The First Kublacon Fall

​

My wizard, Titus, launches fireballs at a troll (or was it an ogre? or a giant? whatever it was, its toast now) and his horde of minions

This month I attended the very first Kublacon Fall, a smaller off shoot of the Kublacon Convention in Burlingame that I normally attend over the Memorial Weekend. I'm very glad that with this new addition, we now have 4 tabletop gaming conventions in the Bay Area and I hope this convention was successful enough that it continues to occur in the future.

 

 KublaFall offered the standard array of activities for a convention, such as boardgames, RPGs, LARPs, dealer rooms, seminars, and miniatures. Unfortunately this convention also overlapped with VetCon up in Auburn, the preferred convention of most of the SBGC, so the miniatures room was kind of sparse. This was probably for the best though because the miniature room was a bit cramped and I don't know how they would've fit all the SBGC GMs if they had chosen to attend.

 

I decided to run 2 Brown Water Navy scenarios using Charlie Don't Surf. I think the games went great and my players seemed to be having fun. I came up with the scenarios on the fly with 0 playtesting though and I felt a bit bad when things seemed unbalanced towards one side or the other. One of my players drew up a map of his battle plan which I haven't seen before and thought was very cool, and his planning seemed to pay off because he did score a rather overwhelming victory.

 

 I also was finally able to get into my pal Jay White's Epic Pike and Shotte game, we usually run games at the same time as each other so I rarely get to play with him. For those of you who don't know, its Jay who inspired me to start blogging about my wargaming adventures, I even kinda of named my blog after his own. You can find his blog here: Jay's Wargaming Madness. 

Along with Pike and Shotte, he also ran a beautiful ACW game.

 I also had the pleasure of finally getting into Christopher Knox's beautiful D&D 5E game "The Return of Ymir", I've seen it at previous conventions but never knew what it was called so was unable to sign up before it was full, and with how fantastic the terrain looks, it often fills up quickly. Had a lot of fun with this one and Chris is a great GM and I look forward to joining his games in the future. We were also apparently the first group to actually kill the final boss Ymir, so was rather proud of that accomplishment.

I really wish I had the time, tools, storage space, and skills required to make terrain boards as good as Chris, not to say I don't put a lot of effort into my own terrain, but the guys really on another level.

 Next game I joined was a cooperative skirmish game called Nightwatch. Another beautiful table that reminded me of a mix of Vermintide and Mordheim. I like this ruleset, I've been thinking of running a Vermintide inspired table and may use it for that.

 And these are most of the other games being ran in the miniature room that I didn't get into.

That's all for now. Here's hoping for future KublaFalls. Hope we get it again next year

 

 I'd also like to take a moment to commemorate my friend and fellow SBGC member Manny Granillo, who unfortunately and suddenly pasted away earlier this month. He was a regular GM on the convention scene and the author of over a dozen wargame rules and scenario books. I always enjoyed talking to him or partaking in his games and all of us who knew him will miss him dearly, I bemoan the fact that he had invited me over to his house to learn his game OpFor and although I was interested, I never sat down and hammered out an exact day to do it, and now I will never get the chance. If anyone is interested you can still purchase his rulebooks here.