HOME-storicon 2014

For numerous financial, family, and transportation reasons, there was absolutely no way I was making it to Historicon this year.  However, one of the reasons was my wife working both Saturday and Sunday, so that translated to a positive:  a weekend of Daddy and the girls always turns into gaming fun.

First, I went to my FLGS to act as my dealers area.

Luckily I placed a special order so I had some material for the weekend.

My Magic cards were more of an impulse buy, first pack in five years... d'oh!

Friday turned into a bust gaming wise as my eldest daughter, Maja admitted "I don't want any rules tonight." That still didn't mean we didn't have fun outside with dinosaurs for two hours.

Coming soon to SyFy...

Saturday morning was the opposite of a con day. We slept in late, had a pillow fight, and my visions of kids with car races, or princesses being rescued or rescuing others from the clutches of the evil Blue Martians were dissolved into a mixture of hours of basketball and volleyball outside, mixed with air conditioned jaunts for Scooby Doo and the WWE on DVD.

Sunday turned into the real gaming day, because after church and brunch, my buddy Brian came up for the afternoon.

We finally broke out OGRE, took a few seconds to go over the rules (90% of which was finding where the rules for hitting treads were), and Brian schooled me with the first Ogre power sweep left that I have ever seen.  It apparently had the AI of Barry Sanders as it juked, jived, and eventually ran over my units.   I demanded a do-over, but Brian had already set up the next game.

Brian had still had a copy of Star Trek Attack Wing in the shrinkwrap and it was as good a time as any to open it up and try out the quickstart rules.  The components were solid and the counters were nice and thick.  The quickstart rules brought back all the naval games I've played, although I fared much better with a Klingon Bird of Prey versus a pre-Dreadnought destroyer.

We also ripped open his copy of Zombie Dice, by Steve Jackson Games. Ridiculously simple, so much so that I pulled a TV-Zombie Maja to play with us. In the second game she pulled off an incredible win, rolling three brains (with two shotguns already) to streak past dear old Dad in the three-player game. It was great fun to hear her say, "Oh no, I lost all my brains again," over and over again.

BRAAAAAIIIIINNNNNSSSS!

For the finale, we broke out the gnomes,  for a Gnome Wars battle of the little talked out Austro-Serbian War of 1914.  We actually used the Four Armies Campaign Generator program on The Miniatures Page for table set-up (and a healthy dose of Maja helping us "decorate").   Like most of our games that day, it was a terribly lopsided affair, but nevertheless we recorded the result and are ready for the next game in two weeks.

Battlefield Objectives by Maja

As much as I would have loved to go down to Virginia and catch up with friends I only see once or twice a year and play in some awesome games, I'll take what I can get at home.  The bathrooms are cleaner, I avoided getting cleaned out of the dealers area, and despite my dog's barking trying to recreate the usual noise problems, I have plenty of Yuengling Summer Wheat to offset that, and already paid for.

UP NEXT:  Hopefully, Gaming with the Gnomies' intrepid reporter Mike Lung will send back a report on his trip to Historicon.  I did specifically ask him for a few pictures of some of the more unusual games that, as I expected, haven't been covered in the other blogs.

UP AFTER THAT:  I did get some painting done over the weekend, so I may introduce the world to Sister Maria Consuela Bananahammock Martinez.   Some call her a penitent pawn of the Vatican.  The First Imperial Guard of California calls her a lifesaver.