Quick Report from Historicon

[Chris Brantley]

Just back from two days at Historicon.

Hoplite Heyday drew 18 gamers, and was won by Roland Fricke. I'll let organizer Mark Pozniak post all the details on his return.

And flush with all that good karma that comes from running a successful event, Mark then went on to take the single-elimination Midnight Madness with his Scots Isles and Highlands. I'm afraid my Etruscan League went down to Mark's Scots in the first round, although it is some consolation to lose to the tournament champion.

The Tony Bath Big Battle DBA tourney was pulled out by the Davids, Kuijt and Schlanger, with New Kingdom Egyptians. They had several hard fought, close run battles, including the final in which they gained an early advantage by destroying a flank knight command only to see the tide nearly turn as they tried to close their victory.

There was also a father-son Big Battle competition, but I'm afraid I didn't catch the winner.

Phil Barker was in fine form, taking a close second in Hoplite Heyday, but did not fare as well in Big Battle. He didn't make a fuss about the larger boards, and all eyes were peeled to see if he made use of BUAs (he had a nice Acropolis to go with his hoplite army).

The new DBA 2.1 amendments seemed to go over without any real hitches.

And over in the main convention area, Nora Palmer of Game Parlour seldom had an empty seat for her on-going Heretics and Infidals game, which ran continuously over three days. It is a walk-up event, with four boards set with Crusader and Islamic armies. Players fight as Infidels or Heretics, and the winner gets to add a small cup of sand to a plastic tube decked out as a palm tree. At the end of the weekend, the side that has the highest level of sand wins, and prizes are awarded She added to the display this year a nice map of Asia Minor and its principle cities, with ribbons pinned on to mark the ebb and flow of conquest.

The neat thing was all the young teens playing at Nora's and off at side tables around the tournaments.

I left on Friday night and didn't get to see the outcomes of the 25mm events, the Duplicates tournament, or the Sunday themes.

[ July 27, 2003, 15:46: Message edited by: Chris Brantley ]

Thanks for the fine recap, Chris. I'll look forward to reading others as well. --Wished I coulda been there. One of these years...

What new releases were there (of interest to us DBA-ers) from the vendors? Any biggie acquisitions in the form of new painting projects?

[ July 28, 2003, 00:01: Message edited by: Paul A. Hannah ]

Originally posted by Chris Brantley:

Phil Barker was in fine form, taking a close second in Hoplite Heyday, but did not fare as well in Big Battle. He didn't make a fuss about the larger boards, and all eyes were peeled to see if he made use of BUAs (he had a nice Acropolis to go with his hoplite army).

[...]

I left on Friday night and didn't get to see the outcomes of the 25mm events, the Duplicates tournament, or the Sunday themes.

Phil used a BUA with his BBDBA army -- Palmyrans with EIR ally. DS and I immediately chose the side of the map with the BUA on it, deployed three blade with a blade general and psiloi support up against it, and sacked it in spite of its blade garrison by the third bound, breaking Phil's small command. Hehehehe

Dunno about 25mm, but the victors I recall were as follows:

Hoplite Heyday: Roland Fricke (Phil Barker second)
Midnight Madness: Mark Pozniak (Dave Schlanger second)
Big Battle Doubles: DS and I won (Joe Coniglio Sr. and Vincent Coniglio came second)
Duplicate: Dave Schlanger (I came second)
NICT: I won (Ron Giampapa came second; Mark Pozniak and Doug Mudd were the other semifinalists)
Themes on Sunday: victors were
Sue Laflin-Barker's Hittites in the Biblical Theme
Dave Schlanger's Big Al in the Greek Classical Theme
Mark Pozniak's Hsi-Hsia in the Asia Theme (I think -- not sure about the army)
Matt Torres won the Medieval Theme with Free Company
Rob Torres won the Dark Ages Theme with Arab Conquest
and I won the Roman Classical Theme with Ancient British.

The gaming was really great, and it was great to see many of you again.

Congratulations to all the winners. I look forward to detailed reports after the players have had time to rest and reflect.

It looks like a fairly small pool of players dominate the podium stand.

John

I had a GREAT time running Hoplite Heyday. Or as Bob affectionately reffered to it - Hoplite Howdown (and alternately - Hoplite Holiday).

I was expecting between 8-12 players, and 19 showed up -- just a tremendous turnout! And there's definitely something about these tight themes that makes for interesting games.

There were:
6 Spartan
2 Kryrenean
3 Athenian
2 Thessalian
2 Early Carthaginian
1 Theban
1 Samnite (played 2 games)
1 Later Ach Persian
1 Early Ach Persian (played 2 games)

Congratulations to Roland Fricke (1st) and his brave Spartans! To Phil Barker (2nd) with his Athenians. And to David Schlanger (3rd) also with Spartans.

In David's report below, he forgot to mention the most important winner of all. The recipient for the Hoplite Heyday Jack "The Butcher" Sheriff Award for most total casualties (own and enemies' combined) was Marty Schmidt. His 4 games had 26 elements killed in them, an average of 6.5 per game. Well done on all that carnage Marty! Honorable mention goes to Mike Stelzer who also had 26 elements killed in his games, but lost to Marty in a head-to-head matchup.

Thanks to everyone that participated. I hope you had as much fun as I did.

Thanks to Xyston for sending prize armies.

Thanks to Chris Brantley for purchasing a prize army when the Xyston armies never showed up (slow post).

Thanks in advance to David Kuijt for painting the first place trophy (which also seems to have gotten stuck in the mail system somewhere).

Congrats to all! Sounds like you guys had a blast. I wish I could have been there.

Hmmm...lots of WADBAGers in there. You know what would be cool? If we could have some informal kind of Club Challenge. You know, get the WADBAGers there representing their din of initquity, we could bring a crew out from the Midwest (Stelzer, Steve Smith, Dave Zecchini, myself, etc.), Wanax and Marty could come up and bring some friends to represent the South, Ed Dillon and Paul Potter could scrap together some guys from Nashville area, and so on. Kind of like a March Madness with a representative to two from each region in different brackets: Big Battle; Themes; and so on.

It'd be a blast to see how it shakes out.

Originally posted by Mike Demana:
Wanax and Marty could come up and bring some friends to represent the South,

Mike, I've unilatterally renamed our Florida contigent. We are growing beyond the bounds of Orlando, but the origins remain true within the name ODDBAGS (Orlando's Dedicated DBA Gamer Society) :

hey, we're bored this Monday
Wanax

Hello,

Being interested in DBA but never having seen a game being played I was very interested in seeing the "Hoplite Heyday" tournament Thursday evening. Just by watching I was able to grasp a lot of the game, learn from it, and I had the added pleasure of meeting Mr. Brantley too. He steered me over to the Infadels & Heretics table so that I could learn more about DBA. Many thanks to Mr. Brantley and others for helping me understand the game a lot more than what I did.

I had a blast at the games I got to join at Historicon.

It was really great that we had such a large turnout for the Heyday, a pretty tight historical theme.

I played Kurenean Greek a. list. I was quite pleased with the way my army was performing, although my dice rolls failed them. [img]tongue.gif[/img] The first 3 games were draws called on time, and I had lost more elements than my opponents each time. Won the fourth game.

On the three draws (vs. Spartan, Thessalian, and ?Theban?), I was consistantly rolling low pips, and combat rolls weren't too great either. Despite that, I was able to fight very aggressive flanking battles without losing! The Kurenaioi have two LCh that can dismount as Sp (Hoplites in Halftracks : ). So my primary goal for most battles is to place one on each flank, and try to get one around an enemy's flank to go assault their camp. Sp (+4; min. roll 5) can't be killed by camp followers (+3; max. roll 9) in an even up fight. Our illustrious tourney organiser, Mark, was always amused to see the Kurenaioi and opponents strung out all around the board as I kept trying to force my way around a flank and never getting sufficcient pips to make a break through. None of the battles ever looked like a hoplite scrum with lines of spear pushing each other back and forth. With only 4 spear in my army (not counting the two in carts), I always held the spear back, only to be brought in when they could get local parity or superiority.

In the final battle vs. Ron Giampapa's Spartans, I was finally able to get some average pip rolls. With my 3 regular LCh plus 1 dismounting LCh on one flank, I was able to keep drawing the Spartan line towards that flank as I pushed the chariots around wide. Eventually, that opened up enough of a gap on the other flank of his line that the lone dismounting chariot on that end could drive through to take the camp.

The other player with Kureneans had to leave early, don't know how he was fairing.

But I would definitely play this army again. With average dice rolls, it can perform quite well. And even with poor dice rolls, it can keep big hoplite lines unbalanced and unable to press a victory.

In related news, the Hoplite Heyday was well represented in the big painting competition at Historicon. Both my Kureneans and Wayne's Samnites took silver awards.

In the 25mm open, my 100 Year's English swept to a glorious last place finish, going 0-3. (At Cold Wars, they went 3-0 and took 2nd place on points)

Just got home and I thought I'd check in.

I had some of the most frustrating and fun games I've ever played!

Sue beat me in the Biblical finals in a game that saw my emotions swing 540 degrees on three die rolls!

First she killed my General. :
Then I killed hers!
Then my bow against her LCh. You can guess what happened.

I was in charge in the Hoplite Heyday going 3-0 with my Early Carthaginians when I met Roland in the fourth round. I took his camp and then lost my General! 1st to 4th on one die roll.

In the first combat of the NICT against Ron my Knight General charged his blades before they had a chance to crush my bows.

3-3 right! Nothing but blades in front of me!
You guessed it! 6-1. No repeat champion this year!

I had a great time anyway. It was great to see everyone again.

Thanks to Bob, Doug, Mark, Dave, David, Phil, Sue...etc...etc for a great convention.


Marty