CanCon 2017 - Part 1

Another year and another CanCon, so Reilly and I made the trip from Sydney to check out the goodies and catch up with friends:

We met up with a bunch of bloggers, including:

Comrade James of the Man Cave!
Blue Willow of Kampfgruppe Willow
Barks of Wargaming with Barks
Millsy of Canister and Grape
Kaptain Kobold of The Stronghold Rebuilt
Trail Ape of Trail Ape's Wargames
Patch from AHPC VII

Unfortunately, many could not attend the meet up due to other commitments (like gaming!), and there were some noticeable absences from CanCon which made this year's pic a little smaller than last year.


We then caught up with some old friends and lead pushers including:
John and Ian from War and Peace Games
Nic R of Eureka Models
Mike P of Battlefield Miniatures
Jimmi from Flashpoint Miniatures

Reilly: taller than me and catching up to Comrade James too!

And met a whole bunch of guys from the Epic Forums whom I have been "chatting with" for well over a decade (closer to two) but had never met in person - that was very cool.

Barks with his new Norse Blood Bowl team 

Naturally, I bought too much stuff (pile of shame pics to follow) mostly from the second hand trade stall to support our current club Dragon Rampant campaign.  Fantasy hasn't been my thing in the past so some inventory holes needed filling, plus I was buying for two.  Justification complete.

Saw some nice terrain and models about the place - probably another post to follow with those as well

Here is Comrade James' brand new 88 on the table during the BA tournament, lining up a shot on a doomed Matilda

Best part of the adventures was a Day 2 thrown down between Lad and Dad using Bolt Action 2.0, being kindly demonstrated by the Demo Gamers (http://thedemogamers.blogspot.com.au/).  Dave and his boys Peter and James are staunch supporters of the hobby are are inevitably seen at every show patiently explaining the rules and sharing their toys.  They also kindly develop excellent indexes for Warlord's BA series of games, which are available at their blog.

The young Dick Winters with James from "the Demo Gamers"

After watching Band of Brothers with me for the first time recently, Reilly was keen to play US Airborne.  So he grabbed the US forces to play against me as the German commander as we fought over a church and some crossroads in a meeting engagement on a lovely late war winter table.

Started well for me, moving up to capture the church and threaten the crossroads with a Vet squad in a corner building.This got ugly over subsequent turns as two of my squads got chewed up in there in close combat, leaving it in US hands

Reilly moves up paras on the other side to threaten the church

My Panzer IV rolls on - but Hans has to go back to Panzer school after failing to hit *anything* all game :-)
That squad then entered the building and got pummelled into nothingness by the Sherman's HE shells

One thing that went right for me- a flank marching Vet squad comes in from the left to disprupt the Americans, wiping our an infantry squad, a bazooka team and isolating the US Platoon Commander.  Before they got wiped out themselves. 

The exciting conclusion as the crossroads become the focal point.  Alas, my last 3 infantrymen were then gunned down and Reilly won both Objectives at the end of turn 6 - a well deserved win.

A fun two days down in Canberra with Reilly - very social catching up with lots of people.  Cant help but think that there was a lack of diversity between traders though - I wanted some resin terrain and some new autumn coloured trees but such things were not on offer.  Not that I went home empty handed, but I thought there was a noticeable absence of diversity of hobby accessories etc.  Well, the ones I wanted anyway.

It was also two days without a brush in hand - back to the AHPC VII projects!