This weekend, I attended the Williamsburg Muster convention at the Doubletree Inn in Williamsburg, VA. I split the report into three sections because, well, it would be really long otherwise, and I wanted to get the nice tidbits out to the folks who were interested in reading them.
First, details of the con. The hotel was much, much nicer than last year. Simply put, I was very impressed. But, because it was Memorial Day weekend, the attendance was depressed. I saw an empty main hall on the Saturday night of a convention...at 8PM. This is not a good thing. I spoke to a staff member, who said that they were down 100 from last year, and yes, they knew going in this might happen, but Memorial Day was the only slot they could get. C'est'la vie is all I can say on that score.
So, what is of interest to readers of "500 Miles..."? Well, I spent a few moments with J. "Streak" Denton of Covert Intervention Games (CIG). Well, I was impressed, I got a look at some things that I can talk about...and some things, that for now, I cannot, but I can say this about the latter...readers, you are in for a treat, a real treat.
I got some WWII French Resistance folks from him (they'll do great for paratrooper games) but the main point is this..there are a lot of releases coming from CIG. Some, are from Ehliem Figures and are just gorgeous, such as these Ultra Modern Russians here (Twilight: 2020 anyone?):
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| Figures by Ehliem, Photo by author |
We also spoke of their new upcoming rules set, Defcon Zero, it looks great, and it reads well. (I got an inside baseball look, and that's all I am saying), but it looks great, and it fixes some issues I have found in other rules sets.
That said, I am really excited, CIG has a plan and a vision, and I learned that some figures of interest to the Twilight: 2000 gamer don't sell all that well (it turns out the Ehliem MOPP suited Russians are not the big sellers I thought they were, for example). So, yeah, it looks as if I will be special commissioning anything I want that nobody makes for a while. No worries. I can deal with that.
We also spoke about the state of the Russian military currently, and he made me aware that Ospreys aren't the gold standard I thought they were. Streak is a very knowledgeable fellow, and I hope for one, that he enjoys the 20mm Rhodesians and that South African truck I gave him. I really didn't have a use for any of it and it wasn't selling at the Sunday Flea Market!
Speaking of that, I managed to get my hands on a First ed. Twilight: 2000 box set, along with a pair of adventures for $20! (The adventures were Urban Guerrilla and King's Ransom, IIRC, as I don't have it in front of me currently).
Also of interest to the "500 Miles..." reader is my acquisition of two books in a series about the Iran-Iraq War:
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| Both images taken from Barnes and Noble.com |
A further review will be forthcoming, but there are some editing issues with the books, and they are certainly not worth the full retail price I saw them going for at Historicon (For The Historian had them on sale at 20% off at the show).
In short, it was a good con, even with the depressed attendance, and I had a lot of fun. Part 2 of this report can be found on FestungPlatz!
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