Cold Wars 2013, Day 2

AWI on "teddy bear fur" terrain. Very nice...

Day 2 at Cold Wars for me was fairly low key. After my big caching day on Thursday, I was close enough to 1,000 that I wanted to take advantage of the multitude of Lancaster caches, so I spent the first hour and a half of my day in Lancaster getting 13 caches in a commercial area NW of the Lancaster Host convention site. All easy caches, but good quantity in a short period of time. This left me with 998 caches, and at that point I had to stop because I had promised Grace that I would not get to 1,000 without her. By 9:45am, my caching was done and I was walking into the show. Not a bad use of a part of a morning...

As for the show itself, Saturday was certainly more crowded than Friday, but it still didn't seem tremendously busy to me. There were a bunch of attractive games to look at, and some bits of inspiration to be sure. Some really well executed teddy bear fur terrain was one of these, and I have already been googling advice on how to make nice terrain mats from this material (see the AWI picture attached for a great example).

Today's purchases were a building and an additional castle wall section from Miniature Building Authority, and a few more packs of Blue Moon 15mm Napoleonics (bicorne French artillery crew and guns).

Napoleonics in the Peninsula

The high point of the day though was getting a chance to have a glass of wine (or two) at the bar with Chris Parker and having the opportunity to discuss his new skirmish level adaptation of Day of Battle. That and getting a chance to see a bunch of friends, older and newer, was what really made the drive out to the show worthwhile. Just about anything I buy at these shows could just as easily be bought on the internet, but nothing can replace the bits of inspiration that come from seeing the really well put together games, nicely painted figures, and good terrain ideas that can be shamelessly stolen from.

The Cornfield at Antietam, ACW, 1862.

It's hard to believe that the next convention will be Fall In in November. I am still not happy that Historicon was moved from my backyard to 3.5 hours south, but what can you do. Maybe I need to investigate some smaller local shows...