I drove up to the Baltimore Convention Center (BCC) on Saturday to check out the HMGS Games in Education Day (GED). Mostly I wanted to see for myself what everyone was kvetching about. There’s been a lot of commentary about the problems with the BCC in relation to the upcoming HMGS HISTORICON 2010. I’ll break this up into two parts: GAMER and LOGISTICS. I went primarily to have a good time; I’ll deal with the other stuff in the next post.
Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of games running when I got there, which was around 2PM. I thought there would be a lot more represented in the middle of the day– I should have taken a closer look at the PEL, because most games were either playing, had played, abandoned by GMs with no players, or set up and not played. Turnout was kind of low. I don’t think that had anything to do with anyone sulking over the location, but it is an odd time of year and the Congress of Gamers (CoG) event was also taking place down in Rockville, MD simultaneously. The CoG doesn’t draw a huge miniatures crowd, but it does support a large DBA event, De Bellis Vashingtonium.
The vendors were nice but a bit disappointing–Wargames LLC was there, but they only brought 15mm miniatures with them– nothing I could use. Age of Glory was there, I bought a 28mm farmhouse off of them. The Game Parlor was there, but mostly with Flames of Glory, which I don’t play.
I did peruse some fun things games going– the Battle of North Point (see pictures), a large scale 54mm game of the Bloody Angle of Spotsylvania (see pictures), a great 15mm scale civil war game featuring ships from Merrimack Shipyards (see previous “Hammerin Iron” posts), and a few other games that were set up but didn’t get run. I ended up pulling out my hip pocket “emergency” game, 54mm Gladiators, out and playing with Ed Watts and the lads that were at the GED with him. Had a great time, and we ended up closing the joint.
Overall, I had a good time meeting with people I knew and watching some games played, as well as playing 54mm Gladiators. I played “Roping Larry” (a Laqueatore, or Noose Thrower) and “SugarPuss” (a Dimachaeri, or two-sword fighter) versus a couple of heavy Myrmillions, a Retiarus (net-thrower) and a Light (Slave class gladiator, sword and shield) Here’s a little slideshow of how it went.
My impressions of the facility will be covered in Part 2 (Logistics). A fun time, considering it was free!
Third Point of Singularity 