Richard A. Nance Jr, founding member of the Heart of America Historical Miniature Gaming Society, passed away from a heart attack Monday, September 25th 2017 while driving near Dover, Kansas. Rick was 65.
Rick Nance founded the Heart of America Miniature Gaming Society with Oril Eisle and Scott Hansen in 1989. This year, 2019, marked the 30th anniversary of the founding of HAHMS, one of the first HMGS groups. Rick always made a point that HAHMGS was the ‘Miniature’ Gaming Society, not ‘Miniatures’, to reflect the independence and uniqueness of the Kansas City historical miniature gaming community. He started and ran the Borderwars and Call to Arms conventions for HAHMGS. Along with the members of his Pioneer Panzer gaming group, Rick designed and built some great looking and great playing games. Povkorovka, Tarawa, Little Bohemia and Alesia to name just a few. These games were often featured in hobby magazines. You can see his Zanzibar game in Wargames Illustrated #300 (see below).
He and Scott Hansen also founded the Borderland Game & Hobby store in Kansas City. A center of miniature gaming in the KC area for over 20 years.
Not content to play with other’s rules, he designed his own minitaure rules. S.U.T.I.C: Small Unit Tactical Infantry Combat. Based on the research of Michael Korns, SUTIC is a set of one to one skirmish rules. Originally for WWII, Rick adapted it to other periods including the old west and modern warfare.
Rick’s miniature games were always a top draw at Kansas City and other conventions like Historicon, Little Wars, Origins, even the US Army National Infantry Museum in Fort Benning. One of the highlights of his gaming life, was in 2008, when his Modern Iraq War game was chosen to be displayed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. And then later at the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn.
San Francisco
www.artbusiness.com/1open/071908.html
Brooklyn
vernissage.tv/2010/04/07/brian-conley-miniature-war-in-iraq-and-now-afghanistan-the-boiler-pierogi
As much a boardgame and rol-player as a miniature gamer, Rick always supported RPGKC shows. RPGKC members will surely remember him from the combined shows RPGKC and HAHMGS put on in the 90s.
And Rick was instumental in convincing the Old Guard of HAHMGS to agree to join forces with RPGKC and other KC area groups to start KC-GameFair, and ultimately Midwest GameFest. Even though this neccessitated the end of HAHMGS’s own Fall show, Rick saw that together we would have a bigger and better convention.
