Warcon 2020 images

Edit 10 Feb: some more pictures on https://miniwargamers.blogspot.com/2020/02/a-wargames-show-in-belgium.html .

I just returned from Warcon 2020 today. It's a nice little convention in the Belgian calendar, and there are lots of opportunities to talk to old and new gaming friends.

We ran our toy soldier game (more on that in a next post), which was quite a success in terms of playtesting.

I didn't buy too much stuff - for some reason there was nothing really that struck my fancy, although I have to say I didn't hit the Bring and Buy when it just opened, and only went to look when most of the stuff was already gone - or so it seemed. Someone told me later there was a Citadel Imperial Dragon for sale - don't know whether that's true, but anyway, one cannot buy everything ;-)

Here are some images of the games, in no particular order.

Imaginations in 42mm (19)

This weekend at Warcon we will run our 42mm Imaginations game. I finished 2 additional units for each side, one side getting 2 extra infantry regiments, the other army 1 infantry and 1 cavalry regiment. I still have an infantry and a cavalry unit on the painting table, but these will not be finished in time. I still need to finish two buildings.

So, what will the game look like? I am trying to aim for a more simple, stylized, toy-like look. That means a green (gridded) cloth for the terrain, some simple trees, and I decided to unearth my old Geohex hills (they haven't seen a gaming table for a long, long time ...).

The scenario is based on a traditional Charles Grant table top teaser. Both sides approach from oppositie banks towards a river, there are 6 possible fords (only 2 of which are fordable, unknown and selected at random), and the winner has to control both fords by the end of the wargaming day.The dynamic of the scenario is such that both sides probably want to find out the exact location of the fords first, and depending on their location, will develop a plan for crossing the river and try to secure a bridgehead. I have played this scenario in various settings before, and always gives some good games.

General overview of the table. Two buildings are still missing.

Another look.

New cavalry unit for Green. Figures are semiflat homecast Schneider figures (I didn't cast them, I acquired them like this :-)).

New infantry unit for Green. Figures are also from Schneider. The paper flag is handpainted, and fits in with the other infantry flags.

A new infantry unit for Blue. Figures are Schildkröt. The paper flag is handpainted. The Blue army is a more "modern" army, and hence the more modern flag design.

Another new infantry unit for Blue. Figures are again Schildkröt.

A look from the Blue side.

... and from the Green side.

Imaginations in 42mm (18)

I scribbled together a rulesheet.

The basic building blocks of the system:
- gridded playing field;
- units of 8 infantry or 4 cavalry (I had played with the idea of units of 4 inf and 2 cav before, but larger units look better)
- every turn the player rolls for command points to be spend on a timetrack (see this earlier blogpost to explain the concept)
- damage is only resolved when a unit is activated, thus creating a level of uncertainty about the effect of fire
- damage can result in various status changes: less firing, less movement, more command points needed, ... rather than removing figures.

Imaginations in 42mm (17)

I finally painted one of the buildings I acquired some time ago.

Technically, they are a too small for the figures, but I think they go well visually with the 42mm toy soldiers.

Imaginations in 42mm (16)

I decided to add a few units to my 42mm imaginations armies for the Warcon conference, 4 weeks from now. My main forces are composed of Irregular Miniatures (Balkan range), but over the years I have amassed toy soldiers through 2nd hand sales, so those are a good source for putting together some additional units. The generals I painted up for both armies also came from this pool of figures.

I keep these figures in several drawers. You can see there is quite some variation in style, but 2 ranges seem to stuck out: SchildKröt and Schneider. Both were sold as homecast kits, so the quality of the actual soldiers is variable.

 

Since I seem to have quite a lot of Schildkröt figures, these seem like a good candidate to make some additional units from:

But also the Schneider figures can be formed in a nice unit:

Of course, I still will have to (re)paint them. Two cavalry units are already on my painting desk. We'll see whether I find the time to complete them all.

Imaginations in 42mm (15)

Within a few weeks we will run a game at Warcon, using the imaginations 42mm figures.

So far, my initial experiments were based on using the Kallistra hexgrid, but I don't feel like transporting all these hex tiles. So I took out an old battlemat which can serve the same purpose. The cells on this battlemat are larger than the Kallistra hexes, so I wanted to see whether it works "visually", and I think it does.

I want to aim for a more simplistic "toy-like" visual impression, so I have kept the battlefield relatively simple and clean. Currently, it's based on a "find the ford" scenario, with both sides trying to secure 2 or 3 unknown ford locations. It's a scenario we have played before and always produces a good encounter battle.

I still want to add some buildings and possibly some more units.

The rules also still need to be worked on. The wooden chips (both for indicating the hidden location of the ford, and next to one unit as status markers) are from a very old "Nain Jaune" game, and fit in with the visuals, rather than shiny plastic markers.

Wargaming plans for 2020

2019 wasn't much of a wargaming year. In my logbook of wargames played in my wargaming room, I recorded zero (yes, you read that right) games played during 2019. Going through the blog archive for 2019, we also didn't play a wargame at Bart's wargaming room. It seems both our wargaming mojo's have reached nadir. As usual, we can blame personal and professional circumstances, but still ... a sad state of affairs.

That doesn't mean I was void of any form of gaming.  I played a number of boardgames (16 games logged on boardgamegeek), and I got my wargaming fix at Crisis and Warcon.

So, what do we plan to do for 2020? First of all, we need to play more games. Since we can't hit rock-bottom any further, this should be easy to achieve.

What else? I would like to run some games using my Imaginations in 42mm toy soldiers, perhaps at a convention. Warcon is only a few weeks away, so maybe we could use that opportunity for a first playtest.

I'm not going to project anything else ... it's a bit too embarrassing given 2019's record ... ;-)

Oldest magazine so far entered

Thanks to Rich Clarke from Too Fat Lardies, I acquired a number of old Battle Magazines for the Wargaming Magazine indexing project.

I just entered the January 1977 issue of Battle, the oldest magazine issue currently in my magazine collection.

There's an interesting article in there by Charles Grant about setting up a wargames campaign. And even though it's 40 years old, it's still very much recognizable. Perhaps wargaming hasn't changed that much after all through the decades ... ;-)