very pleased with her and had been planning to paint her since last NOVA.

I had a great time, but going down on Thursday meant I was toast by end of the day Saturday.

Despite my earlier protests, I will probably go back to Historicon in 2018, despite it being in Lancaster (but I’m not going to be happy about it).