Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Games at Hot Lead 2022

Hello friends:

On of Canada’s most well-known miniature tabletop gaming events is now in the books, and can be counted a success.   After two years of Covid-induced suspension, the games were back, the players were a little fewer in number and all masked and well behaved.   Congratulations to my friend James and his crew of redshirts for making it a success.  You can read James’ account of HotLead and see his own photos here.  There are lots more photos and videos on the Hot Lead Facebook group page here.

This was the first time I’ve stayed over at the Arden Park hotel, the venue space.  Previously I’ve cheaped out and couch surfed at my friend James’ expense, but this time I went all out and my lovely bride Joy came with me to sample Stratford’s shopping delights and to do some anthropological studies of the wargaming tribe.  She said “your friends are weird but nice”.  Truth.

My own brief account of what I played in and what I saw begins on Friday night with on of Dan Hutter’s signature multi-player rules, where no one is a friend and the guy sitting beside or across from you is probably gunning for you, so best gun him first. The game was set in Somalia during the disastrous UN intervention there in the early 1990s: several factions of Somalis, UN peacekeeping troops, and secretive mercenaries all had their own agendas and bullets soon flew in all directions.  Rules were a very simple and mostly playable version of FUBAR.  Grand start to the weekend.

 

Test of Honour samurai game going down on Friday night, lovely table. 

 Chris Robinson, a friend of the Canadian Wargamer Podcast and normally an historical guy, put on a Star Wars game that looked quite attractive.  It was good to hear that the young players enjoyed it.

 Some of the Hot Lead crowd were playing this impromptu Victorian SF game on Saturday morning, involving big steam powered clanks AND dinosaurs. 

 

Saturday morning I played in this beautiful WW2 game hosted by Joe Saunders of Miniature Landscape Hobbies.  Joe is a friend of the Canadian Wargaming Podcast and a lovely guy. 

 This scratch built railway gun was done by Joe and part of the table dressing.

 

The game was called “Countdown to Launch” and featured the Germans trying to delay the Allied onslaught long enough to fuel, arm, and fire off this V1 rocket.  

 It was quite an onslaught.  The Germans died in droves but managed to fire off the rocket.  I confess that tanks massed track to track are an example of why I don’t personally like Flames of War, but it did deliver a fast game, and at this sort of event, with three hour game slots, you need quick fast games.


 This beautiful medieval game, the Battle of Tewkesbury, was hosted by Ian Tetlow, who always puts on good looking games at Hot Lead.

 

 On Saturday afternoon I played in Sean Malcomson’s “Hard Brexit” ancients game using Too Fat Lardie’s Infamy, Infamy rules.  The object was for the Roman players to move a herd of (unfairly) taxed cattle across this table to safe harbour.  The British, strong believers in No Taxation Without Representation, were trying to stop them.

 Some of Sean’s beautiful ancient British figures.   The British deployed from a series of ambush points.

 Life got quite difficult for the Romans.   Their legionaries stood in line like rocks while their auxiliary reserves ran back and forward plugging gaps and counter attacking.  

The British skirmish cavalry, seen entering here, were annoying but not decisive.   In the end, we ran out of time but called it a British win.  I found these rules similar enough to Sharp Practice that I got the hang of it fairly quickly, and would try them again as an excuse to get some Romans to oppose my Germanic war band.

 

My last game at HotLead was on Saturday night.  Brian Hall, one of our local masters of 6mm, hosted an ACW corps-level game featuring the Battle of Cedar Creek.   Since the battle began in confusion and alarm for the Union, both forces started under blinds, with three of the four Union corps well back from the start of the action and thus the Union in a poor position to stop the Confederate advance. 

 By this point the Union had stabilized a line and were beginning to hold.    The rules were Altar of Freedom, which I found fast playing and quite bloody.   With each manoeuvre unit in the game a brigade, whole divisions were being quickly shattered, but the rebels lost too many men to sustain the assault, ending in an historical outcome.

Since a lot of my playing is solitaire, I found the points bidding initiative system in AofF to be a bit of a turn off, but as Brian noted to me, a card drive initiative system could easily be bolted on to the core combat rules for solitaire gaming.

 and 

 

 

Finally, it wouldn’t be a convention report with the usual haul of goodies.  My dear friend MikeB gifted me these Warlord Crimean War sculpts by Paul Hicks for use in my Alt-ACW project, which was kind of him.

Another friend sold me these antique Avalon Hill rules for Napoleonics, which are more of a collector’s item than a viable gaming system, though I gather they were once influential and I will try them out some day.  I gather it was AH’s equivalent of GDW’s System 7 Napoleonics, though the cardboard counters in the AH set were designed to give players a taste of the system and motivate them to buying miniatures.  There are some vintage adverts from minis companies of the era in the rules books.

And I stocked up on tree and basing material.

So that was Hot Lead.   I ran out of stamina after four games in 1.5 days, but as I said goodbyes on Sunday it was grand to see the crowd getting ready for the traditional mass VSF game.  

Huge congrats to James, Elizabeth, and the crew for making this revered event happen and I look forward to returning next year without a face mask!

Cheers and blessings,

MP

26 comments:

  1. Looks like an enjoyable weekend away for you. So many good looking games but Tewksbury may be my favorite.

    On Napoleon’s Battles, I say it was both viable and influential. A classic and a stride forward in both design and publishing.

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    1. Hi Jonathan:
      It was a great weekend. I almost wish I'd played in that Tewksbury game. I think they were using modified To the Strongest rules. I quite like the look of WoTR games, they have a foot firmly in the Middle Ages but you can see Renaissance tactics as well.
      I do intend to give NB a try.

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  2. Some great looking games there, so thanks for sharing. Nice to see you all able to get back to some show/convention gaming at long last:).

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    1. Hi Steve:
      It was a great weekend. I'd been quite envious of seeing photos of British gaming evens starting up again, so it was grand to feel part of life returning to normal, even with the masks.

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  3. A fantastic looking event Mike! I hope your wife enjoyed the shopping! I am sure most of our wives would echo her comments about our wargaming friends!

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    1. What wife would disagree with Joy's assessment? It was nice to have her company at meals and in the evenings after the dice were rolled, and I was happy that she got to some nicer clothing stores than we have where we live. Stratford is the home of Canada's Shakespeare Festival and has some high end boutiques for the tourist trade.

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    2. One of my girlfriends came along to Cancon just to see.. her comment was: "never seen so much bad skin and K-Mart clothing in one place"... harsh.

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  4. Thank you for sharing the wonderful wargame event eye candy, hopefully we can all get back to some normality.

    Willz.

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    1. You're most welcome, and I'll add a hearty AMEN to your sentiments about normality.

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  5. Wow, you lot sure do put on a very cool looking day. Some beautiful games there too, especially Joe Saunders' WW2 table - amazing.

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    1. Joe's table was a thing of beauty. To be honest, I enjoyed the table and the models more than I did the game!

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  6. Sounds like a Victory in every way that counts.

    Weird but nice friends are so much better than the alternative :-)

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    1. It was a victory indeed, and yes, who would want normal and nasty friends?

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  7. You went, you saw, you had fun. That's a good convention!

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    1. Indeed, it was a tonic for the gamer's soul.

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  8. A con.... sighhhhhhh it has been soooooooooooooo long! (Just a litttlee wee bit jealous....)

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    1. We need to coax you out to Stratford, Ross.

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  9. Hah, I still have those AH Napoleon's Battle series.. not bad fun.

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  10. Nice haul of trees! I only bought 3x packs.

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    1. You made a great choice of vendors with the tree ladies, really really glad to see them back this year.

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  11. Great overview of the show, Maybe next year. :)

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  12. It was a great event with many awesome model builders painters and games. It was great to meet you all face to face too!

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