Hurricon 2011

Hurricon 2011 (Sept 22-25) is now history! Mrs. Diceman and I went to Florida for the week. We hit the theme parks solo until Larry Chaban joined us on Wednesday. The weather was generally good, temperature in the 90′s, but 15-minute rains each day (it’s Florida!!)

First up for us was Bill Moreno’s beautiful batlle of Molino del Rey in 15mm using Regimental Fire and Fury rules.

Bill Moreno (maroon shirt) oversees the left flank commanders.

The inferior Mexican troops did well against the Yankees for the most part…we retained control of one victory point site, but lost one. Several impressive cavalry charges by Mexican horse led by Commandante Larry caused the Yankees to concentrate much of their forces to oppose him and allowed us to keep the objective in the center of our lines.

The game was to continue for three more sessions, but we felt that we left our successors with a good start.

The culmination of the scenario was the attack on Chapultepec castle, a magnificent model made by Tom Milmore.

Chapultepec castle

To left is the ultimate prize…Chapultepec Castle. On the last session, the Yankees were assaulting these heights using scaling ladders.

Bill’s games are always fun to play in, and the great scenery and painted figures make it that much better.

DBA play started for us Friday afternoon. First up was DBA-RRR (Renaissance DBA modified). I used English Civil War (Cavalier of course!) and was lucky enough to win the event, even though I only used 11 elements in the first round (dummy!)

It’s an interesting variation on DBA, and I like the ECW period. I dusted off some 20-year old figures, re-mounted them, and took them along to play. Not too shabby!

Tony Aguilar plays Spanish in the final round

In the last round, I faced Tony Aguilar’s Spanish and luckily came out the winner, nailing my third enemy general. This gave me the tournament as my point total was higher than also-undefeated Marty Schmidt.

The next tourneys were not so good for me, although I pretty much split the rest of the games.

One memorable loss was an epic 7G-2 loss…dropping four stands including the General using my Early Macedonians!! SLAMMO!!

Caesar invades Britain.

I elected to sleep in on Saturday (too much vacation, beer, a head cold, beer..) so missed a good-looking Big Battle DBA game of Caesar’s invasion of Britain. In the pic, the Roman commanders Rich Gause and Tony Aguilar plot to beat the barbarians.

Saturday night was the pyramid campaign game “Chopped Sui” – the Far East in 617 AD. Inspired by the Two Davids, this event allows victorious invaders to control their new subject and grow their empires when the subject nation wins. Marty Schmidt attacked and conquered me on the first round. I went 1-1 in the next two rounds, but Marty had been conquered by Musashi (Yamato Japanese)…who ended up the big winner with his empire spanning most of the region.

Great convention, great site, and better gamers…..what more can you want?

Thanks to all the gamers who ran and participated in this con. See ya in a few years!!