Having a good geez at Winter Con, Canberra 2022

 

I am firmly in the belief that our move to Canberra earlier this year was a wise move, at least in terms of gaming.

Not so much for my wallet..the less said about that the better...

So you can say what you want about Canberra. 

It's a snowless arctic hellhole, a joyless winter drudger-land. Full of staid middle-class-public-servants, wealthy retirees and woke hipsters. A place oozing casual affluence & wealth, clueless & immune to the rest of Australian culture...a place where people with no freaking idea how the vast majority of Australians live dare to condescend to that bogans of the outer suburbs and regions!!!...etc etc...etc etc.

Yeah yeah, say what you will. I've heard it all before. Say it again, rinse and repeat, some of it is probably true.

But one thing is undeniable, Canberra is the stronghold of tabletop wargaming in Australia.

I took my son to Winter Con this weekend. 

Winter Con is CanCon's mid-year, smaller convention (Can Con is the massive gaming convention usually run around the Australia Day Weekend in Canberra, and it is by far the biggest gaming convention in Oz). 

This weekend at Winter Con, there were a lot of hard-core, friendly gamers involved in tournaments of Bolt Action, DBA, Star wars Legion, Flames of War, Chain of Command...etc etc...but not so many causal families or players you would see at CanCon.

My son played Dungeons and Dragons with the Dice for Diversity group (https://dice4diversity.com.au ). They are a group of local gamers that run games for kids on the autism spectrum. My kid loves it and he had a really grouse time making up his stories and characters, rolling dice and doing his thing.

Of course, while he was having his session, I pottered around and tried not to be too intrusive as I snapped - sadly - some really dodgy photos with my phone. 

There were loads of tables laden in really cool terrain and amazingly painted figures. Lots of Bolt Action with some kooky mix & match-ups...Russians in great coats assaulting a Malayan compound?  I guess that tends to happen on these tournaments.

As one can see...there was a lot of fighting around downed aircraft...

A lot of great tables with loads of interesting objectives and tactical conundrums...

There was also a bunch of other games...loads of other tournaments of games I just couldn't get good photos of, cuz I felt a little too self conscious and intrusive. People were there after all to win & win hard!!!!

Lots of Star Wars Legion going down.

Lots of Ancients & medieval with beautifully painted armies on display.

There was even a bit of fantasy...it sort of looked like Lord of the Rings but I couldn't be too sure..

A spot of First World war Naval action...This system looked really cool...but...unfortunately I forgot to get the name of the game...it's Aussie made and the designer was even there...anyone out there know the name??? (update...it's https://broadsideempiresofsteel.com  thanks C!)

There were two or three tables running a play-test of a Chain or Command 'Cold War' game in 6mm, but I only managed to snap one shot just as a game was concluding. I had a good chat with one of the players. 

The scale of 6mm is just so, so excellent to see on the table...it's a very, very, very tempting honey trap...

Of course, being the chatty bloke that I am - I've spent far too long in the tropics so I've long stopped caring about formalities  - I managed to have a good chin wag with a bunch of people both local and interstate.

I even managed to off-load a few shelf-queens from my board wargaming days. The bloke from www.thewarlibrary.com.au was happy to take some of this stuff off me. Games that have been gathering dust for far too long and will be off to a better home. 

Hopefully to be played!!!