This was PrairieCon 2022!

So this past weekend, Conscript Mike F and I travelled to Brandon to attend and run games at PrairieCon XLI, the 2022 iteration of, as an old program wonderfully put it, "Western Manitoba's Only Gaming Convention." :-)

I ran the old reliable Gaslands (twice) and my Battle of Hoth game with Star Wars: Legion models and using the Bolt Action rules. First up - Gaslands. I ran a game on Saturday morning with two players and me, and it was fun - but I think the early hour (first slot of the convention, 9am) maybe trimmed off some participants.

 

Anyway at 2pm I ran the game again with 5 players, mostly all buddies. Each player picked a pre-generated 2-car team, put them on the table and blazed away. Here's some photos from the games...

In game 1 the new player picked up the rules very quickly and was executing tricky maneuvers in no time. 

Rear-facing rocket launchers on the buggy made short work of a biker!

The brown buggy took a lap around the table staying out of trouble.

With only one hull point left the driver lined up his opposite number for a head one crash.

KABOOM!

In game 2 the group of friends picked things up fast as well.

Collisions and carnage definitely abounded.

On Sunday morning I ran my Battle of Hoth game. Rich and Darryl took control of the Imperial forces. Their objective was mainly to enter the Rebel deployment zone (behind their trench line) with secondary objectives to destroy Rebel units.

The Rebels deployed in the trench line mostly, prepared to repel the Imperial assault.

The Imperials were pretty disciplined and engaged Run orders to move across the table. The Snowtroopers had the "Recycle" special rule and when a unit was destroyed, it reappeared 18" behind its point of furthest advance. 

Luke appeared from Reserve on the Imperial table edge, trying to make it back to Echo Base after crashing his snowspeeder and destroying an AT-AT off table. He used the Force to put Pin markers on the Imperial E-Web Blaster but ran into a squad of elite Imperial Naval Troopers - it did not end well.

Luke never got a chance to charge in with his lightsaber - the Naval Troopers activated first and even though Luke deflected most of their blaster bolts, he ultimately failed a Deflect roll and was... "defeated". 

On one flank the Imperials continued the advance.

Meanwhile on the other Rebel flank, Vader ran ahead of his snowtroopers and engaged a heavily Pinned Rebel squad all by hisself. This almost ended badly as well, because although Vader cut down a bunch of Rebels, one trooper managed to roll "6 followed by 6" to wound! Vader only escaped defeat by using his Parry rule to make the trooper reroll that successful wound, and sadly another 6 failed to come up. 

Way to go, Dark Lord of the Sith - you defeated three Rebel soldiers. Good for you!

The game concluded with the Imperials having destroyed four Rebel units (4 VPs) and managing to get one unit in the Rebel zone (2VPs). The Rebels destroyed four Imperial units (including the mighty AT-ST!) and didn't exit any units of their own in the six turns we played. A really fun game and I have to give props once again to Jay of  Jay's Wargaming Madness for the basis of the Bolt Action conversion I used for the game. I did make a few more changes to Jay's original mods but I think it worked out great for a convention game.

Pretty cool right? That's some commitment to cosplay right there... 

PrairieCon was a great time as always. Getting to see my old gaming buddies again (after three years away!) was amazing, and running games and auctioneering at the world-famous game auction was a blast as always. I did make one big purchase at the auction too - a large cardboard "mystery box" full of about 10lbs of old lead figures, for which, after hotly contested bidding, I paid a sum that was significant. Suffice to say that the product boxes in the big box weren't exactly 100% accurate as to their contents, but I figure I did OK, as the lot game with a full boxed set of Eldar Harlequins from the Rogue Trader era, most of the box of Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers, plus a LOAD of original plastic and metal Squats, and some RT Imperial Guard, RT Chaos Space Marines, RT Space Orks, etc.... so we'll call that fair. I have a feeling it'll be a "tale that grows in the telling" though, as the day after the auction I was told that I'd actually spent DOUBLE what I paid for the lot. By next PrairieCon I'm sure I'll be said to have spent five thousand dollars on them or something.