Historicon 2019 - Friday's Tables of Interest

I'll establish a couple things ere I get going here: first, I'm mostly a day tripper/shopper and never gamer so I didn't play in any of these. I was here from about 9-5 or so, so very well have missed some games, perhaps even a room of games. Second, I loves the venue and think it's preferable to what the Host has been in the past. It's nice to not have to go outside in the humidity if you don't have to.  Climate control was in excellent shape, staff was helpful and knowledgeable, and bathrooms as I needed them were well maintained. Third, downtown Lancaster was charming and had a fair amount of diversion of it's own - especially the farmer's market bazaar across the street. I've been coming to Historicon for almost two decades and had never been anywhere near the downtown so it was a pleasant surprise. Let's start with the Dealer Hall, the demo games therein and other displays.

1. Blood and Plunder was well supported and there were several games of this going on throughout the day and around the convention.

This looks like a ton of fun. Beautiful presentation too.

2. I'm not trying to knock this company with any malice or ill will, but I think the fur on these mats is way too long. Yes, you can (and should) trim them down for scales other than 25/28mm and possibly 40mm too. Especially as pictured, the artifice is hurting my eyes. It just creates a world engulfed in gray flames. Preferable than billiard table felt maybe but still hard for me to like. I do love the accessories atop it though - great stuff but out of my preferred scales.

3. Cigar Box - I do prefer these and decorated with 3D modular terrain can make a great set up. My only objection the them is the portrayal of 3D items like hedges, walls and trees. It works in a pinch, but I'd prefer they model a forest floor if necessary than the trees. Leave off walling and hedging, standing corn, etc altogether. Two cents.

4. The theme of the Con was jungle warfare - this one had a lot of little interesting vignettes hidden it its depths - neat!

5. Hadn't seen these painted up before - these were at Brigade Games

Even a Putin! Funny

And these were nearby

6. Shanty town from Miniature Building Authority. I've been priced out of acquiring their stuff for years, but great, ready to play pieces.

7. From Sash & Saber's booth: I don't think any of these are new, but they are just terrific - beautifully painted and arranged models.

8. Now we move to the Tournament area - these games look better and better every year. These must be more Blood and Plunder set ups.

9.

9. I like these Team Yankee ones a lot. Note the little car parks.

10. Nice wintry mix here. In general these little FoW boards are terrific - they get rolled out every year and are solid, practical and look great adorned with terrain features. all are edged in black laminated wood and look really sharp.

11. That's right Ma, skulls! All skulls.

12. I think this is for a LOTR game? In any event, I like these dead tree vignettes. I would distribute the grass a bit differently and trim others, but otherwise very nice.

13. Helm's Deep - great functional set piece here. But where to store it?

Lovely details

14. Ah - everyone needs The Argonath, also known as The Gates of Argonath or The Pillars of Kings,  a monument  carved in the likenesses of Isildur and Anárion, standing upon either side of the River Anduin at the northern entrance to Nen Hithoel. Duh! Everyone knows that.

A board of ONLY choke points?

15. More LOTR

Lets go back and look at 12 again.

16.

17.

18. Somewhere among these I'd gone back upstairs again to the main gaming floors - lost track a bit after cropping out people and backgrounds.

19. These little fields look great -- I need some at some point.

20. I also adore these flexible rubber field mats. Simple, durable evocative. Edged with lichen or low clump foliage and they would really pop.

21. This one caught my eye from a distance with its brightness. There's an article out there about using expanding foam for forest. I can't say I'm a fan of this but it was eye catching.

22. Here's where the long fur looks great!

The color appears to be a little dead to me but with 25/28s the length looks pretty good.

23. This was an eye catcher - maybe a best in show for me on Friday morning. It wouldn't hurt if everybody scaled up their trees somewhat. It won't be cheap but the more realistic height can really make a difference despite all its other impracticalities of cost, storage, getting figures in between, falling over, etc.

You are there. Looks fun.

24.

25. I'm an unabashed Russophile in gaming contexts so I like to grab shots of games set in Russia. also here's fur that looks great to me in terms of length. Very natural and realistic to scale

26.

This game was crowded and busy and I would have loved to move the play aid from these shots, but would didn't want to disrupt.

27.

28. Another favorite - beautiful attention to detail here.

29. Nice

30. I've no doubt this was a fun game but a kitchen sink aesthetic is very much in place.

Opposite side of the beaches - there's that green.

31.

32. This one also was very popular and had some very impressive altitudes - that's Romans vs Irish in there.

The difference between the highest point and lowest point on this table was around two feet - very impressive!

33. Battle Cry right?  A very fun game.

34. Beautiful, natural.

35. 6mm?

36.

37. Yeah - gotta cover the tree illustrations with actual tree models.

38.

39.

40. Epic scale!

41. The only prison is in your mind

42. Another probable contender for best in show was this sprawling Western - lots of great stuff in this one.

The rock pillars and mine set pieces are wonderful. Whole campaigns can be played out on this table without moving a thing.

43. Back down near the tournament space

44. This one looked fun too.

45. There's always one thing that strikes me as eminently practical and the winner this year are these little casualty/unit ID markers. Simple, elegant, unobtrusive - well done. [Update - Reader Gonsalvo notes that these are commercially available from from Lancashire Games. Get them here]

Well that's it - I do love attending this thing - it's fun to watch games develop and see everything up close. I think the venue was a great improvement and organizers should seek permanence here in that regard. I also feel like Friday might not be the best day for spectacle games. There were a lot of beautiful set ups, and the usual turkeys but I was on the lower side of impressed this year than I have been in the past. That's not to knock anybody or anything - it takes a tremendous effort, in time, money and heart to prep and put on a game scores of miles from home and I do appreciate it.

I'm sure the Saturday games will be a step above and look forward to seeing those pics online.

Thanks for looking! Questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged.

25mm Perth Pewter - Wizard with Owl

Had this guy for ages and decided to do a bunch of wizards at once - he's the first of around half a dozen. More to come!

For size comparison purposes ... he's quite tiny.

Thanks all for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged!

28mm Empress Miniatures, Father Defending Homestead

The Mrs. and the children are in Russia ca 1812 (see link) cast as camp followers. Father didn't quite fit in there so he remains over 30 years in the future in London organizing a defense against God knows what.

Thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged!

25mm Eureka Miniatures, Formal Lord Shaftsbury with Brandy

Eureka has a number of figures that are off the books and generally oop. This is one I cannot find on their site and was painted in the mid-'00s.

He's supposed to be standing on carpeting but not sure that's obvious here. I probably should custom cut some red felt for this.

Eyes a bit wonky, but otherwise ok.

Thanks all for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged!

Autumn/Winter Trees with Citadel Woods Canopies

These 20 trees (bent wire with tape over it,  mounted on a weighted plastic mound) were drugstore Halloween tchotchkes from quite few years ago that I had lying around. I think they were a dollar and a quarter each. I like the Citadel Woods - bought two kits, but I hate the rigid little canopies they include for the foliage. These trees look great from the top but from any other angle they look very unnatural. I hate leaving the canopy pieces (CWC) in the box, so midway through this tree basing project  it struck me to incorporate them in as piles of fallen leaves.

Here's the first step in my process - hot glue the trees to old DVD-Rs, then kill the glass smooth surface with white modeling paste. I wish I had thought to use the CWCs earlier, but it didn't occur to me until these had been sitting around for a few days as seen above.  The principal problem I ad with this project stems (har har) from trying to disguise the unnatural mounds from which the trees are sprouting. The other thing is that these CWCs are not perfectly flat but rounded in a convex curve. Being quite rigid I didn't feel comfy flattening them as it may distort the leave pattern and more honestly, I couldn't be bothered to look up how to heat them in a way safe enough to not destroy them.

Step 2 - glue down the railroad ballast - sand works perfectly fine here too. I use what I have on hand.

The trees were purchsed jet black which works to my method perfectly. Here I've sprayed the entire thing with Rustoleum Camouflage dark brown. I jumped the gun and did it before the glue dried I think as you can still see the white paste peeking through. Not to worry - it all gets covered.

I did what would be zenithal lighting with Rustoleum light brown covering just the tops of the trees, knowing the color's spillover effects would be fine. Then on the ground I did my usual mix of Graveyard Earth (from a quart I had mixed up at Home Depot), followed by the middle blend of Graveyard Earth and Khaki. I didn't do the final highlight here as I thought it should be darker under the leaf piles. I changed my mind on that later.

Time to paint he the CWC leaf piles - the biggest in the most common brown colors, followed by orange, then russet, finally with the smallest being the rarest: yellow. I could have mixed them all up but didn't want to spend a ton of time picking out individual leaves on all of these fiddly pieces. This was almost entirely a dry brush job over Rustoleoum Camouflage dark brown again - a most useful product.

Maybe you want to see more of what was on my table at the time? When I say I am crunched for space - I mean it. Yes even ancient Ral Partha paints get used once in while.

Back to out problem - these CWCs don't all fit between the tree bases making some jut skyward to an unacceptable degree. I also could have cut some of the longer pieces down following some arbitrary line along the leaves, but by this point they were painted. I also could have left off the ones that didn't fit, but then I'd have bizarre odds and ends with no good purpose lying around. they were all going to get on there somehow.

Another late discovery: because of their convex shape, the holes were going to be near the tops of the piles. That won't do and I wish I had thought of this sooner. It wasn't until I started trying to place them that I noticed those holes looked odd. Plus I didn't want little insects or spiders making homes in there (an unlikely occurrence =)). Little masking tape on the back, black paint on the top ...

... followed by gluing some commercially available "leaf litter" over the openings. Paint the what are now roots or fallen branches and Done.

A final drybrush of khaki on it's own ...

... and time to just start gluing it all down. I used plain ol Elmer's white on all of this. Clump bushes from Woodland Scenics were used around the edges of the parts not touching the ground. Followed by my usual green grass mix - no tufts here. Glue is still wet in this shot so it looks like an inviting Spring setting. It dries a lot darker of course. I do these in phases: first the bushes to cover the gaps, second the grass to cover irregularities of the ground cover , and third I did more leaf litter to cover whatever errors remained obvious.

And La! twenty trees on five bases for an Autumn setting. They'll join the other dead trees I have completed - see here. One thing about haunted wood is that they are not primarily composed of bare wood - it's the darkness of the thick foliage and shadowy canopy that contributes to the foreboding atmosphere. If the moon is shining down one can see quite clearly.

In any event, the figures for these accessories will be visible. Some West Wind zombies seen here and below:

I have a few more sprues of leaves left but am out of cheapo trees. I'll probably add them to other Autumn bases - with more advanced planning next time!

Thanks all for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged ...

25mm Alternative Armies - Wood Elves

Also painted in the early 00s

I like these miniatures - don't need anymore than this little warband. I just identify and prefer other types of fantasy factions.

Bowmen upclose

Shield details - yellow is a problem for many folks - I was no exception though we have better tools for it now - among them are patience, and double thin coats, etc ...

Thanks all for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged ...

25mm Games Workshop - Ghouls

Found among other GW zombies that needed painting was this completed early unit of ghouls. Ghoul design has come a long way. I have more of the next gen done too but haven't come across them recently.

Not easy to rank up quite properly, but the rules don't care.

Also painted in the early 00s

Thanks for looking - questions, comments & followers are welcome and encouraged!

25mm Essex - Zombies

From the archives, completed in the early 00s .. I actually found a half dozen more of these primed and ready to go. (That's a Woodland Scenics HO scale grave.)

I do like painting zombies - all your mistakes are forgiven!

Thanks for looking - questions, comments & followers are welcome and encouraged!