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| 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.
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| 20mm Viet Nam |
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| VC ambush! |
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| Mikey's 15mm ACW ironclads |
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| 28mm Dux Britannarium by the KEGS crew, which was crazy popular all weekend! |
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| Colonial Marines vs. bugs |
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| In Her Majesties Name |
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| Pasha Dan (in the pith helmet) ran another hugely popular silly hats Pulp Adventure in the Back of Beyond |
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| Gladiators |
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| Very small cars smashing into each other in Road Kill |
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| Sails of Glory |
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| 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.
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| busy bustling crowds |
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| Young dungeon crawlers |
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| Snow Ball Wars! |
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| X-Wing attack on the Death Star |
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| More X-Wing |
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| Star Trek |
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| Dux Britannarium |
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| 6mm Franco-Prussian War |
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| Gallipoli |
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| Modern Africa |
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| Circus Maximus |
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| Some old school Shako II |
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| My, that's a lot of fleets |
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| Ian Tetlow's 1914 game sees the Old Contemptibles taking on the armed might of Kaiser Bill |
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| Eager gamers waiting to sign up |
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| Battletech |
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| Barbarian hordes |
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| Legions of Rome |
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| 28mm 2nd Ypres |
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| 15mm Battle of Trebbia |
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| 28mm Napoleonics |
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| Something VSF |
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| 20mm WW2 |
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6mm WW2, the death of Task Force Worthington
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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:
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| VSF Bring and battle |
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| Nerf football turned into a dirigible |
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| Child's toy aircraft carrier |
