Nashcon 2017

      It was a great weekend in Franklin, TN for Nashcon. Kalissa and I never been to this convention before, but it did not disappoint. It was not long after Kalissa's second Bolt Action Tournament that she ran for Siege of Augusta that she was contacted by the Scott Reeves. He was us to run the Bolt Action Tournament at Nashcon this year. It took a little convincing and some quick planning, but the chips came down and in order for us to make the trip to Tennessee. I had not been in that state, since 2009, so it was going to be an adventure!
      Since my wife, Kalissa was still doing end of year testing for her school, I ended up travelling up there myself to set up the tables, so there was no rush to do so before the tournament. Kalissa came up the following evening with our friend, Hugh who had also never been to Nashcon despite countless friends of ours going to it in the previous years. I was suppose to go up with my friend, Danny as well, but do to health reasons, he stayed home. If he had came, we were going to see if we could test out some of the various American Civil War rules, such as, Across the Deadly Field and Johnny Reb III. I did get to try out some Johnny Rebel rules. I, also, got a rundown of how Across the Deadly Field works. More importantly, how you need a reference sheet to play based on an issue with Osprey that made the game much harder to play. Good things to learn.
     As for the staff for the convention, they were really willing to help, despite setting up for any could get to me. I have a fairly quick system on setting multiple tables. My $80 dolly is still paying off, since my first convention game. I parking really close, so it was easy to get everything inside to set up. That was another advantage to coming in early. Plus, I still wanted to be able to roam on the first day.
   Unfortunately, I have been lacking a camera, so I have no photos of the first day. I have resorted to using my wife's phone for photos as of late. I need to do something about that in the future. Usually, conventions for us are photo fests.  What has appeared in this were the Saturday games when I was not occupied with tournament related jobs. There were quite a few games on Friday, and no pictures of me playing a Civil War game on Thursday evening. Maybe, next time! I will try to get as many pictures as I can for Historicon.
    As for goodies, we did get away fairly clean. We got a factory building from Impudent Mortals, which is a small company out of Georgia that has supported us in the past. I came to the realization that the owners are not only friends, but we have not really bought anything from them. This seemed silly to me, especially when I have been eyeing their stuff every time we see them. Just good people in our hobbies' terrain business. I, also, did a little gambling, so to speak. A gentleman had a table selling random stuff. He had on the table a box full of paper bags labelled $1.00. He told me that their could be some good stuff in one of them. So I ended up being the only person buying a bag the whole convention. I ended up with two Hovel 6 mm resin buildings that are out of production for ACW or AWI. I do not have any 6 mm figures, but it is not out of the question. Then, based on a mislabel, Kalissa brought me back into the convention on the last day to look at old Wargames Illustrated Issues for a dollar. They had full year's issues for one dollar, which ended up being one dollar each. The result had me stumble across some 3-D printed Japanese early century building for $5.00 and 50 cent stone wall sections. I left with four buildings and nine feet of walls. Then, we discovered Wings of Glory stuff. I got a couple of bad ass German planes and one fairly over-powered British Spitfire Ace.
       Out of luck, I did not get more at this show. I did something stupid, such as see the posting of Jay's Wargaming Madness on his Kulbacon report five minutes before I took the long drive to Tennessee. I am aware that I helped made those games successful. However, looking at awesome miniatures I want before a convention that sells a lot of miniatures is quite dangerous. Historicon will be a little different with that, since that is a more planned event.