Hotlead 2025 AAR

Another Hotlead is in the books. 2025 was a fantastic year. Almost 400 people attended. Real life got in the way for some game masters and we had a flurry of 5 unfortunate game cancelations in the week leading up to the show (i.e. after the program was printed), but we still had a DBA and an ADLG tournament, 10 role-playing games, and 77 participation miniatures games ranging from cavemen to space marines, big battles to skirmishes, on air, land, and sea, and ranging from 2mm to 54mm in size. 

The Bring and Buy did over $22,000 in business, generating over $2,200 for charity, plus we also had a jar at the admission table that garnered another $400 for this year's charity, which is buying medical supplies for Ukraine in memory of Dan Cushenan, an old, dear friend of half the B&B Team.

Dan Cushenan in happier times, enjoying the heck out of Dan Hutter's annual Mongols With Mausers pulp action game.

The Bring & Buy Team

The last of our legacy vendors has gone, but that's left room for new businesses to fill the void, including these new faces:

Centuries Historical Miniatures 

Beaver and Broadsword 

We even had a craftsperson selling fiber art. Atticus and Clark Creations sold a lot of aime and fantastical crochet figures. My granddaughter liked her crochet corn dog.

Here's a random sampling of games. I've probably forgotten to include many. I wasn't as good about taking pictures myself this year, so I'm using ones posted on the Hotlead Facebook Group.

Friday night!

Gladiator Game

Ancient Gallies

War of 1812 using Black Sail rules.

WW1 Dreadnoughts

More ships! But this time as the setting for a game of Silver Bayonet set in the arctic, which was popular and ran three times. The ships were printed by Beaver and Broadsword. 

Some Epic ACW

Who you gonna call? The Ghostbusters resolve some Mayhem in Manhattan.

15mm Samurai

Frostgrave

Necromunda

Memoir '44 Battle of Stalingrad. GM ran a 3 game mini-campaign with each game's results affecting the one that came after.

Canvas Eagles. We had several air games this year. WW1, WW2, and a couple of jet age games too.

Battle of Britain

Harriers vs Mirages over the Falkland Islands

RCAF P40s vs Japanese seaplane fighters over the Aleutians

Brian gives a player briefing

I'm explaining something to do with Quar

WW1 with multiple trench lines

Dan runs a French Indochina game using Xenos Rampant.

Big Dave a Pete ran a Pulp Adventure game using When Nightmares Come. Players had to survive three encounters, find clues, solve puzzles and then stop the Big Bad in the final encounter

View form the other end. The three encounters were in Venice, the British Museum, and Peterborough Ontario (!)

The final showdown

British Museum

Venice

Dan's Congo Rebellion game

March or Die! Foreign Legion vs Berbers (or are they Tuaregs?)

15mm Italian Wars

The Death Ride of the 1st Hussars at Le Mesnil Patry, 11 June 1944

6mm figures. Rules used were O Group

Battle of Vittoria

The Seven Year's War in India

The sprawling, mad VSF Bring and Battle which is an incredibly popular Sunday morning tradition.

There were more families in evidence this year, which was very gratifying. A new born was wearing a "My First Hotlead 2025" shirt which tickled us all immensely. The new dad has been coming for 10 years, starting as a lad being brought by his uncle. 

My daughter helping mom on the Front Desk, like she did in High School. 

My daughter helping my grandson in his first convention. They're playing Combat Tails, involving anthropomorphic animals with guns.

Grandson's haul. Mom recognized the deal on the houses (all 3 for Cdn$15). He got some nice on sale Model  Builder Supply trees too.

Granddaughter flexing her cuteness to sell 3 cases of Girl Guide cookies on Saturday. She could've sold more. Her mom and auntie did the same thing 25 years ago. An attendee gifted us the donuts. Don is trying to keep out of them.

A friend gifted me a toy Tiger tank, thinking I could convert it into a Quar tractor. I said "hmmm... probably not... but I've got a grandson!" He also went home with some 1/72 WW2 plastic figures and a toy Sherman. His mom, having grown up with her dad's wargaming, has set him up with some basic paints etc. 

Now I've got more gift options beyond Lego at least. And perhaps my friends won't have the burden of trying to shift my gaming stuff when I die if the grandkids will be interested. 

Next year will be our 30th convention. 20 March to 22 March 2026.

Quar of Command at Hotlead 2025

I really shouldn't do this to myself, but I put a game of Quar on the schedule for Friday night, to show the flag so to speak. I had originally wanted to demonstrate a few concepts from This Quar's War, but since I haven't had a chance to play it since January, and there isn't a smooth Player Reference to use, I switched gears at the last minute and used Quar of Command, with a few changes from last time.

Six players. Each player had two squads, a support weapon, a heavy tractor, and a medium tractor. To make the logistic burden easier I brought my lightweight box of Big Sexy Trees and jungle bushes and some ruined buildings. Scattered those and my 6 Quar themed Jump Off/Objective markers in between the two start lines to give them something to maneuver for/fight over.

I used the card activation and had them roll for who got the first card. Each player on the side got as many Activations as were revealed on the card (so if I drew a 4, each player on that team got to do four Actions). A unit could be activated as many ties as you wanted per card, but it could only do one combat action per card.

Everybody was pretty savvy about finding sight lines between the trees, and the tractors started pounding at exposed infantry and enemy tractors. Initially the Crusaders were winning the tractor duel, but then the Royalists brewed up two Baeliogs and an Alithean in one round!

By the end, two of the Royalist players were completely wiped out. Royalists had a Aefyr and some PPCLI left at one end, but the Crusaders had more infantry still standing, a Baeliog, and control of more Objectives. So minor Crusader victory.

First game for the Toulmorese! They did not get absolutely hammered, surprisingly.

First tractor kill!

Victim

Victor

Not all going the Crusade's way

Exploding tractors everywhere! None were knocked out through accumulated shock or mobility kills, just straight to brew ups!

End game. The Toulmorese are trying to close assault the Aefyr at the bottom of the picture.

Here are the Player Reference Sheets I used:

Big Quar can remove 1d6 shock for an Activation

Yes I need to do a stat block for the Aefyr. Big gun, but lighter armour than the misspelled Paerydyn.

Big Quar can remove 1d6 shock for an Activation

Of course, now I need to add the PPCLI Scatter Gun, and stuff for the Toulmorese, Gloam-Hyyn (especially their trackers), the Taenyer tractor, and Squeedle tractors. It's always a Work In Progress.

For the Quar I found this nice die cast truck for $2 that I'll repaint to match the other one, so I can have a convoy to attack or something.

And one of my players, a long time attendee and gaming chum, whom I've inspired to get his own Quar, gifted me this lovely little handmade snack shack for the Mothcake Chef to do business out of. As you can see, he fits quite nicely. The door hinges and there's a pot bellied stove inside too.

I'll talk more about the rest of Hotlead later this week. But the show went very well.