Fall In Convention

 

A view of the two game tables that I used for my three Fall In Sharpe Adventures in Spain games.

I am back from my trip to the HMGS East Fall In Convention in Lancaster, PA November  6-9, 2025. All told, it was a successful show, having hosted three games featuring Captain Richard Sharpe's adventures in Spain during the Peninsular War of the Napoleonic Era. I won a PELA award for my game on Saturday ("Sharpe's Bridge - The Battle of the Coa River") and I also won the Best Terrain award for the convention. Finally, all three games were fully booked with players and this is always my personal goal when I am hosting games at war game conventions.

PELA Award for my individual game on Saturday morning.

Fall In is held every Fall at the Wyndom Resort in Lancaster, PA. This is the same site as the old Lancaster Host Hotel that used to hold Historicon before it moved to a better facility in downtown Lancaster. New ownership completely renovated all of the rooms, so the floor layout was the same as before, but more importantly, the rooms were brought up to a high standard and they had a fresh and new vibe to them.

Fall In is a bit smaller than Historicon in terms of the number of games available and the number of attendees, but it is larger than the HMGS-Midwest Little Wars convention as a point of reference. The convention organizers gave me a premium table site in the main foyer in front of the large Lancaster Ball Room; so everyone had to walk past my two game tables before entering the main game area.

The view of my tables as you first walk down the stairs into the main game hall.
The food vendors were next to my tables so this brought a few more eyeballs to my game table.

Here are more pictures of my games. I will post a separate report about the other games at Fall In.

I hosted three games: Friday at 10AM, Friday at 7PM and Saturday at 10AM. My favorite scenario of the three was the Saturday game: "Sharpe's Rescue" which was inspired by the Bernard Cornwell book "Sharpe's Enemy". All of the players were very familiar with the Sharpe books in general and the Sharpe's Enemy book in particular. Consequently, they all actively played their roles to the hilt regarding  the forces that they were commanding: the evil Obadiah Hakeswill, the French spy Pierre Ducos, several French commanders, Sir Henry Simmerson and others.

Richard Sharpe was tasked with rescuing Lady Farthingale from the evil clutches of Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill (Sharpe's mortal enemy), who was holding her as a hostage. She was being held captive in a convent high up in the mountains. Sharpe led a force of his own Chosen Men (95th Rifles), the Light Company of the South Essex regiment, La Aguja's band of Spanish guerrillas (commanded by Sharpe's wife Theresa) and a half company of the South Essex regiment.

So Sharpe and his Chosen Men and the South Essex light company assaulted the convent from one direction while the guerrillas attacked from another direction (with the aim of cutting off the retreat of Hakeswill's army of deserters.

While the other forces provided covering fire, the Chosen Men fought their way into the convent courtyard, rescued Lady Farthingale and attempted to fight their way out of the compound to safety. Along the way, Sharpe fought and captured Hakeswill and cut his way through a swath of French regulars (who were also trying to capture the hostages). So far, things were running close to the events in the book. However, Hakeswill's men forced their way into the hut where the Chosen Men were holding off the bad guys and Sharpe was faced with the tough choice of releasing Hakeswill from captivity and escaping with the hostages, or try to keep both Hakeswill and the hostages. 

Meanwhile, Sergeant Patrick Harper was leading the way down the back stairway of the convent. His seven barreled Nock Naval Gun blew a hole through a squad of French regulars and the road to freedom appeared to be secured. Just then, the bad guys won the next initiative card and they shot down Harper.

We were running out of game time, so I reshuffled the card deck and decided that I would keep drawing initiative cards until either Sharpe's or Hakeswill's card was drawn first. That would determine the winner of the game. Hakeswill drew the first card and was declared the winner, but close only counts in horse shoes as the old saying goes.

Richard Sharpe and Sergeant Patrick Harper fight their way out of the convent. Rifleman Harris tries to hold the door closed to protect Sharpe's back. Sharpe and Harris made it to safety, but Harper met an unfortunate end.
Or did he? Sharpe and Harper will march again at Little Wars in April 2026.

As often happens during a game, you find some loop holes in the rules or discover a better way of doing something differently.

During a melee, the individual figures match up and both sides roll a D20 die, with modifiers, and the high score wins the melee. Then a card is drawn from the deck: a heart results in a kill, a diamond results in a wound, a spade results in the loser running away, and a club card results in the capture of the loser. During the second game, some of the players started applying this "results method" to small arms fire as well as to melee outcomes. I liked the way that this worked and so I used it in the third and final game. It amounts to a saving throw of sorts and reduces the amount of hits/kills from small arms fire. 

In the next several days I will post some pictures of the other games that I saw at Fall In so stay tuned for more.