Fallcon 2013

Over the last weekend I went to Calgary for my second Fallcon visit, and it was a blast!

This year, there seemed to be fewer miniatures games and more boardgames, but I still managed to get my fill.  I also met all the old Calgary crew again, along with Mark W., who moved there in this past year.

Friday night, there was a Saga game run by Mike Johnson.  At first, I thought it was some kind of tournament, so I brought my own Saga warband.  However, it turned out to be a loosely depicted version of the Battle of Brunanburh, with all the miniatures provided.

Here both armies were arrayed against each other, and I was on the Scottish/Viking side.

I took control of the Scottish King Constantine's warband and faced off against the Anglo-Saxons.  It was a pretty standard Saga warband with a leader, a couple of groups of hearthguard, and a couple of groups of warriors.

There really wasn't much room for maneuver, and I charged through one of the Anglo-Saxon warbands facing me, managing to break them in cooperation with the Viking players on my side.  The battle ended up with the Anglo-Saxons losing, having something like three of their warlords killed.

On Saturday morning, I played in Sean's GASLIGHT game, a Victorian Science Fiction skirmish using 1/72 scale miniatures.  The objective was to collect a bunch of blue crystals, and their collection triggered monsters.  The players also could cooperate or backstab each other.

 

Here was the board setup showing Sean's excellent terrain.

 

I took the role of the Ethiopian prince Haile Unlikely (clever eh?), commanding a bunch of warriors on camels and on foot.  Sean had some very nicely-painted 1/72s.

 

There were all sorts of interesting units, like this Italian steam tank controlled by Mark.

A lot of monster-killing fun was had by all.  Here, my leader attacked a giant spider by himself.

 

Mike Johnson's Fez Patrol was attacked by a giant sandworm.  He managed to kill it though.

 

Eventually, the players all had to turn on each other.  I prematurely attacked the Highlanders next to me and got a lot of my warriors wiped out for my troubles.  Here, my lone camel rider bravely charged the remnants of the Highlanders.

Later on Saturday, Don Ray's Calgary DBA group put on a friendly introductory tournament of ancients DBA, set in the time of Alexander the Great.  I participated and put my ancient Spanish army in there as a stand-in for Thracians.

I played a couple of games with an Alexandrian Macedonian army against other people who used my Spanish, and I managed to win both times, even in bad terrain.  This was more due to bad luck on the part of both of my opponents than anything else.

Most of the armies were actually Alexandrian Macedonian, provided by the club, but there were several other interesting armies too.  Here, a Persian army faced off against their historical enemy.

 

In this one, the aggressive Macedonians attacked an Indian army.

On Sunday, I participated in the Alberta Open DBA tournament with all the usual suspects.  My army of choice here was the Komnenan Byzantines.

My first game was against Mark S's Carthaginians, and it was really bizarre.  I attacked with my knights, including my general, on the right wing against his warbands in the open.  Even though I had quick-kills on his units, my general died without killing any of them.  This ended the game with 1G-0 against me!

The next game was against Mark Wall's Spartacus army.  In theory, I should've been able to take any of his units (mostly warbands and blades) in the open with my knights.  Knowing this, he cleverly positioned his warbands in rough terrain and drew up his blades to support each other.  It ended up being a grinding match, with both of us losing units until he won out 4-3.

In contrast, the next game was rather quick.  My opponent had a mostly blades army and deployed on a gentle hill.  His general and one other unit got run down by my knights very quickly, ending the game.

There were quite a few nicely painted armies in the tournament.  The brightly-coloured Sassanid Persian army here was a good example.  The tournament ended with everyone having a lot of fun, and Don gave away prizes (mostly donated by Mark W!) to almost everyone.

This year's Fallcon was an enjoyable experience, and I'll definitely be back next time!

MayDay!

On Saturday, I went to MayDay, the local annual gaming convention organized by some fellow members of the EWG gaming club.  This year had an excellent turn out and was held in a larger venue than last year.  There were many interesting games hosted by volunteers, as well as larger tournaments for Warhammer 40k and DBA.  I hosted a Squadron Strike game, (detailed description to follow in a later post) which went quite well, and also participated in the DBA and Saga tournaments.

 

The initial position of the Squadron Strike game.  This was the first time I hosted a game this complex, but the players did quite well.

A couple of big ships dueling it out in Squadron Strike.

My first game in the DBA tournament, with my Normans versus Aztecs. (quite an ahistorical matchup!)  I managed to win while losing a couple of units.

My second DBA game, with Normans versus Egyptians.  I suffered the dreaded 6 to 1 roll several times, losing two knight units and my general, and lost the game.

You'd think the third game would go better, but this time I played a very experienced opponent (hi Dave!) who used some inspired maneuvering to kill my general.  So I ended up winning one out of three in the tournament.

The Saga tournament later on went better for me, since it was a new game and all of us were more or less newbies.  Things were on more of an even footing.  The first game I played my Anglo-Danes against Will's Vikings, who were a bit more fantastical than historical.  We had a lot of fun though, and the game ended when Will charged his warlord into my warlord.  Unfortunately for him, a warlord alone always gets killed by a warlord surrounded by underlings.

The second Saga game was against Terry and his recently painted Welsh.  He managed to use terrain and his abilities quite well, and did quite some damage to my Huscarls.  However, I managed to charge my warlord and a bunch of underlings into his warlord, killing him and winning the game.  I'm seeing a pattern here...

I also took some pictures of the other games going on at the same time.  Most of the games were quite nice looking indeed.  Here is a game of parking lot Warhammer 40k.

An English Civil War game run by Dave, with historically accurate banners and everything.  Nice stuff!

Here's one of Bob's games, something based on Battlelore or Command and Colours.

Overall, this was a great event, and my only regret was that I couldn't play more of the games.  The whole "can't be in two places at once" thing was my downfall... Well, until next year.

Saga Warband!

I recently got into the excellent Dark Ages skirmish game SAGA, which uses individually based 28 mm miniatures.  After playing with a Saxon (well, Anglo-Dane) warband at a game, I decided to make one of my own.  It's been a while since I painted things at this scale, so I had a bit of adjustment to do.

All of the following miniatures are from the Wargames Factory Armoured and Unarmoured Saxons boxes.  These are serviceable miniatures, even though they have a bit of a bad reputation.  The annoying thing is that none of their necks fit properly onto their bodies, and a bit of slicing was needed.  The good thing is that being plastic, they are easily convertible.

I converted this Anglo-Dane figure into a warlord by giving him a cape and changing his pose to hold his shield on the ground.  Hopefully he looks leadery enough.

 

The huscarls and the warlord are the ones with conversions.  I decided to give the huscarls two-handed axes, so I put their shields onto their backs.  This also required putting in shield straps, which the box didn't have, and changing some of their arm poses through cutting and gluing hands.  This way I created the pose where they hold the two-handed axes horizontally in front of their bodies.

 Close-up of a huscarl with a horn.

  

These are built straight out of the box, with no conversions.  They are supposed to be wealthy, well-equipped warriors, either lower-ranking thanes or wealthier ceorls.

 

These unarmoured warriors are also built with no conversions.  They are the grunts of the Saxon/Anglo-Dane army.  

As you can see from the close-up, overall these miniatures aren't bad and have enough detail to serve as good wargame pieces.

Considering how much I've been veering away from 1/72s, I probably should change the name of this blog to something more general...