Hotlead 2015 (Very Picture Heavy)

Jungle terrain

I think we had a golden weekend this year for Hotlead; sunny enough for folks to travel well, but still frosty enough that no one wanted to get out and start any yard work. After another long, cold snowy Canadian winter the Great Lakes region gamers wanted to get out and play! We even had a couple of guys from Chicago and someone's relative from England.

I spent my spare time this week doing the last minute planning for Hotlead. I booked a vacation day for Friday, so spent the morning packing up the store and then after lunch Mrs. Rabbitman and I went over to the hotel to get things going. One of my minions was already on the ground shuffling tables, and Martin and Stephen were busy setting up the J&M booth.

Unfortunately I felt a cold coming on Monday or Tuesday, so I've been coughing, stuffy and sniffling all weekend. This curtailed for me the Friday and Saturday evening playing that I try to get in when business is shut down and the Red shirt team can all drink some hard earned beer and relax.

We had the usual core of die-hards show up Friday to buy their weekend pass and start the festivities and all the games had players, plus a few last minute additions. In a case of it's a small world I recognized a fellow in a snappy fedora from work.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.
""I've been coming for years. What are you doing here?" I'd been working on the other side of the plant last Hotlead, but for the past few months we've been sharing the same lunch table.

20mm Viet Nam

VC ambush!

Mikey's 15mm ACW ironclads

28mm Dux Britannarium by the KEGS crew, which was crazy popular all weekend!

Colonial Marines vs. bugs

In Her Majesties Name

Pasha Dan (in the pith helmet) ran another hugely popular silly hats Pulp Adventure in the Back of Beyond

Gladiators

Very small cars smashing into each other in Road Kill

Sails of Glory

E-boats and MGBs duel over downed pilots in the channel

Saturday was of course the main event, this year  seeing a statistically significant increase in paid admissions. Lots of games ran in all the time slots. X-Wing and Star Trek: Attack Wing causing an increase in the SF game offerings. But we had some fantasy, some 3D printable games for youngsters and the usual offering of brilliant looking historical games.

busy bustling crowds

Young dungeon crawlers

Snow Ball Wars!

X-Wing attack on the Death Star

More X-Wing

Star Trek

Dux Britannarium

6mm Franco-Prussian War

Gallipoli

Modern Africa

Circus Maximus

Some old school Shako II

My, that's a lot of fleets

Ian Tetlow's 1914 game sees the Old Contemptibles taking on the armed might of Kaiser Bill

Eager gamers waiting to sign up

Battletech

Barbarian hordes

Legions of Rome

28mm 2nd Ypres

15mm Battle of Trebbia

28mm Napoleonics

Something VSF

20mm WW2

6mm WW2, the death of Task Force Worthington

And then my battery died, so I missed pics of the Battle of Hoth in 25mm with 4 AT-ATs, the Star Fleet vs a Borg Cube and the 28mm War of 1812 game featuring a couple of sloops or brigs of war bombarding a fort.

Sunday I woke feeling even worse and was inclined to stay n bed, but Mrs. Rabbitman said "You've got to sign the cheque and pay the hotel" so I popped some Tylenol Cold and Flu and dragged myself over to find things ticking along fine without me.

But here's a sample of what was going on:

VSF Bring and battle

Nerf football turned into a dirigible 

Child's toy aircraft carrier

Even more Dux Britannarium

Night action in the channel using groovy Liko star shell and flash markers

16th cent cattle rustling on the Scottish border

Saturday's Bring and Buy did another crazy feeding frenzy. The final numbers were down a bit from last year, but maybe everyone has cleared out their good stuff and we're down to the left overs? My personal haul was some more stuff from S and S (two 5 ton trucks for the Taliban to ambush and a technical, some weapons cache markers and a big bag of stowage) ordered through Don Cameron, some extra Perry Samurai that Stephen didn't need anymore and the Osprey on Samurai castles. A regular in the basement o'rabbits gifted me 5 mounted Samurai and Mikey got me a blister of Battlefront Landmattress launchers that someone had left over from the Bring and Buy and didn't want to take home.I'm sure they'll look great supporting my next game of Chain of Command! ;)

Hotlead 2015 loot