From: Jason Pipes Subject: GenCon after convention report 1996 Well, I went to GenCon again this year as I have the last 5 years, and it was a mixture of disapointment and total amazement. Many people tend to scoff at thought of going to GenCon because it is run by TSR, one of the largest and the oldest fantasy game companies in the world. By natural assumption, the thought is that the convention is run only for RPG or CCG players. The fact is, this is not so. Although the convention is dominated by RPG's and now by CCG's, as are nearly all other conventions, it has its share of wargames and the auction is the largest of any in the world for games. This year I spent most of my time in the game auction, as I do nearly every year, but I did get a chance to check out the wargames being played and the convention floor. The major factor in my being upset about this years convention comes from the fact that it now costs $15.00 to get into the convention for just one day!! That is up 5 bucks from last year, and up 10 bucks from the year before! I wasn't prepared to miss the chance to go to the auction though, so I forked over the cash, as did around 20,000 other people too. And that is why TSR has no problem raising the cost of getting in, they know people will do anything to get in, and they will pay any price to do so because they have only one other choice, not go. Most people like myself felt that indeed that was itself too high a price to pay, a lot higher than 15 bucks. The convention floor was dominated by RPG and CCG game booths, but had its share of wargame related booths too. The hardcore wargame booths I saw were Excalibre which had its share of old microgames for sale, all the Yaquinto reprints like Panzer, Ironclads, Ironclads expansion, and Wings, many 3W games for sale, a bunch of SimCan stuff, and some import games from Europe like Siege and Viking. Moments in History was present but rather than selling any wargames at all, they only had Ulrich Blenhiem selling their new CCG about tank battles. It actually looks kind of neat, but I resisted buying any cards because I think as nice as the cards look, and as much as it appeals to my child-like desire to buy and own a baseball card like collection of cards to stare at in a three ring binder, I felt that if I wanted to play tactical level armor battels, I could pull out my 1/285th mini's or Panzer or Amrour by Yaquinto instead. Columbia was selling its CCG about the ACW and the new one on Napoleonic stuff, as well as all their Euro-Front block games. I met Dave Powell from the Gamers at a booth not run by the Gamers. They had all the Gamers stuff out though, and I spoke with Dave about DAK which he said will be out for sure next year in spring or early summer. He said it won't have a direct link up with Tunisia but will have off-board map holding boxes for transfer between the two sets of maps from DAK and Tunisia, if not directly in the game rules, than probably in an issue of Operations. He also said that so far the move to direct market sales has been great for The Gamers and their newest release has so far been their best release ever. Hubes Pocket from the OCS games is their newest game. Crazy Igors from New York was present selling a lot of old games at really high prices as was Zocchi games from out West. I met Lou Zocchi as he was selling somebody Eagle and the Sun by FGA for $100.00. I had to laugh because not only is the game a flop, but I had just found it in the game auction for $25.00. I bought it for the maps and counters to play with my new boxed copy of War in the Pacific that I also bought in the Auction for 165.00. But more on the auction later. The Game Trader from New Jersey was the other major used game company selling used wargames. They also had the best prices too. Of Crazy Igors, Zocchi Games, and The Game Trader, The Game Trader had the best prices. Both Zocchi and Igor's had Mech War 2 in the large SPI box for $100.00, and I bought it at The Game Trader for $27.50. Zocchi had SPI's War in the Pacific for $600.00, and most of the other older games sold at both Igor's and Zocchi's were very high. My feeling is that if you can buy through mail from The Game Trader, do so. They seem like good guys and the Prices are great on used games! GHQ was present selling their really great mini's, and a few other companies were present selling other mini's. I saw a company selling Scottia Minitures and compared to GHQ stuff, the are really poorly done. Try to stay away from them unless you are looking for poorly cast and poorly detailed mini's. At least the 1/285th armour I looked at was bad, maybe their naval and air mini's are better though. A few other booths were selling wargame related stuff too, Chessex was selling WWII: PTO by SPI/TSR for 10 bucks and Scorched Earth for $20.00. The Armory was selling GDW products at 50% off cover price, so most GDW games were pretty cheap. I was rather disapointed at the actual wargames being played this year though. In years past years I remember seeing a lot of naval mini's and a lot of armor mini's, this year I saw only one naval game being played. The rest looked all like sci-fi and fantasy mini's. Although I do know that other real mini games were being planned for according to the schedule book, but I didn't happen to see them. Not many good wargames were being played, I think a little ASL, if any at all, was being played too. A National Security Dept simulation on global politics and hot spots was run though, which I really wanted to go to, but missed. It was run by a real Defense Dept person too. I did see a listing for a playing of TSS by SPI though, and that looks like it was the only hardcore wargame being played this year. In years past I remeber them having ASL tournaments, huge Europa games, and B17 play-offs, but this year I didn't see them. It looks as if wargames may be slipping some as far as GenCon goes, but it's up us, the actual gamers, to inspire more wargamimg in the future as they only have games slotted if people sign up to ref them. So it is as much our collective fault for not having more wargames being played as it is the fauly of ever present RPG's and CCG's. But the true gem of GenCon '96 was and always has been the game auction. I saw so many great and hard to find wargames get sold, many to myself, for only a few dollars a game, that I couldn't even believe it. A few dealers were present buying up stuff to resell, but mostly everything went to real gamers. I am getting a copy of the auction sale results from TSR soon, at which time I plan on making the results public through Paper Wars and on Grognards, but I will include a list of what some stuff went for here. I must say, if for no other reason, come to GenCon next year for the auction because I have never seen so many games sold so cheap. At this years auction I bought over 30 games, spent around 300.00 on just the games (That's 10.00 a game), and made $162.35 selling old games I didn't want any more. I bought: Test of Arms, GDW, 15.00 Days of Decision, ADG, 12.00 Panzer Division, Piker, 9.00 Cold War Origins of WWII, AH, 4.00 Origins of WWII, AH, 2.00 Kanev, Peoples Wargames, 2.00 Eagle and the Sun, FGA, 25.00 War in the Pacifc, SPI, 165.00 The Next War, SPI, 28.00 Mech War 2, SPI, 27.50 Fire When Ready, Taskforce, 8.00 Tomorrow the World, 3W, 17.00 Bundeswehr, GDW, 8.50 Cheiftan, GDW, 6.00 Suez '73, GDW, 10.00 Wings, Excalibre, 15.00 Drive on Stalingrad, SPI, 9.00 Air War, SPI, 1.00 Combat, SPI, 2.50 Combat Assault, Yaquinto, 2.00 United Nations, Yaquinto, 1.00 Spirit of '76, Panzerfaust, 12.00 East is Red, SPI, 2.00 City Fight, SPI, 2.50 Stonewall, SPI, 10.00 Agincourt, SPI, 15.00 War to End Wars, 3W, 4.00 Kaisers Battles, SPI, 4.00 Air Cobra, OSG, 10.00 Man O War, SimCan, 5.00 Grey Sea's Grey Skies, SimCan, 5.00 Fleet Med, SimCan, 5.00 Schnellboote, SimCan, 13.00 Quebec Libre, SimCan, 13.00 Divine Wind, SimCan, 9.00 War for the Union, CoA, 22.00 Plus some S&T mags, Flight Commander 2 by AH for the computer for 5.00 and some other various stuff. I felt that I came away with some really great deals. I looked over all the games too and found that nothing was missing but the maps from City Fight. Most of the important games were unpunched like WitP and The Next War, all the games but Drive on Stalingrad were boxed and not in the flat trays, and all were in pretty good shape. I also saw but didn't buy a lot stuff by Hobby Japan, mainly their naval stuff, going for around 20-30 bucks. Some stuff didn't even sell. I guess I should have bought some stuff just to resell on the net. This year I made it a point to not to buy anything just to resell it. I bought stuff only for me. But as is, I plan on reselling some games anyway that upon looking didn't seem all that appealing to me, so look for them on the net soon. I also saw a lot of other SPI stuff, Russian Civil War came up AFTER I bought WitP so I couldn't bid on it, I had already spent my allotment on collectables, two copies came and went for $38.00 and $48.00. Campaign for North Africa sold for $92.00, Highway to the Reich sold for around $40.00, and I think the highest priced wargames I saw sold was SPI's War in Europe for $190.00. Everything else went for pennies on the dollar. A lot of copies fo AH's 1914 sold for under $20.00, and tons of mint SPI flat tray games were either sold for around 20-30 bucks, or were passed on for only 30 bucks. Nobody jumped at Thirty Years War Quad for 45 bucks, or Decent on Crete for $30.00, and Strategy I went for 60 something. A Mighty Fortress also was passed for around 35 bucks. The entire GDW Third World War set went for $38.00, and a ton of MB boxed games like Broadsides, Shogun, Fortress America, and Axis and Allies sold for anywhere between $140.00 to $30.00. I even saw a few copies of the 1st ed by Nova Games of Axis and Allies. It went for around $100.00. The original Ironclads and Ironclads Expansion sold for 20 bucks each, and a mint cond, still in the shrink copy of Panzer didn't sell for $35.00. I would venture to say that if you were present and wanted an average out of print wargame you could have gotten it for between 2 and 20 bucks, regardless of the game. Older and more rare games where a little higher, but not much. Around 40 bucks could have gotten you some of the more rare games, and on average, 50 bucks would have gotten you your choice of just about anything you wanted, save a few high end SPI items. One thing I noticed though, was that there was a real decline in actual SPI boxed games being sold this year. In years past I saw a lot of the SPI games come and go, but this year I only saw a few. Needless to say, they still went pretty cheap, but I would say that indeed SPI and the other rare games are getting a lot more rare. Keep that in mind... So, as you can see, the game auction was huge. It lasted from Thur until Sat night, with games non-stop the entire time. Stuff not sold at the auction block went into the auction store. If you have a chance, next year come to GenCon, if for nothing eles, come for the auction! Jason Pipes jpipes -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Jason Christopher Pipes jpipes@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu "She is my everything, my other, my all..." Information and Media Technologies Micro Consultant University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (414)-229-6421 Bol 206 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% rom: adam@onramp.net (Adam Adkins) Subject: Re: GenCon after con report 1996 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Newsreader: NeoLogic News for OS/2 [version: 4.5d] In message <4uobpq$rq9@uwm.edu> - jpipes@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Jason Pipes) writes: :>:>I was rather disapointed at the actual wargames being played this year :>though. In years past years I remember seeing a lot of naval mini's and :>a lot of armor mini's, this year I saw only one naval game being played. :>The rest looked all like sci-fi and fantasy mini's. Then I would suggest that you didn't look far enough. I didn't see any WW2 naval, but there was ancient and Civil war in abundance. There was a respectable amount of ancients land stuff (most of which I tried to play) and more micro armour than I cared for. Several Napoleanics battles, air minis -- and of course a ton of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. Which looks like a lot of fun. Next year I'll try it. After all, it's the competition and tactics that really count, right? ************** Adam Adkins adam@onramp.net From: swcectj@discover-net.net (Tom Johnson) Subject: RE: GENCON REPORT EUROPA was there this year, we were upstairs in the middle of what was described as the "west hall". The Demo was a combined East and West front 1944 scenario. (Covering Second Front, Scorched Earth). We also showcased the new series of maps for the East and the draft Soviet OB from Charles Sharp. The Master Europa rules set was used, and the demo featured training on them, and assistance in play. GR/D did not have a booth however. The scenario began with the II JUN 44 turn, and ended in OCT of 44, with American troops just inside Germany, and the Russians Storming into East Prussia. Rumania was driven out of the war. Tom Johnson