Sunday, September 20, 2015

Hubcon 2015

I had all the fun I could have at Hubcon 2015 at the Forest County Center, thanks to Tim Broome once again.

Work kept me from attending on Friday, but we got there early on Saturday and stayed until about 5pm, when waking up a 4am and putting on a game ended my stamina.

I put on a game in which a medieval lord had a bottleneck on a river that throttled the commerce of the lords both North and South of his domain.  They united to take out the bottleneck, formed by a watchtower with a small group of archers and a catapult. The rules used were Warrior Heroes - Legends with the heroic melee.  I had intended to use Captains and Kings, but the forces commanded by the players were too small.  The rules are from, need I say, Two Hour Wargames!

The Southern lord (Bill Majure) reached the watchtower first and succeeded in breeching the doors to the postern and the watchtower.  At this point, the Northern lord (Larry Touhy), realizing that the tower was about to fall, and that the Southern lord was losing men left and right, decided that he wanted the watchtower for himself and attacked the Northern lord's host in the back!

As the game ended, the watchtower had lost 15 of 20 men, the Southern lord perhaps half of his horde, and the Northern lord had lost very few men.  A true game of medieval treachery and mendacity!  I'd like to thank the players for their cooperation in playing the game.

All of these pictures were taken by my wife, Theresa, on both the Canon Rebel EOS T3 and Canon PowerShot SX-120 IS.  So here's the pics!

This is the initial setup before any players arrived.  The watchtower has 16 mailed archers, a leader, and the leader's wife.  They will be defending against 6 cogs, each with 12 archers, 10 men-at-arms, 1 leader, and 5 crew, who only man the cog. All of the buildings and fences are paper, mostly from Fat Dragon.

Here's a view from the other side of the promontary.
The Northern lord's ships and crews.  The Southern lord has the same.
Larry Touhey and Jim contemplate the best was to back stab the Southern lord.
Lord Touhy assigns his subordinates their ships. (Mike Bobe's back in the background)
The Southern lords, under Bill Majure, approach the promentory.  The sails were removed to make it easier for the players to move their shipboard figures.
Closer they come, but the left ship has been unmasted by the catapult on top of the watchtower.
The Northern ships begin their approach, held up by awful rolls on movement!

They approach the Southern ship, who will be glad of their help (hah)!
As they approach, one of their ships is unmasted!
Dwayne Bailius, the lord of the watchtower removes the top of the tower to place a few archers in the second story arrow slits.
Bill Majure prepares to hassle the sheep.  Dwayne asks for his mounted knights (ain't gonna happen)
Bill's flotilla has beached on the shore, and his foot soldiers prepare to climb the rocky beach. Meanwhile, the Northern flotilla has bypassed the docks, coming ever closer to the
Southern flotilla.
A shot of the tower top with the catapult, which suffered from poor reloading rolls.
There are no shots of the end of the game, as the players were getting packed in for the game.

The Southrons got ashore, suffered a lot from the tower's bows but succeeding in bursting through the small tower doors.  Then they pulled down the wattle fences and burst down the tower doors, and found themselves in a murder hole. At this point the Northron flotilla began to rain down arrows on the rear of the Southroners on land, and set fire to one of the Southron cogs.

As our 4 hour slot ended, I declared the Northerners the winners, since they had suffered little, though the watchtower did put arrows and catapult projectiles on a few of their men.  The Southrons would have made them pay dearly for the watchtower, but they were significantly outnumbered, and hadn't got out of the murder hole.  The men in the watchtower were very few.





These photos are mostly from the Bolt Action tourney.
 Hilton MacMannus and opponent for L'Art de la Guerre tournament.
 Walt Bourgoyne and his opponent.


 Chris Swearingen and his opponent.
Chris Johnston and his opponent.  That may be Lee Drake in the rear in the cap.
The tournament was well attended.  I don't know the results.  I know that Chris S. wasn't using his campion Tamil Indians. (No elephants!)

Steve Wirth and Paul Arceneaux discussing the finer points of Viking raids!
An incredible fantasy table.  That parthenon was really beautiful!


A game I did not see, but that is friend Wayne Trovinger seated.
Old friend Rudy Nelson of Time Portal Hobbies reads rules.