Still Hot After 25 Years! (Hotlead 2019 AAR -Picture Heavy)

My lovely wife, the friendly face of Hotlead keeping all of our fun organized and the cash box in parade order. After selling tags for over a decade she knows faces and names better than me.

Hotlead hit a significant milestone this year, 25 years. There have been some bumps getting here, but for the most part it's been a hugely rewarding experience and I've made a lot of really great friends along the way.

I think that because the Hotlead team isn't really a club, but a group of friends who are all excited to see each other (for some of us it's the only time during the year), that makes Hotlead special. That feeling of friendship ripples out into the convention as a whole, setting us apart from other gaming cons. Many of our long time, regular attendees have also remarked on this over the years.

Hotlead friends. The guy on the right, Chris, is my absolutely oldest "brother from another mother". We've known each other since we were 10 or so and played with our Airfix soldiers on the rug or in the garden growing up.

With Red Shirts like these Target would still be open.

I'm trying to explain something important to Chris, who is being VERY serious about it, while Brian tries not to laugh. As usual.

Red Shirts hard at work running the Bring and Buy. Started as a Charity Fund-raiser, it's become a huge attraction in it's own right. These guys do $16K in sales over 7 hours.

My lovely wife guarding the portal, me checking something and my friend the Mad Padre, our Hipster in Residence.

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Red Shirts blowing off steam in Dan's Mongols With Mausers game Saturday night.

To celebrate we got in a cake and had a special figure to give away. The figure also commemorates this year's 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Normandy. Bob Murch of Pulp Figures very kindly donated sculpting and molding, only charging us for material costs and postage. Bob used to be a regular GM at Hotlead before he moved, selling his small line of figures from a case beside his super popular "China Station" games.

And what's a birthday without cake?

Or presents? Our 25th Anniversary figure "Hotlead Herbie" sculpted by Bob Murch.

The Vendors have really changed over the years. Our longest attending vendor, Don Cameron of Five Arrows Figures and Books, who I think has been coming since the first Hotlead, couldn't make it this year due to failing health. Previously the vendors were all stores or part-time hobby businesses retailing figures and a few books, but with the age of internet sales, unless you're a manufacturer it's very hard to make a go of it now. Many of our old standard vendors are no longer in business. This year we had a lot of new Canadian manufacturers selling vinyl battlemats, laser cut mdf buildings, dice, 3D printed scenery and Model Builders Supply who sells to architectural model builders, rail road enthusiasts and now wargamers. The only miniature vendor we had was the venerable RAFM, who cast their own products.

Infinite Dimensions 3D printed scenery

Dan the Dice Guy

"Does this Legio XX Valeria Victrix shirt make me look fat?" Tribe of Nero selling out. I got one of their tees last year.

Infinite Dimensions

Dale Jardin, casts dungeon accessories and paints them. I got some barrels and a wash tub with water effect resin from him last year

The eternal Crossed Swords going out of business sale. He hasn't had a physical store in ages but keeps finding more stuff to unload. I got a few things from him this year on good deals.

Broken Roads Games with their laser cut mdf terrain

Model Builder Supply

Hot Dice Games vinyl battlemats

The crowds were good, but this year we did some pre-registration for games, so the game sign ups went a lot faster. Elizabeth found the administration on the pre-registration pretty straight forward so we'll keep doing it. My big mental block on pre-registration had been taking advance payment, but once I got my head around not really needing that, it was all pretty simple to set up. There were a few glitches and a bit of whining, but lessons learned and you can't make everyone happy.

OK, now the games. Over the weekend we had 75 events ranging in size from Mike doing a foam core building workshop for 2 or 3 people, to the Middle Earth SBG tournament that had 24 gamers playing on 4 tables from Friday night to Saturday night. But we had air and naval games and land games in every period from ancient chariots to Star Wars and in all sizes from 6mm to 54mm. Every period was covered by at least one game except Colonials.

Bill Bean's Battle of Britain game 

WW1 dreadnought

The Middle Earth SBG demo table.  Busy all weekend with 6 to 8 players each session. 

Spent some time Sunday morning discussing water effects with Jason and how he made the waterfall 

Samurai. 3d printed lanterns with LED lights in them and the buildings 

Dan's ancient mayhem 

Dan's Saturday night Mongols with Mausers game, involving silly hats. Fro the 25th Anniversary some extra effort was made in the costume department.

Game of Thrones 

Brian's 15mm Gettysburg game I think

Sunday morning's VSF game with added tentacles this year.

Star Wars

More Star Wars

More of Brian's ACW game

Brian, white hat, explaining something to players in his 6mm FPW game.

Battle of Hastings 

Some old fashioned Tactica 

Italian Wars

6mm Franco-Prussian  

RCAF Sabres vs. MiGs 

Ian Tetlow's lovely 1914 RHA 

The city of Kadesh

Battletech in Quebec City

The Kaiser's hordes advance 

American Revolution in 6mm with a 1:1 ground and figure scale

IDF jets over the Sinai

Battle of Kadesh 

I got out Call sign Two One Bravo Saturday evening and the game went o.k. despite a splitting headache. 

One of three ACW naval games Sunday morning 

ANOTHER ACW naval game, with Mike's scratch built ironclads

DBA tournament 

Snow! This arrived Saturday afternoon giving people a treacherous drive home. 

I notice certain games got photographed a lot by everyone who posted pictures to the Hotlead Facebook group. 

Other views of Hotlead 2019 from the Web:

Must Contain Minis (lots of pictures of the VSF/Chthulu game)

The Mad Padre (some good pictures of Saturday night's huge 1:35th scale What A Tanker! game)

Well that I think is it for this year. A big thanks to all my friends who help out, all the GMs who pack their stuff and bring it to set up games just for us to put our grubby, clumsy paws on, and all the happy attendees who travel long distances, spend their money, have lots of fun and, I hope, reconnect with their friends like I do.

But mostly a huge thank you to my lovely Elizabeth, who is not a gamer, but does this to help me. Hotlead wouldn't be the same without her on the admission desk.

Building Pottersville

OK, with about 3 weeks to go to Hotlead, I fell hard off the wagon and ordered a pile of Sarissa Precision's 28mm buildings from their City Block range. A growing sense of frustration with trying to run bigger or more complex and tactical games lead my thoughts back to buying The Chicago Way last Hotlead and resurrecting my pulp gangsters to have a fun, fast game to play with a variable group of people. This would also be in a very different tone from just more troops in big battles like the other things on my list of desires. Besides I like hard boiled detective novels, old and new.

So on Friday, I got off work early (which was nice, wish we could do that every Friday!) and I got home to find this in the mail box, package 1 of 3:

This is the big warehouse, which I think will be central to a lot of scenarios (or does one call them plots or stories in Pulp games?).

It took all weekend to get to it, but some 90 minutes of work with a bottle of Aileen's Tacky Glue before bed on Sunday and maybe 40 minutes this morning, results in this:

 As you can see, the mezzanine floor comes off to give access to the lower offices. I've left the stairs unglued in case I need to move them for something.

The pillars holding up the mezzanine were quite clever. The front steps, back steps and the stairs up to the mezzanine all used different methods of construction too.

I've left the big doors loose so I can have them open or closed. Maybe I'll make some card hinges before I paint. My only quibbles are that the main floor need a slight trim to get it to fit and the front door doesn't open. I'll have to paint it on the inside so you know where it is. The instructions are a bit vague as well and the parts are unidentified by any number or letter code, so it took a bit of thinking and a lot of dry fitting first.

4Ground have a very nice warehouse that is prepainted and has working doors, but it is also twice the price. So I'll suck up the minor quibbles since I've been able to purchased a bunch of buildings for the cost of the single 4Ground kit.

Still en route are a couple of shops and tenements, so there can be raids on speakeasies or a Mobster's HQ. Plus in previous games I learned that the players always ignore my approach to solid buildings "It's locked, you can't go in!" and they want to go in. So having every building with an accessible interior, even if it isn't central to the plot, is essential.

I'll just arm the fair citizens of Pottersville and they'll get shot at if they run into Mrs. McReady's apartment uninvited.