My Fall-In! 2007 Vacation!

(Belated, I know.. and as always, all commentary is my own)


(crack Events staff Pat Shields, Cleo Hanlon, and a somewhat blase Mike Hillsgrove)

I had a pretty good convention overall. I showed up a little early to work the con, and I schlepped a few things here and there, and fetched wood and carried water Thursday.


(Convention Director McWee and Gruppenfuhrer Mattes)

Friday, my friend Ed came down from central PA and we did a battlefield walk and had lunch, then I did the staff thing on the afternoon shift. I worked the Flea Market, briefly, and also spelling the guys at the front desk of the Vendor Area. More work than I thought it would be!




(Dan Muraski, the only flea market guy in HMGS history who got a VENDOR table to sell on)

There were tons of games put on at this convention and lots of activity, to judge by the impossibility of getting a parking spot in the lot. That's a GOOD thing.. I was struck by the influx of boardgaming in various nooks and crannies of the con, here and there, and sometimes right out on the main tables as bona fide events!



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(Hal Dyson, running perennial favorite AERODROME)


(DBA competitors in the New Ballroom, Friday)


(that Featherstone Cup you've heard about...)


(.. and some folks who japed that it was rightfully theirs..)


(and MORE games)


(and even MORE...)


(son of MORE games..)

I did very little shopping, but got a pretty nifty game of Pulp Adventures! in late in the evening, run by Chris Vaughn.

F-174 On The Shoulders Of Giants
Pulp; 7 PM;
Length: 4;
Hosted by: Chris Vaughn;
Scale: 25mm;
Sponsored by: Rattrap Productions;
Rules: .45
Adventure/Super Science Tales;
No. of Players: 4.
A dense, low-lying fog blankets The City, reducing familiar objects to menacing shadows, when you feel a low rumbling in the pit of your stomach. It gradually becomes an earth-shaking tremble as out of the swirling mists appear monstrous mechanical creations - robots taller than many of the surrounding buildings! The diabolical Dr. Kroon is at it again and it's up to you and your fellow pulp heroes to stop him on the rooftops high above the city! Rules taught. Beginners welcome.

Alas, no pictures of this game were taken, but it was a hoot. Chris, who has a great sense of humor and creativity, was running a sort of micro-scenario of giant robots invading New York City. We only got to see the tops of them, see, as the rest of the robots are hidden below fleecy white clouds. The idea was to leap from robot to rooftop as the robots march by, searching for the mcguffins that would turn off the robots. Of course, it's never quite that easy. There were different groups in New York together, trying to turn off giant robots, and some of them were bad and some of them were good. I played a baddie.. the Purple hood, an overarrogant intellectual genius with followers that looked like klansmen in red robes. I played the guy with a Boston Brahmin accent, looking down my nose at my evil minions. Unfortunately the clean cut hero of the story had homicidal followers that decided it was best to shoot first, ask questions later-- so instead of working for the common good, they attacked my poor minions (and myself), changing what could have been a historic alliance of major proportions into bloody internicine warfare. Typical goody two shoes stuff. and they'll blame it on ME in the papers. Sniff! It was a fun little game, very well done visually. I particularly liked the robot heads, which were simple plastic bowls balanced on white plastic powdered laxitive jars. I was concerned.. not only was there enought to balance a robot head on, but enough to run SEVERAL robots on.. I mentioned the benefits of more salad to Mr. Vaughn but he didn't see the humor in it. Seriously, great game, sir! (Update: Chris has since contacted me and provided details of how to view pictures of this game. His Fall In! 2007 album is viewable HERE).

People, places and games...


Saturday I worked the Flea Market thing and did some front desk work for the vendor hall. Then I ran my own game, Return to Lilliput, from 2-6, when we got kicked out. I'm going to take another pass at the mechanics. I got a complaint that they were too fiddly and slow to look up everything. (if anyone wants to take a look at them, let me know, I'd be happy to have a second opinion).



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I opted to eat in.. not great... chicken and mashed potatoes. At least it wasn't incredibly greasy. Then I played in Ed Watts' Pulp Action game Saturday night, as Professor Rick Ruthless and his fleet of giant walking metal men. Pretty danged funny game. A tad chaotic.. Ed probably could have used some assistance.

S-182 Sand Seared Rugged Adventures, North Africa, 1930s.
Inter-War;
8 PM;
Length: 4;
Hosted by: Edward Watts;
Scale: 25mm;
Sponsored by: Monday Night Adventurers;
Rules: Rugged Adventures;
No. of Players: 8.
Enigmatic characters, steel visaged Nazis, square jawed heroes and plucky heroines in pursuit of McGuffins mysterious and arcane midst dune and palm tree.
Teens and adults preferred.



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There were some great games run Saturday night. HMGS President Panzeri was running a multi-table, Lewis and Clark thing that I personally found very intriguing. The design was run off a series of random event tables. Here you see some of them being set up.



Some other games being held Saturday:







I then went to the MST3K event hidden in one of the far rooms. I missed the first movie but caught the second.. "Crippled Masters". Hilarious! A guy with no arms joins up with a guy with no legs to become kung fu masters! And they used two memorable actors-- one who was a thalyidomide baby and one who had withered legs as a result of birth defects. They started the movie with prop (real) arms and had the props "chopped off" or "burned away with acid" during the course of the movie. It was pretty over the top funny and perfect faire for MST3K. COuldn't stay awake for anything more, so hit the hay.

Sunday, I was up early and attended the TriaDCon planning meeting. Not much was accomplished, as we only had Mike, Otto and myself attending. One thing we seemed to agree on was that we wouldn't be eager to put on another con without more volunteers stepping forward. The same six guys have done most of the work for the last two, and that is getting old.

So, with that inconclusive note, I nosed my car into traffic heading south, and fall in! was done for another year.

Return to Lilliput, revised rules

After plugging up a few holes in the rules and working out a few inconsistencies, I ran Return to Lilliput again for TriaDCon on Sunday. I only had two players (running two pirates each). I made the map smaller and narrower, and increased the ratio of resources to pirates, and gave the Pirates' feet some more points.



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The game went very well, and played to completeion in a few hours. The rules are coming together very well.

The Tibetan Corpse Racing Olympiad: I had a long pleasant chat with Howard Whitehouse last night. The jockeys are completed. These were the critical element in this game. I have all the other elements to make the game happen now (Yak Carts, Adorable Victorian waifs, riders and tibetan heads, extra skellies for race spoilers).

Expected to land around the time of TRIADCON.

Untitled Russo Polish War game project: A lot of effort has gone into this lately. I have most of my Russian Cavalry army painted up and have just ordered some Litko bases for the entire army (that's everything) of 3mm flat wood, 30 x 40mm. I'm painting up a lot of plastic for this game; there's not much available in metal (that isn't ruinously expensive) I tried out the new Kryolon plastic bonding primer. I'm very impressed! Lots of give and a smooth finish that can take some paint. I also was considering going to Fernando Enterprises to rapidly paint my Russian Revolutionary Naval Infantry, but may go with "Reinforcements by Post" as he offers comparable (low) prices and he actually answers email.

So my preliminary Russian force will be:

8 stands infantry in greatcoat and schlemm hat

8-10 stands of Revolutionary soldiers in old imperial peaked hat (with red badge-- these are HaT figures for Russians in the great war)

16-18 stands cavalry (mostly Orion's Red Cavalry but also Strelets' Mounted Terek Cossacks, which proved a bitch to paint.

I also have a couple of Emhar Mark 5 tanks and the HaT Russian WWI heavy weapons pack.

Return to Lilliputt: Other than picking up some terrain tiles at Cold Wars, this project hasn't had much done for it lately. I have to base up all those 6mm infantry figures and build some paper buildings and a ship model. Then it should be ready for testing.

NOMICA: with the purchase of CCG Maker recently, I've discovered a great way to cheaply make the chaos deck that is such an integral part of this game. The rules are being punched up and I even found some pyramid shapes for the generic objective spots!

Background: this is a project report on RETURN TO LILLIPUT, which is a sequel of sorts to the most memorable chapters of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift. This time the story unfolds with a not-so-nice gang of drunken pirates showing up ten years after the events of the book, and they aren't as nice as Gulliver. The Lilliputians have been working on learning and developing new technology in the Man-Mountain's absence, and now are (roughly) somewhere between Lace Wars and Napoleonics. The human players play individual pirate figures (60mm high Marx recast plastics from Russia). There are 6-9 human players. They move and fight there figures, versus the referee-run "System" which is a chart-based AI for the Lilliputian Army (the lilliputians are 6mm Bacchus, mostly).

The inspiration for this game was an issue of RAGNORAK I read last year. I loved the notion of the game, but wasn't too enthralled with the mechanics, the timeframe and scenario depicted in the article. So I wrote some rules ("Bigguns versus Littluns") and gave it another go with a few key substitutions.

The pirates' goals are to keep their drunk going by raiding wineries and breweries (as a nice historical touch, they start the game at drunk level 9 which makes them fierce fighters but awful marksman, and this heads towards equilibrium as they sober up each turn), raiding food warehouses, and moving to the opposite side of the board to engage the Lilliputian frigate. They have an idea of turning it into a rowboat and wish to capture it intact.

Victory is given by "Panache Points" (plastic pirate money), which isn't conveyed by "achieving objectives" or slaughtering little people, rather it is given for the pirate with the greatest sense of style. Strict Pirate dialogue will be enforced throughout and anyone speaking in 20th century speak will have Panache Points taken away.

Just to demonstrate I occassionally work on some of my crazy schemes, here are some pictures demonstrating work is heading towards the finish line on the Lilliput project. The Bigguns are almost done, just detail work to be done now (and the occassional paint chip to be repaired, this is plastic after all).

Here are two groups of the big pirates, two of them based on those large circular Warhammer style bases. My plan is to paint the edge of the base red and blue to represent the swining range of either hand, and add some stickers to show that the pirate has a shooting or long reach weapon. The pirate with the oar and the pirate with the crutch have long reach weapons. The Captain and the Irish (green coated, red haired) pirate have pistols. The rest have cutlasses of some sort.









The next picture demonstrates the relative sixe difference between the Lilliputian army and the Irish pirate.



The next three pictures demonstrate a technique a modeling colleague showed me. Go to the craft store and by a set of pastel chalk markers for about 3 bucks. Shave the end off with your exacto or (better!) sand it. If you use your exacto, you may have to dice it up a bit like you're about to do a line of blow at Studio 54 or something. Then apply powder lightly to the face and exposed areas that you intend to enhance. You can make figures look more sunburnt, get a five o'clock shadow, or very dirty looking using this method. I recommend it. In the second group of pirates, "Red Jack" in the reddish coat has a sunburn and five oclock shadow.







NOTE: You should seal the faces getting chalk dusted then seal them again afterward, Figures are MARX PIRATES recast by a Russian outfit. Paints are all acrylic from craft stores. The 6mm Lilliputians are a mix of Adler and Bacchus 6mm.
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Gee, Beav, how was HISTORICON?

Disclaimer:I got a phone call from Bill Rutherford tonight, saying that the phrase "Major PP" was considered offensive by readers. Not to any Individual, but to all individuals serving in the Armed Forces with the rank of Major. If you are such an individual, I apologize. "Major PP" is simply a shorthand for "Major HMGS President P." and is meant as a lighthearted nickname, much like how the people on CONSIMWORLD combine my first name and last initial as "Walto". Any inference that is drawn from the confluence of rank and initials is entirely groundless and not meant as a slur on our great nation's many fine majors. To be honest, I was shocked anybody actually reads this thing, and probably didn't think on it very hard. Again, my apologies.

First day (Wednesday)

I got up to HISTORICON Wednesday around 6 PM, in time to help out in the registration area, stuffing program books, schmoozing and saying hi to everyone.
I was a volunteer flunky for John Drye, the HISTORICON director, and did my bit, working here there and everywhere, the same old stuff. Didn't do any gaming the first night, but did partake of the time-honored tradition of getting pissed at the hotel lobby bar with some of my cohorts, which is always a fun time.









I crashed in my hotel room that I purposely requested be in the back of beyond, in a room that reminded of what I would wake up in after a four day drunk in Cleveland. They need to remodel those rooms with a brighter color pattern.. they are quite dark and dank.

Thursday day

Worked a shift doing scut work suited for my flunky status for HISTORICON, which suited me just fine, thankyewverymuch. Got lunch, found a reason to visit the dealer area (har har)... and many hours were lost...



I ended up buying some stuff, notably some keeno FT-17 models from HAT plastics. Unlike the gawdawful RPM(?) models I already have tried to build, these have six (6!) pieces, go together in seconds and look really great. And they are two tanks in the eight dollar kit. I bought two of them, now I have four tank companies.



I also bought a SKIRMISH ELITE book on the Russo-Polish War to support my R-P game I'm working on, to be played with RED ACTIONS.

I visited the Marxman for the FT-17s, and also picked up some big 54mm(ish) plastic guys for that little notional RETURN TO LILLIPUT game I'm working on. Spoke with Steve DeYoung about working on terrain bits for this game and I'm duly impressed. The big 54mm truly look "Gulliverish" compared to Heritage 6mm figures and I think this game will kick ass. I'll take some comparison pics and post them here later. Orignally I was going to select 28mm Victorian figures for the big guys in this game, now I think I'll go with 54mm plastic zulus, indians and such. They are all dressed in loincloths and dancing around madly like they are stomping on little lilliputions. This is going to look great!

Anyway, didn't get into any games Thursday day, and I hung around to make myself available for the Board of Directors for the Great Convention Director's vote-off of 2005. Oh, you don't know about that? That's because I've not mentioned it in public since COLD WARS. Background: I was asked by Fred Hubig, president of HMGS, to be convention director of HISTORICON. I like the HISTORICON show's time of year much better than COLD WARS (which I am in charge of at the moment), for scheduling's sake it's far easier with the family being out of school and such. So I said yes, with enthusiasm. Two weeks later Fred called me on my cell phone at my son's soccer game to inform me that James Mattes (the promotions VP for HMGS) had blocked that appointment and that the decision should be made by the incoming board of directors (voted in between Cold Wars 05 and Historicon), not the VP for CONOPS (Fred). So Fred was rescinding his offer, with the codicil that likely I would be the HISTORICON CD anyway, I had his support, and yadda yadda. I grilled James M. about this and was told that he supported me too, but felt that we needed to canvas for new candidates because we are so thin with directors right now. Fair enough. And in the two or three phone calls I got from Mattes in the following months(!), he acted as if I would be the natural choice for HISTORICON, soliciting inputs for the new historical theme and etc. So now you have the background for Friday night (see below).

Thursday evening

The first night (THU) the board met for several hours and reconsituted itself with new officers in place. This went rather late.

Here's the new line up:

Fred Hubig: President (phew)
Fred Haub: VP Conops (a very quiet guy and kind of shy.. I can work with him)
HMGS President P.: Executive VP
Bill Rutherford: doing the same ol' same ol
Jim Birdseye: Education and Outreach
James Curtis: Treasurer
James Mattes: Communications and Newsletter (moved out of Panzeri's control)

The Convention Directors were not named that night. They all had to wait for his Pete to show up. So I gave up hanging out to give inputs to the BOD and went and got into Norbert Brunhofer's incredibly fun Comin' Aboard, Like It or Not! game. This was a fun, lighthearted ancient naval game in 28mm scale, very much "in yo-face" kind of thing and I had a great time with it.

Later, I hung out on the Veranda with Rick, Paul, Heather, Bill and Mitch. For once, the conversation wasn't about HMGS poltics, and we shot the shit and just yucked it up.

Friday

I had to work Friday in the afternoon, did a bit more shopping in the AM. Found some bitching Elvish glider thingies (a GW product) for dirt cheap in the flea market. They look like they might work in a Martian game, so I picked them up.. all of them.



Friday night, didn't wait to hear from that ol' gang of mine and weaseled my way into Alex and Jen Bagosy's wonderful Tel-El-Kebir game which proved to be a great fight and the natives did their best to cut me to pieces. (RECAP HERE) Here's a pic below to tease you with. My friend, Bill Alderman (from Prezcon) also attended, and we had a delightful time killing things... well, okay, being killed.



In the midst of this Fred Hubig and Bill Rutherford seek me out, and interrupt to tell me they had bad news. The Historicon Director's job had gone to another person, as I suspected was what Mattes was setting up all along (and not without a rather strenuous fight from a lot of concerned parties that demonstrated more how much they didn't like the other candidate rather than feeling conident in my humble abilities, I'm certain).

I shook their hand and told them it was a pretty stupid decision and a shoddy way to treat a volunteer, but it was their own to make and I respected that and would assist the other guy in doing what needed to be done to make Hcon a success.

From a certain party I got the vote counts, which were largely predictable. Pete, James Curtis, James Mattes and Jim Birdseye against. Fred Hubig, Fred Haub and Bill Rutherford for. It turns out that Mattes led the effort to get the other guy elected, based upon testimonials and eye witnesses. Mind you, James is the same "Walt guy" who called me a few times to tell me how much he supported me for the position. The capper: He approached me in the bar later and said: "I really f*cked you on that one, didn't I?" to which I replied, "Yes, you really did, and I won't forget it". We haven't had that follow up conversation yet.

And so, yet again, stayed up but not quite as long and as boozy as the previous couple nights. Off to bed a tad earlier than other days so far. My system appreciated it..

Saturday dawned.

That inevitable Saturday morning torture heaved into view, the HMGS East membership meeting. They introduced the next pack of savvy, motivated types to lead us into the future:


Sans Fred Hubig, who is at the podium, that's (L-R) Pete Panzetti, James Curtis, James Rattes, Jim Birdseye, Fred Haub, and Bill Rutherford. I take some encouragment in the fact that Dr. Jim Birdseye is the same guy who wrote VIKING LOOTERS, which is one of my favorite convention games. That means the guy has to have a sense of humor. (And no, no sour grapes if he didn't vote for a total stranger for Historicon CD.. it's not surprising)

Other than that, it was uneventful and long. The new HISTORICON director hoved up on his hind legs and did a spiel about his convention. He's made one bad staffing choice, but I suspect people will tell him about that.

Worked the convention registration room for a while, and then worked canvassing together a team for COLD WARS 2006, which surpringly went very well:

Convention Director: Walt O'Hara
Convention Assistant Director and Staff Coordinator: Ruth Torres
Staff Hotel Rooms and Assistant Staff Coordinator: Pat Shields
Web Developer: Bill Grey
Vendor Guys: Michael Betts (vendor packets) and Neil Schlaffer (vendor locations and map)
Pre-Registrar: Frank Preziosi
Flea Market: Jim Leflar and company

I'm psyched, this is a good team.

Did a little bit more shopping, buying some fakirs and arab street performers (to go with my CIRCUS WORLD Cheshire family), some Prussian mounted generals (for Prussian-Texas campaign in GASLIGHT). some odds and ends.

Went out to dinner with Bill and Margaret Alderman, after cocktails in their trailer across the street at the campground. We couldn't get in at Dieners diner, and went to a family place in Intercourse (snigger). It was great! I also visited the little kitschy souvenier shop next to Dieners and picked up EVERY in-scale pencil sharpener souvenier golf cart they had, and some neat inscale rowboats.

Bill and Margaret were up on my invitation, working staff diligently and having a great time. Bill was shilling for PREZCON, and I didn't have a problem with that. They dropped me off at the hotel in time to get ready for a game of "Steel Bonnets" courtesy of Lindsey Gauld, an old friend of mine (an very Scottish, so you know where his sentiments were in this one).



(This took place in the back room of the bar, an ideal location considering the beer we were consuming at a rapid pace) SEE THE RECAP HERE.

I didn't witness the legendary Orest Swystun-Rick Etvedt argument that proceeded to shoving match and required hotel security to resolve.. but kind of wished I had, it sounds as if it had lots of entertainment value. It had a slight reprise with Orest repeatedly trying to approach Rick after the fact (after he had been warned off) to either apologize, or get into a heart to heart discussion with. I was just coming back from dinner when this happened, but did catch Orest trying to have a follow on with Rick. Amusing stuff.

Got to speak with Corny Rutherford from the Ren Faire crowd, she is ecstatic about the success of the first two outreach weekends (the Battle Barn guys from Williamsburg and Brian Whitaker and myself). Brian is quite primed to repeat the performance and hornswaggled me into coming along. This time for two weeks. Fine by me, I had a great time doing this event the first time.

Had a very short talk with Bob and his close associate, Neil.. assured him that I pursued the job of HCON director not out of a sense of rancor but because it looked like fun and paid the same big wage as a CW director. It was a positive discussion and we shook hands like gentlemen. We are now pursuing a joint AMISH RAKE FIGHT THREE
project, featuring an assault on the Host itself and the stunning denoument taking place in the lounge on the first floor lobby. I bought the golf carts for this one, as a legion of irate golfers will be the last line of defense for the Host. I am also
acquiring a new figure, THE RATMAN OF LIMEHOUSE, by Copplestone Castings, to represent our newest addition to the pantheon of ARF villains: James Rattes. I'll figure out a way to make him wear a two-color turncoat, in keeping with his namesake's proclivities.

So I'm named COLD WARS 2006 guy officially and for sure, which is something. I'm going do a great job on COLD WARS, and am looking forward to it.

Sunday

Woke up late with a pounding headache (no surprise there, when you hit the sack at close to 3 AM). Deconstructed Otto Schmidt's wonderful display cases, did some final cleanup work at the front desk, browsed the flea, and headed straight home for a long snooze on Sunday night.

Now, there's going to be a follow up photo album, as soon as I post the last of the piccies to my FLICKR account, and a couple of battle reports. So lots of stuff to come yet.

In the meantime, there's some more photos at Miniature Wargames DOT Com, a site I generally don't like because of the many links and commercial content. He is Johnny on the Spot with the photos, however.

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