Historicon : American Adventure Days Five and Six

WOW ...............I am now sat in a Mexican restaurant in Fredricksburg reflecting back on two pretty full days at  Historicon. This might be a long post😬 But I will share some of the other photos separately and there is still another half day to go. So my first reflection is Historicon is not for the feint hearted but I hope I have thrown myself in sufficiently to get the whole experience. For those that don't know American Wargaming shows are completely different to shows in the UK. Gamers get together to play rather than watch.

People putting on games (Gamesmasters) put in a vast amount of effort to run games for other people frequently 6 to 8 but up to a lot.....complete strangers  to play games which last anything from 3 to lots of hours. These start at 8am and run well after I went to bed ! The traders / vendors make up perhaps 25% of the show, and certainly at Historicon they run a series of quite large competitions including Fow etc..... And there is a bring and buy although I have to say this was pretty disappointing and mainly full of mini traders.

It is really the games that people play that make it...........I didn't see a demonstration game all weekend ! In the two days I played three games ...actual gaming time about 14 hours !!!!!!! I deliberately chose things which I didn't know or would normally experience....by some luck I picked three fantastic games.

I found pretty much everybody friendly and clearly not many people either see or meet non-US gamers so people were interested to find out what the wargaming scene was like in UK.

First up the battle of Koniggratz in 6 mm with Bruce Weigle a beautiful game, some of you may recognise his terrain/games which has featured in several magazines. The game used his own rules for a massive Prussian Vs Austrian 19th battle. I commanding the 5th Corps and Guards in a flank attack.

Second a 20 mm WW2 game, using Battlegroup Kursk rules, a 1943 Russian front battle hosted by a young guy Nick Wooster. A really fun game and a set of rules I might purchase in the future.

My third game was another massive game this time ECW 1642 Edgehill and my first taste of Carnage and Glory, a game hosted by the authors of the rules/ system Nigel Paul Marsh.

I will share some pictures of some of the other games separately.