Miniaturepeddler

The Orccon gaming convention was a major success in spite of facility issues by the hotel.

Orccon, http://www.strategicon.net, has been plagued this past year with parking issues since they moved from the Westin LAX hotel to the Radison LAX. Thier first convention at the site last February was cursed by the popularity of the convention overwhelming the parking capacity of the hotel itself. Since that time, the hotel has begun major remodeling of its facilities, conference rooms, and meeting rooms, and has torn down its parking structure in order to build an entirely new parking garage. While this means that future events will be in an entire remodeled hotel and have plenty of parking, this has caused major heartache for the convention organizers.

The last convention was held over Presidents day weekend (Feb 13th- 16th), which included Valentines day, which is often a death dart into the heart of many gaming activities as loved ones would rather have their spouses at home and going to dinner rather than at a stink fest of gamers and ignoring them.

In spite of all of these obstacles, Orccon was able to bring in close to 1400 attendees to the convention, breaking their own projections for the convention, a good sign in these troubled economic times.

It might have helped that there were several major tournaments held at the convention this time: A Gamesworkshop Independent Grand Tournament, Broadside Bash, and a Flames of war National Qualifier tournament. Both tournaments were decently attended given the Valentines day event.

As usual the Board gamers took over a major part of the gaming floors and spread their love of dice, cards and cardboard boards into the wee hours of the mornings.

There were new hobby classes put on by several well known painters and scultpers, that were a nice addition to the event, and the exhibitor room seemed packed with vendors selling their wares to all attendees.

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A major announcement for the Memorial Day Show (End of May) is that they will be moving temporarily to the Sheratan hotel around the corner and owned by the same management company as the Radison. This will allow the Radisson time to complete renovation of its ballroom and its parking Structure (hopefully in time for Labor day).

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In meeting up with Robert, President of Darkson Designs, at Orccon 2009, Robert brought along a couple of models from his upcoming release of  Darkson Designs Miniature system in Space.

Robert was very excited to emphasis that this new system, just as AE WWII is not a point based miniature game system but rather a Force Organizational based that allows you to swap our force components and build either that small elite dream team or the green hordes based squad to overwhelm your opponents.

He had two models with him to show off a couple of the new races that that will be included in the new system:

I’m looking forward to seeing the entire miniature lineup and the book at this years Gencon.

Miniature Peddler
Orccon 2009

I was at the Orccon Gaming Convention in Los Angeles over Valentines weekend (Presidents day weekend) and I came across a Terrain Vendor by the name of “The Art of War“.

I began looking at their pieces and was very impressed. Good sized terrain for standard 25/28mm fantasy/SciFi/Modern battles to build great battle boards for anyone:

So their web page is http://www.artofwarterrain.com

Check them out and tell them the Miniature peddler recommended them.