Last week grognards from around the country (but mostly the east coast) gathered at HistoriCon, the USA’s biggest mostly-historical wargame convention. HMGS, or The Historical Miniatures Gaming Society, puts on three conventions a year – Cold Wars in February, HistoriCon in July, and Fall In in November. Historically they’ve been held in a variety of places but many of them in beautiful Lancaster, the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country.
This is my third year attending HistoriCon. I’ve been to Fall In previously, but HistoriCon aligns better with my personal calendar (it’s not during any soccer seasons) so I’m going to this one now. Getting there (for me) is not easy – it’s about a nine hour drive along the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes. EZPass helps but it’s a slog, especially the Ohio part. Nobody likes Ohio.
Lancaster, PA
If you’re the cultured type, Lancaster will offer a lot of interest outside of the convention halls while you’re at HistoriCon. In the past, we’d been at the Host, an old resort on the edge of town near some outlet malls. I figured that’s what Lancaster is – buffets and boomers. The last few years HistoriCon has been downtown at the Lancaster County Convention Center and it is, frankly, a totally different place. It’s one of the oldest cities in the US, founded in the 1720s. The streets, architecture, and general atmosphere are all very interesting and take you back in time.
Right outside the main convention hotel is the Lancaster Soldiers and Sailors Monument, dedicated in 1874. It’s a beautiful monument and really puts you in the mood for some sweet grogtime. It’s cited at the spot of the court house where the Continental Congress met for a time during 1777. It makes for a wicked roundabout thingy that really put my Midwest downtown driving anxiety into full gear.
We stayed in The Hetty House, a rowhouse on Orange Street that was purchased in 1840 by Hetty Parker, James Buchanan’s (one of the worst American presidents of all time) housekeeper who helped raise his niece and nephew. He’s from Lancaster, but we won’t hold that against the city. It’s a beautiful house – easily the oldest I’ve ever stayed in – and easily accessible with a 10 minute walk to the convention center. It’s been branded with stuff (not as bad as ‘live laugh love’ but perky little sayings everywhere) that wasn’t my taste – I think it’d just be great as an old house. Four of us slept well, with me in the attic, bending over my 6’3″ frame the whole time.
Parking outside the house wasn’t easy, but I did parallel park once. That makes it six times, I think, in my entire life. Parking at the convention center is easier if you get their early – there is a garage attached right to it. HMGS provides you a comped pass so a $35 parking fee for a few days becomes $0.0 on your way out. It’s easy to cart your stuff from the garage to the places you’re playing with elevators and escalators. This is a huge win for HMGS organizers – well done!
There are a TON of food options around the convention center. I think I noticed three different Nepalese restaurants, with our group eating at one Friday night – it was excellent! An appetizer and Bhutawa Chicken entree only cost me $20 (in this economy!). I’m also apparently a massive Midwestern rube because I didn’t know you could BYOB to restaurants – our buddy Patrick brought in an entire case of champagne and handed it out. I internet searched it, and apparently its just not as popular here in Michigan because liquor licenses are much easier to get than some places. Other food options are the Central Market, with tons of great breakfast and lunch options and plenty of breweries. Folks with a far more refined palate than mine visit HistoriCon and love the food there.
Downtown Lancaster really surprises me every time I go; the Dutch part that I had been to before seemed like any old rust belt town, but downtown is bustling and busy every night after dark with lots of people walking everywhere. There’s live music all over the place and bars are hopping. I guess I didn’t realize it was nearly as thriving as it is; Wikipedia says over a half a million people live in the metro Lancaster area, and it was a warm summer week, so it makes sense.
Our Lovely Lard Club
Started around 2018, our informal Lard America gaming club has been organized mostly via Facebook and email. We have members on the East Coast, in the Chicago area, Michigan, down south, out west, and even Ohio. There are about 15 of us who regularly run events at HMGS and AdeptiCon conventions. While I generally only see these people once a year, gathering together, talking, drinking, and playing TooFatLardies games is one of my favorite things. It’s also really nice to be around friendly armchair historians who aren’t ranting in favor of all the hot garbage happening right now in our country; not saying that historical cons are usually like that, but you do tend to see that kind of thing when a bunch of people are brought together.
Our club runs four or five games per time slot – usually two time slots in one day. We have a corner of the main upstairs ballroom with all of our games right in the front when you walk in.
This year we played a club game of Midgard on Thursday night before most con games started. It was Scots vs French, with team Midwest taking the Scots. I actually was supposed to run a game of Midgard at HistoriCon but had to cancel at the last minute due to my brother’s back giving out; he had all the minis for it. We had a great time, with Lard Midwest holding the line with Scot pikes and countercharing when needed. We won with a difference in reputation of around 10.
The Convention Organization and Location
Every good convention has an amazing vendor hall. The vendor hall at HistoriCon is hugely diverse; there are a lot of minis suppliers, of course, but there are also lots of terrain suppliers, book vendors, and demo stations. I usually look for stuff that I can’t buy at home, of course, but also things I want to see in person to determine if I want to buy them. I ended up picking up a bunch of cool stuff.
Overall I did really well in the vendor hall – caught some sales and grabbed all the Uncivil War minis for $1 each.
The convention staff (all volunteers) have made a ton of improvements since I’ve been attending. They use tabletop.events to manage event tickets and hosting. You get a QR code in your email that you scan when you walk in and get a badge printed out for you automatically. T-shirts, badge holders, bags, etc. are all well-priced. While the con itself isn’t all on one floor, it’s easy to get around and use escalators etc. The ballroom we played in was super well-lit. Con food was priced as usual, so for lunch and breakfast I tried to eat the food I brought and splurge on dinner out.
One of the neat things the con does is award gamemasters for hosting great games by having judges walk around and look; I totally realize this is a thankless task that has to be done by volunteers. I’d love it somehow if there were more, and I’ll have to volunteer to do it next year. It seemed like there were zero judges that came around when I was running games. One of my club-mates had an amazing game that is magazine worthy and deserved an award. The other suggestion I’d make is moving games that have a huge capacity (8 or more people) to the hallway or in their own rooms – it’s super difficult to run a game for four guys when you’re being crowded out and yelled over by 15 nearby.
Historical conventions are generally different from what you might expect if you’ve attended GW events or AdeptiCon. Instead of lots of tournaments, there are a few tournaments (Bolt Action, Art de la Guerre, Triumph, SAGA, others – even 40k had a two day tourney) but mostly there are participation games, where a gamemaster paints a ton of minis, brings terrain and a mat and sets up a game. Players sign up to play in the game based on what rules or conflicts they’re looking for. This gives players a great opportunity to check out new rulesets, new miniature lines, and have a good time playing a game they like without having to buy and paint everything.
One game of particular note, when I walked around and looked, was the ranch hands game run in the back of our room. One team were the ranchers who had to move the cattle across the board; the other team had to stop them. At the time I walked up the team stopping them were wolves attempting to take out cattle. It was amazing. I had to buy the rules that night.
The Games We Played
Thursday we played the Midgard game, then Friday I had basically open to peruse the vendor hall and fill in for people that didn’t show up for their games in our Lard area. I played in a four way Silver Bayonet game as the Spanish first. It was a rough go, as the other teams got in close to the objectives and pulled them up first. I did manage to do some damage to enemy ghosts before retiring from the field.
I filled in for a fellow Larder in a game of Chain of Command using Quar minis, one of the best participation games I’ve ever seen presented. All the terrain bar some fences was scratchbuilt, and the paint was fantastic. I managed to get my Quar into the objective building but was then quickly shoved out to never recover.
I ran a Sharp Practice 2nd Seminole War game first thing on Saturday. It was great setting up the night before because it gives me deep anxiety setting up while dudes are sitting there watching or standing over you. The game itself went extremely well; I’ll detail it more in a future article, but the Seminoles had to defend their storehouses from being burned by the US regular infantry. I chose to go specifically with a smaller set of units to make the swamp seem bigger, wider, and more intimidating. It allowed for a lot more movement and maneuver, particularly on the US side. The game ended with the US player charging the Seminoles and two level four leaders dying. The morale states were 2-0 in favor of the US, just barely a win.
I ran a Bag the Hun game in the afternoon with American pilots in Wildcats, Dauntlesses, and Avengers bombing a Japanese transport convoy defended by Pete and Rufe floatplanes along with Oscar army planes. I’ve run this scenario before at FlintCon and it was impossibly close, with the Americans just barely managing a scenario victory, losing almost 50% of their force. This time it wasn’t as close – the Americans didn’t drop their torpedoes in time and the dive bombers missed their targets. They did take down a bunch of Japanese planes but lost a number in return. I feel that the players learned a lot about the game which is always what I want.
Next Year
In about a year we’ll be back at it, traversing the downtown cobbles of Lancaster and telling stories about the junior leader who single handedly took out that 88. I’m planning on running two days of Sharp Practice games with Revolutionary War scenarios, as it’ll be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I’m hoping to have a campaign with four linked scenarios that I test this winter with a variety of troops coming to bear against each other.
If you’re interested in attending, definitely check out https://hmgs.org/ and become a member. Membership makes attending cheaper and allows you to register for all your games you want to play. When hotels and other places to stay come up grab a place to sleep and I’ll see you at HistoriCon!
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