For starters, allow me to drop the obligatory disclaimer. By no means do these shots encapsulate all the Bolt Action that was going on. Warlord Games and Osprey Publishing both had amazing, and apparently successful, booths in the vending hall. Once again, Osprey offered the new newest Bolt Action rules supplement way ahead of schedule for those attending. Thanks Bruce! Warlord had a ton of stuff - the most Bolt Action I'd ever seen in one place - as well as an incredible Pacific table set up with USMC and IJA forces for people to demo. Thanks Andy, Mike, and Chris!
Second, these pics don't represent the "best" or "worst" or any other adjective you might choose to describe them with. These images can only be described as those captured during the rare moments where either I actually remembered that I needed to grab some shots, or when my phone actually had a charge left. So, take them for what they are - arbitrary flashes of coolness taken out of an entire weekend of cool.
A quick shot of the main hall. It's about the size of a war memorial, and just as echoing and cavernous. They added some drape dividers here and there to help with the cacophony; and it did, but I'd still lost my voice by Saturday afternoon. For those that haven't been, there are additional, smaller rooms throughout the complex that easily double the overall venue space. It's huge.
I got in Thursday afternoon, and had the chance to hang with the Osprey and Warlord teams before getting into some boardgames. Good times.
Friday was dominated by meet-ups and walking the vendor hall, before meeting everyone for my first ever Bolt Action Tank Battles. The following are some of the forces people brought to the event.
Captain TO put on a great event. I ended up a huge fan of the format he used for this: A two-game event where you and your first opponent play Point Defense. You play your second game against a new opponent, but if you had attacked in the first, you defended in the second, and vice versa. Another highlight for me was the option to group up. I didn't get the chance to ask the other guys that decided to play as a team how they felt about it, but for me, it was perfect. My teammate CH and I had a ball having different colored order dice in the bag for our two halves of our force. There was no decision to make when one of us pulled the die. If it was his color, he was ordering something. Mine, my own.
Plus, I only ran three of our nine units, so had extra opportunities to make sure glasses were full.
Stefan (Captain TO, if you didn't know yet) set up his tables Friday and kept them the same Saturday. MikePWithTheMasterPlan and his pal Matt set up a couple too, but I didn't get any pics of their beautiful set-ups. Here are some examples of the rest, though.
I ran out of juice before the Tank Battles got started. So no pics! I'm sure someone will deliver on the forum, though. I know that Captain TO's son, the now-Lieutenant TO, took many a pretty POV shot for you to enjoy later. Stay tuned!
Before I get to the Saturday event, someone brought a bunch of military kit and set up a little area people could go check out. One area had some typical items soldiers find useful.
"Alright," I thought, "this seems to be pretty accurate. Standard gear for soldiers to have around throughout the eras - but something's missing." However, if you look closely, I was wrong.
Bingo! A can of Pringles. "OK," I said at that point, "this guy's legit."
On to some of the action from the 1000 point standard tournament we played on Saturday!
Searching for Baxter faces in convention pics is like looking through a "Where's Waldo" book, only nerdier.
I played Baxter and his all-infantry Soviet horde in the first game, and it was a classic. Afterwards, I played against Gordon and his turbo Americans. He's a Massachusetts expat, so automatically wicked awesome. He's also apparently lucky, because he won nearly $1000 worth of prizes in a raffle!
MikeP's got so many master plans one game system can't contain him.
And that wraps it up for me, folks. I've gotta' get some rest. We'll have more Historicon coverage coming your way soon.
