Hot Lead 2024 (LOTS of pictures and video!)

The Battle of Magnesia. 

Well, the 28th Hot Lead has come and gone. And we're left with the photos, bags of purchases we may regret, and some crazy memories.

Hotlead has always prided itself on being the "friendly convention." Mr. Roper here just want to give everyone a hug.

Late season snow squalls on Friday kept a few people away, but it was still hopping. Here's a video from Friday night around 6:30, as folks are setting up and shopping has already started. As you can see there's already quite a buzz as things get going:

Compare that with this video I took Sunday morning around 10, still quite a buzz. It was the busiest Sunday ever.

Attendance was up about 10%, putting us just shy of 400 people.

We also had the most games ever I think. 84 open participation games, plus another that was cancelled. 6 Role playing games. And 3 Tournaments. Adding the Infinity Tournament to Sunday helped create more traffic for that day.

All periods, scales, genres, and elements of games were well represented.

There were 12 naval games of various scales and in every period. The Dread Not! WW1 game made it's debut this year. I missed getting a picture of the 1/300th scale WW2 destroyer action on Friday night. I was busy actually playing a game and having my monthly beer.

WW1 battle cruisers

ACW Ironclads

War of 1812 on the Great Lakes

Napoleonic Wars British vs French

Ancient gallies

18th century piracy

Star Wars

Hotlead was the debut of Dread Not!, a fast play, First World War game put out by Dobbie's Hobbies and supported by a range of 3d printed ships.

More War of 1812

More WW1

Aerial warfare was also well represented with 5 games. Two set in WW2 and 3 set in WW1.

Canvas Eagles

Balloon busting in Wings of Glory

King Kong was used as a quick tutorial session before players started the game

Late War with Check Your 6!

On land, we had everything except cavemen and post-WW2 modern. But lots of choice from skirmishes to traditional big Napoleonic and American Civil War battles.

Friday Night Fight! Titans smash each other in Legio Imperialis

The Sherrif of Nottingham goes tax collecting

Space Hulk

In space, no one can hear you scream! Xenomorphs and Predators have infested a colonial outppost

big ancient battle

Epic Black Powder American Civil War 

28mm WW1

54mm Viking Raid using Ravenfeast

28mm Napoleonics. 1812 General d'Armee

The extremely popular chariot races

Colonial Marines run into a Predator

Toy Town makes off with the teddy bear's marmalade supplies

The Tatooine Incident. Must be spring, the plants are looking pretty lush.

English Civil War in 28mm

Battle of Mariagano in 15mm

More Epic 40K

Teddy Bears get their marmalade back

Push of pike in the 16th century

Push of pike in the 1st cent BC. Battle of Magnesia in 28mm

The siege of Fort George

Silver Bayonet was popular, running three times

I cannot remember what this was....

6mm American War of Independence using a true 1 figure to 1 man, and 3mm to 1 yard scaling. 

Battle of Magnesia in 15mm

28mm Renaissance 

Ork buggy races returned and were very popular all day

The 2nd Annual Hotlead Mystery Game. This year it turned out to be Marvel Crisis Protocol

Battle of Stratfordegawa, 15mm Samurai 

Saturday night I joined some of the Hotlead Team in a special session of Matthew Sullivan's homage to 80s dungeon crawl Advanced Dungeons and Dragons sessions; Dungeon Creepers. The experience was very similar to his Dead Man's Hand game I played last year, using similar mechanics. Each player was the Boss of a team of dungeon monsters, competing for dominance but also defending the dungeon against parties of adventurers who kept coming in to kill the Liche that runs the place.

Everything could be interacted with. Often there was a moral choice with various risks and rewards.

A rust monster. No one interacted with it though, so who knows what would have happened

Don's Fire Cultists guarding an homage to the AD&D Player's Handbook

Pig-faced Orcs in the guardroom run by the very load and orky Rico

The gelatinous cube. Part of Chris' slime team.

Standard adventuring party; wizard, cleric, fighter, dwarf, and thief enters to cause mischief

Rico's orcs lie in wait

My troll encounters a Mimic. No one likes the Mimics. They don't pay into the coffee fund and never bring donuts when it's their turn. Actually of all the chests in the dungeon, I was the only one to run into a mimic. Everyone else found useful things.

A worried goat

Used to summon a demon. Big Dave rolled exactly what he needed to add the demon to his team. A pip in either direction would have been bad.

My team of monsters getting attacked by the neighbors. I had decided to help the prisoners (following my werewolf) instead of eating them. This would help me against the Adventurers, but the other players now got double VPs for killing my creatures. And Rico massacred the Adventurers by rolling very hot. So I had a princess and a mad hermit, that I couldn't eat now. Ho hum, life is tough as a lonely werewolf.

Rico's ogre angers a water sprite 

Canadians secure a bridgehead

Sunday was quite busy with 10 games and an Infinity Tournament with 18 players.

Infinity Tournament

Infinity Tournament

Infinity Tournament

Infinity Tournament

Infinity Tournament

My purchases were pretty modest this year. I sold $140 worth at the Bring and Buy and only spent $40. I got some Average Dice because both Honours of War and Twilight of the Soldier Kings both require them, and the cube of yellow dice to give me another colour for reasons, like rolling for Lewis guns jamming in Mud & Blood. There were two Wargaming Estate sales running as well. I got Through the Mud and the Blood from one and Wargaming in History form another. $10 each.

Then I also got a bunch of freebies. Another sprue of the Warlord plastic samurai. A book of pictures from the First World War put out by Life magazine for inspiration. Some resin HESCO bastions and pair of land rovers from a long time dealer who is trying to get rid of stock. A Russian flag from the Flag Dude and a GI with a cup of joe, to go with my various tea drinking figures.

The $2400 dollars raised for charity either through direct donations, or sales from the Bring and Buy mostly went to support Red Cross relief efforts, plus a small donation to my Air Cadet Squadron and a Veteran's charitythat Rico raises funds for.

Now it's just cleaning up the website and making notes for next year.

The dates are already booked: 21-23 March 2025.