Records Broken at Hotlead 2016!

Another Hotlead has come and gone.
My throat is still sore from talking all weekend.
I had some bumps earlier in the week leading up to the show, but they got sorted with minimal fuss.
We ended up with only 80 games. Some were cancelled because of a health issues or life getting in the way. But another totally slipped through the cracks and wasn't in my first number. Plus there were an unrecorded number of pickup games filling empty slots, and 80 participation games is still a record.
We also had record numbers of attendance. Significantly more folks came Friday night and stayed all weekend, which also made Sunday very busy too with a full room of games.

Friday night!

Saturday morning

Bring and Buy gets mobbed by crowds three deep! 

Sunday morning.

I ran my Afghanistan game Friday night and Saturday night, I'll post pics of that later when I talk about the game itself. But it's been awhile since I ran a game at Hotlead and it didn't stress me too much this year.

So on to the games:

Patrick's Chinese Civil War game

Charlie Company

Dux Britannarium

VSF naval action

Colonial North America

Golan Heights, 1973 in Micro scale

15mm SYW

15mm Italian Wars

25mm Chariot era

Axis & Allies Airwar

Micro scale WW2 Russian front

RAFM hosts the Tomb of Chthulu

Another view of the Tomb of Chthulu

Keith's Cuban Missile Crisis. RCN Banshees vs. Cuban MiGs

Road/Kill!

28mm Shako III big Napoleonic game

Plastic 20mm ancients battle of the Trebbia

15mm Lake Trasimene

Super Heroes

28mm SYW

WW1Dreadnoughts

48mm antique Toy Soldier game complete with silly hats

Pulp adventure with silly hats

28mm Stalingrad

Car Wars

More Dux B.

The Sunday VSF Bring and Battle was in a city this year.

Sunday VSF battle

An unscheduled 15mm ACW ironclad game

Still more Dux B. Ran all weekend in every slot.

An excellent weekend with friends new and old. Saw lots of great looking games. Didn't find much to buy though. Mrs. Rabbitman noticed many new faces in the registration line, which made up for the few who couldn't make it or went to Cold Wars instead. Also we saw a lot of youngsters old enough now to come with dad (and sometimes mum too!) to play, so there's hope for the future.
Among the happy reunions, Bob Murch, the two-fisted sculptor and evil mastermind behind Pulp Figures made an appearance. Bob launched Pulp Figures from a suitcase beside his Rugged Adventures games set in the Far East in the very early days of Hotlead. Then he left for British Columbia and we haven't seen him in a while. But now he's joining forces with RAFM which I think will make everyone, especially the gamers, happy.

Bob Murch of Pulp Figures.

I'm not sure what RAFM and Bob are plotting but he muttered something about "Rugged Adventures must rise again!" followed by evil chuckles. This reporter will watch with interest.

My friend Don was up from Las Vegas and didn't fly home until Monday, so Sunday afternoon we drove to Hamilton Ontario to check out the Canadian Plastic Model Show held at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. We both felt that many of the gaming miniatures at Hotlead were equal or better than many of the entries in the model competition! But it was a beautiful day for a drive to look at the museum's collection of old warbirds.