I attended Little Wars yesterday. It's a Chicago based gaming convention.
A short report is attached

Soldier King - Seven Years' War game from APL. This is still in production,
but it getting close to shipping. There are two maps. Both typical APL
works of beauty. One covers the Americas, mostly N and the Caribbean,
with S. America distorted to fit in.

This map has inserts for India, Africa, and Indonesia. Lots of spaces for
Indonesia, a few for India and only one for Africa.The other map covered
Europe from Britain to Turkey and Russia, Scandinavia to N. Africa. There is
a track for naval movement across the world. Movement is point to point,
with the boxes decoration nicely with a heraldic design (or national flag).
I just watched, so the following comments ought to be taken with a generous
margin of error. Stacking is very low density, perhaps two per box, with
maybe a marker on occasion. For the multi player game, there is a
negotiation phase, where you can apparently "cut a deal". The game had a
full crew of players (six or seven), and they seemed to be having lots of
fun. Battles seem to be this: Combat value plus mods, vs opponents combat
value plus his modifiers.


Shellshock.com - a free game on the web. The terrain was by far the
worst there (and gave me hope. Nothing I can do will be worse!) as it was
a sheet with colored bits of foam on it, with a few trees here and there.

But the game was great. All you need to play is on your control sheet. I
saw complete novices running the game after 15 minutes, and the game
moved quickly. It was a WWII scenario with Grants and Shermans taking on
Panthers, Jagdpanthers, and a Tiger. The Americans won, and did so by
using their speed and numerical advantages to get flank shots in. Lots
of flaming tanks on both sides of the table, and the players spent a
good 30 minutes going over the post mortem. The whole thing took some 2
hours to set up and play to completion.

Highly recommended if you want a quick game. Nice guys behind the game,
also.

Great War Spearhead - A late war scenario was run, British vs Germans.
It was a night game with no gas, but lots of flares for visibility. a
couple of tanks appeared, and lots of ARTY. The players seemed very
happy with the way the system played. Interestingly, this was a
"surprise" game not on the listing, but it filled up with players even
before it was set up. I heard a lot of positive comments on GWSH in
general here, and at the dealers area.

Zombie Game - The winner for the "just plain fun" game. They turned the
boardgame into a mini version, using HO scale Railroad buildings. The
town has been zombieized, except for a very few humans. They need to 1)
stay alive; 2) call for help; 3) survive until the National Guard gets
to them. There were a lot of people around this one, and all seemed to
have a good time. A nice touch was that the town's drive-in theater had
a double feature "Planet of the Apes" and "Night of the Living Dead".
Even nicer was that the "Screen" was a portable DVD player, playing, you
guessed it, "Night of the Living Dead."

WS&IM - The scenario was a French attempt to reinforce Louisburg, and
the British attempt to stop them. The ships were gorgeous, richly
painted 1:1200 scale. The terrain was cliffs, islands, and part of an
18th century fort. The gentleman running it kindly shared me with his
secrets on making the terrain, and bases. He got his mat from hobby
lobby, a large craft style chain in the US. The fort and some of the
islands had batteries. This game was also well attended, and all seemed
to have a lot of fun. The French won.

Boxer Rebellion - THE big game of the convention. A table that was some
20 feet long, a Tartar wall that was at least two feet high, and eight
inches high. About 500 figures (maybe more) The table was surrounded by
flags from the nations involved. The players got to wear caps
appropriate to their command. Boxers had straw hats, Imperials wore
round "mandarin" style caps, the Civilian got a top hat, and the various
Great Powers got caps reasonably close to what they should have had. The
French had a beret, the Russian a dark cap, and some nations just got
pith helmets with a feather of an appropriate color. The rules were the
Sword and the Flame (much apparent at this con, I saw no fewer than 5
games using this system.) The author of so much fun (Larry Brom himself)
, will attend tomorrow. Unfortunately, I will not, and will miss meeting
the gentleman.

The game went very well for the Boxers, and the Austrians and Russians
fled their legations without making the Boxer suffer for it. The Italian
legation was set on fire, and the Germans had hand to hand combat with
Boxers in their legation. Although the Imperial Chinese appeared (one
group of which led by yours truly, with little cap in place) to lend
weight to the attack, the Boxers were doing very nicely without them.

A person who had played before was amazed that so many Boxers had
penetrated so deeply into the compound. I had to leave early (11:00 PM!)
as the game had started late. Many large games do, it's somewhat
unavoidable.

Kudos to the judges who kept a tight rein on a huge multiplayer game.

The Sword and the Flame

I saw the following, all played using the sword and the flame, or minor
variants of it:

The Wind and the Lion, final battle scene: This was a nicely run game, the
judge kept it moving, and kept it fun. A special rule for the Raisuli
(Sean Connery),  made him harder to die, but Ray Krebs from Dallas was on
his own!

Very nice terrain, and a very balanced scenario.

Last of the Mohicans, ambush scene. Daniel Day Lewis bit the dust,
and Magwa got to wipe lots of British seed from the face of the earth.

Brits & Natives vs natives and other Europeans I did not watch this much.
It seemed way too big, and also looked to be a very slow game.

French & Indian War, French (and Indians) vs the British An exciting
attack on a British fort and blockhouse, lots of teenagers at this one,
and they appeared to be really enjoying it. It was a huge win for the
French. In fact, the con as a whole was very kind to the arms of Le Roi.
The French won both games I saw, and were instrumental in winning a
Yorktown battle.

Frank Chadwick's new skirmish game.

Interesting in that Frank was there in person, and that the Germans were
not placed on table. I did not see any placed down, and so am not sure
what needs to happen for them to appear.

Game vendors, Eagle's ACW, GMT/APL.

Board games were very apparent, with lots of people having GMT products,
and APL had a booth. The Eagle games, Civil war and Age of Imperialism
were also present. Their civil war game sold out the first day. I saw a
lot of people carrying This Accursed Civil War, and Thirty Years' War. I
also met a guy who was contemplating buying Great War Spearhead, who
confessed to "being addicted to Paths of Glory". He told me he and his
buddies had played it some 20 times.


Regards, Pat
tippecanoe@netzero.net
http://tippecanoe.tripod.com/


Last Played:  Great War Spearhead, Lesnika (SGBoH), This Sceptered Isle

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