CANCON 2012

As previously posted I planned a trip to Cancon 2012 it is located in the suburb of Mitchell in Canberra, Australia, this was my first visit to a major convention here in Oz, must say I was excited.

I made the long drive up with my bro John (pictured above), we basically hired a vehicle and did the whole road trip thing, the trip itself wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, still plenty tiring though.

Demo Games

As far as free Demo games go, there wasn't enough, but there were some outstanding ones like this Alamo game, great scenery, plenty of miniatures and the guys were friendly to boot ! so much eye candy to be had here.

Another awesome demo game, Wings of War a WW1 air combat game, a great terrain mat, excellent miniatures and what seemed like a great set of rules, there were plenty of mid air collisions, machine gun jams, and close calls.

Tournament games

There was a lot of tournaments happening while we were there, I took pics of a few that I noticed as I passed them going to other games, Blood bowl, Stalingrad, DBA, Infinity.

They even dedicated a whole section to Magic the Gathering...... waste of space ?? I guess a lot of people didn't think so !

Traders

Now this is another area that I thought was a little lacking, barely anyone selling terrain or terrain pieces, and those who were selling miniatures had them all in a box in which you had to rummage through to find what you wanted, could have been better organised me thinks, but there were some traders that had set themselves up properly, they seemed to be the busiest, coincidence ? think not, here are some of the better set ups.

Overall Cancon 2012 was quite fun with plenty to do if you were prepared to get involved The game that stole our imagination the most was the WW1 air combat game Wings of War ! we watched it being played, even that was fun to do, we also played a few demo games, in the end we succumbed and bought the game ourselves, easily the best demo game of Cancon 2012.

What a collection .... Wow.

My brother and I played in this game, I am the German plane in the middle that is about to get sandwiched by two British planes, in this series of games I got shot at, hitting my fuel tank and causing me to explode in mid air, I was also shot to pieces over a few goes, causing my plane to crash to the earth, in other incidents I had a few close call possible mid air collisions, cannot praise this game enough for the 'Fun Factor' it puts out.

Its the Red Baron ! where was he when I needed him ?!!?

ANGLO-SAXON CEORLS

Next to march off the painting desk are four Dark Age Ceorls, pronounced (churls), these made up the bulk of a dark age Militia / Fyrd, if you were a freeman between the age of 16 and 60 then you were required to take part in military service that could be called forth by a local Thegn in times of crisis, these guys formed the basis of Anglo Saxon society, labouring away on the land and on the livestock, but would also have to participate in the general fyrd when the need arose, sounds like a tough life!

Each Saxon warband will have six Ceorls in service, so thats 12 Ceorls in total for both warbands to paint up, I dont mind painting these guys as there is plenty of colour and lots of variety, These guys are from SLM, they are 15/18mm scale and are pretty easy to paint with heaps of detail.

Have a look at the guy with the two handed axe, this guy towers over most of his peers, the majority of my other saxons only reach up to his armpits in total height ! no doubt he will assert his axe's authority over most of his enemies, probably my favorite Saxon thus far.

ANGLO-SAXON GESITHS

 I decided to start with the Anglo-Saxon war bands, I believe I will be painting up two small bands, so about thirty men in all, 15 men in each band, I was excited about getting into the 'Dark Ages' so I got stuck into it real quick, painting up a group of six Gesiths to start proceedings, for those of you who dont know what a Anglo-Saxon Gesith is...  basically it is a term used to describe an Anglo-Saxon nobleman in the early part of the Dark Ages in England, these guys were land owners and usaully had peasants or Ceorls working the land for them, Gesith's often also served as retainers to a king or a Lord.

so while I am talking about Anglo Saxon classes I thought I might aswell include this small table which offers a simplistic break down of classes at that time, this will help you guys follow what I'm saying when I use the proper historical names for the different classes:

Slave            Thrall      I may use these in my games.
Peasant        Ceorl      will be used as militia / light infantry.
Nobleman     Gesith    will be used as med inf, well trained.
Lord              Lord       unit leaders, well armed and armoured.

There were more classes than this but this is what I will use within my skirmish games, just to keep it simple and fun, basically warbands led by local leaders with all there troops. 

'Form a shieldwall !'

So, as metioned before these are 15mm (18mm) miniatures from SLM, good sculpts, good detail, I had a few mold lines to remove, and a few rough spots in the wrong places to smooth, they could do with more variety in there poses but outside of that they were fun to paint, and I can recommend them to whoever wants to get into this period at this size, more Saxons to come soon, stay tuned fellas...

                                                  

                  

THE DARK AGES

 'The Picts attacking Hadrians wall'

So this is my new project for the year, the 'Dark Ages', I will be concentrating/gaming the early part of the history, so to set the scene, here is a brief overview of what was going on at that time, around 410AD,

Roman military rule in Britain has been withdrawn by the Emperor, due mainly to barbarian pressures in Europe, these were taken to be the early signs of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Briton is left to fend for her self against a variety of invaders, there were the Picts from the north and the Irish-Scots from the west and to make matters worse the British high king of the time hired Angle and Saxon(Germanic) mercenaries to help keep the invaders at bay, in exchange for land and royal favor, but the Anglo-Saxons seeing a vulnerability decided to exploit it, they rebelled and took more land by force of arms, in the end becoming an invader themselves, history tells us that the Anglo-Saxons went on to establish kingdoms of their own in the southern part of Briton.

This is the time period and setting in which I will play some skirmish games, featuring war parties from the Anglo-Saxons, Romano-Brits, Picts and the Irish-Scots, all of this will be done in 15mm with all miniatures from Splintered Light Miniatures , the terrain I use will probably be my Tusk terrain, but I may make a Dark Age Saxon village or a Romano-Brit frontier fort as well, I will keep you posted.