Obligatory Cancon Post ....with a touch of Impetus

Cancon?

Australia's biggest war games show, not big by International standards but big enough to get people travelling thousands of kilometres from all across this big red land, the wife and I only had what we consider a shortish trip and it still ran at 1100km each way!

I'll take it, does it come in red?

Not so much of a report from me but a general description although kept handy I kept the camera safely tucked away and confined myself to a quick look around at the various games (mostly comps and tourney's) and a quick rifle through the trader stands. For the most part Cancon is a chance for people to first meet up and second to play competition games. There is not a big emphasis on demo and participation games as such and as for painting....... well it took me a while to actually find the painting display (I wont insult the participants by fielding a photo of the glass fronted first aid box their lovely works were displayed in) but I guess it doesn't rank very high on the Cancon list of events. I'm not blaming the organisers it may be that people aren't overly interested in this aspect of the hobby and the Cancon people are simply reflecting that, I should add that the works on display were 1st class and personally I would like to see it given more prominence.

No trip to Cancon and the Nations Capitol is complete without paying a visit to the Australian War Memorial and Museum, looking towards the tomb of the unknown soldier

Getting back to the games as I said 1st class participation games weren't in evidence to the extent we might see at Salute for example and it is possible that the tyranny of distance has some influence on this, a grand looking table and game has to be loaded into a vehicle and then on the road for at least a full day, more likely two and the whole time you would be worrying about the durability of your terrain and of course you would have to burn through your annual leave. The games on display were well attended however and  generating plenty of interest, I carefully noted the Chain of Command game and had an interesting conversation regarding Napoleon at War. Cancon though is a comp and tourney show and a damn well behave one at that, more smiles than frowns and if there was a full blown dummy spit it didn't reach my ears. It was a perfect opportunity for me to meet up with guys I have known in an on line sense for some years and they proved to be as good a bunch of blokes in the flesh as they are digitally, what is more they were heavily into the Impetus tourney which I was very interested in. I definitely picked up on the vibe of the game and am sure to start rattling that particular cage as mentioned in my previous post though I'm not sure if ancients are my bag, I might be a dark age type ......possibly medieval not that it matters much.

Some hundreds of Perry ACW plastics, I feel a Fire and Fury Regiment or two coming on.

Of course war games shows are also a perfect opportunity to add to the pile of shame... Oooooer shiny! Avert your eyes do not get tempted by the shiny...... tooo late. I was a good boy the plastic stayed firmly in my lucy locket until the last day, by that time most of the lead mountain additives had disappeared and the credit card could be let out safely.

Aventine Romans, will need to purchase a few more to round out the haul but it is a pretty good start.

 So what did I buy, my major purchases were 2nd hand figures with the sale being organised in advance of the show and the deals finalised in the car park, exchanges of figure stuffed shoe boxes and shopping bags filled with used notes being common place, my carpark deal landed me with a shoe box full of Perry ACW plastics and a haul of Aventine republican romans. I did find a box full of Freebooter figure going at $5 a pop and being an admirer of Werner's beaut little sculpts I dived in, picked up a few of GW's new washes, Secret Weapon's birch seeds and tree stump terrainy type stuff, and a nice little angel wire saw and riffler files.

A small but tidy collection of shiny, please note the lack of figures. By the way I won the Chessex dice and GW washes!

I'll wrap up with a few photo's of the Impetus tourny, if I was to give a very brief description of what Impetus is it would probably be..... The thinking mans DBM.

And the winner is..... Ralph. That is Tarty on the right, tourney organiser and all round top bloke

Ostrogoths on the right crash into a Saxon shield wall

Ostrogoth cavalry going through the same process as above

Richard won best painted army with his Huns

Some more of those nicely painted Huns