 |
| 30th Anniversary Logo |
Well, another highly successful Hotlead is in the books. We realized that this year, after consulting the ancient tomes, would be the
30th convention (not counting the two years we didn't run because of Covid).
So with such a significant anniversary, we naturally needed merch. The company we went with could set up a store for everyone to order and pay for their own selections, and we would just collect and distribute. The printing technology meant that we didn't have any minimums and could have a wide variety of items. Except embroidered hats and golf shirts. I had to buy the residue to make the minimums and hope we could flog them, fortunately some people were happy to make up for failing to get an order in before the deadline and we were able to sell most of them.
 |
| Back of the tee-shirts. Hoodies were the same. |
 |
| Golf shirts |
 |
| Mugs too! Did I need another mug? No, of course not. Would I be sad if I didn't have a cool Hotlead mug? Yes, of course I would! |
But onto the games. We had 10 role-playing games using a pleasing variety of systems. Four tournaments: ADLG, 2x DBA and Infinity. 80 participation games. There was originally more, but a last minute wave of
TEN! cancellations knocked that down unfortunately. Elizabeth did her best to reach out to pre-registrants and get them signed up for something else, but it wasn't always possible.
More stats, because everyone likes stats! Maybe I should make some pie charts.... mmmmmm pie...
There were 6 air games. 2x First World War, 1x Second World War and 3x jet age.
There were 9 naval games. 1x ancient, 3x Age of Sail (all set in the War of 1812 on the Great Lakes), 1x First World War (the models were soooo tiny I didn't bother trying to take a picture, even the cruisers were based as multi ship squadrons), 2x Second World War, and 2x Science Fiction.
There were roughly 21x skirmish level games (individual figure movement and activation, instead of squads activating and moving as groups), vs approximately 34 "big battle" games. Some games as usual are hard to categorize. For example, Dan's giant Mongols With Mausers game, is it a skirmish, or battle? World War One or Pulp-Fantasy? Command Decision is a small level of combat, but I put it with battles, since you aren't moving individal squaddies about. Dungeon Creepers I included among fantasy skirmishes, since it's not really a role playing game.
There were 11x fantasy games,10x science fiction and 59x historical.
Historical period breakdown was: 13x ancient, 4x medieval, 6x pike and shot (including the samurai), 7x black powder era, 2x colonial, 5x First World War One, 14x Second World War, 6x Post Second World War (Vietnam or the Falklands aren't really modern anymore are they?).
 |
| The busy busy Bring and Buy. $21,900 in sales over 6 or 7 hours. |
 |
| The hall is packed |
 |
| Samurai |
 |
| Battle of Lutzen, General d'Armee |
 |
| Canvas Eagles |
 |
| More Battletech |
 |
| Memoir '44 D-Day, or maybe D+1. I dunno, he ran both. |
 |
| Epic Hail Ceaser |
 |
| Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game in Osgiliath |
 |
| Chain of Command the Road to Jitra |
 |
| Battle of Towton |
 |
| Pearl Harbour with Axis & Allies Air |
 |
| Battle of Mohacs, DBR |
 |
| Battle of Lutzen |
 |
| Battle of Lake Erie using Black Seas |
 |
| Osgiliath |
 |
| Big battle DBA |
 |
| Battle of Kernstown, 15mm ACW |
 |
| Russian Front using Fistful of T34s |
 |
| More War of 1812, but with 1/100th scale boats instead of 1/700 |
 |
| Check Your 6! Jet Age had several games |
 |
| Commandos in Norway |
 |
| Another Chain of Command game, France 1940 |
 |
| ADLG Tournament |
 |
| Epic Pike & Shotte |
 |
| Space ships! |
 |
| Cavemen! |
 |
| Dinosaurs fighting Conquistadors! |
Saturday night, despite getting a rubbish sleep the night before, I was feeling energetic enough to join the Red Shirts in a special session of
Dungeon Creepers and have a couple of beers. It was handy that we were near the bar. In this game the players are all running teams of old school AD&D monsters, fighting over who's Boss in the dungeon, while parties of annoying adventurers arrive, throwing fireballs and trying to kill the Lich or rescue the Princess. So we had to occassionally stop trying to kill each other to join forces against the advnturers. It was all good boozy fun with many bad jokes.
 |
| Matthew the DM tries to explain something to us rowdy drunks |
 |
| Big Dave and I ran these guys. The Beholder is our Boss |
 |
| View of the dungeon |
 |
| Pablito and Joe try to drop a slime on our Medusa, and our Harpy gets into a fight with their Boss, a Mindflayer |
 |
| Adventurers arrive. Standard old style AD&D party: fighter, elf, dwarf, thief, cleric, magic user |
 |
| Mindflayer gets into the inner sanctum and tries to perform the rites. |
 |
| Oops. Pit Demon appears, and he's super angry |
But that's OK, the game ended before the Pit Demon ate the Mindflayer. Big Dave and I killed the last adventurer for double points and collected their treasure, pushing us to a game winning 14 Villiany Points.
Total of 3x tournaments, 7x RPGs, and 46x open participation games.
Sunday
Sunday was very busy as well. The
Infinity tournament created a nice buzz, but we also had full tables with eight games.
 |
| Barnaby points at Tatooine |
 |
| Bolt Action |
 |
| Jason and the Argonauts using 7TV |
 |
| Battletech |
 |
| Middle Earth |
 |
| Another CY6! Jet Age game. Harriers around the Flaklands |
 |
| Jason and the Argonauts |
 |
| Infinity tournament |
1x tournament, 1x RPG, and 8x games.
Between the Bring and Buy, Pete flogging abandoned stuff Sunday morning, and a donation, we raised $2370 for charity. We'll add to that from the door fees.
I did not shop much, but I did get some fun things.
 |
| Saw this while collecting booth fees from vendors. Had to get it, because it's my favorite tank ever. |
 |
| Do my friends know me, or what? Some gifts that they found during the show. I could put the truck in with the gangsters or repaint for the Quar, but I think I'll just keep him on a bookshelf |
 |
| Sadly, we had another estate sale, this time for a member of the team who had dropped out during Covid. His family were rather baffled by Barry's large and eclectic collection. Various people chipped in, helping to identify things or send them customers seeking something. I got these lovely Hudson and Allen medieval buildings. It was gratifying to see the piles of go down. |
So, that's that. It was good seeing everyone. My throat is finally recovering after a full 36 hours. The Bring and Buy was our second best year and numbers have returned to our pre-Covid peak with around 450 people attending.
Next year's dates are 19-21 March 2027.
