ETMW Games Day, October 2025

Aerodrome WW2

I ran the sixth East TN Miniature Wargaming Games Day last Saturday. The full schedule can be found here. Tracking attendance is a bit rough, since there is no registration and it takes place in a store, but I counted 40 people who at least showed up just to interact with the event. There were eleven games played, including an ad hoc Necropolis 28 game late in the day. That definitely makes it our largest event so far, and people travelled from Morristown, Chattanooga, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Incredibly, after two years of this, I'm still meeting pockets of uncontacted miniature gamers. I feel like an anthropologist!

Mah boy gets Gutshot!

IMG_1648, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Three Rivers Con is an occasional local convention which is mostly devoted to role playing. I've been meaning to make it to one, but something always seems to come up! This year, a small window opened up between soccer games and family obligations for me to take Number One Son to the show. It wasn't just the show, but Mik was running Gutshot with Flounder's assistance. Flounder has run this several times for us, yet I had never been able to make one of the games, so I was actually pretty excited about playing in it! Mik borrowed my Whitewash City buildings, but used Lego cowboys. This was a hoot, especially since Number One Son is also a Lego fan. We were given two Gutshot character sheets at random, and then took turns assembling our characters! It was more fun than I expected.

Back From Fall-In!

Mik and I are back from Fall-In! I had some concerns that, after having been to Historicons and Cold Wars, the smaller Fall-In! might not be worth the time and cost to get up to. We drove almost 600 miles to get there. Despite being somewhat smaller, it was definitely worth it, though. I can't go to more than one a year, and that one would tend to be Historicon, but Fall-In! was fun.

I went content in my hobbiness and not really looking for anything new, just hoping to pick up some bargains. Yet I started two new periods! Actually, I have been on the verge of "big game hunting" for prehistoric mammals or dinosaurs since Historicon 2009 when I picked up the Tooth and Claw rules. My nine year old son is a big prehistoric animal fan-- much more so than the WW2 games I've subjected him to. Plus Mik bought some Primaeval Designs Neanderthals and other figures. So, what the heck, I bought two packs of Neanderthal hunters and two woolly mammoths. Only on the drive home did I realize I now had just about everything I needed for Tusk!

My son has also been reading a lot about Romans. Plus, he and his older sister have been painting a bit for me. So I was already thinking about getting some plastic Romans for him to paint. However, in the flea market, I picked up something like 150 Wargames Factory ancient Germans and 40 or so Warlord Games Romans. I have no clue what I'm going to do with that many figures. Ah well. He will not run out of things to paint anytime soon, and hopefully it will be great practice for him.

One of the coolest things I saw at the con was the use of flickering LEDs for fire markers. They would be tucked away inside a rather traditional puff of cotton smoke, and really looked good. I ordered 12 from Amazon, determined to make my own. Only later did I realize how cool they would look as fire markers in a 25mm Tusk game!

I now have my Neanderthals glued and based, and my Woolly Mammoths assembled, waiting for time with the kids to get painting on them. Prehistoric big game hunting and ancient Romans will largely be "with kids" painting. This will allow me to continue to focus on 15mm WW2, while also giving me incentive to spend more time painting with the kids. At their current rate of $2.00/hr, it's cheaper than having Sri Lankan children paint!

Theft at Historicon

Conquest Miniatures is reporting a theft of a display miniature during Historicon-- take a look and see if you can help find it.

Historicon is now a holiday!

So, at work, I'm given eight scheduled holidays and two floating holidays to be used at my convenience. I used them for my Historicon trip, thus officially making Historicon a holiday!

More Historicon Pictures

I got the rest of my Historicon pictures uploaded. I'm back home now and tired, having gotten a couple of months worth of gaming in during a weekend!

Fri and Sat Pictures

I'm uploading these now. I'll probably have them up Monday morning.

Historicon 2009 Was Awesome

So, yet another Historicon has (mostly) gone by, and I have to say, I had a great time. Think what you like about HMGS East, about the only way they actually effect me is in how they run their cons, and so far, I think they have done a great job. There was a lot of complaining about the move to Baltimore next year. I don't know-- the host is a bit of a dump, but it has a nice atmosphere. I really take it for granted that we'll be able to drink beer at our games for Historicon, and it sounds like we won't next year. That will affect a lot of people's enjoyment. No more coolers (or mini kegs!) at the game tables. The free kegs on Friday night might have been a bit much-- I heard one guy was found passed out on some stairs and the police were called in-- but they were still appreciated. Anyway, 2009 ranks up there as a great con for me.

Goodnight

Too drunk to upload pics tonight...spent the night drinking with Piquet and Wargames Factory guys...g'night...

Historicon Pictures

Here are the Historicon 2009 pictures I've taken. I'll update them in the evenings as I get more. I also made a little video of the vendor hall.

Historicon AAR

Okay, I finally got around to typing up my experiences from this year's Historicon. Summary: I had a firkin' blast.

NecromundaCon 2006

The official results [3Mb PDF] of NecromundaCon '06 have been posted.

Necromundacon 2006

Yesterday was Necromundacon 2006! For a buddy's birthday, we got together four guys (three of which still play regularly) from our Necromunda league 10+ years ago, along with two others, and played sixteen games of Necromunda over about thirteen hours yesterday.

The Best Looking Games at Historicon

Here are pictures of what I thought were some the best looking games at Historicon. There were a lot of really impressive games, but these really stuck out for me.

Eat Hitler!

Eat Hitler: The Nazi Taste Treat! was Howard Whitehouse's fun little game. Hitler and his insiders have built a time machine in '45. They're going back to '33 to do it all over again, but right this time. Only the time machine malfunctions, and sends the Nazis back to the Mesozoic Era! The dinosaurs instinctively know that these Nazis must be eaten! Players got points based on the seniority of the Nazi they ate, from goon to Hitler and in between.

Chain Reaction

On Saturday, I also played in a intro Chain Reaction game. I've got the rules and could tell that there was some value in them, but frankly they are so poorly written that learning from the book is too much trouble to deal with. Bob, the guy running this event, seemed to have pretty much the same idea, and was running two simultaneous teaching games. I totally forgot to take pictures of the game, but I ran a squad of inter-war US Marines against some Central American militia. I guess I got so into learning the rules, and really having a blast playing them, that I didn't even think to snap pictures. I did take one of his groovy dice tower. Anybody have one of these for sale?

AK-47 with Peter Pig

First thing Saturday morning, I made for an AK-47 game with Martin and his wife from Peter Pig. I've got a ton of figures from Peter Pig and really like them. I never really got into the AK-47 rules. I got them and read them years ago, and pretty much dropped them, although I thought the political flow chart system was genius, and have used the rules for bringing on troops in other games. Anyway, I didn't want to pass up a chance to learn from the master, so to speak, and I thoroughly enjoyed the game and anticipate running it locally.