After a brief hiatus Cold Wars came back, albeit at Gettysburg this year. I attended and once again I volunteered at Hobby University while getting to have a terrific time! How was the show? Well, if you read the title of this post you can see I felt there were some highlights and lowlights. Let’s get into the post to find out more!

This years convention was held in the Eisenhower Convention Center. I have never been to this venue and like King of Prussia the convention was a bit spread out. Like King of Prussia the majority of the gaming events were in a separate building from the vendor hall, however, these locations were not connected by an inside walkway. We were lucky the weather was really nice on Friday and most of Saturday, but it started getting really cold and windy, and if there was rain or snow it would have been ugly. The two buildings were about a quarter mile from each other so I certainly got my steps in. Attendance was very low for an HMGS show, probably around 800 or so people.

The entrance into the hanger like building where the vendors, tournaments, Hobby University, and Wally’s Basement were. Wally’s was in the hockey/box lacrosse type arena which made me feel right at home!

The Good: While there were a shortage of attendees everyone I spoke to was able to get into games, and every game I walked by appeared to have enough players so the ratio of gamers and games still appeared to be right on. My two basing classes didn’t have anyone in them but that could speak more on the class than the show, although some of our other popular classes were only about half full. I still had a great time and got to hang out with both my Hobby University friends, but some HMGS friends as well. No complaints here!

One of my students painted this dumpster, and I demonstrated on my dwindling supply of shipping containers.

Here is an assortment of the games I saw. While there were less games than normal these were still terrific!

I rolled a buddies dice one time for Chain of Command so I claimed I played a game! I also ran two games of Arena Rex in the evening so I actually did play! I even won one of the Arena Rex games despite all three of my gladiators having been painted by me and having never been on the gaming table. Normally that’s a recipe for disaster!

Naturally I found some good food! I went to Forescore Beer Company where I forgot to take a picture of my food, Mason Dixon Distillery, Gettysburg Baking, and Honey Bee Gettysburg. I’d recommend all of them!

I found the Tabletop World walls for a steal of a price in the flea market and was able to spend my volunteer vouchers on some epic scale terrain I wanted!

The Bad: The Eisenhower is fairly dated and could use an update. I didn’t like having to walk outside between the two buildings and I’m sure many of our members weren’t a fan of the rolling hills and the walk either.

The Ugly: While the number of attendees didn’t seem to put a damper on any of the games the low attendance was noted by a few of the vendors.

While it wasn’t all positive this go around the pro’s outweighed the cons and I was glad to spend the weekend with my friends having a great time gaming! Thank you to the HMGS staff who made it all possible, I look forward to an even better Cold Wars next year!

My friend over at Wargaming from the Balcony went to the show too, you should check out his write up too!

-Wachtmeister