Shannon Cooke - 04:47pm Jun 2, 2002 PST (#1141 of 1146) It's still all bollocks. It's about 3:40 pm on Sunday afternoon. All games are over and all the tables are empty except for one of the A3R/RS games, the OCS Korea playtest and a couple of last minute pick-up games. My congrats to Mike Lam for sacrificing his gaming time to run the GMT Down in Flames tournament. My congrats also go to Jerome Koopman's 10-year-old daughter who shot my USAAF pilot out of the sky. Streets of Stalingrad got a thorough going-over and looks to be one of the best games that will be released this year. The game mechanics are simple and can be picked up in a relatively short time. However, the game itself is difficult to play well as there is so many choices that the players need to make. That, to me, is one of the hallmarks of a great game. I am really looking forward to setting this one up at home. I also had the opportunity to play a soon-to-be-p500-listed game called "Europe Engulfed". I have never been interested in block games, but this was fantastic. It is a quick and fun game of strategic WWII in Europe. Thanks to John Loy and Rick Young (one of the designers) for a good time playing this one. Look for it on the GMT website soon. Overall, a great time. Those who didn't get to come should really try to get here next year. Thanks, sysop, for a great time gaming!! Shannon Mike Lam - 12:04am Jun 4, 2002 PST (#1171 of 1172) Playing in the DIF continuous experience campaigns at GMT's Games Weekends-WEST; Next Weekend: Late Sept/Early October 2002 in Hanford, Calif Cisco - Amazing pictures, thank you for sharing them. Yes, great pictures but . . . where's my event? :-( Down In Flames Debriefing Report First, a big thanks to the 37 players who participated in the inaugural ComsinWorld Expo 2.0 DIF Aces' Campaigns by flying in at least one mission. The idea was to have some open DIF games available to any free participants not currently involved with any monster games or for monster-gamers to take a break to play something quick and light between their turns. I wasn't expecting to be running DIF all the time as I thought most participants will be involved with their own huge games. I was expecting to run 1 mission every 1 or 2 hours. Well, I was proved wrong! Once DIF got going, free time at my table was minimal. Everyone's enthusiastic participation prevented me from becoming too bored. After setting up the tally sheets, 4 missions were played on Wednesday night, 25 on Thursday, 23 on Friday, 19 on Saturday, and 7 on Sunday, for a total of 78 missions flown covering the 4 campaigns; the 1941 Western Front, the 1942 Pacific, and a 1943 Western & Eastern fronts campaigns. Robert Robertson from Liberty Lake, WA, was the Ace Of Aces with 7 kills in 10 missions flown by his 8th AF P-47 pilot, appropriately named Rob Robertson. Rob won the Grand Prize of free admission at the 2003 ConsimWorld Expo. A big thanks to John Kranz for this unexpected prize in making the event a very competitive one. Tom Meier from Falls Church, VA and Greg Smith from Phoenix AZ, each shared top honors on the Eastern Front with their Luftwaffe pilots. Meier's Pieter Niedermeyer had 5 kills in 7 missions and Smith's Leader/Wingman combo of Sturmer Schmidt and Gunther Schreck both had 5 kills each in 8 missions. Tom was awarded the paperback "Luftwaffe Fighter Aces" by Mick Spick. Greg left the convention early before the winner was determined and did not received the same book. Since Greg lives in Phoenix, he should be back at next year's con to collect his book. Rob Schroeder from Manteca, CA, was the top Luftwaffe pilot in the 1941 Western Front campaign with 4 kills in 2 missions by his pilot, Johann Hindermann. Rob won a paperback book, "JG-26, Top Guns of the Luftwaffe" by Donald L. Caldwell. All players with 5 or more kills also received an "I Became An Ace" t-Shirt that has on its front side the Ace card drawing from the Rise Of The Luftwaffe card deck. Rick Young (Europe Engulfed) also received a t-shirt for having his American 8th AF pilot, Norm Cash, become an ace. But as Rick previously mentioned in post #1144, Cash didn't survive his 8th & last mission when his fuel tank exploded. Chris Janiec from Pennsylvania was the top Soviet player with 4 kills in 6 missions by his pilot, Konstantine Chapegef. Chris had to leave the con early to catch his flight out but he will receive a Time/Life book on "The Soviet Air Force" when I see him at WBC. John Loy from Newark, OH was the top Japanese player with 3 kills by his pilot Saburo Sakai. Unfortunately, his pilot was killed by an exploding fuel tank on his fifth mission. John received the paperback, "Aces", about fighter aces from all the nations during WW2. Shannon Cooke from Ceder Bluff, VA was the top American Pacific player with 2 kills by his pilot John Mosby on 2 missions. Shannon received the paperback, "Aces Against Japan" by Eric Hammel. Top RAF honors went to my own pilot, S. Baldrick, who had 4 kills achieved in 4 missions in the 1941 campaign. The top 1943 Luftwaffe pilot on the Western front was my own pilot, Maximilian Schell, with 5 kills flying in 3 missions. Honorable mention goes out to Minka Koopman of Scottdale, AZ, and Alan Gieske of Phoenix (?), AZ, two 10-year old players. Minka played in 7 combined Japanese and American missions, shooting down a total of 8 planes. Alan played in 14 combined US and German missions, shooting down a total of 9 planes. John Kranz has given his full support to have this type of event again in 2003. And based on the participation level this year, it is very likely that I will do this next year, provided I can get vacation days off from work. Tentatively planned next year is a special bomber mission (10 or more bombers), either on Saturday evening or Sunday morning. This will be a large bomber mission with lots of bomber targets to be shot down with some fog of war surprises for both sides played by two 5-player teams. For any DiF players, if you like playing DiF all day like I do, consider making the trip to Tempe next year. I hope everyone enjoyed it and had fun learning how to play and playing DIF. I hope to see everyone again as well as some new players in 2003. Mike Lam, The ConsimWorld Expo DIF Flight Coordinator Richard H. Berg - 09:24am Jun 3, 2002 PST (#2517 of 2565) I can't help it. I was born sneering." Pooh-bah, in "The Mikado", by way of W.S. Gilbert An A-List convention, extremely well organized and run by our Beloved Sysop, whose recent hernia operation did not stop him from being the only gamer there who actually lined up a date for the following week. (And not a bad choice on his part, I might add). John also braved the herniatic elements by holding aloft a copy of GDW's OVER THERE as one of the 364,576 door prizes given out. Good convention hotel - the Tempe Mission Palms - altho it is not a real A-List hotel (too much street noise, aging air conditioning system - John K managed to turn the heat on one night; not a mean feat on a day when the temp hit 110). Local eateries leave something to be desired, although not "bad". Great onion rings and hot dogs at "Fatburgers" (any place with posters of Little Richard and Fats Domino can't be bad); the Japanese restaurant we ate at one night was as Japanese as a Rueben sandwich: noisy, formica-tables, rap music blaring, and not a Japanese person in a 10 block radius; sushi and gyoza were not bad, tho. And if the Thai restaurant we ate at was Thai, then I'm Jennifer Lopez. (Of course, Johnny K ordered the "Thai steak", so authenticity as an issue went out the door right smartly.) Bottom line: regardless what it says on the door, you're gonna get pretty much the same stuff at any given place. Not bad stuff, but variety, while it may be the spice of life, is at a premium here. Or there. Hot item; STREETS OF STALINGRAD. Very good graphics, a most compelling Roger MawcGowan boxcover (and it is a big box), and what looks like pretty good play value. They had two games going - after the L2D (is that their name?) crew sat up the whole night pasting and cutting the proof version of the counters - and both looked worth getting involved in. They've already sold close to 1000 copies . . . and sight unseen for a $100 game, that's not bad. This looks like its going to be quite popular. However, their next project appears to be a re-do of Jack Radey's plot to destroy western civilization by dumping an entire cardboard dung heap atop it, the very poorly aging KORSUN POCKET. Want to know what it looks like set up? Take every single counter you have - every one; color them all brown; drop the whole lot of them in one spot on a map. That's the set-up. And its downhill from there. There are reasons some games never get played . . . this one runs the entire gamut of reasons.(Jo Lo Yo's idea to alleviate the ghetto-like counter crush by doubling the size of the maps is brilliant in its sheer lunacy.) Watched a playtest of the Gamer/MMP KOREA . . . seemed to move along fairly smartly, despite Perry Andrus's attempts to make playing it seem like a weekend with a nasty nun and a big ruler. 3 mapper . . . The standard Borries Fest - a complete BARBAROSSA playout - took up more space than a van full of wargamers and actually was fun to watch, a tribute to Vance's game. I got dragooned into playing Dave Powell's THIS TERRIBLE SOUND, more of which somewhere else . . . bottom line: Fun, but I still disagree with some of Dave's design decisions. None of which stop it from being Fun. NES's KILLING GROUND was being demo-ed/played by Marty Sample. Handsome game (on the Allied breakout from the Normandy beaches), but high on counters and scrimmage line effect. If this is what you like, you'll be very happy. Enjoyed Doc Decision's talk on the many upcoming projects Decision has . . . until I realized I had heard exactly what he was describing in a meeting in Jim Dunnigan's office at SPI back in 1975 when he announced the upcoming projects for the year. Still, despite this cardboard time trip, Decision appears to be doubling its production for the upcoming 18 months, and some of the work looks quite handsome. Oh, and if you really, really, really like the color yellow, pick up a copy of the latest S&T, "Belisarius". Speaking of quite handsome, in tow with Doc was - ta da!! - Ty Bomba, complete with Hiway Patrol sunglasses. Ty was quite genial, even despite getting whacked rather handily by John Leggatt in one of the Stalingrad games - there were 3 Stal titles being played - Decision is re-introducing. Probably because he's bringing his old Command buddy - and A-List graphics man- Larry Hoffman over to Decision. Which is now being re-named "Command II; They're back and Now They have a Doctor". There is no truth to the rumor that Doc D took out a $15 mil insurance policy on Joe Miranda, whose demise would reduce Decision's game line to Terry Hardy Redux. Saw Dean Essig - who apparently has forsaken his usual Few Good Men poster buzz-cut for a more wind-blown Tom Cruise effect - playing what appeared to be back-to-back DAKs. Don't ask. Whole bunch of upcoming Bulge games - 2003 appears to be Year of the Bulge; I can hear Mae West even now: "That a Bulge in your pocket son, or are your dice just glad to see me?" Played a good game of the EuroLoo WATERLOO with jovial auctioneer Alan Emerich (who also demo-ed yet another version of TOTALER KRIEG), who was most, and suitably, impressed . . . probably because i let him win. I did get another rousing game of BORGIA played, with a most interesting cast . . . and another remarkably close result. 106 to 105 for the top two, the latter score held by Larissa Ostrovskya, a young lady from Kiev. My GBACW developer, John Alsen, finished a fairly close 3rd (all three engaged in a great last turn election of Pope, assuming that if either of the 3 got elected, that person would win). . . and the winner, Todd Davis, gamestore owner deluxe, wanted to buy dozens of copies on the spot. BORGIA is looking better and better each time . . . as it did to GMT's spy, Tony Curtis. I left stuff out . . . But it was an excellent small con - c. 100+ attendees - that seemed bigger than the literal attendance. I'd recommend you folks consider putting it on your list of cons to consider. Now to start packing . . . RHB Don Johnson - 11:39am Jun 4, 2002 PST (#1175 of 1184) Is this wit half empty or half full? YOU DECIDE! Manassas, VA Bummers: 1) Me getting only 2 hours sleep the night before the start of the con. Even sleeping on the plane did not prove sufficient. Such is life. 2) The phone modem internet connection really stunk. In my room also. 3) The heat outside is fairly scary for someone not used to it. I sure hoped and prayed the electricity would not fail. The rooms were nice with a/c, but you needed to be aware to drink plenty of fluids if going outside for any length of time. 4) Someone taking the cash box, how disappointing. Nice things: 1) Watching the committed Streets of Stalingrad players execute their "build phase" prior to playing the game, where they actually built the game. You could tell they were itching to play. 2) Getting flea market stuff for good prices. 3) Bidding but not winning at the auction. Alan E. is always entertaining. 4) Watching LOTS of games and matching faces with names I see on consimworld. 5) Hoping for a door prize. The idea of giving out extra tickets for attending game previews was a great one. 6) Getting to actually play against a live opponent in one of my favorite games. 7) Watching others play some of my favorite games. 8) Watching other games I knew little about but now I get to see if I want to learn. 9) Meeting lots of nice people. I think John K. sets the tone here in a big way. Ken Nied - 07:14pm Jun 4, 2002 PST (#1181 of 1184) MonsterGame.Con II -- The Streets of Stalingrad were less brutal than the Streets of Tempe in the daytime! John, I want to publicly thank you for the splendid event you put on. You are a gracious, fun, and witty host. As if the games and gaming weren't enough, the free breakfast buffet was an unexpected and valuable bonus. My favorite line of the convention, from Richard Berg at the Welcome Reception: Seeing all these great games from the past -- Streets of Stalingrad, Siege of Jerusalem -- made me think I'd gone to sleep in a time warp and woken up in Don Greenwood's basement! Martin Sample - 08:25pm Jun 4, 2002 PST (#1182 of 1184) Now playtesting the Killing Ground for NES - see W.W.II Individual game folder This was my first time, having missed it last year . For those of you on the fence about going, GO !!! Between the free breakfast and the mountain of door prizes , its like getting free admission . Kudos to John for a class convention - great job and already looking forward to next year !!!!!