SzenarioCon 2025

After a long break, I came back to the Palatinate, and as already described in the kick-off, the new wargaming year starts early, right on the second weekend, with the Szenario Con in Hackenheim, near Bad Kreuznach.

The event was fully booked, around 200 guests and 25 hosted Games / presentations along with several traders. Many thanks at this point to Jürgen and Frank for the great organisation.

The venue is a courtyard restaurant in the foothills of the Rheinhessen wine-growing region. You can go for a walk nearby or take a look upon the animals in the petting zoo nearby. And as veteran readers know, there is no event coverage without a proper parking lot picture.

As it was cold and dry, the mostly unpaved car park wasn't an issue, but if it raining, I'd recommend wearing boots.

The gaming tables were set up in the coach house and in the cellar and were well arranged so that, if it wasn't a particularly busy time, it was easy to get around them.

In addition to the cellar within the coach house was a gallery, where further demo games were hosted along with multiple painters and a workshop area.

But we were there for gaming and started right away early in the morning after doing a first round, greeting a lot of familiar faces and to see what was offered and available.

Our first game of the day was Fallout: Wasteland Warfare and hosted by Oliver and his pals, who represent the German Wasteland Warfare Community. The scenario was: Raider scoundrels raid a farm of wastelanders to steal the supplies of the unsuspecting settlers. To fight them off, the settlers have to activate the electric fence around the settlement before the Raiders have collected enough supplies...

Really entertaining scenario as it kept the tension to the very end. It could have gone both ways and we really like the mechanics, as they did not only create a dynamic experience, but really fit the skirmish battles within a setting like Fallout / Post-Apocalypse. I could really see these rules work for other settings with 10 or less miniatures, as the way equipment and interaction is handled, was quite lean but still covering the differences between classes and gear.

Our next game was From Hell, a home-written rule set by Rusus. It was about Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders. One side would be playing Jack the Ripper and the suspects, the other one Scotland Yard.

As Jack you would have to commit the five murders and then escape, without being caught or killed. And the investigators had to catch the suspect, that was most likely to be the killer, dead or alive. Depending on how public the attrocities were done, they would be noticed and thus the net of the investigators would tighten. We played two quick games and switched sides after the first one.

Entertaining and another lean rule set. Quite difficult not to escalate the game too early, but challenging for both sides. In our case some lucky shots, put Jack the Ripper in both games to an early end after two murders each time.

Our fourth game of the day was hosted by HF Wargaming, who we met on shows before, for example like Crisis last year. Franz has his own Zombie-Apocalypse rule set, called All that'z Left and wrote a scenario for this event, which was called Halunke von Hackenheim (Scoundrel fo Hackenheim).

The scoundrel, an information broker, did sell some rather unreliable info to one warband, who know want him to pay for the consequences this caused, while another warband tries to stop them / protect him, as they are interested in further business relations with him. And all that, while Zombies are roaming around. This game has an interesting zombie threat level mechanic, as the game can be lost not only by getting beaten by the other player or missing your objectives, but by being not careful enough and causing to much attention (creating a zombie horde). I would probably overhaul the activation phase, as it feels like a bit too many dice rolls to get the characters into action, but beyond that an interesting fast-paced skirmish, with and individual backstory.

Dino had the opportunity and play a fantasy scenario, that went multiple stories tall. Hosted by the well-known DonVoss, who has written about his tower on Sweetwater. A bit like a dungeon crawler, you adventure room by room, fighting enemies, gathering clues until you reach the final stage of the game.

And those were just the games we played. There were a lot of further interesting hosted games and tables, for example Ad Arma (who host their own event in early may 2025) with V for Victory, or this electrified Mantic Deadzone table.

You even had two tables covering Middle Earth, one hosted by Tabletop Rhein Main with Ring Rampant (Dragon Rampant variant) and the second one using the official Middle-Earth rule set hosted by the Tabletop Nerds Mainz.

On the gallery there were the mentioned painters, among them The Red Hut and HvM Workbench.

It was a well organised show and I am already looking forward to next years installment. The entry is free but the hosts encourage you to get your drinks and food at the restaurant, providing the venue.

I was surprised how many of the tables were hosted by local wargamers, and many of them were independend people or smaller groups on their own, without a affiliation to a club or gaming society. As well as many tables were hosted in a way, that you saw that the hosts had an idea for a scenario and used a rule set benefiting that setting, and not the other way around, providing a a very broad range of games, with quite a few rather unknown or home written rule sets. Very refreshing.

Beyond that, quite the who-is-who of wargaming gathered under one roof. Lots of invitations for upcoming events during the year, along with the chance to pick up tables that we didn't have the time at show or for a rematch.

Therefore, thanks again to Jürgen and Frank for hosting. Had a blast! See you next year at the latest!

Link: Szenario Con