Spartacon XXIV The "Why Doesn't Anyone Have A Con In The Winter" Con

Our gaming group went to this con last weekend that takes place at the Lansing Center in downtown Lansing, what a coincidence. If you have never gone, you will not be disappointed.



http://home.comcast.net/~spartacon/site/

A few highlights of the day:

Jim Wonacott who is one of our gaming group. He was coming to my house and I was driving up. I was sitting in my front room, in more gentile times, it would be called the parlor. I was not paying attention because I had my nose in my Kindle tm. I hear all this swearing coming from my driveway. I start to laugh, I know what Jim has done, because I had done the same thing when I put my car in the street. . It had been raining and we had a lot of snow in the past few days. The driveway approach was a small ice filled lake and he stepped into the a fore mentioned lake. We transfer his miniatures, rules and terrain to my car.   We then go get Ted Bender to pick up his items. They are running a Bolt Action game in the afternoon session. The drive there was a bit dicey for about half the trip. With all the snow and warming temperatures, there was a lot of fog.



We park and get out of the car and we are hit with an odd smell or actually a stink. It has an odd bouquet and I really cannot place it, but I know it has a familiar odor. We get upstairs and then I realize, the convention is sharing the space with the Shriners Circus. The odor that we smell is elephant shit and tiger piss. I now know why they sell stinky greasy food at the circus, it covers the smell of elephant shit and tiger piss. As soon as they started cooking that food, the peculiar bouquet disappeared.



The first game we played in was a French and Indian war game, it is not listed. The game was a substitute for another game that was canceled. It was run by Mark and I have to apologize to Mark, but I cannot remember his last name. It was pretty good game, rules were a mix of Johnny Reb (of which I am not a fan of) and Empire. It was a solid game, Jim, Ted , Gene Zoll(one of our group I had not mentioned yet) and I all had a blast. The Americans won, as it should be. I am biased, I played Roger Rangers.

The afternoon session, Jim and Ted were running their Bolt Action game featuring Marines vs. Japanese.

Here is a link to some photos of the play test.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/33016873@N06/sets/72157638261745303/

There are also some photos of Ted's latest projects.  He is a machine when it comes to painting.



The game was very well received and as I checked in occasionally, a good time was had by all.

 I played in a Check Your Six game. I am a big fan of the rule set and I have a couple of hundred planes, both WWII and modern.  It was run by Dave Winfree the proprietor of I-94 Enterprises. He ran a scenario featuring the actions of James H. Howard.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jhoward.htm



It was seventy years ago to the day that he was awarded The Medal of Honor for his actions on January 11, 1944. I flew a couple of Bf-109s and I got a half of a B-17 . The two 109s that I was flying had to disengage because of damage. That was pretty much the typical effort put out by the Luftwaffe that day. It was an American victory.

Then we always go and eat at a restaurant across the street.
I want to thank all the guys that make Spartacon a great convention. I know it is a lot of work and it is much appreciated.

Here is a link to more photos of the convention.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33016873@N06/sets/72157639915583964/


Thank You for reading,



Mike