Well, after a long break from writing about the European scene, this writer is now back in the Great White North. The Canadian activity of note to which this scribe has been a witness was the 1993 MIGS convention in Hamilton, Ontario. For those who are not familiar with the city, it is located west of Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The MIGS event has been running for a long time as denoted, the number shown above; however, for most of those years, it was a local convention with limited exposure. Recently, due in part) some of the more ambitious group members, it has grown in attendance numbers and venue. This year the convention was held, the city centre at the Holiday inn and I was informed that next year there will be a new location to accommodate more gaming space and a larger crowd.

The event was held over May 29-30 with the doors opening 8:30 am on the Saturday for registration. The dealers area was open until 5:00 pm Saturday and until the event closed on the following Sunday; however the gaming rooms were available throughout the night for the very avid gamers.

The convention catered to most historical and some fantastic periods of interest to miniature gamers and there were even boardgames being played. There was also a painting contest, flee market, door prizes and food and refreshments offered on the site. The dealers included most of the stores and distributors located in southern Ontario which provided figures, terrain, paints, rule books, magazines and board games.

The gaming tournaments included WRG 7th and DBA (more on them below), Advanced Squad Leader, Battletech and Hordes of the Things (H.O.T.T.). The organizers also offered several events aimed at children, spouses and novice gamers and some special events to insure that anyone attending was able to find something of interest and also amusing. The children's events were certainly popular (although the WRG 7th gamer may not have enjoyed sharing a room with the younger crowd) and drew lots of interest. The kids may have been encouraged to pay more attention to "Dad's hobby".

For the mainstream gamer, there was plenty of variety of games and rules. The latter included commercial and "homebrew" rule sets. Preregistration was required for most events and gamers were limited to one event per day,. This did not limit participation as there were usually more positions than players to many games and announcements were made for all events requiring additional players.

For the ancient gamers, the open games included "Tactica", "Le Guerre" (hosted by Les Scanlon and the Old Guards Historical Society--and had some common points with Tactica), "Knight Hack" holded by the Jogglers of Buffalo, NY , "Siege Assault" a medeival siege game, and "Men-at-Arms"-a medieval rule set (no comment by this author as I am listed as a playtester and will be writing a review later).

These events were for 15mm and 25mm figures. All or them drew sufficient numbers, thus a large group was either exposed to new rules and/or a new period.

The two ancients tournaments were not as well attended but did attract the more competitive players. The WRG 7th tournament had eight participants (one of which was a rotating MIGS entry allowing several gamers to participate). The armies were all 15mm and included: Ptolemaic, Teutonic (2), Early Rus, Mithradatic, Scots, Seleucid and Gallic. The DBA tournament was also a 15mm event and had the popularity of the quick rules as many of the participants prefer not to use the 7th Edition but still enjoy the period.

The MIGS is interested in expanding its events and even has eye on the NCT of NASAMW. The organizers had hoped to draw participants for the 7th tournament to get it classified as CT heat but are short of the minimum number. The group is very active in ancients gaming and the number of gamers from NewYork, Michigan, Ontario and elsewhere are indicative of the group's efforts to foster gaming events as both hosts and participants.

In closing, thanks to Brian Lewis, the convention chairman, and the rest of the MigsCon members for hosting the event. It was great to be able to see so many familiar faces from the various groups all gathered together. I look forward to next year's event and hope that continues to grow as planned.