Occurring at opposite ends of the year, Denver has two fairly major gaming events: GenghisCon in the late winter, and Tacticon in the late summer. Where GenghisCon is dominated by role-playing games, Tacticon predominantly features tabletop miniature war games. Someone among the Strange Artifacts crew suggested we get a table of our own for the event, so we did exactly that.

While I have attended GenghisCon for the last couple of years, this is the first time I've attended Tacticon. Where GenghisCon was divided up among many ballrooms and conference rooms, the bulk of the con was in one massive hall, with tables upon tables. The vendors, a far smaller array than the winter event, took up the circumfernce of the room. A full third of the hall was dominated by Star Wars Legion players, with large and beautifully appointed tables. The rest was a mix of Bolt Action, Warhammer and Battletech.

Our intention for the event was to demo three games: Forbidden Psalm, Flames of Orion and Void Admiral. Our goal, if we indeed have one, is to gather all the 28mm, independent weirdos in the area to play our favorite games. I started out wanting to bring everything, but found that even three games was perhaps too many. This selection, however, does a good job of covering both fantasy and scifi as well as including modern classics, a new release and in Void Admiral a game I feel could be a sleeper hit in the community.

We were assigned a table for four hours. While we'd expected a full, 6'x4' rectangular table among the other games, we were given a single 6' round table off on the periphery. Not to fret, we set up two boards. Strange Artifacts foundin member, Kitbash Chaos built his first static board, a beautiful red desert scene suitable for fantasy, scifi and post-apocalyptic settings. For my part I brought a recent, modular desert board with an assortment of hand-built and 3D printed terrain and buildings.

Flames of Orion

With an odd number of us in attendance, the best way to get started was to array our models on the table and to start playing a game. As one of us had never played Flames of Orion and another only having played one game, I chose to adjudicate a game between my friends. After a brief overview of the rules we rolled for scenario, landing on Scavenge in the core rule book. I brought two fully painted lances and plenty of terrain so we were off to the races.

For those not familiar, Flames of Orion is a small-ruleset, miniature agnostic battlemech war game by Steve from the Hive Scum podcast. The game successfully kickstarted over the summer and should fulfill in the next several weeks. Each player fields a number of mechs or units, frequently four each, and either plays a stand-up fight - which like in any game takes to long and is boring - or you chose an objective-based encounter either home grown or from the book. Units are built either by rolling randomly or by spending a certain number of points per force. Before the event, I rolled up two lances so we could get down to it.

I'm unprepared for a battle report, but at the end both players said they enjoyed the game. The rules are fairly intuitive and easy to pick up. I feel the game benefits from having an established narrative, something to drive the story along and enrich the experience. I can see it being especially good if combined with a sci-fi role playing game, like Death in Space or Salvage Union. Flames of Orion seems like a good ruleset for dropping out of pure RPG to act out combat encounters on the table.

Forbidden Psalm

After the game of Flames, one of our buddies needed to leave, so Kitbash Chaos and I set up for a game of Forbidden Psalm. Mike built a beautiful new board for the occasion, that we were both excited to try out. Sadly for the blog, but not so much for us, we were both too in the moment to take any pictures. Having played the first scenario in the Endtimes Edition last time we got together, we played the second, My Heart Has Joined The Thousand. I played a warband consisting mostly of Ramshackle Games Boglanders. You can find Mike's YouTube Channel.

Mike did provide some pictures of his wonderful board to share with you here.

Overview

How was Tacticon? I think for what we wanted to do, to hype our favorite indy 28mm games, it might not have been the right scene. While to groups did stop by and ask a few questions, for the most part attendees knew exactly what they were going to do before they got to the event. Tacticon is a great place to get together with your friends and play epic wargames for four days straight. For my part, had I been able to, I'd have been at the Battletech tables for hours.

On the other hand, and this is the most important, a few friends got to get together and play fun games on cool terrain with beautiful painted models (if I do say so myself). Like any time the Strange Artifacts crew can get together, it was a great time and I look forward to when we can do it again...

...perhaps during the Strange Artifacts Forbidden Psalm Invitational next month?