Kinkkucon 2012

I kick off this year's gaming with Kinkkucon 2012. It's a small boardgames convention in my hometown Kuopio, and I've been hosting miniatures games there for several years. Btw, "kinkku" is ham in finnish and the con is so named because finns eat ham on Christmas and Kinkkucon is only two weeks after Christmas. Makes perfect sense.

The small space we have available for the convention got a bit cramped on saturday

A Normandy 44 game in progress.

Anyway, I hosted two games this year. The first was a small 1/72 scale WW2 demo set in Normandy using the Rate of Fire rules:

US Paras try to disable the German 88.

The kids visiting the con gave me a lot of positive feedback on the layout. They also said they had previously played a game called "Warhammer".

The second was a 6mm ACW game of the battle of Cedar Mountain using brigade level Fire and Fury:

I ran out of stands and had to replace some with wooden bases. The good thing was that the brigades on the bottom were not allowed to move for several turns, and the Union forces were happy to make Confederate stands available again.

I'll post a more detailed report on each one soon.

Aside from that, I showed one player how to play Space Hulk and Hammer of the Scots to another. That pretty much took all my time this weekend with some time left over to clean the hobby room and do some recurve bow shooting before my wife and son return home tomorrow.

The war is cut short as Wallace catches up with Edward Longshanks in the third year.

Looks like someone has been making a demo table..

2012 hobby summary

It seems we've made it around the sun one more lap without the world ending, so I'll take a quick look at what I did during the past year. It seems like the year went quickly, but my early year blog posts seem ages ago.

For miniatures gaming and modelling I managed to complete and play the following:

The Gettysburg game for last year's Kinkkucon had me busy for the end of 2011 and the first days of new year.

Marauder Miniatures' fantasy giant for Warhammer.

A Chickamauga game. I don't think I painted anything up for this.

Some Battletech Quick-Strike. I should build a demo table for this at some point.

A goblin catapult for Warhammer.

ACW casualty markers.

ACW wagons.

ACW artillery limbers.

Some fences..

A river system.

The afternoon battle at Antietam.

And finally a model Titanic.

I also tested Hail Caesar and got some Baccus 6mm greeks, but I haven't done anything on them since.

This picture was the last time the sons of Athens have seen the light of day.

Apart from miniatures gaming I also got a fair bit of boardgaming done. I was especially happy witht he amount of Musket & Pike games I played.

During 2012 I also took up archery and oh.. had a son, so I think I got a lot done all things considered.

Ok, so what's in the pipeline for 2013? The first stuff will be for Kinkkucon, which is on.. friday this week. I'll try and have a small demo table for 1/72 WW2 skirmish done. After that, who knows? I think I'll try and get those greeks painted this year, and I still have some ACW figures I should paint to complete my set. I also have a few dozen Germans and US paratroopers in 1/72. I think those will keep me happy for the first half of the year at least. Let's hope I don't see anything shiny that'll distract me to a new period!