From: David Ferris Subject: CON: Crusades '97 AAR As usual, I had a great time at the annual winter game convention in the southwest tip of Connecticut. This year the con was moved from its ancient traditional home in Darien CT upstream a few miles to Norwalk, to a nicer hotel. As was the case last year, I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged to see that the con had grown from the previous year: more attendees, more events, more vendors. The place was packed. I was further encouraged to note the presence of quite a few youngsters. Most of the pre-teens were playing fantasy and science fiction miniatures, but several were holding their own in ancients and medieval tournaments as well. There were a few women as well, including one young lady who was "cleaning clocks" in the DBA tournament. Is the wargaming hobby dying? I dunno, but you wouldn't think so after seeing these Crusades conventions. The events were mostly miniatures, split evenly between historical and fantasy/sci fi. There were a few boardgames, primarily the "family" type games (Die Siedler, AH Civilization, AH History of the World) although now that I think about it I didn't see *any* Magic card games going on at all. Clash of Arms was there displaying the map and counters for their new game on Jena. I'm not familiar with CoA's La Battaille series, but I'd always heard the components were gorgeous, and this new set on Jena was absolutely stunning. The most ironic sight I thought, proving that cross-over between genres in the gaming hobby can and does occur, was watching a game of History of the World being played by Dick Bryant (editor of "The Courier", the largest miniatures-only wargaming magazine in the US) and his crew. There were tons of great events to choose from. As was the case last year, I went to the con with five other HOGS (Hopatcong Organized Gaming Society), so we craftily picked events that no one else had signed up for yet and signed up as a gang. For the first event we played in Leo Walsh's ACW (Apparently Civil War, as opposed to the more commonly known Advanced Chart Wars) naval miniatures rules "Age of Iron". I had purchased these rules four or five years ago but had never gotten around to playing them, so it was fun to see how the author ran the game. It was a blast, I managed to sink two Yankee ironclads before being blasted to splinters myself. After a good steak dinner we ganged up on a 15mm American War of Independence miniatures game using homebrew rules from a Philadelphia game group. The paint jobs on the minis used in this game were probably the finest I'd ever seen; I could make out the tartan patterns on the kilts of the highlanders from about five feet away. The HOGS were split between American/French and British/Hessian commands, with me getting the French battalions. In a classic Sun Tzu move I managed to control one-third of the victory point objectives for the entire game without firing a single shot, simply by maneuvering and intimidating my opposite number into withdrawing. Had he been more aggressive and assaulted my line, I probably would have crumbled after a few turns and lost the ground I was trying to hold, but I managed to make my opponent lose his nerve simply by shuffling my reserve of grenadiers back and forth down a road. Great fun. Most importantly, I skillfully managed to spend way too much money in the vendor areas. Leo Walsh (the guy running the ACW naval game) also runs TCS, an outfit that produces lots of cool wargaming stuff and sells via mail order and frequent con appearances. I made Leo very happy by buying many handfuls of microarmour (including some relatively rare WWI miniatures! Yeah!), probably 30 or 40 ACW 1:1200th scale ships, Fort Morgan in 1:1200, and a nifty little modular 15mm castle-like thing. In the rules department I picked up lots of stuff I'd been thinking about for a while: Shako (quick-play Napoleonics), Rapid Fire (WWII armour fast-play), Full Thrust (spaceship miniatures) and More Thrust (advanced rules for Full Thrust), Stargrunt II (sci fi 25mm), and Dirtside II (sci fi 5mm/6mm/"epic"/1:285/1:300 scale). In the bribery department I picked up The Great Dalmuti and Nightmare Chess for my wife. Coincidentally, my Generic Legions T-shirt finally arrived ("In space, no one can hear you moo") although the artist misspelled the Irvanian motto, which is *supposed* to be Semper Pullus ("always chicken"). All my books are packed away right now; can anybody tell me what "Semper Pollus" translates as? Tanks, DLF