Huzzah! 2023 – my recap and photos of my 3 Wars of Ozz and 2 Feudal Patrol Games

As I wind down from Memorial Day weekend activities, I wanted to share some of my photos from the Huzzah! 2023 gaming convention. I ran 5 games there – two Wars of Ozz games on Friday, two Feudal Patrol games based on the Spanish Conquest in Mesoamerica games on Saturday, and a final Wars of Ozz game on Sunday. Each game slot was 4 hours long.

As usual, setting up and running a convention game (let alone 5) takes away from being a photographer. In the end, I want the games to take priority – and find a moment or two to take some shots for you, my readers. I do not have a good play-by-play to share, but I will give you the general gist of the games and hopefully the pics will suffice – there are a lot here.

If you like wargames photos – or you were at Huzzah! 2023 – this post is up your alley!

As background, the Huzzah! 2023 gaming convention was held in South Portland, ME, from May 19th to May 21st. It is run annually by the Maine Historical Wargamers Association (MWHA). There are two Facebook pages associated with the group, one is for the MWHA and one for the Huzzah! convention that you can access.

I arrived early Friday the 19th – around 11 AM – so that I could check into my hotel and move all my stuff from my very full car into my room and get my first game set up for 2 PM. Unfortunately, the hotel would not let ANYONE check in before 3 PM – and yes, that was during my game slot. The staff of the hotel claimed that they needed to keep rooms free for flight crews (not the fault of MWHA btw). In any case, my car was not packed such that I could just grab stuff and go – and after a bit of transloading in the parking lot I got my stuff into the convention space and set up my first 6-player Wars of Ozz game. The table was smaller than I had planned – and had a lot of figures on it, but with all of the scrambling, I made it work.

Friday Afternoon Wars of Ozz Game

I set up all of my Ozz games as “meeting engagements”. The idea was to expose the players to the rules and for them to have a fun and straightforward game. In the first game, on the “bad guys side” I had a brigade of Gillikins (loaned to me for the convention by my friend Chris Comeau), my brigade of Winkies, and another Winkie brigade (loaned to me for the convention by my friend Chris Palmer of the Maryland HAWKS club). On the other side I had my Great Land of Harvest Brigade, my Munchkin Brigade, and a Quadling Brigade (also from Chris Palmer), At future conventions, I should have enough of my own Ozz troops, but thanks to the two Chris’s, and Eric Schlegel (the HAWK who brought the Maryland-based figures m to the convention), I was set. Each player had a brigade – and here below are some shots of the action.

The first game was an overwhelming bad guy victory. I reset the game, finally got checked into my room, and prepared for the next band of players. As for dinner – a bag of crackers and a Coke had to suffice for the time being.

Friday Night Wars of Ozz Game

When I reset the game, I removed some of the terrain to alter it a bit. I also deployed the forces closer to each other. Here below are some shots of this game.

At the game’s end, the bad guys had the advantage – but the tide was (in my opinion) turning in favor of the good guys. All had fun in these first two games.

At this point, I grabbed another Coke, a bag of Goldfish crackers, and a microwaveable frozen mini-pizza for the room, and crashed.

Saturday Morning Feudal Patrol Game – The Battle of Centla

The next morning, I got in early and set up my next game – the Battle of Centla. This is a Feudal Patrol skirmish game based on the first encounter between the Conquistadores and the Maya (Cortes would later fight the Aztecs).

I again sold out! It was nice to have a full table.

Thankfully, I was able to get this game dismantled (with a lot of help especially from Leif and Brad) and put away and moved to my final table of the weekend. Fortunately, this was going to be a BIG table – five 6′ x 3′ tables of watery battlefield – Lake Texcoco – where the Aztec capital used to be.

Saturday Evening Feudal Patrol Game – The Battle of Lake Texcoco

This game would be in the evening on Saturday – so I set up during he afternoon – all 23 war canoes (with 5-6 Aztecs inside) and 5 Spanish brigantines (with 13 or so figures in each ship). Each side gets Victory points differently. The Spanish get points for successfully firing their primitive lombards and falconets (cannon) at the city. The Aztecs get points for successfully boarding each brigantine. Both sides get points for inflicting casualties on the enemy – with the Aztecs getting more points for inflicting them than the armored Spanish do. There were 9 players.

In the end the Spanish lost the game – as not a single shot hit the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish players were somewhat cautious in their advance but also too willing to fire valuable cannon opportunities at war canoes. While they inflicted a lot of casualties, the lack of cannon hits doomed their chances at victory. Meanwhile, the Aztecs boarded all of the brigantines, and that was the difference in points.

After a cleanup, I had help setting up Sunday morning’s upcoming Ozz game on this same table.

Sunday Morning Wars of Ozz Game

I only used 4 brigades this time as I dropped the Winkie and the Quadling brigades that I had borrowed from Chris Palmer. There was a LOT more maneuver space and several of the players were from Friday’s Ozz games. Also there was lot of action in this game as you will see below!

That was the end of the game as time expired. It was not really over as the Munchkins were still intact and the Winkies had taken losses too. Had it gone on longer, I expect that it would have been very close – but as it ended the Winkies and Gillikins made it a three for three weekend.

I hope that you enjoyed the photos – and I want to thank all of the MWHA folks for all of their hard work – and I want to thank the players as well. I do believe that everyone had a very good time at my games – plus I think I will see some of them at future Mass Pikemen games – and I really look forward to that!

As always, I appreciate any feedback from you in the comments section. Thanks for looking!