ORCCON 19 was held February 16-19, 1996 at the Wyndham LAX Hotel.  My
impression was that the game convention was well attended.  Card games
seemed to have declined some what, though I can't really say that
wargames made up the slack.

What I observed being played around the con included: Ring of Fire,
Hunters from the Sky, Stalingrad Pocket, Bloodiest Day, World in
Flames, Siege of Jerusalem, Chosin, Battle of the Bulge (AH '81),
Advanced Third Reich, Spires of the Kremlin (more on that later),
Command Decision and ASL.

I skipped Friday night.  On Saturday, I role-played (gasp!) one of the
Union commanders at Gettysburg.  The miniatures were in another room,
pushed around by the "low level" commanders.  Runners delivered
reports and took our orders to and from the other room.  This
experience really gives one an appreciation for the difficulties in
trying to control a battle in that period.  The battle unfolded along
roughly historical lines, though the assaults around Culp's Hill were
somewhat stronger.  The Confederates had more problems with
coordination and their attacks took a long time to get setup.
Fortunately, we didn't prove to be too much of hinderance to our own
side and the North won.

On Sunday, the CONSIM group got together with at least 10 folks.  I
will be brief as I am sure Hank will want to jump in with more
extensive comments.  Hank provided the MREs; I brought the drinks and
Danny Holte raffled off some goodies.  Three different winners ended
up with: a ZOC issue, an SPI space game and a shrinkwrapped SPI "Fulda
Gap".  It was a good time just shooting the breeze about games.

Joe Youst enthusiastically spent several hours showing us his "Spires
of the Kremlin" game.  There was a lot of discusion about the design
approach and then actually running some demo games for us to watch and
play the game.  The game looks like it could be a winner for Eastern
Front grognards.  I will send out a separate message with more details
on this.  BTW, Joe says his "Road to Berlin" game is stalled for a
variety of reasons at PacRim.  Currently, it's not clear when it will
be out.

Monday was the auction.  There were some incredible bargains there.  A
copy of first edition (SPI) "War in the East" went for $5.  There were
lots of items that went for $1 and $2.  Danny Holte hauled off more
stuff than would probably fit in the trunk of my car.

My own acquisitions from this con included:
1. Dune (flea market $7)
2. East Front Tank Leader (flea market $6)
3. Duel for Kharkov (flea market $20)
4. Trial of Strength (auction $2)

BTW, can anybody give me a review on (Panther Games) "Trial of
Strength"?  The integrated move/combat mechanics look like they could
be interesting.

-ted

Ted Kim                     Email: tek@ficus.cs.ucla.edu
UCLA Computer Science Dept. WWW:   http://www.cs.ucla.edu/ficus-members/tek/
3564F Boelter Hall          Phone: (310) 825-7307
Los Angeles, CA 90095       FAX:   (310) 825-2273