Final Thoughts on Historicon 2016

I've just finished going through my notes preparing records for my own Glorious Obsession. It is impossible for me to do a write up on every game we ran, but I wanted to highlight some of the action.

First of all, hats off to Captain Murray who had to be the most active officer on the table. He was killed in game one by an errant shot (Event Card) that caused the rout of the Williamite center on the last turn of the game, fought a personal duel on the crest of the Pennyburn Bridge and killed General Maumont in game two, led a charge that recaptured a lost standard in game three, 'rescued' General Maumont's Mistress from the Jacobite camp and led the most decisive win of the week in game five with a victory called after eight turns (out of ten), and got caught up in a retreat and drowned in a bog in game seven. He personally led multiple cavalry charges. His first squadron was ALWAYS the first over the bridge in the assault and were routed or destroyed in every game except one. His second squadron fared slightly better and managed to survive four games, but suffered capture in game two. Bull's cavalry suffered serious casualties as well, but not in the spectacular fashion of Murray's!

Lord Grand Priors's battalion fought well. They were deployed near the bridge and had to withstand multiple cavalry charges almost every game. They managed to capture colors from both of Murray's squadrons in game two.

The Kestrel proved to be an entertaining part of the scenario. The effectiveness of the guns varied depending on the skill of the players with maneuvering in the current, but it did reduce a scratch squadron of Jacobite horse to a bloody smear at near point blank range in one game. We had a boarding action once when Jacobite troops launched a small boat to pursue the ship. Another game featured a waterborne 'sniper' duel when a lone soldier (his partner fell overboard) spent the session picking off crew men. Near the end of the game, the captain became so alarmed at the losses that they turned loose a full broadside at the little boat... by turn ten the launch was sinking, but the sniper managed to paddle to shore!

Besides all of the enthusiastic gamers at our table, I had a lot of fun hanging out 'after hours' with people I had only really conversed with online, including Dan Faulconbridge and Dave Taylor.

So how was the rest of Historicon? Well, I don't really know. I didn't get away from our table often. There was a few grumbles about registration (which I think I avoided as a GM who checked in Wednesday night), but for the most part everyone I talked to seemed to be having a good time. I've seen other negative comments that it was too hot in the main hall (which I never noticed), a funny smell (besides the great smell of hot dogs grilling near by, again I didn't notice) or there weren't as many people (several dealers I spoke with said their sales were up). I guess I was just having too much fun...

It was also great to get to hang out with my partner in crime (photo above the only proof I've seen that we were BOTH at the table - from Thomas Grove). We've only been in the same city twice in the ten years we've been working together so it was good to be able to sit down and share a beer (well. ok lots of beers). I honestly don't know if we'd get anything accomplished that didn't including toy soldiers if we lived on the same continent...

Historicon Sunday

Whew! Seven games in four days!

DID THEY NOT SEE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE

FIRST TWO SQUADRONS THAT CROSSED THE BRIDGE?

RIPARIAN ENTERTAINMENTS

THE GENERALS RESOLVE A GAME TOO CLOSE TO CALL

WITH A SPIRITED GAME OF BLACKJACK

SEVEN GAMES WASN'T ENOUGH!

BARRY AND I FIGHT IT OUT TO SEE

WHO PAYS FOR DINNER!

(I think he cheated)

I am sooooo going to get it when Hilton gets back to a computer. He will be plotting his revenge on the entire flight back to Scotland. You'll have to keep an eye out over the LoA blog...

It was fun to get the chance to run Beneath the Lily Banners for so many great wargamers. I'll have more over the next few weeks...

Historicon Saturday

Three days, six games...

CAPTAIN MURRAY AND THE LADS

'YOUR OTHER PORT!'

THE PENNYBURN MILL

'... AND THEN I THROTTLED HIM!'

So far we've had four victories for the Jacobites and two for the Sons of Derry, though I think the later had the most decisive win, causing the game to be called on turn 8 out of 10. Now I'm off to bed as I was out drinking with Scotsmen and Canadians!

One more game tomorrow... err... later today now... oh, dear!

Historicon Friday

Two more great games, but one sequence stood out...

CAPTAIN MURRAY, THE COMMANDER OF SALLIES,

LEADS A RAID ON THE JACOBITE CAMP...

... 'RESCUES' THE DOXY...

... AND DELIVERS HER TO THE PASTOR

TO LEARN THE ERROR OF HER WAYS!

YES, NOW WE NEED TO CALL HIM 'SIR BARRY'

Yes, they gave him a medal. Yes, he may be insufferable for a bit. Yes, I think he made that face just to mess with you... I think.

Seriously, congratulations on being inducted into the HMGS Legion of Honor. Barry has produced decades of amazing games under the League of Augsburg title and is deserving of the recognition. His work has inspired many of us.

Of course, pal, I'll be back to making fun of you tomorrow...

Historicon Thursday

I'll write some full reports after the show, but wanted to throw up a couple of quick shots...

JACOBITES DEFENDING THEIR... ERR... CAMP...

WELL, WE DON'T REALLY KNOW THE RULES EITHER.

CAPTAIN MURRAY LEADS THE SALLY!

THEY SAID WE HAD TO CAPTURE THE BRIDGE!

Fantastic day. Had a great dinner out. Interest was so high we decided to run a SECOND game Thursday night. Off to bed because it's now tomorrow and I have to be up around 0630... I'll make more sense on the next post (maybe).

Packing List for Historicon

Inspired by Miles from Lair of the Uber Geek, I thought I'd add a quick post on the list of everything I need to pack for Historicon. He and I followed similar paths this spring and summer, documenting all of the preparations for our games so I thought I might as well keep up the trend.

Terrain
Two 4x4' Game Boards
Island (an old GW hill that sets on the water)
Bridge, Windmill, and Barn
Pennyburn Mill Sign
Assorted Walls and Fences
Trees
Wheat Field
Pier
Tents, Crates, and Other Assorted Camp Gear

Jacobites
Three Commanders
Three Battalions of Foot
Two Regiments of Horse
Three Detachments of Foot
Light Gun

Derry
Three Commanders
One Battalion of Foot
Three Regiments of Horse
Three Detachments of Foot

Other Models
Assorted Civilians and Livestock

Boats
Small Cutter w/Crew and Two Guns
Three Launches

Game Stuff
Two Beneath the Lily Banners Books
Six sets of QRS
Unit Cards
Unit Roster Sheets
Player Handouts
Dice (D6's and D10's)
Two Tape Measures
Order Markers
Condition Markers
Wheeling Templates

Display Stuff
Table Cloth
Signs for the Table
     Quindia Studios
     League of Augsburg
     Beneath the Lily Banners
Business Cards for Blogs
     Quinda Studios
     League of Augsburg
Uniform Guides
     Battle of the Boyne
     Siege of Derry

Other Stuff
Super Glue
Pens, Pencils, and Markers
Wedges (in case of uneven tables)
Notebook
Camera, Lenses, and Charger
iPad (not likely to forget this) and charger (might have forgotten this)

Co-GM
Barry Hilton (must remember to pick him up at the airport tomorrow)

Somehow I need to save room for a suitcase and one for Mr. Hilton as well! The good news is that everything has already been checked and rechecked and packed in their boxes. All I need to do is load up the SUV (and make sure not leave any boxes... maybe I need to make another checklist).

Right! Heading out tomorrow after lunch. I promise to take tons of photos and keep my camera with me between games to try and get some shots from other tables. I am hoping to find time to visit other games and stroll through the vendor sections, but I only have a two-hour window between games on Friday and Saturday during most of the action.

Can't wait!

Last Notes on Preparation for Historicon

Ok, Historicon is next week! The only thing I have left to do is paint the edges of the boards (working on them tonight) and paint four models for the crew of the Kestrel. Everything else is ready. The Hilton invasion has even begun (no need to hide your wives and children as he brought his own... mind your fruity drinks though). I am due to pick him up in Richmond next Wednesday, but he will be rampaging around Florida until then.

The theme for Historicon is Cavalry, Mounted Warfare Through the Ages. Barry left the subject of the game to me and I chose the Battle of Pennyburn Mill because the encounter featured lots of the dashing cavaliers. Some of my existing forces were pressed into service which was fine because we don't know most of the uniforms from that part of the period. However, once we started working on the uniform books, it became apparent that the mounted forces of Derry probably didn't have many uniformed cavalry and one of the two Jacobite formations involved was a scratch company made up of men gathered quickly by their officers.

This bothered me. We were going to be presenting the game with copies of the uniform plates at the table and all of my horse were smartly arrayed. It wouldn't really matter but it still bothered me. I had units with red coats and units in grey and tried mixing the stands. That helped a bit. Early during playtesting, I pressed some of my ECW cavalry into service to make up numbers while I was still painting and the boxes were still in the game room and as I sat staring at the array of horsemen I hit upon the cunning plan...

Ok, there are a few anachronistic bits, but individuals still provided their own gear at this stage of the war and it is not unreasonable to assume some turn up with kit from the ECW. While I would have liked to field four regiments of motley civilians, the effect I was able to achieve does the job. Hell, they most likely didn't carry standards either, but I reserved that bit of realism for the scratch Jacobite unit. The flags were necessary for identifying the units on the wargame table and besides, they look better!

Also, here is Lord Galmoy's regiment - another commission painted by Rob Goodyear of Polymath Workshop and based by me to match the rest of the collection. Like the commanded shot from last week, this unit is for sale at the show. Come see us at the table to ask about the price.

We will be featuring some new Order Markers and Condition Markers in the games. There will be a limited number of sets available from Le Roi Soleil, the official US dealer for Warfare Miniatures who will be in attendance. I designed these, but my brother Dennis is the one who actually produced them. We are still exploring the possibilities of having access to a laser cutter...

Finally, besides our six games, Barry is hosting two seminars...

Friday 6:00-7:30p
Decisive Results on the Table Top. How to plan and execute table top refights of large historical battles while reaching a decisive conclusion within the available time.

Saturday 5:00-6:00p
Why are Wargames Light on Cavalry? A look at mounted troops across history and the part they could play in table top games. Learn about the assembly, organization and use of cavalry components in wargaming, with special emphasis on the 1680s-1815.

Mr Hilton was inducted into the HMGS Legion of Honor last year and sometime on Friday will receive his award during a brief ceremony as well. I'm not sure this is a public event, but thought it was worth mentioning. The HMGS Legion of Honor was established by the HMGS Chapter Board in 1995 specifically to provide a means by which the recipient of the Society's lifetime achievement award, the Jack Scruby Award, might be chosen every other year. As such it was thought that members of the Legion should also be chosen for their distinguished service to the hobby if they were to act as electors for such an important process.Thus today the Legion acts as a self-electing honor society that not only decides the Scruby recipient, but also serves as a source of inspiration and achievement to which all miniature hobbyists might aspire. I can think of no more deserving wargamer.

Right, so that's it! I'll try to post a few times during the show, but our schedule is fairly heavy with games until 6pm every day. We also need to pack everything away every night because there are no secure storage facilities at the hall for GM's. By the time there's been dinner and drinks, I may be too knackered to fiddle around getting photos uploaded and tap out something coherent, but we'll see. We will definitely take lots of photos and have full reports of the event afterwards.

I am really looking forward to this - See you there!

New Lenses for my Camera

Ok, I couldn't resist. I wasn't going to post any more photos, but I got a couple new lenses (birthday present from my cats - they are very generous) for my camera and took a pile of pics getting used to them. It seemed a shame to let them go to waste!

The Pennyburn Mill

Just some of the defenders of Derry (ironically the attackers in this game)

An Irish bog

A pleasant morning on the Foyle

A quick note on the last photo... there was no naval support in the historical attack on the Pennyburn Mill, but there were encounters on the River Foyle during the siege. I wanted to add another element to the wargame and take advantage of some of the new rules we will present in the upcoming scenario book (yes, it IS coming...). The Kestrel will be armed with a pair of light naval guns to give a bit of artillery cover to the Derry assault, though the range will be limited to about half of the table.

I suppose mentioning the new lens above, someone who cares about such things is probably shouting at their computer, "What was the lens?" I've had a Canon Rebel XSI for about ten years now and always used the 18-55mm lens that came with the kit. It's been a great unit and I've mastered the art of taking shots of single models, individual units, and relatively close action shots. What I've always struggled with is long shots with sharp focus across the entire depth of field. I also have to set up a very complicated light array in my game room to get photos with enough light to stop the camera from needing overlong exposure and often resulting in blurred shots.

Without going into a pile of technical detail, which I don't really know all that well anyway, the shots above were taken with an EF 50mm f/1.8 STM. It is ridiculously cheap for a camera lens (I think it was $100). It only has a single level of zoom fixed at 50mm, so you need to move the camera around to compose your shot, but that's not much of an issue with miniature photography. All of the shots above lack any post production on the computer except for a small amount of color correction with a cool filter to remove a bit yellow caused by the light from the room. I could have corrected that by setting the white balance on the camera, but I didn't bother for these. They probably could have used a bit of post, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. No complicated lighting (only the overhead of the room and a window), sharp focus all the way across the shot, and almost zero post production - very happy with this lens!

I'll talk about my other new lens, a Canon 10-18mm at some future time, but it also has great capacity for shooting under less than ideal light conditions. I'll still be carrying my original too, but now I will give the illusion of being much more professional as I pretend to carefully consider the correct lens for the shot!

Ok, that really is it. There will probably still be a few pics for units I haven't shown yet and maybe another post on the game in general as the time draws near.

Historicon 2016

Only a month to go! Here are the last two brigadiers needed for our game at Historicon...

Captain Adam Murray of Derry...

General Maumont, French general in the employ of the Jacobites...

Like most of the models in this period, these gentlemen may serve for many different characters in the future...

Historicon 2016

Work is winding down on preparations for our Historicon game. I still have two squadrons to paint which will be the work of a few weeks. I have a couple of brigadiers to paint, a few small terrain bits to add, and I still have a 2x2' section of the board to finish, but I took time out last week to dig into the little extras that add an extra layer of detail (and fun) to a tabletop game...

First up, to the left is a sign for the famous Penny Burn Mill. The graphics for the sign was produced on the computer and I glued it to a thin sheet of balsa and built a frame around the face with more strips of wood. The base is a pair of washers filled with green stuff that I sunk the post into. The result is very bottom heavy and difficult to tip over without a substantial bump!

Next up are civilians - I think these are all Foundry models, but I may be mistaken as they came out of one the numerous bins I have stored around and were not purchased recently. It's fun to break up all of the rank and file with a few colorful characters, speaking in this case of their personalities rather than the hue of their clothes! The first is a shepherd and his flock. There is a quiet corner of the table where I happen to know no models should be entering and little scenes like this add life to the table... and maybe if Barry and I get bored, the flock turns into roaming rough terrain!

The second set of stalwarts is the miller (of Penny Burn Mill) and his bully boys. Where do the big man's loyalties lie - with James or Billy? Again they might not amount to more than scenery or they could be up to no good and it may change from game to game as we are running the thing six times over the course of the convention. I suspect no two games will end up the same!

If I run out of things to do, I may add a few more characters to add to the confusion...

There are two camps on the Jacobite table edge. I have a pile of tents that would work fine on their own to delineate the camps, but that's a bit boring. It's much more interesting to strew a bit of detritus around as well. Like the civilians above, I'm not sure where the crates were from, possibly Tabletop World, but the wagon is from Warfare Miniatures. It's also no accident that the wagon is based exactly the same size that I need for the artillery park of one gun in Beneath the Lily Banners! The baggage might end up as tempting targets for the Williamite Horse, possibly even over the objections of their officers.

The next vignette is a pair of sappers, hard at work to fortify the Jacobite position. The models are from Dixon (which fit in great with the Warfare Miniature range, BTW, while we're waiting for Barry to commission some). These models have no use in the game (that I of know of yet) and are meant to be another part of the camp scenery. The base will make a great marker for engineers in future games of Beneath the Lily Banners.

There's more, but we'll save some details for Historicon... Not long now!

Historicon 2016

The table is still a work in progress, but it's almost there! Online registration is now open for Historicon 2016. As loyal readers know, Barry Hilton and I will be running a BLB game many times over the course of the event...

Commander of Sallies: The Battle of Pennyburn Mill

Thursday 1300-1700
Friday 0800-1200
Friday 1400-1800
Saturday 0800-1200
Saturday 1400-1800
Sunday 1000-1400

Embarrassingly, the presenter is listed only as Clarence Harrison because I registered for the table and they tell me that's how it works. Barry is ignominiously listed as Assistant GM! I think we all know how the ranks are arrayed when it comes to running BLB games (six games is probably more than I played in all of 2015).

No need to avenge the slight, for I'm going throw out a teaser in that Barry Hilton will also be a Guest of Honor for Historicon 2016! Breaking news because it's not up on the site and I'll let him tell you more about that when the time is right.

So if you are planning to make the trip to Historicon this year (July 14-17) and want to sign up to participate in our game, head over to the HMGS page and register before all of the slots are full!
GO, GO, GO!

Earl of Tyrconnel's Regiment of Horse

I've managed to finish another unit for my 1690 project, the Earl of Tyrconnel's Regiment of Horse!

I actually have plans to expand this unit to three squadrons so I guess it's not truly finished (no model army ever is), but it was painted at this time to also serve for Captain Adam Murray's unit in our Historicon game. You can see more pics of this unit (with different flags) at the League of Augsburg blog! Parker's Regiment in white coats is up next (masquerading as another defender of Derry for Historicon).

Piers Butler, Lord Galmoy

I've been painting lots of Warfare Miniatures for the Battle of Penny Burn Mill and the units are coming along nicely, but I realized I needed more brigadiers! I am currently wading through two squadrons of Captain Murray's Horse, but I thought I'd treat myself to a quick project and paint up a Jacobite commander - namely Piers Butler, Lord Galmoy.

I drew inspiration from Barry's version and game him a buff coat before realizing I painted General Hamilton in a similar manner not long ago. No matter - I think every other officer I've painted so far has a red coat so two buff coats in my collection will hardly be a majority.

Murray's horse up soon...

The Earl of Clancarty's Regiment of Foot

Yet another unit for my collection and our game for Historicon 2016, the Earl of Clancarty's regiment. Research said Clancarty's regiment had white or blue cuffs. I chose white because of the many other regiments they could stand in for with a flag swap. Just a quick scroll through the BLB rule book revealed Orkney's, Lord Grand Prior's, Ramsay's, Earl of Angus', and the Scot's Footguard!

One of the joys I take in this hobby is creating conversions. There is a satisfaction in fielding a unit with a unique model that appears in no one else's army. I usually concentrate these efforts in command models and Clancarty's officer was the focus of my efforts here.

This dashing gentleman was made from a Warfare Miniatures' foot officer, a cuirass equipped cavalry officer (let's ignore the question as to whether or not any foot officers still wore a cuirass), the judicious application of a jeweler's saw, and a bit of green stuff. It was actually a simple conversion owing to the careful selection of the original models.

I cut the horseman below the sash to minimize the amount of sculpting I need to do. I filed the waist attached to the legs to give the new torso a slight lean forward for a hint of action.

The sword arm was from a Warfare cavalryman, but filed a bit at an angle to throw the arm a little to the right rather than straight ahead, which seemed a more dynamic pose. The minimal amount of green stuff needed to hide the joins was easily sculpted into the lowest fold of the sash and folds of the coat and the paint job hid the rest.

Next up will be two squadrons of Captain Adam Murray's Irish Horse...