Ropecon is an annual role-playing convention held in Helsinki and it's the biggest non-commercial event of its kind in Europe. I have been organising events there for 11 years now from demoes of various miniature wargames to tournaments. Various games that I've been presenting over the years have been Confrontation by Rackham (now defunct, but miniatures still being cast by CMON), Hell Dorado by Asmodée (subsequently bought by Cipher Studios, now a subsidiary of Soda Pop Miniatures), Warhammer Historical: Great War (out of print), Malifaux by Wyrd Games (actually still alive and kicking rather well), All Quiet on the Martian Front by Alien Dungeon (defunct, range subsequently bought by Ironclad Games) and Carnevale by Vesper-On games (defunct, range bought by Troll Trader).
From above, you might have noticed a slight unfortunate trend with the games I've been involved with. I think it's my karma or something, although it seems to be true that many upcoming scifi/fantasy games suffer from the same fate if they don't have enough financial backing to keep the ball rolling before it takes up enough speed. I started to grow tired of once again getting inspired with a new game with an uncertain future. Add to that my interest in the renaissance, the transition to Pike & Shotte was logical, and even if Warlord games (the publisher of P&S) goes belly-up, there are still dozens of manufacturers that offer miniatures to this period (see Madaxeman's listing). Most of my miniatures are from Warlord Games, but this is mostly due their plastics being very cheap and even their metal ranges have a good price vs. value rating.
Pike & Shotte isn't that popular yet in Finland, although the Finnish took part in the war. There is interest though and I wanted to find out how much of an interest it could gather. I chose the Swedish Phase of the Thirty Years War, as this would be the period most likely to be of interest to the participants (also my forces are conveniently built to this period as well). I did a couple of demo games at home with my regular opponents and the following images are from one of these pre-demo games. They are taken with my cell phone instead of my DSRL camera, so the image quality is worse than usual (granted, I don't much concentrate on photography when gaming usually even with a better camera).
In the demo setup the Swedish are facing the Catholic League (yes, the flags are Imperial, I know already). I tried to make balanced lists that were different enough to show how different troops varied from each other. The Catholic side had two generals of Command Rating 8, with one of them commanding the cavalry (one unit of cuirassiers and one unit of harquebusiers) and the other a tercio of catholic elite troops (represented by a large unit created by two adjacent pike blocks) and a medium cannon. The Swedish had the veteran Blue Regiment (here they had one musket unit too little), a light cannon and a Scottish mercenary regiment. The Swedes were commanded by a single Command Rating 9 general.
In the above image the Swedish have already taken their first turn and advanced rather quickly amongst the fields. During the demos I always played the Swedish side and both won and lost. After working out how to counter the League Cavalry, I decided to keep playing with fragile tactics that left my veterans vulnerable in order to demonstrate cavalry tactics to the demoee.
The fields are by Holz Artworks. I bought 2 sets of them and I've been satisfied thus far. Granted, I could have bought a 10 € doormat from IKEA and cut it to suitable pieces, but I wanted to try pre-made terrain. The cardboard buildings and terrain tend to come either from Dave Graffam Models or Fat Dragon Games.
The tactics of the typical demo are reflected here. The Swedish advance forwards (I learned to be more cautious later on), the League cavalry advance to the road to firing distance. The Scots come from the right and threaten the flank of the League troops, but that flank is already protected by the town. The Swedish light cannon concentrates its fire on the tercio (with varying success), which advances forwards with the aim of crushing the Scots.
Here the League Cavalry have attacked the Blue Regiment musketeers, with the musketeers responding by retreating to a hedgehog formation, basically tying down the Blue Regiment. I later on realised (with the here-missing musketeer unit mind you) that the Swedish veteran musketeers can take a head-on charge against low numbers of cuirassiers with their Swedish Feathers rule, especially when they are well supported by their comrades. Of course, if they can be flanked... that's a whole different story.
The League tercio usually was more than a match for the Scots, but on several occasions the Scottish did manage to repel the League forces, but that was much due to their higher morale and very lucky dice rolls. Still, on many occasions they also proved unable to understand clear orders stated in plain Swedish. In this pre-demo game after the Scots routed, it was easy for the League infantry to clear the remaining musketeers and break the battalion morale of the Swedish forces and win the game.
As for the demos themselves... my target audience was divided into three distinct groups: 1) gamers with scifi/fantasy background that had grown old and wanted something more to their games than dragons and space elves, 2) history enthusiasts and 3) people not familiar with miniature wargaming. I think I "caught them all" and I can thank the "Experience Area" staff for their recruiting skills that meant that I didn't really have much time when I wasn't running a demo game. I was also pleasantly surprised that the demos also gathered spectators of whom many followed the game for half-an-hour or more. I told the demoees that basic mechanics of the game could be shown within about 30 minutes, but each and every game I ran was so intense that people wanted to play it all the way to the bitter end... and this was on a 4'x4' table with full ranges and tiny forces. Heck... I later on heard that one guy liked the game so much he decided to buy the TYW Imperialist Starter Army from the Warlord Games store! That's probably the best response I could have received!
TL;DR: I had loads of fun! Thanks to everybody that took part either as a commander or as a spectator!
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