Historicon AAR Part I

My son Nick and I went to Historicon again. It was another great convention.

General Observations: Good turnout, everyone seemed to be having a very good time. It might have been just locations but the main gaming hall seemed to be more crowded with games on Friday night than on Saturday which I thought was unusual. While there are still some minor problems with the site (noise and bad chairs), it was clear they were trying to accommodate us and the staff I encountered were universally very friendly.

A lot of great looking games through the convention. Here’s some pictures:

The Big Pirate Game that everyone was talking about. It was truly beautiful




ACW naval and ground game. This was in 28mm and was certainly the equal in quality, if not size of the big pirate game.








A delightful tribute to the centenial of H.G.Wells' Little Wars


Battle of the Rosebud:

Silly hats and costumes seemed to be the theme of this convention (yours truly included as you will see from our Les Miserables game)


Here's some other games that caught my eye:












We played Thursday night in a game of Desperado. It was a nice way to ease into the convention with low figure density and easy to pick up rules. It was quite fun. The town sheriff decided to police his town by setting up as a sniper in the town jail and shooting down the bad guys who were robbing various locations around town. Unfortunately, after most of the bad guys had been eliminated, the sheriff began shooting down anything that moved in the streets, mostly local citizens. We all got together then and stormed the jail, SWAT-style. The lone bandit who survived was riding out of town when he was blown up by some thrown dynamite.


Friday morning I played in another skirmish game, this one based on the “Lost Regiment” novels where a Union regiment is transported onto another world inhabited by large alien tribal warriors, the Tugars, who eat humans. The game involved three small cavalry patrols encountering some of the Tugar scouts. We humans managed to wipe out most of the warriors but not without significant losses.





Saturday morning, we played in a game using the Pig Wars rules but set in the Greek-Persian Wars. The scenario was something of a replay of Marathon with the Greeks defending some hills and us Persians trying to capture at least one of the hills. I controlled the small Persian cavalry force. In the early going of the game, the Persians got chewed up pretty handily - my force was reduced to a single figure very early on in the game. This seems to have led the Greeks into over confidence and they charged down off the hills to try to route us off the field. The Persians pulled back, drawing the Greeks further apart from one another, except for my single horseman who rode up on the nearly empty hills and took pot shots at the Greek commander. Ultimately, a couple of the Greek units were surrounded and wiped out and some mercenary Greek troops and the Persian unit run by Nick pushed their way onto one of the hills. My single cavalryman was there to greet them and the final action of the game was an attack on my cavalryman by three Greeks, two of which I slew. The final result was an unprecedented Persian victory.





Now for the games I ran. Friday night we ran the Res Mechanica weird science Roman game set at the end of the Year of the Four Emperoros.







The game represented the attempt to relieve the Flavians, including Vespasian’s brother Sabinus and his son Domitian, who had barricaded themselves onto the Capitoline Hill when an attempted negotiated surrender by Vitellis was foiled by Vitellius’ followers. The Vitellians had few troops left at this point and so relied on various ad hoc units. Every group had some type of “high tech” weapons or machines to aid them.

We had 10 players and the action split into three separate actions. The first was the Roman fleet force, an airship and landship, each carrying troops approaching from one edge of the board. They were opposed by a bunch of Circus performers and freed slaves, originally gathered for a reenactment of the victory over Boudicca. Also with them was the big Trojan horse and an Amazonian phalanx. Right at the start, the Flavian commander Primus convinced the Amazonians to defect with their Trojan Horse. This doomed the Britons who put up a stiff fight, including trying to storm the land galley but in the end were utterly destroyed. The land galley ultimately rammed through the city walls and linked up with the defecting Vigiles.







The second area of combat involved the Flavian cavalry aided by their Ruritanii allies opposed by some freed Jewish rebels and the Roman mob under Titus Pullo. The mob immediately pulled back into the city and began looting, although they ultimately tried to storm the Capitoline in an attempt to loot the temples there. The main opposition to the Flavians came from the Jewish rebels, who despite small numbers put up a fanatical fight, at one point routing most of the Ruritanii. They were aided by a well-neigh indestructible golem. Finally, the great war aurochs of the Ruritanii, led by King Rheomitalces finally did the creature in but as the great stone thing collapsed, it fell directly on the barbarian king whose memory would be sung by his people for generations. The remaining Jewish rebels were pushed aside and the Flavian steam chariots rushed into the city. There they were surrounded by the die-hard Vitellians. The final action of this part of the game ended when the crew of large steam chariot blew themselves up taking with them the last intact cohort of Vitellian troops.



The third area of action was in the city of Rome where Vespasian’s brother Sabinus and son Domitian had barricaded themselves onto the Capotiline Hill. They were attacked by the last hard-core Vitellian troops who launched repeated attacks only to be fended off each time. The Vitellians had a unit of Icarii, light troops sporting feather and wax wings. These came up with the unique tactic of grabbing a bunch of slave girls from a nearby auction and dropping them on the defenders of the Capitoline as the “Babe Bomb.” Sadly it proved to be less than effective. Towards the end of the game, the Vitellians, with the aid of Pullo’s mob and some gladiators did gain a foothold but were crushed in a stampede when Domitian released the sacrificial cattle onto them. The final event here was an attempt by the last of the Icarii to sweep down on Sabinus to capture him. They failed when a group of Senators who had joined Sabinus fended them off. Imagine the ignominy of losing to a bunch of overweight, middle-aged politicians.







Also within the city was the vigiles under Nigerapis (Blackadder) who decided he wanted no part of being on the losing side and came up with a plan to capture Vitellius himself to use as a bargaining chip. After luring the gluttonous emperor out of the palace with a dish of Carthaginian chicken barbequed on his flame-thrower, Nigerapis turned his men on the German bodyguard and secured the Emperor. By this point, the Roman land galley had broken into the city but caught fire while passing too close to a burning basilica. Nigerapis not only was able to present the Flavian commander with Vitellius but also had his men, Rome’s fire-fighters put out the fire.







I had a great group of players who all got into the fairly wacky spirit of things. Here’s a group photo.


The other game we ran was Les Miserables the Wargame.

This was probably one of the funniest game experiences I ever had. I will write up a separate account of that in the next day or two.

Again, a great convention. Nick and I can hardly wait until next year.