Rapiercon 2019 - Friday

Last weekend I made the short trek south to Jacksonville for the 2019 iteration of Rapier game convention. All said, it was a terrific two days of gaming and hanging out with friends.

Your truly and Mark J (driving) on Friday morning. There's a lot to be said for driving to a game convention on a Friday morning and not being at work!

My plans for the weekend were pretty loose - only two commitments - a Blood and Plunder tournament on Friday afternoon and running a Star Fleet Battles game on Saturday afternoon.

Interesting development... the Firelock Games folks are working on a Great War skirmish game that uses some of the B&P mechanics. I'd keep any eye out for this if it's your cuppa... the company is top-notch and I'm very impressed with their product thusfar.

An interesting swashbuckling affair with a very nice layout.

My favorite layout of the weekend was this darkest Africa table. Forty-eight square feet of AWESOME! Sadly, they were playing during my B&P games so I couldn't join.

Blood and Plunder began at 2:00pm. There were only four of us playing which made for a really tidy three-game tournament! My first game was with Mark.

Belloq makes his tabletop debut! 

This dice roll neatly sums up the game. It was a one-sided slaughter in favor of me. We both learned a bit and it was on to the next round!

I didn't take many pictures of my second game. I played against a fellow named Joe who did nothing but complain about how unbalanced my chosen army was and that he was doomed and complain complain complain. I made the foolish mistake of electing to attack in a scenario that forces the attacker to rush across the battle field. As it was, we both dealt significant casualties to eachother's force and I failed to pass nearly every morale test I was required to take. In the end, I lost a close affair. The melee in the "Corral with No Gate" was a highlight.

Game three's opponent was Damien who was running a Canadian Milita force. We played a Control The Field scenario. The primary goal was to take possession of two of the three objectives to score points. One was in the plaza of the hacienda.

The Green Macaw boys went over the wall and were met by a hail of shot. It was as ugly as you think. We fought a bit more for a few turns. Eventually my Hovitos quit the field since failing morale tests was just what I was doing Friday afternoon!

Some of the fellas. Complaining Joe is wearing the red shirt behind Mark. All said and done, I came in third out of four... not great but it was a great way to kick off the con for me!

Meanwhile, Mike ponders his next move in the ACW game he was involved with across the room.

An impressive amount of lead is piled upon a table for a big Napoleonic battle.

A bit later, the other half arrived and it was quite a battle!

Some gorgeous 40mm FIW. They were playing Musket and Tomahawk using Sash and Saber Minis.

Mark had gotten involved with that during the evening session.

While Mark was skirmishing in the 18th century, Mike and I took to the skies over England for some Blood Red Skies!

Mike's been playing the game in Waycross for a few weeks and got me sufficiently educated to play a proper bombing run. I ran the evil Germans while Mike defended. I apologize for the unpainted plastic, but it was a new game, fresh out of the box! 

A Spitfire claims one of my bomb trucks.

It wasn't long before the RAF had taken out another. A Pyrrhic victory for the Brits! I actually did a remarkable job killing Spitfires. We did a few things wrong since multi-engine planes behave differently that single-engine ones, but had a great time either way. The game is very peculiar but I enjoyed it and it elegantly delivers the difficult-to-achieve goal of being able to manage a full squadron of planes without having to "manage" things.

It was about 11:30PM so we all went off to catch some sleep to be ready for gaming in the morning!