Last Hotlead treasure post

 

So, not everything that I bought was on sale, just the vast majority. The six boxes on the left came from centuries. Kamal has a lot of stock and it is a real challenge to not find something of interest.  In my case, and for no good reason, I decided to pick up some Oathmark Elves. I also got a package of mounted Halflings which is fine as I am occasionally working on a Halfling army. He also had a box of Perry's mixed Spanish/French skirmish troops and since the club may do some Peninsular war skirmish that too was fine.

Now for some of the deals.  This Quar's war was less than half price! 'Crazy' Lee was having a clearance/getting out of business sale. He also had a number of blister packs at $10.00 each (regularly around $25.00)  an offer I could not refuse. So I picked up a few packs for Silver Bayonet and a pack of back of beyond hunters.

The other pictured packs all came from the bring and buy. Prices ranges from $15 to $20 as opposed to the retail price of around $47+.

I also picked up three board games, History of the World, Quartermaster 1914 and a nostalgia game, Waddingtons Campaign, a game that I have not played in 40 years. All these games were less than $10.00 each.

The Canadian Tank Museum [Whitby]

 

So, on our way to Hotlead we stopped off at THE CANADIAN TANK MUSEUM . It was the first visit for all of us and we had no idea what to expect, we figured we might be there for at most an hour. However we were pleasantly surprised and spent two hours and had a very enjoyable time. After buying our tickets we were getting set to wander about when a guide suddenly presented himself and just like that we started a guided tour!

The first part of the tour consisted of small displays of weapons and uniforms from the 1800's on up to modern times. Nice simple displays made better by the guides narration. The second part saw us entering a large garage packed full of vehicles from WWI to more modern vehicles. 

You should keep in mind that the following pictures are taken by a gamer with an eye to weathering techniques and certain other details. Go to their site if you want to see images of the entire vehicle.

First Canadian tank model the M1917 [French tank built in USA]

Universal carrier

Hotlead games part 2 of 2 [ECW, Mongols and Mausers]

 So one of the big games of Saturday night was an ECW games run by a buddy of mine, Craig. It modified version of the Black Powder Pike and Shot rules was used.

The Royalists on the right Parliamentary forces on the right. Rupert is in the lower left leading a massive cavalry wing.

Rupert with his dog at bottom of the picture

Hotlead 2026 some of the games part 1 of 2

 

There were a lot of games at Hotlead and sadly I only have a few pictures of a few games. Next year I must remember to take more  pictures especially of the whole venue and the mass of people that surround the bring and buy.

Up first. a dungeon crawl where the players were the monsters. 

A gorgeous game! The dungeon was well built and the various monsters well painted. Judging by the noise and laughter it was a very enjoyable game.

Up next, a caveman game

More treasure from Hotlead

 

So, I went a little crazy, and picked up twelve 3D print buildings and a bridge, 1 old school (heavy) resin buildings and a bunch of scatter terrain last weekend at Hotlead. The 3D print buildings came from BEAVER AND BROADSWORD while the resin building (lower right) was from the bring and buy. 

Recent board game night: Invincible

 

So, Noah brought over a new to us board game, Invincible The hero building game. We do play a lot of superhero games and this one had intrigued me for some time (I was very close to buying it myself) so I was fairly happy to him show up with it.

For the first game we used only 3 heroes, that changed to 4 for the next two games.

The game is pretty straightforward and easy to play. It does convey some feeling that you are in a comic book fight and it offers plenty of options through random car draws and random colour chit draws. Yes there is a lot of random elements to the game, but you can mitigate this to some extent buy selecting the right powers and using certain cards to gain you new coloured cubes.

Your selected powers are enabled by placing coloured cubes blacks are wild, but draw 5 black cubes and your hero crashes.

My characters crashed a lot (drew 5 black cubes) 

So, we lost the intro scenario but then won the rematch and the next chapter in the mini campaign. It was an amusing, lightweight game that I would happily play again.

Treasure from Hotlead

 

So, I came back from Hotlead with quite a few items, so much that it will take a few posts to cover everything. The bring and buy was excellent as usual, plenty of great deals on a wide range of stuff. John got a massive East Africa WWI lot of painted troops, civilians, objectives etc. For my part the only painted figures that I found were two 28mm well painted British Napoleonic to be used in Silver Bayonet. 

I did find a lot of 20mm WWII resin vehicles for the Germans, Russians and Americans. I also picked up some boardgames. I also bought a lot of 3D printed buildings and scatter terrain, more on that later.

The highlight of the convention for me happened at the last minute on Sunday, just as we were getting ready to return to Ottawa.