IndiCON ‘25 Recap: Fun with the Sun, and MORE!

FIRST of all, many thanks to ST Patrick and his wife Jena for hosting such a wonderful event! It was nice to be able to just play games and not have to monitor anything, I'm so grateful for the wonderful "escape" weekend (I only checked e-mail once!). ST and Jena made us ALL feel welcomed and loved, and were so attentive to everyone's experience. Everyone had an amazing time.

This was a "bring your own game" event, with attendees invited to play whatever they'd like. For me, this event provided an outlet for continuation of my Second Season football project with the 1974 Southern California Sun of the World Football League. So my weekend was different than everyone else's in terms of what games were played. I know there was a lot of Matchup Football and APBA baseball being played at other tables, and MANY other games got some time on the tabletop. But here's a fast re-cap of MY weekend...

I opted to fly into Detroit and drive down to Indiana, about a two hour drive. There's an airport in Fort Wayne, but no direct flights from Denver. Hey, I'll choose a couple hour drive over a connecting flight and layover every time! It was a great experience.

I arrived at the hotel around 230pm and it was like old times, "the gang's all here!" ST was holding court with Charles Helms, Mark Russell, Brian Hoxsey, Jim Woods, George Adams, Mark Miller and a host of others. I hadn't seem some of these guys for a few years, but it was an immediate re-connect. That's one of the great things about this hobby!

I had set up a basic game plan ahead of time with gamers who I knew would be there. Mark Russell had expressed interest in one of the games I've been working on for a couple of years, a re-enactment of the 1940 British attack on the Italian port of Taranto. (NOTE: IndiCON was billed as a sports game only event, but we figured ST wouldn't mind if we bent the rules just a LITTLE bit!) Technically, this was a "naval" battle, but it marked a turning point in naval warfare, with the use of ship-based aircraft. Anyway, Mark has a strong interest in war games as well as sports games (there is a fairly good-sized overlap of the participants in these two genres), so I brought it along. We set it up ran several turns, and shared thoughts. Extremely helpful.

Then we switched to Slap Shot--a PLAAY favorite, though not a PLAAY game. We've done streams with it, and it's been played at several on-location PLAAY events. It's just a FUN game! Brian Hoxsey and Scott Johnson joined me and Mark for the game, I was the "regular season champion," but Mark won the "wild card" playoff and the defeated me two games to none in the championship.

After hockey, we all headed for dinner, different folks went different places depending food and friends. I had arranged to have dinner with Mike Canestrari so that we could discuss plans for the upcoming Digital to Dice Con in Connecticut. James Hart and his wife Esther joined us. We went to a local eatery ST had suggested, a home-spun diner in the downtown area that's a local favorite. It did not disappoint!

After dinner, it was back to the hotel for some Roller Rumble with Scott Johnson! I brought along the 1960 IRDL cards from a couple of years ago, I chose the Chicago Westerners (with future hall-of-famer Joanie Weston leading a strong women's squad that also included Cathy Read, Loretta Behrens and Dolores Doss) and Scott took the star-laden New York Chiefs--probably the best men's squad in the league (even better than the San Francisco Bay Bombers!) with Bob Woodberry, Buddy Atkinson Jr., Ronnie Robinson and the Gammon guys Mike and Gene. This made for a terrific back-and-forth battle as the men and women alternated periods on the track. The Westerners women forged a 37-34 lead as the seventh period ended, and it looked like it might hold up, but Robinson scored three on a late jam and burst through for the winning point in sudden-death overtime to give the Chiefs a classic, dramatic roller derby win, 40-39.

Scott Johnson and the official scoresheet of the ‘60 Chiefs’ epic roller derby win over the Westerners.

The next morning I rode over to the venue for IndiCON with George Adams, Jim Woods and Tim Face, the Early Ford V-8 Museum grounds. The museum is set up at one end of the parking lot with a spacious meeting space at the other. The museum is pretty cool, we were encouraged to take at least a few minutes from our game time to go over and take a look. Here's a sample of what's inside...

Wouldn’t I love to have THIS beauty in my garage!? 1950 Mercury “woodie” wagon from inside the early Ford V-8 Museum.

At the meeting hall, ST and Jena had goodies for everyone! We each got a "swag bag" full of thoughtful gifts, there was a huge spread of snacks and drinks, and everything was set up for a big day of games. ST had a few opening remarks, followed by some words from the museum representative. Here’s a look at the room as ST “addresses the troops”…

ST Patrick delivers opening remarks at IndiCON 2025, Auburn, IN.

Then? Game(s) ON!…

As I mentioned earlier, for me, this event provided an outlet for continuation of my Second Season football project with the 1974 Southern California Sun of the World Football League. (If your curious "why the Sun?" There is a connection with my favorite NFL team, the Saints: Tom Fears was the coach of the Sun, he was the original Saints coach when the team made its entry into the NFL in 1967. He brought with him several players he'd coached with the Saints, tight end Dave Parks, defensive back Gene Howard and others.) I'm trying to play as many games as I can from the project head-to-head with other gamers. I matched up with Harvey Couch last summer at the "Gridiron Games" event at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played a game with Erik Holdaway at last falls' "UTAH-ctober" event in Salt Lake City. (I'm approaching mid-season of the project with the Sun at .500, I'll do a blog post update soon..)

The "morning game" had Kevin Burghart coaching the Philadelphia Bell. I marched the Sun downfield on my first possession, Kermit Johnson running it in for an early 7-0 lead. But Kevin had the Bell ringing LOUD, King Corcoran picked apart the suspect Sun secondary and connected on a pair of long scoring passes (61 yard bomb to Linzy Cole, 51 yard screen pass to Claude Watts). "The King" dove across himself for a third score, making it 22-7 Philadelphia. A fourth-quarter touchdown pass from Tony Adams to Keith Denson got the Sun back into the game, but we weren't able to score again and the Bell won 22-14.

The Southern California Sun of the 1974 World Football League are the only pro sports team ever to have used magenta as their primary color! The #74 jersey is that of the league’s 1974 defensive MVP, DT Dave Roller.

The "afternoon game" had Dave Heller coaching the Portland Storm. Rich Dunn was on-deck for a third game, but the way the afternoon was fast escaping, I figured it would work better if Rich took over as coach of the Sun while I kept stats and the game book. It was a close game through three quarters, the Sun clinging to a 15-10 lead as the fourth quarter began. The final quarter turned into the Kermit Johnson show, as he scored twice (9-yard pass, 27-yard run) to blow the game open, 30-10. Dave got the Storm into the end zone in the final minute, Jeff Baker snagging a 27-yard TD pass from Pete Beathard, for the final 30-17 margin.

Dave Heller (left) and Rich Dunn (right) post-game, Sun out-shines the Storm 30-17.

Then we played Draft Duel, which George Adams had brought along from his game collection. I suggested we play the FULL Draft version, where you literally draft players from a pool to form your own 12-card team deck and then you play multiple games with those same players. Brien Aronov and Charles Helms joined me and George for the game. We decided that the first person to win two games would be declared champion. As it turned out, we only played two games--Charles Helms won BOTH! Me? I finished in last place both games! I had Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott as my quarterbacks--but I wound up starting Prescott in both games, ugh. Cowboys fans, I feel your pain.

George Adams (right, in red) makes a Draft Duel play while Brien Aronov (right) Charles Helms (center) watch with interest…

Five o'clock was fast approaching, and ST had arranged for us all to gather at one of his favorite local eateries, Mimi's, for dinner. It was a very cool setting, cozy and home-spun. I sat with Gary Brown, Blake Wilson and Broc Riblet and had a great visit spanning numerous sports game topics.

After dinner, back to the hotel for more games...

I had brought Fury Hardball with me, the base game, head-to-head pitch deck and the 2025 Big League Fury teams, with the idea of getting a feel for how our PLAAY-Dot-CON "Fury Tourney" will go. I played a best-of-five series with James Hart--he took the Cubs and I took the Rockies. The Cubs won the first two games and it looked like they might sweep, but the Rockies came back to win game three. And game four! With the series on the line, we had a classic Fury slinger-duel. Shota Imanaga threw a no-hitter for James in the Chicago half, four straight zingers and a final pop out. But Kyle Freeland was up to the challenge and managed to struggle through several near-hits to retire the Cubs without a score and got a pop out for the "extra out" to win the game AND series for Colorado! Awesome!

Here’s me (left) and James Hart (right) in the middle of our Cubs/Rockies Fury Hardball series. Go Rox!

Dave Heller brought a cool board game based on the Watergate scandal of the early'70s. Again, not a sports game, but Dave and I share an interest in history-based narrative games (and we knew ST intended for "fun" to be had at this event)! I played as the CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President), Dave was the media. One of those games where you need to play it a couple of times to understand how everything worked. I made a couple of crucial early errors and Nixon was taken down pretty quickly. It was really engaging, though, thought-provoking. Interesting choices, and I thought the game captured the tension, drama and, yes, the strategy of the struggle to take down/preserve the presidency. Here’s a link with a more thorough description of the game.

I was so engrossed in “Watergate” that I forgot to take pictures of my own! These are taken from the web, so you can see what the game looks like.

After wrapping up with Dave, I wandered over to another corner of the hotel guest space where History Maker Golf match was unfolding between ST Patrick, Mark Russell, Charles Helms and Joe Bryan. ST was Greg Norman's "caddy," and Norman raced out to a six stroke lead by the 12th hole. But in classic fashion, he imploded down the stretch and Ben Crenshaw (Charles Helms), greatly aided by the "lucky" quality (blue chip to start every hole) made a nice run and closed to within a stroke. A missed birdie putt on 17 would prove to be Charles/Crenshaw's undoing.

Saturday night golf at IndiCON! (clockwise from left) James Hart, Charles Helms, Joe Bryan, ST Patrick, Mark Russell.

That put the wraps on a fun day of games, and after some wind-down conversation I headed back to my room to get some sleep. A good number of folks stayed up (late) to play games into the wee hours. It's one of those things where you hate for it to end.

Sunday morning I headed back to Detroit, another amazing sports gamer get-together in the books. I can't close this post, though, without a shout-out to Caitlin A, a gate attendant for Delta Airlines at the Detroit Metro airport. I got to the airport a couple hours early for my 4pm flight back to Denver and after getting through security noticed that Delta had a flight to Denver leaving at 12:45pm. Long story short, Caitlin pulled a few strings and got me on the earlier flight, which put me home three hours EARLY--how awesome is that!? It was a great exclamation point for a wonderful weekend.

Again, MANY thanks to ST Patrick and his wife Jena for putting the pieces in place for this amazing weekend. You guys are incredible!

Next up, Digital 2 Dice Con 2025 in Preston, CT. See you there in a few weeks! There's still room for you to attend, here's the link for more info!