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HISTORICON 2007

	Author: Colonel (Ret) Bill Gray Article Type: Convention Coverage Publication Date: 8/27/2007 Related Categories: Business and Industry, Convention Coverage

Friends, Toys and the Prussian Royal Guard Landwehr

For me Thursday was an off day. I got to meet old friends I hadn’t seen for four months and engage in stimulating conversation over the true color of Russian raspberry, French lancer pennants, not to mention other such critical issues for lead heads such as myself. I also took a spin through the flea market and then did a rigorous scoping out of the dealers’ hall. It doesn’t work every time, but the trick here is to see exactly what you want to purchase, but don’t go back to actually buy it until Sunday morning. This is when most everyone is waiting for noon pack up and might be willing to give an extra discount. Of course, just about all the close to 90 merchants know this, and you always risk the possibility of whatever you wanted to buy not being there.

While on station I stopped by to see Doug Kline at Battlefield Terrain Concepts, and also Rob Walter at Eureka, AB Miniatures. Both dealers had previously agreed to sponsor my two games on the morrow, Doug with some 10% off gift certificates for all players, the friendly folks from Eureka with some nifty 18 mm Napoleonic French aid de camp sets. Yours truly was very pleased to receive a Napoleon and staff command set and you just have to love any firm that will include the Emperor’s butler. The give-aways were very well received and I heard that at least three of the certificates made it back for purchases.

Christmas in July at the Expo Hall.

I also spent quite a bit of time at Belle and Blade Video who had simultaneous monitors continuously going with the Japanese movie Battleship Yamato as well as the recently released US flicks 300 and Flyboys on screen. Ok, sure I know the Persian Immortals didn’t dress like Ninjas and I also know Xerxes did not deploy giant attack rhinos, but boy they looked cool. The chaps at Belle and Blade also managed to deploy their seating area right under one of the few air conditioners working in the exhibition hall, so obviously that was a consideration, and one I took advantage of a lot. Brilliant marketing decision or not, the chairs were always full.

I also took time to take lots of pictures with this nifty little Nikon L11 digital point and shoot my spousal unit got me for our 30th anniversary. I normally used an older (and much larger) Nikon 990 purchased for me by HMGS, but technology has long passed it by. A jump from 3.34 mega pixels to six and a tiny $ 20 memory card that will store over 600 high resolution images, all wrapped in a tiny, pocket sized frame with more bells and whistles than Data’s navigation console on Enterprise D. My wife calls it a PHD camera (push here, dummy), but it works quite well.

This was a good thing as there were lots of stunning games to take picture after picture of, and I still had 200 shots to go by the time I finally said goodbye. It would take far more Webpages than Wargamer.com would ever allow, but some of the highlights for me were Uncle Duke’s huge Northwest Frontier display in front of the fireplace foyer, Phil Viverito’s scratch built castle and Roman Legionary encampment, the ubiquitous Aerodrome Great War aviation game, my own game the next day and a fascinating battle between different factions of gnomes (yes, gnomes, and don’t ask). There was even a very well done game on the 1813 battle of Leipzig completely outfitted with accurately painted plastic figures drawn from Risk boardgames. You really have to see some of the innovative techniques on display to believe them.

Some of the many games presented and please note the gnomish tank.

And speaking of my own game, or rather two games, I took Thursday to present a seminar to teach newbies the rules, and also set up all the terrain late that night. The reason for the evening hours work session was a 7:30 in the morning working breakfast for the Legion of Honor, sorta an HMGS hall of fame. Here my good nature got the best of me and I was suckered, … er, I mean selected as the new Legion adjutant. It’s purely an administrative position, so hopefully there won’t be too much policy oriented responsibilities. In my experience that is usually where the real work is done and frustration sets in.