Ropecon 2016

I've been a bit slow going through pictures from my camera, but I guess it's better late than never!

Finland's largest gaming event, Ropecon, was held again this year on the last weekend of July. A new venue, as the normal one is under renovation, was much more spacious as it was a convention hall, but unfortunately different things were very spaced out in different areas. Previously roleplayers, card players, miniature games and all the others were quite mixed up, but now all groups had more or less their own areas and not much intermingling seemed to be happening.

One of the highlights for me was a lecture by Finland's gift to wargaming, Tuomas Pirinen of former GW fame, about the process behind the creation of the Warhammer Chaos books that he authored in the 90s. Great stuff with some very nice background info on why certain gods have been developed the way they were and about different characters that he created for the universe. Having always been a follower of the Chaos Gods and of Nurgle especially it really gave some great insight into the faction. Also some John Blanche artwork was on show with original prints of images used in books and even some unreleased ones as well. Great lecture, too bad that he didn't have more time. And bonus points for dressing in character as he was in suitably chaotic cosplay garb at the convention.

As usual our club was very active with multiple demonstration games in different systems. I ran Bolt Action again with a very Commando themed scenario, in addition to that there was another Bolt Action game for Africa around 1942, American War of Indepence with Black Powder rules, Dark Ages and Medieval with both Saga and Lion Rampant, Dropzone Commander and Infinity. So we had a pretty good selection showing different gaming systems in addition to the ones that had tournaments running (40k, Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, Warmachine etc.) Unfortunately I forgot to take too many pictures of our tables so a couple of snaps of my own game will have to suffice.

I've run a fairly similar scenario before as well with British Airborne making a dawn assault from all sides on a German HQ building. This time simplified it a bit with the Brits just having to capture a trio of German characters and escape with them while reinforcements from a nearby German garrison would try to stop them. Games ended up being evenly won by both sides so I guess fairly balanced. Plenty of movement required by both sides so everyone got to be quite active and with a Commando themed game action was plentiful!

As always there was also a painting competition with some pretty impressive entries. Our club had a clean sweep of the competition with all prices except one being shared by two of our members. I snapped some pictures of my favorite entries from the competition. Funnily enough not too many shots of any of the winning entries except for the Warhound which wasn't by any of our clubmembers and which took the open category if I recall correctly.

And finally pics of an amazing Mordheim table. A campaign was played through the three day event with couple of players vying for control of the fabled city of Mordheim. A nice choice as well as Tuomas Pirinen, who gave a lecture on Chaos in Warhammer, originally created Mordheim as a setting and the rules as well and was apparently very taken by the fact that it's still played and quite popular.

Ropecon 2014

Well Ropecon is over finally and I've had a little time to gather my strength again and go through the few photos that I remembered to take during the event. 3 days full of miniature gaming, tabletop games and tons of roleplaying and cosplay stuff was more than enough for quite a while especially when we were running our demo games for two full days.

There are tons of pictures on the Mika's blog Femoral Head Ostectomy so visit there for pics of pretty much everything was going on :) Mazikainen of On Wargames and Such also has a post about the ACW 6mm game that he was running with a guy from my club and about our Winter War game too.

The Winter War table and minis gathered quite a bit of action and we ended up running 7 or 8 demo games through the event when we had originally planned to play three all together. Bolt Action is really a wonderful ruleset for conventions as most people managed to learn the basic rules in about a turn of gaming and things started to roll forward very fast after that. Bolt Action miniatures seemed to sell quite well at the stores in the convention and quite a few players came to thank us about the demo and to tell that they'd bought a few boxes to start the game themselves.

Our scenario focused on the first battles around Raate road where the Finnish 9th Division historically encircled and destroyed the Soviet 44th Division. Our scenario dealt with closing the narrow Raate road around the village of Haukila. Facing each other were two Inexperienced Soviet platoons with light tanks and a Regular Finnish Platoon with added anti-tank capabilities and a machine-gun. The scenario was adapted from the Flames of War Surrounded scenario with the Finns seeking to take one of two objectives along the road. Worked out quite nicely, even though the Russians were maybe a bit too powerful and managed to win nearly all games.

Our Zen Saga game also gathered quite a crowd. The scenario is the same as seen in Hamburger Tactica by Kurpfalz Feldherren. All the minis and terrain came from one of the players in our club who also ran most of the demo games.

Another group from our club was running a Force on Force Vietnam demo focusing on a group of special forces soldiers trying to escape the board by reaching American reinforcements and their extraction boat.

There were plenty of other demos running too including the 6mm ACW game, All quiet on the martian front, Infinity and plenty of more. One of the more impressive ones was the Warmachine demo station run by Jason Soles who is the lead developer for Privateer Press and their Warmachine game. He ran demos where he gave a Q&A session about the game and it's design followed by a challenge game against some willing victim.

Naturally there was also a painting competition with some pretty brilliant entries all around.

This zombie hunter diorama won the diorama category. Nice composition and especially the lighting effects were brilliant.

This dwarf unit ended up winning the people's choice award. The base was really nicely built and the use of non-metallic-metallic technique was pretty much spot on. 

The inquisitor diorama won the open category and the theme competition ("Power"). There seemed to be more and more to see when you started looking at it closer. Especially the flames reflecting from the windows are a nice touch and add a lot of background story to the diorama.

Warhead didn't have their own stand this year, but instead they had put together a table showing different Space Marine chapters from both the loyalists and chaos side. Impressive paint jobs all around and some very nice conversions especially on the Centurions which are normally horrendous models.

Finally there were the shops with all the usual stuff on sale. Not that many miniature sellers, which is quite understandable as Ropecon is still mainly a roleplaying and LARP event. I tried to limit my shopping to only a few minis that I had preordered, but I ended up buying my own copy of Zombicide as well.

This Girls and Corpses magazine was one of the most random things on sale at the whole place. Apparently somebody has been publishing this for over 5 years already. Maybe there is room for Playboy mixed with zombies after all :)

Finally there was a large library of tabletop games that you could borrow and play during the convention. This has always been one of my favorite stands at Ropecon as trying out new games is super easy and you end up playing games that you probably would never have spent money on beforehand.