Miscellaneous Winter War pics

My brother-in-law Jim and another player (is that Greg?) examine one of the maps in the Blind Sniper room. In the foreground is Jim's son Ian. As I mentioned before he and I crippled each other on round 2 of the game. The fella in the red plaid shirt is Alfred, who won the all-new, all-crazy Board Gamer Agonistes award. Each boardgame ran at the convention was worth a number of points based on total players at the table. The winner got a bunch of those points and other people got some points at the ref's discretion. Al came out with the highest total, though my sister apparently did pretty darn good as well.



My Encounter Critical players. From the left that's Josh, Kathleen, and Doug. They've played in several con games of mine over the years. Our tastes intersect enough to create some magnificently fun one-shots, but I sometimes suspect that we'd drive each other crazy in a lengthy campaign. They'd be busy telling some sort of anime-based storyline and I'd be trying to fight every NPC encountered. Across the table from this terrific trio is Marc, Dave Hoover's son. We all had a lot of fun together.

After buying a bulletproof vest and shield, Josh modified his character illo. Not pictured: the rollerskates he swiped off of a one-eyed mutant midget.

Here's my ten-player D&D freak-out. Josh, Kathleen, and Doug are a little more crowded together in this shot! Everyone is working on characters here. For most events I love making my own pregens, but a nostalgia powered game like this demands random chargen at the event.


One of the vendors, Thompson Productions, had a painting demo table. They had a selection of Reaper brand figures and paints. I painted these two guys. Even with the limited time and selection of colors I thought they turned out better than I expected. This really gave me the boost of confidence I've needed to take minis painting more seriously. And working on the archer's chainmail made me a believer in drybrushing. The pic is terrible, that actual figures don't look very good (the sculpts are nifty, the paint job is terrible), but up close that chainmail looks awesome. All thanks to a simple drybrush of silvery steel over a black base. I'm definitely going to paint some more figures after this experience.

Finally, here's some links to pictures of the monsters I made for the Friday night Clay-O-Rama game.

Klaggor, the Thing from Beyond the Stars!
Mr. Maw
The Stinging Vampiric Two-Faced Snake-Weasel
Little Arty, the Littlest Artillery Piece

Winter War 34 in review

Ten Things I Liked About This Weekend

1. I had a great time chatting with a lot of great people that I don't game with during the course of the year.


2. My old school D&D game was a lot of fun. Managing ten players went fairly smoothly, except for the one kid who wanted to stab a wizard who had a cyclops friend. I had a blast running this module.


3. I played Clay-O-Rama, the super-silly game of Playdoh-based carnage. More on that when I can show you pictures.


4. The Encounter Critical game was superfun. Mutants were propositioned. There was a quantumly indeterminate Warlock's Pit containing a substance such as crocodiles and/or sharks & lions. Blink Beasts pulled people off of dewbacks. And Darth Viraxis was put out of our misery. The players are already jazzed up for next year's adventure "Obiwan Shinobi in the Wilden West".


5. I didn't go crazy shopping. I found a 3.5 monster book for 75% off, some dollar bin old gaming crap, and a couple minis, including this thing:


6. Pat and I snuck away long enough to make a run for the local comic shop. In the 50 cent boxes I found some Avengers: United They Stand and the one issue of Legionnaires that I've been wanting. And some more Sensational She-Hulk.


7. Don returned my copy of Starter Traveller, which he had borrowed for grognardy research purposes. Thanks, Don! He also gave me some helpful ideas for maybe attempting a new superhero campaign. Don is solid awesomite.


8. My sister was able to attend. Some of her games went less-than-swimmingly, but I think she still had a good time overall.


9. I was able to leave early Saturday night. (See item 4 on the next list.) For those of you who were making fun of me for not being hardcore, I would like to direct your attention to this.


10. The Catpissman Ratio was way down from last year as far as I could tell.

Five Things I Didn't Like About This Weekend

1. No one signed up for my Mazes & Minotaurs game. I put quite a bit of work into that adventure. I think my pitch in the con program book was a bit bland. And mythic Greece isn't exactly a redhot genre.


2. My daughter was out of town. She was having a good time with the grandparents, but I still missed her.


3. I didn't get as much time as I would have liked to chat with everyone.


4. My nephew and I crippled each other with point blank shots on turn 2 of the Blind Sniper tournament. Better luck next year, Ian!


5. I was hoping to score a copy of Dungeon Crawl #4, Bloody Jack's Gold, but none of the vendors had it in stock.

Con games can be weird.

Winter War, my local con, is officially underway today. I expected my Sunday morning Encounter Critical game to be full up by this point. It was a big hit last year. But my Sunday afternoon D&D Basic game ('81 rules, of course) has filled as well, and I put down that I would run it for 10 people! That's going to be very interesting. It's been a long time since I last run a game for even 7 players.

Meanwhile, my myth-tastic Mazes & Minotaurs session has yet to get a single player. Still, that's not til tomorrow morning and turnout this year looks like it may break the local record.

Winter War final program is up

http://winterwar.prairienet.org/pdfs/WW2007FinalProg.pdf

Hmmm, looks like my Mazes & Minotaurs game got moved from Friday night to Saturday morning. Pat, I'll be picking you up earlier than I expected! Expect me at 8 AM.

Winter War Preview Links

Friday afternoon, February 9th

Friday evening, February 9th

Saturday morning, February 10th

Saturday afternoon, February 10th

Update to Friday and Saturday events

Saturday evening, February 10th

Sunday morning, February 11th

Sunday afternoon, February 11th

Winter War Preview: Sunday Afternoon

This is it, folks! The last installment of my Winter War preview series. For all my regular readers who have not commented over the last few days, let me thank you for putting up with me devoting my energies to purely local matters.

Here are the links to the previous entries in this series: Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, general update, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning. Now let's get down to business.

Sunday, February 11th, 2pm

I expect the Advanced Squad Leader and Living Greyhawk rooms to still be active through the final few hours of the con. But since the ASL room is devoted to one big tournament I suppose it is theoretically possible they could be done before this session starts.

Other boardgame events include more sessions of Formula De and Feudal. Tim Gritten will be running Power Grid. That's a fun game and Tim Gritten is a good ref and instructor. In addition to Feudal, Tom Hendricks offers some Axis & Allies action, with a variant allowing for more special weapons to brought into play. That sounds fun. I love the special weapons in A&A but they don't get much screentime in a regular game. Speaking of variants, El Nyberg will be running Rail Baron with ramped-up starting trains. My personal pick for the Sunday afternoon boardgaming would be Al Conrad's Aliens game. Based upon the movie of the same name, Aliens offers a some fun tactical play with awesome special rules, like the "Oh crap! Acidic alien blood just ruined my face!" rule or the "Oh noes! I just fell down an inexplicable bottomless pit!" rule. And playing with the flamethrowers is always fun. If tactical xenomorph slagging doesn't ring your bell, go with Tim Gritten's Power Grid session.

In the minis area four events are scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Two of them, Ken Vreeman's Advanced Civilization game and Russ Hartley's 25mm fantasy affair, are continuations from Sunday morning. Given it's the last day of the con and people might not want to spend 8 hours at a single game, it might be possible to get into one of these two events anyway. Ask the ref at the table but always make sure to clear special situations like this with the front desk. The con staff are always keen to know these things, not because they want you to jump through hoops to play, but because they need to know which games are popular and which aren't.

The two new minis games are Tom Reed with another Desperado Wild West shoot-out and Chris Fawcett with Full Thrust. Recommending one game or the other is a tough call here. Cowboys versus Indians in 25mm reverberates with the childhood of many a gamer who remembers the golden age of the cinema Western. But Full Thrust is one of the best rules-light sci-fi ship-to-ship games ever written. I have to give the nod to the Desperado game simply because referee Tom Reed is such a fun guy to game with.

As things are set right now the role-playing department offers you two choices. I'll be running a session of dungeon-delving using the 1981 Basic D&D rules. That's the one with the awesome Erol Otus cover. Meanwhile Chris Fairfield will be running Pentatastar. I don't know anything about that game but Chris has run it before at least a couple of times. I can't really offer you a recommendation here other than to say this: you're either interested in a dungeoneering game where Elf is a class and only Thieves (not Rogues) have skills, or you're not. I think you'll probably have a good time at either table.

Winter War Preview: Sunday Morning

For those of you just tuning in, I've been spending some time giving my chatty opinions about the upcoming Winter War gaming convention. In its 34th year, Winter War is Illinois' oldest local boardgame, miniatures, and roleplaying convention. About 300 souls gather for a long weekend of dice-slinging and general fun. This year Winter War will be from Friday, February 9th to Sunday, February 11th at the Hawthorn Suites in Champaign, IL. If you like cons that focus on games and gamers, not publishers and celebrities, then Winter War might be your kind of thing.

Today I'll be talking about the events on the pre-registration schedule for the Sunday morning of the con. For earlier events, check out my previews of Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday evening. And don't miss this update to the Friday and Saturday events.

Sunday, February 11th, 9am

Sometimes at cons (including Winter War) the Sunday morning events can be a little underwhelming. Alot of people game or debauche heavily the night before. But there are several good events on the schedule for Sunday morning run by straight shooters who will show up on time and run a fabulous game despite any festive activities the previous evening. As mentioned in every previous installment, the Advanced Squad Leader and Living Greyhawk people are expected to still be doing their respective things. Personally I can't play the same game for 2 and a half days straight, but different strokes for different folks.

The boardgame area features three guys running five games. Clark Barthel offers newbies a chance to try out Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix, a racing game that is totally new to me. Tom Hendricks (I really need to find out if this is the same Tom Hendricks I used to game with. That guy is cool.) offers another session of the chesslike game Feudal and also a board full of Shogun. My brother-in-law Jim will be running both Mississippi Queen and Puerto Rico. Both these games are good, clean fun and Jim is a great guy to have running a game. And I'm not just saying that because he's my wife's brother. Jim's great. Both of Jim's games are listed as 'newcomers welcome' but if you're new to both of them I suggest going with Mississippi Queen. While Jim can handle teaching Puerto Rico to newbies, that game takes longer to really grasp. Pick Mississippi Queen if you're going to the event to play a game, but go with Puerto Rico if you're there to learn a game. If you already know how to play Puerto Rico, then that's my pick for the Sunday morning boardgames. Great game, excellent game moderator.

Over in the miniatures depaartment we have six games on tap. '40K At Its Finest' is billed as a game where you show up, pick an army, and smash it against an opponent. This no-frills straight-to-the-point action is provided by Mr. Jake Welch. (I first read that name as Jack Welch, the ex-CEO of General Electric. I bet he'd play the Imperial Guard.) If you like your elves without lasers, then look to Russ Hartley's 25mm Victors of the Realms session, which promises hot human-on-demihuman action. Ron and Shawn Ralston offer a second session of Starmada Compendium, once again in a slot that makes the game unavailable to me. SC is one of those games I enjoy so much I bought an extra copy of the rules so that multiple people could reference stuff during play. Not that Starmada even requires that much page-flipping. The mechanics are simple and rock solid, delivering fun space-operatic capital ship shoot-em-ups.

Ken Vreeman, subject of much praise in previous installments in this series, will be offering an Advanced Civilization game. Advanced Civ is a much-beloved boardgame, but this event is slotted in the miniatures area. I presume this is because Mr. Vreeman will be using one of his large, elaborate custom boards with 25mm figures replacing the counters. If you like the idea of playing out some alternate history, consider 'The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming', a 6mm micro armor look at a speculative Russian invasion of West Germany in 1948. The rules for this scenario are Cold War Commander and the referees are Steve Massey and Terrance Haas.

In my opinion the most intriguing event in the miniatures area would be Chris Fawcett's French Foreign Legion event, 'The Last Remake of Beau Geste'. An emphasis on player interaction and secret agendas makes this event look like one of thos proto-RPG things that usually make for a great con game. If I wasn't running a game Sunday morning I'd probably be at the Starmada game, but don't let my personal obsession with exploding starcruisers keep you away from 'The Last Remake'.

Speaking of me running a game, as I type this I have the entire RPG room to myself Sunday morning. The RPGA folks will still be doing the voodoo that they do, but they usually get their own room. My event is entitled 'The Revenge of Obiwan Shinobi' and will be run using something resembling S. John Ross' faux retro sci-fi/fantasy freak-out, Encounter Critical. I ran EC last year and we all had a frickin' blast. If you like wild gonzo games with things like elf ninjas and robots that worship Satan, come and play Encounter Critical with me. This year Obiwan Shinobi, the newly-rebuilt robodroid warlock IG-666-A, and a new crew of adventurers will attempt to infiltrate the Crawling Chaoskeep of Darth Viraxis!

Okay, folks, only one more preview to go. Next time I'll go over the events scheduled for Sunday afternoon, the last session of Winter War.

Winter War Preview: Saturday Evening

Winter War is the oldest annual gaming convention in Illinois. This year is the 34th installment in the series. Come join us in Champaign from February 9th to 11th for a weekend devoted to gaming.

In today's Winter War preview I'll be looking at the events in the Saturday night section of the pre-registration schedule. If you haven't checked them out already, here are links to the Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon events. And don't miss the update to those earlier installments.

Saturday, February 10th, 8pm

Several events continue into Saturday night from earlier in the convention, such as the all-con Advanced Squad Leader tournament, the awesome Blind Sniper throwdown, and action in the dedicated Living Greyhawk room. The Warmachine and BattleTech Total Warfare events from Saturday afternoon will continue into the night as well.

The boardgames area is bursting with cool stuff to play on Saturday night. Don Botkin has reserved room for two full tables of Puerto Rico, one of my alltime favorite German games. El Nyberg offers a 16 player Settlers of Catan tournament. He notes "Using resource start plus Soldiers' Perogative rule." I've played Settlers more times than I can remember and I have no idea what that means. Super-nice guy Al Conrad offers a particularly intense session of Roborally specifically designed for veterans of that game. Racing game afficionados Leland Black and Charlie Priest present Daytona 500. And Glenn Overby offers even more Memoir '44 and BattleLore. That last one, BattleLore, is generating a lot of internet buzz. I plan on checking out that table to see what the big deal is. That's a lot of good stuff in the boardgame section, but I'll give my top recommendation to Al Conrad's Roborally event, with the notation that you need to have played that game at least once before showing up.

Over in the miniatures area you get your choice between beating up Nazis, zombies, or ninjas. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a win-win-win scenario. Travis McLin supplies the anti-Nazi action with his 15mm Flames of War game. Steve Massey and Bob Legro offer All Things Zombie, the 28mm game of post-zombie apocalypse skirmishification. And Ken Vreeman, subject of much gushing in earlier installments, once again will be running 'Shogun-Maker' his big Kingmaker/Shogun/house rules hybrid freak-out. Making a recommendation here is a tough call. I want to once again tell you to sign up for Ken Vreeman's game, but if you want something historical the real pick is Flames of War. And don't forget those zombies.

Besides all the Living Greyhawk events, the Saturday night schedule includes 3 role-playing games. 'Terror From the High Seas' promises to be a historical Call of Cthulhu event by GM John Harting. Important Tip: Evening Call of Cthulhu events almost always fill in pre-reg! If you want to play this game, go sign up for it ASAP. I think this particular event is a repeat or sequel to a similar game last year. Players from that previous game had a glowing report. If horror is your bag but the CoC game fills you might want to consider Brad Trumpinski's GURPS Space/Horror adventure. The event is called "In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream." Man that sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Finally, Dave Hoover is on the schedule to run Iron Gauntlets. Based upon recent events I don't expect that item to remain on the list. Look for Mr. Hoover to run another system in this slot. And look for that game to be awesome. Seriously, you could do a lot worse than filling out your pre-reg sheet with "Whatever game Dave runs".

Tomorrow I'll look at the game running in the Sunday morning slot of the con. Like many cons that's usually the hangover session, but I see a lot of cool stuff on the schedule. Also, this will give me a chance to talk more about my favorite subject: me! ;)

Winter War Preview: New Events Added

So far my previews for the events of Winter War 34 were based on the first version of the pre-registration packet. Since then new a updated schedule has dropped with new stuff to play. The following material supplements my previews for Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon.

Friday, February 9th, 2pm

Two very promising miniatures events have been added for the Friday afternoon slot. Phil Hall will be running "The Spear of Destiny" a pulp action skirmishy thing using .45 Adventure, "a tabletop miniatures game of two-fisted action set during the era of the pulp magazines." The event description promises Nazi-fighting. Hot damn, but that sounds fun! Phill Hall is a cool guy, too. Speaking of cool guys, Tom Reed will once again be running Desperado, a Wild West shoot-out game. I've played a couple minis games with Tom over the years. He's a fun-loving easy-going minis guy. And every time I've ever walked past one of his Desperado games everyone was having a helluva good time.

Also added is a 15mm American Civil War game, run by Russ Hartley and using Fire and Fury rules. I don't really know enough about this game to offer anything useful, other than to note that the American Civil War is a perennial favorite of the local tin soldier set.

Friday, February 9th, 7pm

Holy crap, go sign up for this next game right now! If you like cut-throat political boardgaming run by a good-natured moderator, the latest addition to the Friday night schedule is the best thing going. John Satterfield returns with his "Kingmaker on the Big Board". The rightly-called Big Board is a ginormous custom jobbie with 25mm miniatures replacing the normal Kingmaker chits. Even the cards you use are super-sized. But here's the most important part: John Satterfield is the nicest and most fun guy I've ever gamed with. Period. This game is his baby and he makes playing it a hoot. If you like people that don't suck and games that are fun, do not pass this one up.

Saturday, February 10th, 9am

Two more events have been added in the Saturday morning miniatures section. Phil Hall will be running a second pulp-tastic session of .45 Adventure. Mr. Hall promises a totally different scenario than the Friday afternoon event, so you can play both if you'd like. Russ Hartley will run some more 15mm Civil War.

Saturday February 10th, 3pm

Hey! Three new boardgames, all of which look awesome! My kid sister is running Tumblin' Dice. I blogged about this game a while back, but the short version is that you will learn this game in two minutes and be having a great time immediately. I'd tell you all about my sister, but she's supposed to be babysitting for me next weekend and I don't want to screw that up. I will share one small item: she blames me for Don Botkin's Railroad Tycoon game being scheduled at the same time as her Tumblin' Dice event. Not because I had anything to do with the scheduling, but because I was the one that encouraged her to run an event. Railroad Tycoon is her favorite game that no one in her game group likes to play. Sorry, Jenn! Bring your copy to the Blind Sniper room Saturday night and I'll conscript some players.

So anyway, I don't know Dan Botkins. But I do know that, of all the train games I've played in the last couple of years, the boardgame version of Railroad Tycoon is one of my favorites. And it doesn't use a crayon. I know those crayon train games have a cult following, but I find them personally unappealing. Even though I love crayons.

Also on tap for Saturday afternoon is Dave Dubin running an event he calls "80's Retro Attack Settlers". Man, am I jealous. I wish I was the guy who first strung the words "80's", "retro", and "attack" together. The actual name of the game being played is Borderlands, which Mr. Dubin is pitching as one of the inspirations for Settlers of Catan. Something about that game rings a bell. Was it reviewed in Dragon once upon a time? Is the setting licensed from a novel or something? I can't quite put my finger on it.

In the next installement in the Winter War preview series I'll be taking a look at the games running the Saturday night of the con.

Winter War Preview: Saturday Afternoon

Last week I started a session-by-session rundown of the events on the schedule for Winter War, my local con. You can check out the earlier installments here, here, and here. Today I'll be talking about the stuff happening the afternoon of Saturday, the first full day of the con.

Saturday, February 10th, 1:30pm

It's not on the preregistration form because you don't have to register for it, but the Live Auction is one of the biggest events at the con. All kinds of crazy crap appears at this auction, selling for pittances you would not believe. I've seen serious collectibles like the Blitzkrieg Module System or Delta Green go for easily half the eBay pricing. I sold my copy of the Wraeththu rpg at last year's auction. To my friend Bruce, who I'll talk more about later in the post. That poor bastard had no idea what he was getting into. The head auctioneer, Rusty Rutherford, is a true grognard and will not hesitate to tell you if the item up for sale is a piece of crap. Rusty's patter makes for a fun auction experience and the room is often rolling with laughter. Another great feature of the auction is watching con staffer bid against each other, exchanging dirty glances across the room. They're all friends and this sort of competition really brings out the tiger claws.

NB: I said you didn't have to register to go to the auction, which is true. But to bid you have to be a registered con attendee.

Saturday, February 10th, 3pm

The convention-long Advanced Squad Leader and Living Greyhawk events continue through this slot. Heck, some of those guys may not even break for lunch. In the board game division James Richards will be hosting a game of Rocketville, a new product from the new Avalon Hill. I didn't even know this game existed until I saw it on the schedule. I love the retro robot art! Meanwhile in the RPG area Michael Collin has a Dark Conspiracies game planned, featuring the walking dead. Cool.

Much of the action so far scheduled for Saturday afternoon takes place in the miniatures area. On the historical angle, the French and Indian War seems awfully popular this year, as both Time Mikesell and Dean Spitz will be running games set during that conflict. Mr. Mikesell will be using The Sword and the Flame as his ruleset, while Mr. Spitz offers Black Powder Battles. Kevin Brown will continue to play out World War II in 15mm, using Flames of War 2nd edition and whatever armies he or anyone else brings to the table. And Stanley Arbogast will be replaying part of Saving Private Ryan using Battleground WW2.

If you like your tin soldier wars to be more fantastic and less bogged down by actual events, then Mike Bohlmann is your huckleberry. He'll be overseeing a session Warmachine, the 30mm game set in the steampunk world of Iron Kingdoms. I don't know much about the Iron Kingdoms setting or Privateer Press, the company behind the games. But looking through their website I can tell you one thing: I want one of these so badly my balls hurt. Imagine all the good times to be had sending that thing against my D&D group!

On the sci-fi tip you have lots of good minis options on Saturday afternoon. Ken Vreeman will be running some sort of adjunct to his "55 Hours on Uranus" game (mentioned in the previous preview post). This one is called "Escape from Uranus" and is listed as being powered by house rules. Not knowing a thing about the system I'd bet dollars to dimes that will be a good time. Dave Bullis and Bill Reuter will run another session of post-apocalyptic scum fighting over a Spam caravan. Fans of the BattleTech universe have two options. Steve Massey and Travis McLin will be running BattleForce 2 and Ronald Walston promises some BatteTech Total Warfare.

But the best event of the afternoon, and possibly the whole dang con, will be the 28th Annual Blind Sniper tournament. Holy crap, this game rocks on toast. First, let me tell you a bit about the guy running is. Bruce Gletty is without a doubt the grogniest grognard I have ever met. He's the kind of guy that's played everything from Tactics to OD&D to fantasy baseball to D&D 3E to the latest CRPG. One room of his basement is dedicated to one of those monster wargames where the entire European theater of WWII is recreated at the squad level or whatever. Unlike a lot of hex-and-chit men nowadays Bruce doesn't just own games like that, he actually plays them. Bruce is hardcore. He's also one of the most intelligent people I've met in my entire life. On the odd occasions when I am able to beat Bruce at a boardgame I do a touchdown celebration in my head.

Now let's talk about the game. Up to twenty players individually fight on a single Sniper! mapboard. The game is called 'Blind' Sniper because movement is totally hidden. No player sees the counters. The official gameboard is concealed from general view. Each player has one dude on the board. Orders are communicated in writing. Example:

Turn 1: I move 6 hexes west, turn to hexside C, enter building.
Response from Bruce: You see a man with a machine pistol inside the building in hex 0305, he's exiting the stairs.
Turn 2: I shoot the bastard!
Response: He shot you as well. The other guy is dead. You're hit in the leg and only get half movement points from now on.
Turn 3: I cross the room and collect the machine pistol.
Response: Okay, you've got it. The clip has 10 rounds in it. You hear gunfire from beyond the north exit.
etc.

When Bruce appears from his hideyhole and hands out his responses you can cut the tension with a knife. Sometimes he gives certain reports to the whole room. "You all hear an explosion from near the tall building in sector C of the map." or "Jeff, you're dead." The goal of the game is to either visit 5 target hexes and exit the board OR to be the last man standing. Most years it's the latter. The game continues until there is a winner and sometimes that means the last two or three participants are at the con until 4 in the morning.

One reason the game goes so long is that it takes some serious time for Bruce to read and respond to all the written orders. Pickup games are played while everyone is waiting for teacher to pass out the quiz results. I've literally played three or four other whole games during a long go at Blind Sniper. Some of them quite lengthy games, too. So here's the big secret of Winter War: the best boardgaming at the con isn't on the schedule. It happens at the Blind Sniper event. In my experience every single person in the Blind Sniper room is a serious gamer but also a decent human being. You could play tiddlywinks with these people and have a rockin' time. Some years I don't have the time for Blind Sniper because I'm scheduled to run some sort of RPG in the Saturday night slot. When that happens I spend the afternoon in the Sniper room just to play the pickup games.

Winter War Preview: Saturday Morning

Today I'll pick up where I left off yesterday giving you all my chatty opinions about the events on the Winter War convention schedule. Click here and here for the Friday afternoon and evening rundowns.

Saturday, February 10th, 9am

On the boardgame front the all-con-long Advanced Squad Leader tournament will pick up right where it ended the night before. Tim Gritten will once again be hosting a session of Really Nasty Horse Racing. Both my nephews and my sister have reported that this game is a hoot. As I understand it your horse can come in last but you can still win the game by betting on some other player's pony. Brilliant. Memoir '44 will be making another appearance, this time with some Russo-Finnish action. (Which reminds me, I gotta ask some of the local grognards if anyone ever ran Winter War at Winter War.) Carol "Cookie" Morris, who I called a 'devil-woman' in my last preview post, will be breaking out a copy of the new boardgame based upon the webcomic Order of the Stick. That comic is amazing. It has almost completely supplanted Monty Python as the source of stupid quotes at my game table. Whether the game is any good or not I can't tell you.

"Blocks of the Bulge" will re-create action of the Ardennes Offensive using those cute little blocks that Columbia Games make. My brother-in-law Jim will be running two games Saturday morning. In my opinion Thurn and Taxis is cute, but not great. The other game he's running is Louis XIV, which I absolutely adore. It's a lot like El Grande mechanically, if that game is your bag. Jim's Louis VIX game is my pick of the Saturday morning boardgames. Not only is Louis a gas, but Jim's a super-nice guy and he is excellent at explaining games to newbies.

Two card game events are on the schedule for Saturday morning. First we have Winter War's ninth annual DCI sanctioned Magic: The Gathering tournament. Click here for official tournament info. The other card game is Ninja Burger, which I didn't even realize was card-based until I looked at the schedule right now. I guess that shows you how plugged in I am to the cardgames scene.

With nine events already on the schedule, miniatures looks like the place to be Saturday morning. The Central Illinois Tabletop Warriors always bring great stuff to Winter War. Warhammer 40K fans can join in an Imperials versus Chaos affair. While afficionados of the Battletech universe can play some sort of Clan-infest mass combat Battleforce 2 thingy. In my head the Battletech timeline *ends* with the invasion of the Clans, so I really can't usefully comment on this game, other than to note this particular outing is scheduled to run through the afternoon slot as well. If fantasy is more your thing Dale Lybarger will be running Confrontation using the Dogs of War expansion. I couldn't tell you a thing about Confrontation's game mechanics but the figures are awesome.

Rally 'Round the Flag makes another appearance Saturday morning, as the American Civil War is always popular around here. Other historicals include Dean Spitz running a French and Indian War affair with Gentlemen of France Fire First and Kevin Brown with a 15mm WWII, using Flames of War 2nd edition. Mr. Brown's game is BYOAOPOOM. That's bring-your-own-army-or-play-one-of-mine. There are two aerial games on the schedule. Kurt Jeffries will be running a house rules WWII dogfight where the Germans will try to take down some attacking B17's. Don't be put off by the fact that this is a house rules game. In my experience Kurt Jeffries has his act together when it comes to game mechanics. Bob Swieringa plans a WWI flying aces game using the Red Baron ruleset. If I wasn't running a game in this slot I'd totally be at Bob's table, dratting the Red Baron Peanuts-style and generally making a nuisance of myself.

But my recommedation for best minis game of Saturday morning would be Ken Vreeman's porno-punically titled "55 Hours on Uranus". Ken is one of the most popular minis guys at the con. His figures and scenery are top-notch and he has an easy-going approach to gaming. The rules are based on 55 Days in Peking, a Boxer Rebellion game, but the setting here is futuristic space marines versus orcs. On Uranus. Multiple informants over several different Winter Wars all give this game an enthusiastic thumbs up. Uranus.

For roleplayers the the Central Illinois Roleplaying Combatants Alliance will continue their all-con Living Greyhawk funfest. The non-RPGA or non-D&D inclined currently have two Saturday morning options. Mike Wilson will once again offer a session of Elementary Watson, the RPG of Sherlock Holmsian sleuthing. And some dude named Jeff Rients will take a go at Mazes & Minotaurs, the retro-awesome game of Bronze Age fantasy. It would be extremely unfair of me to offer a pick for the RPG section. Obviously, I want people to play in my M&M game, but at the same time I find the concept behind Elementary Watson very intriguing. And Mr. Wilson has been running it at Winter War for years, so he must be doing something right.

That's the Saturday morning session of Winter War in a (rather large) nutshell. In the next installment I'll get to two events that are at the heart of the con: the live auction and the Blind Sniper game.

Winter War Preview: Friday Evening

This here post is part 2 of my seven-or-so part preview of the upcoming Winter War convention, where I run down the games listed in the pre-registration bookletand give you my recommendations for what games might be cool to try. Winter War is February 9th through 11th here in Champaign, Illinois. Click here if you missed Part 1, where I outlined the scheduled Friday afternoon events.

Friday, February 9th, 7pm

The two bigass all-convention-long events, the Advanced Squad Leader tournament and the Living Greyhawk freak-out, continue through this slot of the con. Again, you can check out Warhorn for more details on the LG events.

The Friday night boardgaming section looks really lively, ranging from a 12-player game of Formula De to a similarly-sized Car Wars scenario to new fan favorite BattleLore. Leland Black and Charlie Priest are running a newcomers-friendly game of Shadows over Camelot. I've played that a couple of times with my sister and it is wicked cool. Glenn Overby is running Memoir '44 in addition to the previously mentiond BattleLore. Tom Hendricks is running two more games, another round of the old chesslike game Feudal and coldwar paranoia fantasy Fortress America. The real pick of the Friday night board games has got to be Alan Conrad's Complete History of the World. The original History of the World is a fabulous game and Al has been working on his grand variant for years. This is one of several unique events you will only find at Winter War.

The miniatures department looks pretty sweet as well. Dale Lybarger will once again be reffing local favorite Clay-O-Rama, the Play-Doh battle game first appeared in Dragon #125. Every time there's a Clay-O-Rama table at the con the result is a lot of hootin' and hollerin' and a general good time. On the historical angle Rich Nelso is running Rally 'Round the Flag, one of the more popular rulesets for the American Civil War. Most of the rest of the minis dance card is filled out with sci-fi stuff: Ken Vreeman (an excellent ref with great minis and scenery) is running the old GW classic Space Hulk. Dustin Burger, another great ref, plans an Imperials versus Orks outing of Warhammer 40K. And a couple of chaps I don't know will be presenting a post-apocalyptic fight over a stockpile of Spam. You heard me right. Spam. I love it when the post-apocalyptic world is full of black humor like that. Entitled "FallOut Wastelands: Quest for Spam", this event will be run with the Days of Reckoning 28mm skirmish rules. Google doesn't seem to be helping me learn anything about this game.

All these minis events look like solid gold to yours truly, but the standout game has got to be "Sleepless in Rockwood", a 28mm zombie minis event. Boo-YAH! I am totally on the zombie bandwagon. If you want to call me a zombie poser, that would be okay. Getting back on topic, the rules used for this event are All Things Zombie. God bless this era of easily-distributed niche games.

In addition to the Living Greyhawk stuff, there are four RPG events on the Friday night schedule. Chris Fairfield offers a scoundrel-themed d6 Star Wars game called simply "The Kessel Run". Mr. Fairfield's Star Wars games are quite popular locally and, really, who wouldn't want to go on that infamous Run? Carol 'Cookie' Morris once again shows up to Winter War ready to run some HackMaster. Despite my own recent run-in with the KenzerCo boards I still think HackMaster is super-cool. And Cookie is exactly the right kind of wicked devil-woman to run it. I mean that in a nice way. Honest. People like myself who dig D&D 3.5 but don't get jazzed up by Living Greyhawk have the option of signing up for an Iron Kingdoms session designed to introduce newbies to that setting.

The RPG pick of the litter has to be Dave Hoover's Feng Shui game. Dave is a bit of a local legend, as he once ran a game in every one of the seven sessions of the convention. Some of us seriously thought this feat was going to kill him, but he made it through. He couldn't speak coherent English by the end of the weekend, but he ran all seven games. Feng Shui is one of Dave's signature games. The combination of frantic cinematic action and mindfuckingly freaktastic hidden backstory is a perfect fit for the kinds of games he likes to run. Dave has a cult following, so by the time you read this post his games might all be full. But sign up for his stuff if you can.

That's the Friday night line-up as I know it right now. The only other thing I should note is that the Living Greyhawk room will be open through the 'Friday twilight' session, which runs until 4 frickin' AM. The rest of the con is dead at that time, but the RPGA guys plan to go all night long, baby.

Winter War Preview: Friday Afternoon

I'm going to be doing something new for the upcoming Winter War. In a multi-parter I'll be giving you my recommendations for what games might be cool to try. My hope is to lure some of my regular readers to the con. If you live within an easy drive of Champaign, Illinois I'd love to see you in February.

I'm getting all my information from the Winter War 34 pre-registration booklet. You can download the booklet and check out the whole deal for yourself. If you pre-register you get a break on the price and first shot at signing up for the game of your choice.

Friday, February 9th, 2pm

As I type this there are seven events listed for Friday afternoon. Tom Hendricks is hosting a game of Feudal, the chesslike strategy game that was part of the 3M Bookshelf Game line. Mr. Hendricks is also running a nuclear variant of the classic Risk. Both these games sound like perfect warm-up material for the first session of a con. And if this Tom Hendricks is the same fellow involved with the local Living Greyhawk scene he is a super-nice guy, too. Tom's games are labeled 'younger players welcomed'. I like it when people run stuff the kids can play.

Speaking of Living Greyhawk, CIRCA (the Central Illinois Roleplaying Combatants Alliance) will once again be organizing LG events throughout the con, check out Warhorn for more details. The Living Greyhawk contingent has been a substantial portion of the con over the years. Last year I was hoping to lure a few LG players to my Original D&D event (i.e. the 1974 rules) but they could not be pulled away from the glitter of Officially Sanctioned Experience Points. I ended up with a table full of great people anyway, so no harm there.

A dude by the name of John Harting is your go-to guy if Living Greyhawk isn't your bag but roleplaying is. John's running a 4th edition Shadowrun scenario called "Fish or Be Bait". I haven't played ShadowRun since the heady days of the near-broken 1st edition, but my informants tell me the new 4th ed is pretty darn slick. If you haven't played an elf computer nerd in a while this might be a good opportunity to testdrive the new version.

Mild-mannered grognard Al Conrad will be running RoboRally on Friday afternoon. RoboRally is an absolute hoot to play. It's one of those games where I laugh out loud even as I'm losing horribly. And Al is a great guy to have at your game table. Mike Wilson rounds out the boardgaming sections of the slot with Circus Maximus for up to 15 players. As far as I can tell, Circus Maximus was written to simulate the legendary chariot race sequence from the film Ben Hur. And it pretty much delivers on that goal. Good game.

If I can take the afternoon off from work you'll find me at Ronald Ralston's table, where he'll be running a sci-fi ship-to-ship minis game using the Starmada Compendium. Damn this game is fun. It lacks the potent crunch of Star Fleet Battles, but the it delivers a lot of frantic action. Full Thrust is the one of the few games that compares well to Starmada. I prefer the latter because I like hexes on my spacemap while standard Full Thrust uses tape measures and turning wheels.

Finally, I should note that the all-convention-long Advanced Squad Leader tournament is listed in this slot but that the event itself doesn't start until 6pm. I'm not sure what there is for an ASL player to do between 2 and 6, so consider yourself warned. I don't play ASL and there's probably not much I can say about this event other than to tell you that this is the place to be if you're the kind of person who wants to spend two and half days playing Advanced Squad Leader.

In the next installment of this series I'll share my thoughts on the games running in the Friday night slot of Winter War.

Winter War cometh!

Winter War 34 will be held February 9 - 11, 2007 at the Hawthorn Suites in Champaign, Illinois. Click here to see the pre-registration packet and hit the Winter War website for more info.

I'll be running three games, which I clearly need to get serious about working on. This year I once again plan to intentionally violate one of the cardinal rules for GMing con games by not making pre-gen PCs for two of my games. For my '81 Basic/Expert D&D and Mazes & Minotaurs games rolling up PCs will be easy and fun. I could do the same thing for Encounter Critical, but I have some nifty ideas for good pre-gens for that one.

Anyways, hope to see you at the con!