Chillcon Haul

Yesterday it was Chillcon, one of my favourite wargames shows.  I'll admit I don't cope well with crowds, so the bigger shows, like Vapnartak, are not for me.

Anyway, what was the show like, and what did I get to add to my MABLE*?

The show was great, it was clearly busy, but not too crowded as the space available was ample.
I went with a list, both for myself and for Merlin.  Alas, I couldn't find anything from his list, and my list was only partially filled.

Thud and Blunder, since Merlin got this I was determined to track it down.  It uses essentially the same engine as In her Majesty's Name and Blood Eagle, but is far more geared to a traditional fantasy game (there are pages of spells for instance, and there are sample characters to make up an adventuring party).  I hope this will give me the opportunity to play games with pretty much any fantasy minis I have.  I certainly have no real complaints with the Blood Eagle games I played a while ago, though I suspect on a much larger scale the granularity of the game might slow it down somewhat.

I theory, I shouldn't need to paint anything up for this as I have stuff for Vanguard, plus loads of D&D minis of various sorts.  I'm sure I will do a dedicated warband though.

Dwarven MDF cut terrain from Lasercut Architect. I've seen these two dwarven buildings on the internet before, in real life they were good enough for me to buy.  There is a third, slightly larger, building and a bridge in the same style.  If cottage 1 (on the left) looks slightly familiar, it is based loosely on a card model of a dwarven brewery that was available in a scenario pack many years ago.  I liked the original and always planned to build one of my own.  Now I don't have to.  The designer was interested to hear that there could be a market for similar buildings in 15mm.  

I have a terrain project planned for the near future, so these will come in useful.

Oathsworn under their 'Sensible Shoes' label.  I've not noticed these before, but they are nice minis for RPG characters (and a few monsters).  My new D&D campaign features Dragonborn as an important PC/NPC race, so I was pleased to add to my currently small collection.  

Tieflings this time.  My son likes these, so I picked up what we could find.

I needed some good sized tufts to finish of some bases (then I can show the handgunners).  I can pick up Army painter stuff quite easily in my FLGS, but these were a little more out of the ordinary.

Mantic were selling packs of the Star Saga scenery at a very reasonable price, so I got a pack to use as extra stuff for Deadzone.  I understand that interactive scenery will be a thing in DZ soon.

There were many impressive display games; Mantic's Vanguard was particularly appealing, but for sheer nostalgia this was awesome. 

This is Dark Ops' 3D Heroquest board.  I'm sure this boardgame (released in the 1980s, don't you feel old now?) is responsible for more people joining the hobby than pretty much anything else.

What didn't I get?  Well I wanted some bases from Warbases, but I didn't think to order them in advance.  I'll put in a postal order.  I was also after a few odd minis; a plastic GW archer to complete my kingdoms of Men archer regiment, and some old school minis for another mini project i have coming up.  

It didn't matter though, I'm more than happy with what I got, and when it comes down to adding to the lead pile, there are only two new minis for me (plus a bit of terrain admittedly).

*Miniatures Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy