Historicon 2011

...or, Just Passing Through

Our biggest area wargaming convention of the year is going on this weekend, and by the time it ends Sunday around lunchtime, I will have been there for a total of about two hours. The  event is having its second year at the new venue, the Valley Forge Convention Center, which is certainly a bigger facility than the Lancaster Host, but I am not sure that it is dramatically nicer. I suppose it is, but I am not 100% convinced yet.

One undeniably good thing about it is that it is closer to home, and in fact is about 10 minutes from where I work. Which turns out to be a good thing this time around, because if it weren't for stopping in for a couple hours Thursday evening on the way home, I wouldn't have made it there at all. Not attending in any meaningful way is not something I planned, it just sort of worked out that way. The 4th of July holiday weekend was just a few days ago, and I took a couple of extra vacation days to make a very long weekend out of it. Work is busy at the moment, and adding another vacation day or two just wasn't possible.

So a quick fly-by was all I was able to manage. I had just enough time to stand in line behind 4 people (for 20 minutes!) to register as a walk-up attendee, get double charged in the process (yes, apparently the first credit card charge did go through...as did the second), and do a quick cruise of the games area and the dealer area. There wasn't really anything I needed, nor anything that especially struck my fancy, but I did buy some additional "muddy stream" pieces and two bags of palm trees for my 15mm Crusades project. As any good wargamer worth his salt will tell you, there is no such thing as too much terrain.

The best thing about the brief stop at the convention, though, I would say, is that it seems to have rekindled the desire to make the time to be able to pick up a paintbrush and get back to work on some figures. Although to be more productive, I really should get back to work on re-basing those Crusades figures... or paint some more Lord of the Rings figures... or work on my medieval retinue... or Napoleonics... or get back to that Seven Years War project... Hmmm.