FallCon 2019

This past weekend, I went on my annual visit to Calgary for the FallCon gaming convention. This was the third year that they've had the convention at SAIT, and I've gotten used to the new location and parking opportunities.

On Friday night, I went to the Calgary DBA players' hosted event. This was a refight of the battle of Telamon, between Romans and Gauls. There were several tables depicting the same battle in different scales.

I played the 2 mm version of the battle. The miniatures were near invisible, but they provided a good sense of scale. I lost the battle as the Romans from some pretty unlucky dice, but it was a lot of fun.

On Saturday morning, I ran a game of Imperial Skies with my newly painted aircraft miniatures. The scenario called for a Royal Navy aethership fleet to chase down an Irish pirate ship and locate its hidden base.

When the game started, the British ships were in hot pursuit of their target, the Fenian Ram, and managed to damage it rather badly.

The Fenian Ram deployed its fighters to harass the pursuing British destroyers while it made its escape.

With the British ships distracted by the fighters, the Fenian Ram was able to damage, then destroy, several of them.

Here, a light cruiser went down in flames.

 A destroyer was also shot down.

Eventually, the British fleet closed in on the pirate base, but we ran out of time and had to call the game. Unfortunately, I didn't design the scenario objectives quite right, and the Fenian players simply flew their ship around without landing in the base, which didn't give the British players enough opportunity to locate it before time ran out. This probably made it too difficult for them.

Later on Saturday, I participated in the annual Alberta DBA Open tournament. The dice were not with me that day, and along with some bad decision-making, I lost quite badly. I did play against some nicely painted armies though.

This weekend turned out to be quite cold in Calgary, and it was snowing most of the time. On Sunday morning, the streets looked like this.

I played in Dennis' Flames of War introductory game, with a scenario set in the African desert between the British and the Germans.

Due to the game's rather ahistorical rules, our side, the British players, started the game aggressively close to the German tanks in the middle of the table. This allowed us to take out some Panzer IVs early on, which made the game easier later.

In the end, our side took a lot of tank losses, but managed to destroy enough German units to make them reach a breaking point and lose the game. This was my second time playing this game, but it gave me the same impression that I had the first time - it's a good game, but not that historically accurate or realistic.

All in all, this was another great weekend spent on gaming.

Failures and Successes with the 3D Printer

I've been trying to 3D print various things for the last couple of weeks, mainly miniatures in different scales, to test the ability of my Sparkmaker to contribute to my hobbies. There were hits and misses, and I've learned a lot about how to use my printer.

For gaming miniatures, first I tried to print an Epic scale Tau Tigershark bomber, the one with two large railguns on the front, and I immediately ran into an issue with the top right side of the bomber "collapsing". In the right picture above, you can see a hole in the model where the resin didn't fully solidify. It actually looks like ripped fabric. I originally thought it was because part of the model got stuck on the bottom of the resin vat and the print didn't complete.

However, I did three more models, and all of them had exactly the same problem, which pointed to something with the file I was using. I think I've fixed it, but I haven't had a chance to try it again before I moved onto other models.

The above is a size comparison for the model with a painted Forgeworld Tigershark bomber on the left. They match very well in scale.

Next, I tried to print some Imperial Thunderbolt fighters, also in Epic scale. I used a file from Thingiverse for a larger model and scaled it down. The problem is that I forgot to thicken some of the thinner pieces for the smaller model size. The wings especially drooped quite a bit since they ended up extremely thin. I had to use a 3D modelling program (DesignSpark Mechanical) to thicken the wings, which allowed me to have usable models. These were quite nice when they were finally done.

I then printed some Imperial Marauder bombers, also from Thingiverse, and they ended up beautifully the first time around. I'll have to get around to painting these Epic miniatures to see how well they hold paint.

Then I moved onto 15 mm WWII. I have a whole bunch of unbuilt 15 mm models, but since I'm preparing a Canadian force, I want some kangaroos. Being a big fan of plastic in 15 mm scale, I don't actually have any kangaroo models, none of which is available in plastic. Again, Thingiverse came to the rescue.

I took a Ram Kangaroo model from Thingiverse, put two of them in one build, and added supports, which are a necessity for a lot of SLA 3D printing jobs. However, my first print ran out of liquid resin in the middle (darn you, Sparkmaker's too-small resin vat!) The result was a couple of kangaroos with the front neatly "sliced" off.

The second time, I learned my lesson and refilled the vat somewhere in the middle of the print to keep things going. This time the job completed.

The result was quite impressive. The pictures above show the models cut out of their supports. The right picture is a super close-up that unfortunately shows too much of the print lines on the model. When painted up though, I don't think they will be visible.

Finally, just to show that I haven't exhausted all the scales, I also tried making some 1/6000 scale modern naval models. I have a number of 1/6000 modern naval miniatures from Figurehead Miniatures, which have incredible amounts of detail. However, they are not up to date. (any product line that says "modern Soviets" is not) I have to make some ultra-modern ships myself to complement the existing miniatures.

The above picture shows a Ford class aircraft carrier, two Independence class LCS, two Zumwault class stealth destroyers, a Ticonderoga class cruiser, and the tiny thing on the lower-right is a Swedish Visby class stealth corvette. Mostly, I found 3D files for these ships, then did some processing to make them small enough. Sometimes this involved reducing some detail, thickening some parts, etc. Then I added bases to them so they are easier to handle. Just a note on size - the bases are 1 to 1.5 mm thick!

A comparison with a Figurehead Miniatures Nimitz class carrier, which is supposed to be slightly smaller than a Ford class in real life. My miniatures have less detail, but they should serve as supplements for missing ships in the metal line.

I'm really encouraged by the printer so far, since it has behaved very well for me. I just have to start painting up some of these...

Fallcon 2017

Following my annual tradition, I went to Fallcon in Calgary this past weekend.
This year, Fallcon was moved to a different venue, the SAIT campus, from the original Commonwealth Centre location. The new place caused some issues, mainly with parking, since the SAIT parking lot was less convenient and cost money compared to the original. It didn't seem to reduce attendance though.

Friday night, I ran an expanded version of my Imperial Skies game with 4 players.

I painted up some of Brigade Models' excellent small scale scenery as British industrial buildings on Mars. They were targets for attacking German aether ships.

Here, the German players entered the map in two groups, making straight for their targets.

The British player (we had one player show up at the start and another join in later) initially positioned his ships to take advantage of their broadsides, and they sat around waiting for their opponents.

As the Germans came closer, both British players sent their destroyers forward to harass their opponents and kept the bigger ships back.

This resulted in British destroyer casualties as the first blood of the game.

As the game went on, treachery! A band of Irish adventurers staged an attack on the British rear area with their ship, the Fenian Ram. However, the British revealed their own hidden forts protecting the factories. At this point though, we ran out of time, and the game was called. I probably need to reduce the size of the scenario, especially with 4 new players playing it.

The Forge, a Western Martial Arts group in Calgary staged sword-fighting demos at Fallcon, something I hadn't seen there before. It turned out one of the guys in the group was the host at the bed and breakfast where I stayed, and he trained with the same WMA instructor that I did when I was practicing swordsmanship. Small world! I'm glad that WMA/HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) is becoming more widespread and better known.

I was quite sick Friday night and Saturday morning, and I missed some events. However, I did feel better later that day and went to the auction. At the auction, they presented awards for amateur game design, and members of the 501st Imperial Legion in Calgary showed up to provide some atmosphere!

On Sunday, I joined a game of Chain of Command run by Stu from Calgary. This is a Too Fat Lardies ruleset used for 15mm WWII games.

I really liked the interesting although very abstract initial reconnaissance mechanic, where the two sides placed markers to control and limit each other's deployment. Here our side (the Germans) managed to sneak into the town at the centre of the table.

From that point on, since the Germans had a deployment location in town with a lot of heavy cover, they were well protected against any British attack and were able to play aggressively.

Here, the Germans on the right attacked the British position near their side of the board. This ended up being the decisive part of the game. Despite heavy casualties, the Germans overran the British position, and the game was called. The game had interesting mechanics, although some of it felt a little clunky and unnecessary.

This year, I had a great time again, despite being sick for a part of it. We'll see if the SAIT location will be used again next year.

FallCon 2016

Over the last weekend, I went to Calgary again for this year's FallCon gaming convention. It looks like the Calgary DBA group has become more active, and they're trying to recruit more into the fold. Overall, the convention still seems quite popular despite some bad economic times.

On Friday night, the Calgary DBA group ran a tutorial event for several potential new players, and I joined in on some of the games. Hopefully this means there will be more players in Calgary.

Don and Mark from Calgary were instructing new players on the mechanics of the game.

 Here, I guided new player Wayne in a game with Medieval French against my Komnenans.

On Saturday morning, we played a number of games with the theme of ancient Greeks and Romans versus Asians. Various Asian armies were pitted against ancient Mediterraneans in several separate tables. I was glad to see some of the new players from the previous night's event joining in.

In this picture, I had a game against Dennis' Qin dynasty army with my Celtiberian army.

There were a few other miniature games running at the same time.

There was a superheroes miniature game. I saw this board with the Batmobile coming in against some dastardly criminals. No doubt there was plenty of "Kapow!" in the game.

There was also a demo game of Fireball Forward, which looked quite intense with a bombed-out urban WWII setup.

In the afternoon, Dave P. ran a series of walk up and play WWII naval games. I watched the first one, but ultimately didn't have time to join in. I had played the same scenario before on club nights, so I was fine with that.

Instead I joined an introductory game of Steampunk Rally, an interesting boardgame. You had to build racing contraptions with cards representing components of your machine, propellers, boilers, etc., and those components provided you with power and motion to allow you to win the race. The picture above is one of my rickety contraptions.

This is a shot of the racing board, marking where the characters are in the course and some of the hazards on the track. Overall it was quite a fun game and I had a blast.

Sunday morning, I played in the Alberta Open DBA tournament. Things didn't go that well when I kept rolling 1s. Fortunately in the last game I ran into another player who did the same thing, so I managed a 1-2 W/L ratio.

Since I already have so many things to paint, I avoided getting too many extra minis this time. At the flea market, I grabbed a copy of Smallworld Underground, a variant of Smallworld which I used to play at work. It's quite a fun game.

Once again, I had a great time at FallCon, and I'm looking forward to next year. Also, the Calgary guys promised they'll come for DBA next Mayday, so I'm looking forward to that too.