Returning from Hotlead – What a Rush!!!

Hotlead is an event that I look forward to every year. Last year I missed it, but this year – I attended and ran two participation games of Frostgrave. I will write about the Frostgrave games later, but suffice it to say, they went well.

Every year, I am impressed with the number of people at Hotlead and the quality of Game Masters. James Manto really manages to attract great talent to the event and this year was no different. Check out these pictures of Hotlead 2017!

The Interaction around this table is excellent. These players are totally loving their game of Charlie Company and I can fully understand as I played the same game at the Lords of the North Game Day.

Every time I see this table, it is looking better and better. They guys are doing a great job at putting together a visually stunning game with a fun ruleset.

Elsewhere, we had a group of guys playing Bolt Action on a Stalingrad Table.

Love the Trenches. The KEGS guys always put together great tables.

There are some big buildings here.

I bet it would have been a lot of fun to play this game. To be honest, KEGS is the same crew that introduced me to Bolt Action two or three years ago. Since then, I have bought three armies and try to get in one to two Bolt Action games a month.

Aside from games that I am already very familiar with, there were a number of other games going on at the convention. Below are some pictures of those other games. For the most part, I am not sure what rule sets these are, but the games look cool. Please feel free to fill in some details in the comments area of this post.

A Micro Armour Game of Some Sort.

I think this is a winter time Chain of Command game.

The Table in Action.

A game of Hail Caesar. In this one, the Germans must ambush a Roman convoy going down the table. The Germans should get a strong alpha strike, but from there, the advantage would likely turn to the Romans.

A game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum being set up for deployment.

Another great looking table.

The GMs put in a lot of work for Hotlead and it shows. BTW… I love the Ox Carts on this Table!

Looks like there is a fair bit of player engagement going on in this game.

Look at the size of this Game!!!! It is Monstrously Huge!!!

A naval battle with some very tiny ships.

Despite the ships being tiny, check out the details on them.

Okay… I am impressed!!! Look at that Terrain! Amazing!

Another very cool looking game.

While a large portion of the games at Hotlead are Historical, games of other varieties hit the tables too. In a different room, there were GW games being played. I did not get pictures of those games though. Around the main hall, there were plenty of cool games including X-Wing, Road / Kill, A Homebrew Heroes Game, BattleTech, and my own Frostgrave game.

A very nice gaming board of X-Wing. It is the death star trench run. The Game Masters used clear plastic strips to allow ships above the trench. Very cool!!!

A Heroes Game ran by my friends over at Six Squared Studios.

Another shot of the Heroes game. These guys always do an amazing job on their tables and games.

Road / Kill. An Awesome game of Vehicular Combat. I did not play this time around, but I did a couple of years ago and loved it! The group I was playing with had a great time and getting to play the game with the designer just adds to the experience.   🙂

A Battle Tech Table between games.

My very own Frostgrave table at Hotlead. I ran two sessions at Hotlead and plan to write about those games in more detail later.

Update: Since the original publication of this article, I wrote up a Battle Report for the above game. 

Not really related to participation games, but still very cool was a booth ran by a local gaming group looking to recruit players. The group is Ontario Hobbit Adventures and check out their displays. Beautiful!!!

An Ontario Group dedicated to The Hobbit Miniatures Game.

Some Lord of the Rings Action going on here.

This entire display here was hand made with Hirst Arts Molds. It looks great!

I was impressed. What a cool looking booth these guys set up!!!

Overall, I had a fantastic time at this convention. I knew I would though, because I always do. 🙂

Aside from plenty of awesome participation games, there were a number of vendors at Hotlead, including some of my favorites (J&M Miniatures, Six Squared Studios, RAFM and a buddy selling off his old Flames of War stock). Unfortunately, the event conflicted with Adepticon so my friends from Crucible Crush and Pulp Figures were not on hand this year for Hotlead. Perhaps I will see them again later at a future convention.

There was also a very large bring and buy table. I was looking for boats for use with the “Island” setting Frostgrave slated to come out in the fall. I found some there, but they were not in my budget so I passed them up. Too bad. They were nice.

What I did end up buying was a Paint Bottle Holder by Six Squared Studios, some American Airforces Blisters for Bolt Action from J&M Miniatures and some Gale Force Nine clearance items from my friend Hal’s Booth.

Thanks goes out again to James Manto for running this fantastic annual event! Before signing out, I would like to give a quick shout out to The Mad Padre. I saw you at Hotlead, but I was so busy with my gaming table that I was unable to chat.

Until next time, Happy Gaming Everyone!!