Historicon was, of course, a blast.

(Forgive me: I hardly too any pictures)

This was my first year going down for more than just the day: normally I head down Saturday morning and come back Saturday night.  This time, I’d planned on playing in the Bolt Action Escalation tournament on Friday and By Fire & Sword tournament Saturday.  Then, I started going stir-crazy in the house and work decided to not trample over my time off, so I headed down for Thursday afternoon.  So, like, triple the Historicon and it I could have easily gone down for another day. Or week.

Thursday was, basically, a shopping day.  The advantage of doing this Thursday is that, even though folks are still working out their systems and processes, the crowds aren’t too bad and you don’t have to worry about vendors selling out of anything (which was definitely an issue by COB Saturday).  Picked up a couple of things (a Dragoon regiment, mostly) from the BF&S folks, and some odds and ends from Brigade (some more Partisans and a long-sought-for LVTA1. Then I basically spend the rest of the day chatting with people.  Like, five hours just wandering around, shooting the shit.

Friday was the Bolt Action Escalation Tournament.  I wasn’t hungry to play the escalation format, but I wanted to play some organized BA games and Friday was the day I had free.  I had a good time overall: two very enjoyable butt kickings sandwiching a butt kicking that was less enjoyable (but if I’m honest with myself, it wasn’t that bad, just more like a mediocre game of 40K than I’ve come to expect from Bolt Action).  Ended up going 0/2/1 and getting the Smoking Boots/Biggest Loser award (which was surprising because, like, I drew once) and, more pleasingly, the second-place for Player’s Choice.  Some of the prizes were from Warlord (some dice, a Sherman), and some were from Trenchworx (a BT-42 and an FT-17).  Bopped around for the rest of the day, chatting and watching games.

Saturday was supposed to be a later morning than Friday (noon start, aiming for some time to wander the vendor room a bit vs. 9AM start), but 95 is a sonuvabitch.  The day had two goals: painting contest and By Fire & Sword.

I’d expected to not do so well in the painting contest, because it just keeps getting bigger (which means more and better competition) and because the past year has not been a great one for hobbying for me (as evidenced by the silence ’round these parts), so it was a delightful surprise to not only place again, but twice, and both in 1st place:

I’m particularly pleased with MacReady’s showing, since I’m incredibly proud of how he came out.

The By Fire & Sword tournament was fun, but I really should be calling it “The By Fire & Sword ‘Tournament'”, since only a quarter or so of the people there really knew how to play.  The rest of us were there to iterate through some games and learn the game.  I did not do well (1/2/0), but had a good time and learned a lot about the game.

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I don’t do a lot of gaming conventions: I do NoVA, which is a collection of tournaments, and Madicon, which is as much of a SFFG homecoming as it is a convention, and this one.  I think Historicon is probably the most enjoyable of the three: I was there for three days and would have been content for it to go on for three weeks. The time flew.  There is an unimaginable amount of stuff to do there; I didn’t even have the chance to play a club game this go-round. It’s cheap: $25; free for kids and (non-playing) spouses.  I love that: “Thank you for being patient and understanding with your significant other’s stupid nerdgames.”

If you’re around these parts, you really owe it to yourself to drive down for the Saturday, at least.