Once again the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society hosted Historicon in downtown Lancaster. I love the location in downtown as there are a ton of places to grab a bite to eat within easy walking distance. The weather was either super hot or, due to Canadian wildfires, very smoky, so the close walking distance to good food and drink was very welcome! On Wednesday evening, after an unexpected, and very minor, detour to pick up a friend who needed some roadside assistance we stopped at The Burley Bar for dinner. One of our friends hoped in an Uber to meet us and we started off the con full and ready for some gaming, painting, and shopping!
First thing Thursday morning I taught two classes, “Tanks a lot” and “What the Hedge?”. Both classes had a full six students who were all fully engaged and happy to learn. I was lucky enough to have a Sherman Calliope donated as one of the class materials, and as I don’t have any of them I naturally grabbed that one to be my demo tank! Thanks Cliff!
After I went to the Southmarket where I grabbed a cocktail from the 1888 bar and a poke bowl from the sushi place. The poke bowl was very stingy on the salmon, but the cocktail was delicious!
I spent a little time wandering the convention looking at games, and hitting up Wally’s Basement. As always there were a bunch of nice games across all manner of time periods.
After a few hours of wandering I went back to the Southern Market for dinner where I grabbed another cocktail from the 1888 bar, and the Jager Schnitzel from the Schnitzel House. You can also see a box of Star Wars Legion and Skragg the Stealthy, a classic Games Workshop Dwarf I picked up from the flea market, along with a figure I got at Adepticon for a friend of mine. We only live twenty minutes from each other, so of course I had to bring it to a location three hours from our houses to meet up!
In the evening I managed to capture a bunch more pictures of the incredible games. I know it’s not ihstorical but I really like the homebrew Titan game in the bottom picture, and the infamous Test of Grit game set in Rock Ridge of Blazing Saddles fame (picture 4) is a classic favorite!
Breakfast on Friday was naturally at the Central Market where once again I grabbed a falafel super bagel from Safi’s!
I only taught one class Friday, and it was my tank class again. This one I ended up with 8 students, but I only remembered to grab a picture as the last two were heading out!
Lunch was at the Central Market where I had a meatball sub from De Grassi. This is a can’t miss place for lunch over at the Central Market, highly recommended!
Having bought the Tiki Gnomes at Historicon 2025 I knew I needed to get in the massive three table game of Gnome Wars. One of the boys played a band of Gnomes on the table with the fort, while the other helped me push the Tiki Gnomes and get in everyones way! The boy pushing his Gnome troops achieved his objectives after causing trouble amongst all the other crews. Good dice beat good strategy any day of the week. After the GM (jokingly) banned him from future games he stated “I make things happen! If it weren’t for me you’d all be playing Napoleonics!” Needless to say a good time was had by all! Oh, and as you can see from the last picture I managed to get a crew of Tiki Gnomes to row from Table 1, through Table 2, all the way to Table 3!
Another trip to the Southern Market for dinner!
After dinner the boys played in the Friday Night Joust which was well attended as always!
I wandered around and saw a bunch of great looking games across all sorts of genres. The skill and creativity people put in here always amaze me!
I then met up with a friend for a game of Age of Sigmar Spearhead. I’m going to do a battle report at some point so I don’t want to give too much away, but suffice to say the bad guys won!
As we were finishing our game a pair of teenagers set up the games they had made for Saturday’s gaming. I have to say I was super impressed at the high quality design work these guys put together. I didn’t get around to checking the games out as I was teaching when they went off but I hope they were well attended. Can you believe those guys in the left two pictures were made with rolled paper coiled with a homemade lego device?
As I was playing my game one of my boys came in beaming that he won the joust! I was very happy for him as he was stuck pushing Tiki Gnomes in impossible situations with me earlier in the day!
The next morning I helped make more hedges, and taught a class on painting Nurgle demon skin. The hedge class had 8 students, and the Nurgle class ended up with 10. Guess I need to pay closer attention to how I fill out the classes in Table Top Events! I forgot to take pictures of the skin class, but everyone seemed to enjoy the lesson!
Some more morning games I found on my way to lunch.
I forgot to take pictures of what I got, but the boy dug right into his sushi!
I spent some time looking at the Wargames Illustrated Painting contest, there were some really high quality entries this year! I really enjoyed the 40k hover tank made of a deodorant tube, I happen to be working on one of those myself!
There was a decent sized 40k tournament going on with some well painted armies, these were a few of my favorite tables. I know we are supposed to be a historical miniatures organization but I’m glad to see different people enjoying the show and growing the hobby!
Another proud moment, this son won third place in the Youth category in the painting competition! Last year he was 1st of 3 entries, beating out his brother and a miniature that wasn’t based, this year he was 3rd place out of 8 entries with some stiff competition. The medal placement may have dropped but this was still a huge improvement!
Finally I ended the night with co-hosting the Iron Paintbrush! We had a whopping 34 contestants spread out amongst 10 teams, a record turnout by a longshot!
I didn’t note the order our wonderful guest judges ranked these in, they are in team number order. Our theme was “What If The American Revolution…?!” The contestants were allowed to fill in the rest of the sentence in any way they wanted. I offered suggestions such as What If The American Revolution occurred 100 years earlier, 1,000 years later, under the sea, and so on. The creativity of the teams was amazing as always and the work they put together was impressive given the limited materials and significant distractions we put on them! I appreciate the kind note left behind by one of the teams, it makes the craziness even more worth it!
Once again I had a terrific time at Historicon. I love downtown Lancaster, the food is great, and the venue is nice and clean. As a bonus Hobby University was moved down a floor and being on the 3rd floor was terrific as it allowed us to be integrated more within the convention. My wife helped with Paint and Take and she said it was constantly full and there were a ton of people there. As always I’d like to thank the Hobby U team, and the rest of the staff and volunteers for the terrific job they did making the show a success. I hope to see you all again next year, if not sooner!
If you want more Historicon content make sure to check out Wargaming from the Balcony !
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 