Historicon 2000 Hosts 3000

At Lancaster Host

by Dick Bryant

Scott Holder reports a preliminary attendance figure of 3000 for Historicon’00. My observation was that the numbers were certainly up from the previous year. I counted over 300 games in the event program, not including the various tounaments.

The Courier Staff put on 32 games (0ver 10% of those at the entire convention) in the Paradise room. We also had over $1000 in gift certificates to give out at our games. They were contributed by Renaissance Ink, Geo Hex, Wargames, Quality Castings, Miniature Service Center, GHQ, TSR, Brookhurst, RLBPS and Tommy Gunner - many thanks to these manufacturers who continue to put in taht extra effort to support the hobby. Larry Brom had a room dedicated to Colonial gaming using his The Sword and The Flame Rules and Out of Africa. This venue was very well attended throughout the show.

Scott Holder reported that the Ancient competitions cracked the 250 person barrier this year which means that the ancients players accounted for nearly 10% of overall convention attendance. This is due most likely to the proliferation of rules sets used in a tournament environment with this year’s success story being Warhammer Ancient Battles.

The trepidation that many of the Ancient gamers had about the “new”, temporary, location, the Showroom (The Lampeter Room previously used was being renovated) proved to be unfounded Most comments weere on the order of “wow, great room. Can we come back here next year?” According to Scott, one of the best things NASMW did this year was run a “DBA Teen” tournament. This was the brainchild of Julie Ann Stanoch who also just happens to be a teenager. Bob Beattie ran it in The Courier’s room with 12 players, all under 21 (with perhaps a few pre-teens thrown in for good measure.

WAB hit an important milestone in that it attracted walk up players. It’s one thing for an umpire to beat the bushes for players prior to a show but an entirely different monster when people simply show up at the check in table and say “I wanna play Warhammer Ancients.

The Sportsman winner went to Phil Gardocki, a longtime 7th Edition player. Other people nominated were: Toby Rice, Derek Hannan, Dan Promutico, Greg Hauser, Rich Kroupa, Scott McDonald, Jerry Looney, Todd Kaeser, Tom Barkus, Tim Brown, and Pete Reese

Scot reports that one of the neatest things he heard about is something Joel Caruso, a 7.6 player, does during his games. At the start of each game, he places, oh, about 20 cow figures upright on his side of the table. Whenever an important die roll comes up, he knocks over “X” number of cows (perhaps an ancients player’s version of cow tipping?) depending on the importance of the die roll. A “five cow roll” is apparently pretty important. Overall it forces the sacrificing player to manage his cattle against the expected divine influence on luck! And who says paganism isn’t alive and well in the 21st Century? No word on if the god(s) were answering Joel’s pleas. Of course I’d hate to see what happens when a Pagan plays a Christian or Muslim army, “I’ll see you five cows and raise you three bishops” or “my 2 martyrs count more than your papal interdict”. And what about those Aztec players? Hmmmm, better not go there. Sponsors for the weekend were Pass o’ The North (who donated armies for various DBA tourneys), Old Glory, Wargames, and Simtac. Umpires were John Shirey, Scott Dickson, Bob Beattie, Don Effinger, Rob Robertson, Jesse Scarborough, Doug Mudd, Mike McVeigh, and myself.

The Theme for Historicon 01 will be the Caliph. Go to Scott’s’my web site http://www.dauphinehotel.com/ancient.htm http://www.dauphinehotel.com/ancient.htm for a listing of the armies.

More Courier Dispatch

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #80
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2000 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