The latest convention season is over. Though there seems to be at least one convention a month somewhere throughout the year, the June to August triumverate of ORIGINS, GENCON & GENCON EAST (sometimes call- ed Eastcon) seems to be generally accepted as THE Con- ventions of the season. I do not mean to slight the other fine but smaller conventions - MICHICON, CWA CON and PACIFICON, however with an average attendance over 4500 each the three major conventions are certainly in a class of their own.
Dick Bryant & Leo Cronin await the crowd at Origins.
We know that a large part of the three major Cons are FRP and other non-historical miniature gaming oriented, with GENCON reportedly having the least amount of historical events. The two conventions I attended, Origins & GenCon East, had a great variety of historical miniature gaming events - Origins had over 1000 Historical Miniature player spaces while GenCon East had above 600. These numbers do not include seminars, etc.
In spite of this I constantly hear the complaint that there is not enough Historical gaming events at the conventions!
This article pertains only to the Historical Miniature gaming activities at the conventions. Many other types of awards & activities were going on (the preponderance, in fact) but to save space we will not report on them here.
HG WELLS AWARD
The highlight of Origins every year is the announcement of the annual HG Wells and Charles Roberts awards. This year saw the debut of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design whose members voted for the awards.
The nominees are those secledted by the hobbyists who send in their nomination ballots each year (most magazines in the hobby print the ballots - The Courier printed it in Vol. II, No. 4).
The winners were:
BEST HISTORICAL FIGURE SERIES: 1980 RAL PARTHA CONDOTIERRE
BEST VEHICULAR MODEL SERIES: 1980 GHQ MICRO ARMOR
BEST MINIATURE RULES: 1980 TACK FORCE (GDW)
BEST PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE COVERING MINIATURES, 1980: THE COURIER
BEST ALL TIME PRE-NAPOLEONIC GUNPOWDER MINIATURE RULESRENAISSANCE (WRG)
ADVENTURE GAMING HALL OF FAME: GARY GYGAX
SPECIAL COMBINED HG WELLS & CHARLES ROBERT AWARD FOR THE GAMERS CHOICE OF 1980: ACE OF ACES
PAINTING AWARDS
The highlight of any convention for Historical Miniature gamers is the painting competition (or, at least, it should be). The winners in the historical catagories are listed below.
ORIGINS'81
THE COURIER AWARD (Best Historical Unit): Lee M. Fry (Burbank, CA) Citizen Hoplites
GHQ AWARD: Greg Horrell 9Salt Lake City) German Vehicles
ORIGINS '81 Best of Show: Lee M. Fry (Burbank, CA) Citizen Hoplites
NOVICE AWARD OF MERIT: Tim Rinker (Sunland, CA) Mounted Warrior w/axe
ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE: Lee M. Fry (Burbank, CA) Citizen Hoplites
HORSE & MUSKET Dana L. Sublette (Los Angeles) Scot Greys (15mm)
WAR MACHINES Clifford Castle (Santa Rosa, CA) Renaissance Wagon
WAR ENGINES Dan Johannesen (San Jose, CA) Swedish Horse Army
NOVICE ANCIENT MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE: John Sullins (Petuluma, CA) Samurai
RAL PARTHA - BEST PAINTED ARMY IN THE ANCIENT COMPETITION: Barry Kemp (BC Canada) Gallic War Band
RAL PARTHA - BEST PAINTED ARMY IN THE RENAISSANCE COMPETITION: Pete Flynn 9San Jose, CA) French Renaissance Army
GEN CON EAST
MINIFIG BEST HISTORICAL ARMY: Steve Aleo 15mm Napoleonic
MINIFIG BEST HISTORICAL UNIT: John Carroll 25mm Zulus
THE COURIER BEST HISTORICAL UNIT: Steve Aleo 15mm Old Guard Grenadiers
BEST HISTORICAL UNIT (GenCon Award): John Carroll 25mm Indian Army Elephants
BEST HISTORICAL ARMY: Steve Aleo 25mm Napoleonics
BEST HISTORICAL DIORAMA: Warren Bender North Africa
BEST MILITARY VEHICLES: Larry Bond WWII Armor
BEST HISTORICAL FIGURE: Pat Pirone 25mm Condoterri
The almost clean sweep by Carroll & Aleo belies the fact that there were dozens of entries. These two are certainly the people to beat at the East Coast Cons next year. Origins, of course, is the scene of the annual ancient tourney - each Con holds one but the Origins Ancients Tourney has been going on the longest in the U.S., I believe. Pacificon - the west coast Con which hosted Origins this year - gives a "CHARLES GRANT CUP" to their 25mm ancient tourney winner each year. This year it was presented for the Origins tourney to Bob Butler of England. Dave Mason, also from England won the 15mm ancient competition. The runners up were Paul Serio and John Drye respectively. Note that in an informal game later that evening, David Mason also beat (decisively, I'm told) Larry Dunfield - last year's 15mm ancient competition winner at Origins! The clean sweep by the English gives, perhaps, some proof to their comment that "The American has quite a few misconceptions on how the game is played"!
I have asked them to write an article for THE COURIER outlining what they see as the differences - it should make interesting reading. THE COURIER sponsored the 25mm WRG tourney, Ral Partha sponsored the 25mm Renaissance tourney giving an army, I believe, to the winner, Kyle Brown. Ernest Calvillo was the runner up. The WRG Microarmor tourney sponsored by Pacif icon was won by the team of Eric Reiser,Carl Olsen and Dennis Wang, all of New England. The Northern California team captained by Ray Jackson defeated the Southern CA team led by Brian Stokes in the OMAR BRADLEY MEMORIAL ARMOR GAME, another event run each year by Pacificon. There were several other tourneys on which I have little information. Beat-to-Quarters is one that I remember. There were also many participatory demonstrations: Vive L'Empereur, Empire III, Sword & Flame; Lynn Bodin (editor of Savage & Soldier) demonstrated colonial games a Franco-Prussian war game by Paul Koch, the French Religious Wars, ACW & more. There were approximately 1000 historical miniature player spaces available! That's up from 762 at Origins'80.
Ned Zuparko is to be congratulated on his running of the historical miniature side of the convention. Such a presentation can only be accomplished by the unstinting efforts of many. In this case Norm Flam of The Last Grenadier (Burbank, CA) who provided a whole contingent of helpers and referees, and 'private' gamers like Ray Iwasaki who personally provided 12 games (120 players) over two solid days of gaming, are to be specially commended. It is this type of effort that is required by more of us to keep the hobby growing.
Historical Miniature Garners attending GenCon East owe the same thanks to Chris Parker of The Toy Soldier (Newburyport, MA) who was the Miniatures Chairman and to the Triangle Simulation Society (Ed Mohrman and Company) who put on dozens of games, the most popular of which is The Sword and The Flame.
Both conventions, for the first time were at hotels. Origins at The Dunphy had plenty of gaming space though the dealer areas were broken up into several small rooms each too crowded - definately not the way to go. There were organizational problems especially with shuttle busses between hotels not running long enough or often enough to get people back and forth between their tourneys. The program booklet had a great index but no page numbers! Also there was too much live FRP at 4 am down the hotel corridors (I threatened to throw one "Ninja" into the pool - from the 3rd floor - if he slammed the corridor fire door outside my room one more time. He decided I must have a 3D8 hit factor and left in the other direction).
East Con at Cherry hill enjoyed a very large dealer area though several dealers were again shoved into small nooks and out of the way corners and probably experienced low sales as their customers must have had trouble finding them. Another problem with GenCon was that many kinds of games were put on in the same room, i.e. miniatures board and fantasy with some "stepping on each other's toes". The Ancient Tourney at GenCon East was poorly attended, perhaps because it advertised that the 5th edition would be used! The participants voted the use of the 6th - the 15mm and 25mm tourneys were then promptly won by Tom Hazlett and Steve Hernden who have won or placed the last several years.
I feel that the move to a hotel venue is not a good one. While there are many small rooms for semi-private gaming, and the facilities are better (rooms, bar, restaurant), the cost to the gamer is higher - $5.00 breakfasts, $2.00 beers served in eye cups and room costs that compete with dormspace only if you sleep spoon fashion with 4 of your "close" buddies in the room. I personally prefer a hotel - but I can afford it. The average gamer-student must have a problem.
I apologize for the lack of photos as several who promised photos did not come through (what else is new in this hobby?) and the fellow who did had camera problems.
Neither show had anything particularly new and spectacular for miniaturists perhaps because we miniaturists have won the reputation of not coming to conventions. So why bother to introduce new miniature items there?
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