Though the attendance was down from last year, there were over 400 games and events taking place. Everyone had something to do.
At right: Richard Bryant III, number one grandson of Courier editor Dick Bryant and possibly future editor of The Courier. Here he enjoys a historical WWII game at his first Historicon.
The Courier put on 23 games in The Paradise Room, a particular treat was the presence of Mike Blake who is part of the team that wrote the Wild West Rules, that generated several memorable battle reports in these pages. Mike put on several games, one is reported on in some detail elsewhere in this issue, Fugitives Drift - the aftermath of the battle of Isandhlwana; another was the Death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand and finally The Spanish in Mexico fighting against the Comanches. All where done using beautifully detailled and modified 54mm figures. Bob Beattie ran the 8th Annual Dick Bryant Dupicate Open DBA Tourney, Bob Marshall ran several modified TSATF games. Chris Parker ran 3 Day of Battle Medieval games, Jim Arnold ran a VLB Napoelonic game, and Mike Mocarski ran a F&I War game. Bill Rutherford and Dick Bryant ran side by side Crossfire games and Dick ran his Old West skirmish scenario.
The Courier had over $500 in gift certificates to give out supplied by Renaissance Ink, Eureka Miniatures, Stone Mountain, Quality Casting, GHQ, Wargames, Brookhurst Hobbies, TCS, and Dave Reynolds. many thanks to all who supported our efforts. At the time of this writing, I do not have the winners of the painting competition, but by all accounts it was better than ever.
At right: After three days, Tom Desmond and the 1000 mile stare.
SCRUBY AWARD WINNER - BOB COGGINS
Bob won the coveted and much deserved Scruby Award for "making a contribution to the hobby of such a magnitude that it would not be the same if he had not been part of it." Bob was an original In Wally's basement and husbanded HMGS through many Historicons taking over from the tireless Pat Condray (also a Scruby winner) and carrying the convention through the transition to its new venue at Lancaster.
Also awarded were Hal Thinglum and Greg Novak who were recognized for their many conributions to the hobby by election to the HMGS Legion. Don Featherstone was Master of Ceremonies at the investiture.
HISTORICON 99 ANCIENTS REPORT
Scott Holder
Okay, the bad news first, the Lampeter Room (also called the old dealers room and based on our weekend there this year, "this old dump") stunk. Literally and figuratively. Go into one corner and the urine smell was overwhelming. The air conditioning never caught up. The pipes in the ceiling had enough condensation on them to irrigate a field in Nebraska. Of course that resulted in the ceiling tiles becoming soaked and subsequently falling on one game (in the Open area) and on a couple of flea marketeers. It was hot, humid, chairs were in short supply Thursday and Friday, and the garbage cans seemed to constantly disappear.
The good news is that we had plenty of room over the entire three day period. I crammed about as many tables as I could into the room anticipating lots of usage (particularly in 25mm) on Thursday and Friday. And while I packed in tables, we still weren't too cramped and that isn't a bad thing, i.e., it still provides room to grow.
We did a number of things slightly differently this year, namely we inflicted some structure on he Armati Tournaments with the inclusion of a Theme and Open, and we saw the first Medieval Warfare tournament run by author and longtime member Terry Gore.
Despite overall convention attendance being down, we again pulled in around 200 players in the smorgasbord of tourneys, a tad bit lower than last year. My usual inexact count is DBM at 62, DBA at 60 (more on that in a minute), 7.6 at 41, Armati around 23, and Medieval Warfare at 14. 0% of the 7.6 players at least doubled up on tourneys and at least half played in events all three days. I'd say 50% of the DBM crowd doubled up, maybe 40% tripling. And many people witched around between several games systems. We did two single elimination tournaments for Armati plus the all-weekend-long Arena and that seemed to work pretty good without taxing any of the umpires, unlike in the past where the free for all Arena seemed to drive both Arty Conliffe and Rob Wolsky nuts!
DBA was amazing. I always bemoan the fact that Midnight Madness never fills up at Historicon. Well this year we had 48 players sign up. On top of that, it looked like we had around 40 players unday morning. And there's an interesting generational "shift" going on here, one that is very good to see. Look at the winners on Sunday morning. Three of them are kids of current miniature wargamers. Plus there were several more who didn't win who fall into the same category.
The Theme was immensely popular this year. Our first Armati Theme pulled in 16 players. Better yet, 42, that's right, 42 DBMers played in the 15mm Theme breaking the old record of 32 players in a Theme (the Punic War Theme) way back when 7th ed was the only game in town. The Sportsman winner went Keith Hatch who had 3 nominations with 19 other participants receiving nominations
Everybody got plaques (or a trophy for the DBA NICT winner). Old Glory sponsored the DBM and 7.6 NICT, Wargames the Armati Arena, and Simtac the DBA events. Gary Coyle gave me a humongous amount of unpainted Essex 15mm Assyrians which I sorted and made into three prizes. Thanks Gary. Our remaining sponsors were Foundry, Ral Partha, Regal Miniatures, and the Quartermaster. Jamie Fish of Thistle and Rose donated almost an entire 15mm army to the best of the younger 7th Ed group.
Umpires were myself, Jevon Garrett, and Scott McDonald for 7th. John Shirey and Rich Novak juggled the usual DBM events as well as playing. Dave Ray ran Midnight Madness for the last time while Doug Mudd ran the 25mm DBA events for me and Mike McVeigh did his usual job on Sunday morning. Lest I forget, Bob Beattie ran the DBA NICT as well as his long running Duplicate tournament.
Finally, Rob Wolsky took over the Armati administrative duties sometime on Friday. The "official" ancients Theme for Historicon 2000 is the return of the Punic Wars. Look for armies, etc., later on in Spearpoint or at my ancients web site. I say "official" because we're planning on running a small mini Theme at Cold Wars for 15mm DBM only. At this point, the two guys who have promised to scare up enough players are tentatively going with something called "Battles of Britain" which will most likely be a Dark Age trash type of event. Again, more on that as it develops. Also don't forget that Bob Nedwich is organizing another big battle 25mm event at Cold Wars, again I *think* this will be a Dark Age game. Look for these in the Cold Wars ancients tournament schedule under "Specialty Tournaments".
TOURNAMENT RESULTS
DBM 15mm NICT Ethan Zorrick Daylami
DBM 25mm NICT Allan Brown Avars
7.6 NICT Dave Stier Medieval Spanish
Armati Arena Steve Herndon Trajanic Rome
DBA NICT Jim Mzik
Sportsman Keith Hatch
DBM 15mm Open Spike Monahan Pre-kingdon Chinese
DBM 25mm Open Carl Stefenelli War of Roses
7.6 Open Alex Vaeth Tibetan
Armati Open Steve Herndon Trajanic Rome
DBM 15mm Theme Monty Walls L Hungarian
DBM 25mm Theme Glen Boise War of Roses
7.6 15mm Theme Todd Kaeser Swiss
7.6 25mm Theme Tim Brown Burgundian Ordnannce
Medieval Warfare Jeff Ball War of Roses
Armati Theme Steve Herndon Komemnan Byzantine
DBM 15mm Mini Marc Crotteau E. Byzantine
DBM 25mm Mini Wayne Carter Gauls
7.6 15mm Mini Ewan McNay Seleucid
7.6 25mm Mini John Green L. Imperial Rome
Midnight Madness James Albright Spartan
DBA 25mm Open Jim Mzik Viking
DBA Biblical Paul Hazelwood New Kingdom Egypt
DBA Classical Art Haus E Byzantine
DBA Asia Julie Stanoch Medieval Hindu
DBA Dark Age Kris Kelley Viking
DBA Medieval Patrick McMillen E Swiss
More Courier Dispatch News
Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #77
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1999 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com