Cold Wars 2013, Day 1

Poles vs Russians in 25mm in Carnage and Glory II

After my goof yesterday, today was actually the start of Cold Wars. I left for Lancaster after dropping elder daughter at school, and drove through a blowing snow squall most of the way out. I arrived at around 8:15, but had one work conference call that I needed to be on from 9:00 to 9:30, so rather than going into the show and registering, I took a few minutes to find one nearby geocache before getting back to my car for the call.

After my call I made my way in to the register, and then wandered around for a while. There wasn't much going on yet, and the dealer area didn't open until noon, so after exhausting the "mill about and look at the games" possibilities, I went back out to find another geocache across the street, but came up empty. But at least that killed enough extra time that I was able to go back to the show and wander the dealer area, as well as the increasing number of games being set up. I paid particular attention to an 1813 Napoleonic game using Age of Eagles, the Fire and Fury variant, and a handful of Fireball Forward WW2 games (a rules set that Leo heartily endorses and I have purchased and read, and like the look of).

19th cent. Prussians vs Bavarians in 6mm - Bruce Weigle

I left at around 3:30 to get home in plenty of time for some family things tonight, but it was an enjoyable day, and I got to see a lot of acquaintances from over the years. I'll be going back tomorrow for a full day, and hope to get into a game or two to play.

No convention write up, no matter how brief, would be complete without listing the spoils of war, which were modest. Or maybe moderate. I picked up Age of Eagles as well as Chris Parker's new Day of Battle supplement for The Crusades. I also picked up an order from Old Glory that I had called in a few weeks ago for pick up at the show. This contained odds and ends of medieval cavalry to expand some existing units (German knights and Teutonic sergeants - you can never have too much medieval cavalry) as well as some Seven Years War Austrian and Prussian artillery and Austrian Grenzers. Leo has shown a renewed interest in gaming Napoleonics, and I have been looking at early war Prussians and bicorne French, so I picked up a few packs of Blue Moon (Old Glory) 15mm/18mm 1806 Prussians to paint as samples. If I like the figures, which I am sure I will, I will get more and send an order off to Sri Lanka to get an army started. I'll be starting with a few packs of musketeers and fusiliers, as well as some guns and crew. I just hope my eyes can still see well enough to paint these little buggers...