Well the weekend I waited for for months is over. I got to spend the past two days with Erik at Fall-In. A Historical gaming convention hosted by HMGS:
http://hmgs.site-ym.com/default.asp? at the Lancaster Host Resort in Lancaster, Pa. The theme this year was Poland Through the Ages From Duchy to Republic. For those who have never attended an event like this, there was a massive vendor hall, a flea market area, tournaments, painting classes, seminars, and of course every corner that could fit a table had a mass assortment of games you could sign up to play.
In the past few years, we've attended events held by HMGS but we've only ever gone down for a day and that was mainly to spend lots of money. This year we decided to hit it Friday and Saturday, and as the location was only a little over an hour away we decided to drive back and forth instead of getting a room (more money for shiny stuff). Let me start of by saying that HMGS is run by a great group of people and for what they have at their fingertips, they do a great job of hosting an event. One of the big downfalls to only going one day is you can't preregister for day passes. Which usually results in standing in a line Saturday morning waiting to get in. This year, since we were going for two days, we preregistered which allowed us to preregister for any games we wanted. As we wanted to spend time walking around and looking a list of game systems I settled on one I'd like to play. I thought it was a Brother Against Brother game for ACW using 28mm (It turned out to be something else, but I'll get into that later). Erik had a Battle Star Galactica game he wanted to check out along with the BaB game. So we were registered and waited for the big day.
We got there Friday at around 0930 and was able to walk right in and get our badges. Erik was on the fence of whether he wanted to sit in on the BSG game. Which, luckily, we found out when we got there that it was canceled as the GM couldn't make it last minute. So we decided we would spend the morning walking around checking out games since the Vendor hall didn't open until 1200 and the flea market opened at 2:00. Most games were just setting up, but I was able to get eyes on a few games I've been reading up on and it was pretty cool getting to see the terrain and figures ranging in anything from 6mm historicals to 28mm gnome wars and zombie apocalypse games. I was able to snap a few photos, but didn't go crazy. Below are the three that had my attention the most. Especially Sailpower. We got to talk to the guy who created the game and get a free quick reference guide on how it plays out. Maybe if we play test a game I'll write up a post about it.
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| 15mm WWII: Fireball Forward |
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| 15mm ACW: Johny Reb III |
After walking around the gaming rooms we decided to grab a bite to eat before the vendor hall opened. After fueling up we spent a few hours walking around the vendor hall. Most vendors I recognized from previous years, but there were a few new ones. What surprised me the most was there weren't a whole lot of "sales" going on. There were a few that were offering 10% or "buy so much get this free". But what surprised me was that most of the bigger retail places were selling at MSRP. All in all, there was a good mix of shiny things and was happy with my purchases. Once we were done there, we hit up the flea market. Lot's of tables with a mix of everything. Last year I was able to walk away with some pretty cool stuff. I had trouble finding gems this year and ended up walking away with a few blisters of FoW. After a few more laps around the market and walking through to check out what tournaments were going on. We decided we had enough fun and began the trek home.
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| Tournament/Flea market Hall |
Saturday we were back at it again. Since we weren't expecting to leave until around midnight we got a "later start" and got there around 10:00. We had a table reserved in the flea market starting at 2:00 with a 1:15 set up and a shut down of 5:00. So we decided to do a recon of the vendor hall real quick since they shut down at 6:00 and we wanted to make sure we knew exactly what stands to go to to spend our newly acquired cash from the market sales. Before we hit that we swung in to make sure we were still good for our games. As this was the first year signing up for games, we didn't realize that the game we pre-registered for were also on our badge. When Erik preregistered, he had clicked an extra game he didn't want to play. The problem is there is no way to uncheck it unless you close completely out. So he contacted the site and explained what happened. When we went to go check on our games, we soon found out that they had canceled him for the wrong game. On top of it we had somehow missed that the time period was for AWI not ACW. Although the ruleset and scale was something that we were interested in (we play BaB at 1/72nd scale) the time period didn't interest either of us. Since the game was booked and we weren't sure if he was even going to be able to play, we made the decision that there was no point sticking around for it. So with that disappointing find, we shot over to the hall. After scoping out the hall we shot over to the market to see if we could find anything in the morning session. Sadly again, I came up empty handed. We took a quick lunch break and it was time to get ready for the market. I quickly met up with a buddy of mine who was selling me some Bolt Action figs (the white ones in the swag picture below) and then we hauled in our merchandise. I ended up only have a few boxes/blisters to sell. I was hesitant to really go through all of my minis because I didn't want to load the table with misc stuff. After walking through and seeing what sold, I wish I would have. I ended up making some small cash and Erik got rid of the majority of his stuff. We decided to call it quits at 4:00 so we could spend more time at the hall. I was able to do a quick round one more time in the flea market and found some guys selling the Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens and figured they'd be fun to add to my zombie collection. After a few more laps and making sure I didn't come home with any money
All in all it was a great time as always. We got to check out some new games, meet some new people, along with catching up with some friends, and was able to grab everything I "needed" along with some other stuff. Below are my obligatory swag pictures, but here's a quick run down of my shiny things:
X-wing - Slave 1, Millennium Falcon, Tie Interceptor, A-wing, Mist Hunter
Fow - Italian 47/32, 90/53's, 3-ton trucks, Add to dictionary, and my 105mm Vietnam guns
Bolt Action - Axis book, template and dice, Finnish MMG, Pak 3, Medium mortar, and a box of misc troops
Misc- Scenic express summer tufts, measuring stick, LOTS of 28mm lazer cut fencing, zombie vixens, Blue Moon walkers, and some Heroclix
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| Friday Swag |
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| Saturday Swag |
- Justin
