Last week I made my annual trek to Lancaster, Pennsylvania for Historicon. This year was the first time it was held at the Lancaster County Convention Center (LCC) in downtown Lancaster. I stayed at the Holiday Inn a few blocks away. It was what you would expect from a Holiday Inn, and was a short 5-6 minute walk from the LCC. The drive from South Carolina was the best it has been for ages with light traffic and no accidents or bad weather. I took I-95 on the way up and I-81 through the Shenandoah Valley on the way back. My usual friends from Ohio couldn't make it this year, but I fortunately managed to find a roommate: another Columbus wargamer who I first met back in the late 1980s, hadn't seen in many years and who was a great substitute.
I arrived at the LCC around 2:45 PM (my thoughts on the location are at the end) and spent a few hours wandering the dealer hall before my first game at 7:00, the English Civil War "Battle of Soggy Bottom" using the For King & Parliament rules. I have been interested in starting to play the ECW again and wanted to try out these rules, which use a gridded board and playing cards instead of dice. I ran the Parliament left center infantry command. There were 4 commands on each side. I kept the Royalists out of the town at the cost of most of my forces. I enjoyed the game and rules and am considering ordering them. Afterwards I browsed through the Thursday night flea market.
The Battle of Soggy Bottom (Parliament on the left, the King on the Right)
My foot were defending the town for Parliament
The Royalist foot advancing towards my position as we exchange musket fire
Action on our right flank
Friday morning following a quick, good breakfast at the Holiday Inn I headed to the early flea market and made my big purchase for the convention, two painted 15mm English Civil War armies (Royalist and Scots Covenanter). They came with a huge amount of unpainted lead, some of which I will use to fill out the armies; the rest may be sold on at a future date. I sold my ECW collection at least 10 years ago and I have wanted to get back into the period for a while. It looks like I will get my wish!
The Friday game I played was a western, "Have Gun Will Travel". It used an old 1959 boardgame as the basis for your gunfighter to travel to the area your randomly-selected outlaw was located, then you moved to the main board, which was fantastic. It included all the western stereotypes such as a town, fort, native american encampment, graveyard, mining camp and mine. It was lots of fun to move around on the board, locate your villain, and have a shootout. I successfully hunted down one outlaw in the church and was killed by a second in Rosa's Bar..
Friday night I ran the first session of my game, "Battle of Montrose Platform". It was a post-apocalyptic fight between 2 groups attempting to salvage a North Sea oil rig. Two teams of three players moved on the table in boats, boarded the platform and a wrecked ship and fought it out. I used the 7TV:Apocalypse rules. I ran it again Saturday morning. If you are interested in more details or pictures of the games, they are in a separate post here:
https://mirosgames.blogspot.com/2019/07/historicon-2019-games-i-ran.html
Saturday afternoon I got the chance to try out Frostgrave for the first time in the game "Island Towers of the Terror Folk". It was a fun game with some nice terrain. I managed to get on of my crew to the top of the tallest cliff on the last turn, only to be tossed over the side by the winged inhabitants.
My crew
My Heritor claiming a treasure marker
Saturday's final game was "Return to Lower Uncton", a 1st-edition SAGA game with four warbands of 4 points each fighting for possession of a village. I brought along my Scots and fought against Welsh, Vikings and Anglo-Danes. I haven't played SAGA for some time but it came back quickly. I won the second-place prize for killing the most enemies, which was a set of Norman SAGA dice.
My Scots advancing
Anglo-Danes in the foreground, Scots in the background
My Scots from the front
Fighting the Viking Warlord. It took a few tries but we eventually cut him down.
My kills
So what did I buy this year other than the ECW armies?
Two ECW scenario books from On Military Matters and two OGRE counter sheets in the flea market
(Clockwise from top left) The free WWII jungle convention miniature from Warlord; some pin vice bits and two dice from Harmony House; 12 Gripping Beast plastic archers for my Romano-British SAGA army and a GB Pict warlord in a chariot for my Pict SAGA army from Badger Games; two Reaper Bones giant rats for 7TV from Windsword Hobbies; a set of SAGA Norman dice won in a game; 3 packs of Essex 15mm ECW; and a great surprise from fellow 7TV player Wayne, a large bag of 28mm miniatures for 7TV, many of which are OOP.
Not pictured are a rocky terrain piece from the flea market, a bottle of superglue and an Xacto knife I needed to make a minor repair for one of the terrain pieces for my game.
My first Historicon was back in 1995, so I have experienced many of the venues over the years. I was very happy with the new location. The LCC is a great building, fully carpeted with nice chairs and icewater stations at every room. I played or ran games in each of the different rooms on three levels, and while it was loud at times, it was not worse than Fredericksburg or the Host in my opinion. The large number of nearby restaurants is great and the Central Market has a variety of bakeries and lunch vendors; everything I got there was delicious. I have heard and read some complaints about parking. My experience was:
Thursday at 2:45 PM I got one of the last spots. I wanted to see where I would have to unload everything for my game on Friday.
Friday at 8:15 AM it was full
Friday at 2:00 PM there were open spots on the top two levels
Saturday at 8:00 AM there were open spots on the top two levels
If I hadn't been running a game with the associated unloading/loading I would have left my car at the Holiday Inn all weekend, it was a nice walk at all times from early in the morning to late evening. I would encourage anyone who stayed home this year to attend in 2020.
Some other games I found interesting:
A Riverboat game with multiple levels
