KEGSCON 2015

Saturday morning saw me up bright and early for the 2 hr drive into deepest, darkest southern Ontario to attend KEGSCON in Chatham, hosted by the Kent-Essex Gaming Society, who are spread from Windsor to London, actually.

Small convention. Nice room in a nice hotel, so bar, food and accommodations all on site. Friday night Brian ran a Waterloo campaign game which I  didn't get to, but it sounded fun. Five dealers and about 12 games on Saturday. Some games went unplayed unfortunately, but I could only be at one table at any one time! But a good gang of guys so fun was had.

I was a bit late having missed my turn and seeing parts of Chatham I didn't want to. So I got there and was soon seated at a game of X-Wing run by my friend Scott R. I hadn't really played it before, but several of my friends do, so I thought I should give it a try.

The Rebel force is trying to cover a transport that has to escape the Imperial Raider and attendant fighters. I am running the X-Wings, B-Wings and the Millennium Falcon in the foreground. So I have both Han and Luke, plus a few other named "hot sticks."

Big furball/traffic jam!

I focused on the Imperial aces in the red advanced Tie fighters before shooting up the basic Tie fighters with level 1 no name pilots, who ducked and wove and dodged many devastating volleys to my great annoyance. They kept their box formation admirably until the last turn when I shot two down finally.

This didn't help us as the Raider cut the transport in half. But my partner did blow up Darth Vader to gain a moral victory. I only lost two fighters and really took a liking to the unglamorous B-Wings that handed out a lot of hurt.

Some Dux Britannarum on a nearby table. Maybe next year I'll get in on this.

A pirate game that I should also seek out at another convention. The skull full of doubloons is a nice touch.

Bolt Action using 15mm Battlefront minis

Keith's Wild West shoot-out free for all to end the day.

After lunch and a bit of browsing the vendors, it was time to try Brian's 6mm Franco-Prussian War game. We refought Mars-la-Tour using "Bloody Big Battles". Barry and I ran the Prussians. I quickly grabbed the two towns we needed to hold to block the French advance while Barry distracted a lot of their left wing.

French advance

French left driving headlong after Barry's outnumbered command

My troops build up in the center

Delaying the French right center

Prussian left delays French right wing

Barry and I destroy French left wing corps

View at game end with Prussian troops still holding the two objectives

Game end Prussian right keeping French centre and left threatened

Interesting game with a lot of similarities to Fire and Fury. The French were frustrated with having lots of troops, but only one command stand and an additional negative for command rolls, so they didn't move very much. The Prussians had to scramble to rush troops to the objectives. I kept trying to build a massed battery in the centre, but kept having to withdraw guns as they ran out of ammo. So of my four batteries I only had two at any given time.

I only did a bit of shopping and visiting. I bought 2 resin haystacks from 6 Squared Studio and some air support for my modern Canadians thanks to Don H. who spotted the  Apache kit and pointed it out to me during my X-Wing game. It was in a box of stuff at the perpetual travelling "Crossed Swords" clearance sale. The dealer closed his store a couple of years ago and is dragging his stock around to the local shows to play "Let's make a deal!" I got the Apache for ten bucks.

I also had an interesting chat with a recently retired RCR warrant officer, who was explaining some details of modern section tactics with LAVs and the smaller, firepower heavy infantry sections.

Another good chat with Brian as he packed up Mars-la-Tour and then it was time to head home, stopping at a highway Tim Horton's for dinner and getting home a little after 10 PM.