NICon 2016 Report

NICon 2016 Report 4 and 5 June 2016, Hamilton, NZ With Rob Shirley The Hamilton(NZ) Immortals hosted the NZ North Island convention over the weekend of 4-5 June at Fraser High School. It differed from most events, in that it was a 'Morganfest' – that is where people donate their armies to stay at a table and players rotate to tables, where the armies are provided and missions are set.

In the past 20 years New Zealand has only had four of these events, as they can be a lot more complex to run than typical tournaments. And this one was themed on the Normandy Battles book published back in 2012. I did the major work on this and there is so much preparation work required, I would not do another of these in the same form.

We ended up having 13 specialist tables. Getting the co-ordination done, and getting others to check my work was a real mission. And there were things that happened, on the day, in terms of the checking, that was not done.  And two of the original suppliers changed their minds part way through. This is possible to do in a far less time intensive way, and not having a theme it would be the biggie. That’s how the other three have been run. And having people supply (as a pair) armies/mission/terrain/etc is the way to do it.

Above: Lepowiskis Prison Break table in play-testing.	Below: Lepowiskis Prison Break set up for the tournament.

All of the missions we played were scenario-based. Three tables were Seize and Hold, the Late-War parachute-drop mission. There were two tables of Seize and Hold but with a focus on the Glider Assault coup-de-main aspect. Three tables of Hit the Beach – each being a separate scenario of Sword, Utah and Omaha. Two tables of German Counter-Attacks. The last three tables were quite different: Fighting French vs German Fallschirmjäger in Leipowski’s Prison Break; German Training School Early-War French tanks vs US Paras on the Frere Causeway; and one we set in Caen, but using Not One Step back from the V2 briefing Stalingrad. The last two were really Free-for-Alls.

Above: Table 6 – Sword Beach by Alastair Mundell.

The first three finishers were all very experienced players. It was very pleasing to see how well the two under-18-year-old players did.

Results

Place	Player	VPs	Awards
1	Rob Sadler	27	1st Place
2	Andrew Karl	26	2nd Place
3	Mike Haycock	25	3rd Place
4	Rob Shirley	24
5=	Cameron King	22	1st Under-18
5=	Sofia Chambers	22
7=	Harry Bird	20	2nd Under-18
7=	Keving King	20
9	Lance Knighton	18
10=	John Lee	17
10=	Mark Taylor	17
12	Craig Ramsay	16	Best Sportsmanship
13	Ian Cameron	14	2nd Sportsmanship
14	Simon Taylor	13
15	Brent Young	12
16=	Kim Styles	11
16=	Michael Hamilton	11
18=	Alistair Mundell	10
18=	Matt Berkers	10	Dunkirk
20	Blair Reid	9
21	Phil Ward	6

Huge thanks to the people who loaned their models, to those who provided terrain, to the management team of Matt, Michael and Ian, to Dory and Marlin who ran the whole event of 12 different genres, and to people who stayed at my place, who attended our dinner (13 of us) and particularly to the set-up and pull-down crew. The next two years of NICon are planned for Auckland (2017) and Napier (2018). ~ Rob.