ConQuest and Dragonflight: Mountains to Scale

Last weekend I attended ConQuest as a guest of the convention. I've never had something like that happen before and I was flattered. On Saturday I played DBA in Paul Hannah's tournament, and played a couple of pick up games too. That is always fun. Many of the other historical miniatures games languished through a lack of players. Even Bruce's Harborstorm event was poorly attended.

Later in the day I met with Gabriel Vega, the owner of ConQuest and John Wootress, a Dragonflight organizer and supporter of Enfilade. Both encouraged NHMGS participation at the two conventions. Gabriel even encouraged a financial relationship among the conventions. I responded that I would do the best I could, that the financial aspects were big picture items I couldn't make promises about, but would encourage NHMGS participation at Dragonflight and ConQuest. I encouraged Gabriel to attend Enfilade and he agreed.

On Sunday, after getting little done at home, I drove back to ConQuest to attend a dinner to celebrate the inaugural sailing of the convention. I met Allan Dyer there and hung out with the convention organizers and supporters. I had a most pleasant conversation with Nicole Lindroos of Green Ronin Publishing about school, and chatted with Allan and Chris Pramas about miniature gaming. In his introduction and remarks about NHMGS Gabriel was quite complimentary and solicitous of our support. I followed up our evening with an offer to coordinate miniatures events at Dragonflight and ConQuest.

Since the convention, I've been trying to gauge the lay of the land in terms of NHMGS support for historical miniature games at both conventions, and I've taken a two pronged approach.

1. On our leadership group I've proposed an NHMGS presence at both of the other conventions. However, rather than focusing on the draw of pulling non-miniaturists into our games, we would have fixed game periods as at Enfilade, with perhaps 5-8 periods over a weekend. We would try to set up four games per period and perhaps pre-register players for that game. That way there wouldn't be games unplayed for a lack of gamers. Bruce Meyer also had a serious discussion about a NHMGS rate that would reflect the customary rates historical miniature gamers pay at conventions, such as Enfilade and Historicon. My view is if we can provide organized, high-quality gaming at a familiar price to our membership, show the flag to non-historical miniature gamers, and bring in paying customers to these cons, then everybody wins.
   
2. On our membership group, the feedback regarding the convention has been largely negative. Those who attended the convention were frustrated by a lack of organization, admission prices they felt were exorbitant, and a lot of sitting around. I haven't shared a lot of my thinking there, hoping to do that here with opportunities for interested parties to respond.
   

My goal is to move this agenda head with buy-in from the stakeholders, and some guidance from our membership.