MINI GAMING: ConQuest Sac Was a Huge SUCCESS!

Hi Everyone,

Well, ConQuest Sac has now come and gone and it was a Huge Success! I had worries leading up to the show of a tiny room that would be poorly air conditioned and dozens of miniatures wargamers stuffed together with board gamers and the good Lord only knows whom else and... almost none of my worries came to pass.

First of all, here's a link for the con:

http://www.avalonconventions.com/conquestsac/

The Sci-fi / Fantasy Miniatures events did very well with 100% of the game hosts showing up promptly and all but one event attracted lots of players and had a great time. George Gardea's Full Thrust game didn't attract any players, but he'd also chosen a time that went head to head with the Babylon 5 starship game so most of his potential audience already had their phasers and missiles primed elsewhere... so to speak. It was also a first year show and we had one of the weirder phenomena occur (cue X-Files music)... we had more games & gamemasters than players the whole weekend! Very few of the games went to capacity because there were so many different choices.

Teaming up the historical and sci-fi / fantasy miniatures events was also a great idea. Don Delis and I were able to manage the miniatures games very well and made a great partnership.

Here were the areas for improvement for next year:
- Plan a little farther ahead so that room assignments will be known to all ahead of time...
- Have the convention event booklette ready a little sooner...
- Make individual game entries in the events booklette a little more discernable.
- Be able to provide more space for the big game tournaments that came such as the larger GW games...
- Locate registration somehwere closer to the front of the hotel or put up more directions, folks had to hunt for it...
- Provide more space for open gaming...
- Have affordable food available for the gamers; several folks expressed a wish for a closer and more affordable eating venue... The hotel's meals were a bit pricey.

Here were some of the con's great strengths:
- Great event coordinators; I saw happy people having a good time at every event I attended or even walked by...
- Great staff! Registration ran smoothly and the only complaint I heard was that the registration desks were located in the back of the hotel...
- Great game masters / game hosts... we had lots of generous folks and there were always plenty of games to play or even watch...
- Stephanie and Walter ran a really cool movie room and had plenty of auxiliary activities for everyone to do.
- Great seminars! I was very impressed by the job that Grace did and the only thing that kept me from attending the seminars (I had planned to attend three of them) was my responsibility as a miniatures games coordinator...
- Very cool painting contest! I had some difficulty finding time to visit and support Roger Mark, but I was able to do so later and I stopped and painted a miniature with him and some of the other painters around. Roger was great!

I simply had a super time and I got in the following games and attended the following activities:

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FRIDAY:

Friday was the slowest day of the con and thus provided Don and I with the least work so we got to play more games than we expected...

1. DBA Tournament
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/299

- Mike Warde, Clay, Don and I all got a chance to get a few DBA games in and we had a great time. In one of my battles I received a huge surprise when my warband heavy army managed to beat a knight-heavy army. Mike also debuted his beautiful new Seleucid army. He put on a great event and everyone involved had a great time.

2. Wings Of War: Dragons!
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22686

- Kimbo was kind enough to play a few games with me and we both had a good time. We later played a three-players game or two when someone else showed an interest.

3. Havoc
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/19363

- Kimbo utterly stomped me at this numbers / trick card game. It was ugly. I won one battle and he won the rest of the war (something like the other eight battles!)...

4. Command & Colors: Ancients
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14105

- I had a chance to play The Battle of Cannae with two guys from the Bay Area and pulled off a surprise win on the last turn for the underdog Romans. It was a good game!

5. Junta
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/242

- The Junta game unfortunately didn't collect enough players to get underway, but I did get to meet Sam Abbaki, a Persian gamer and we were able to amiably swap Middle East experiences and stories. We just about went out for Persian food (I'm still Jonesing for it) that evening, but both decided to stick around and pull in a few more games...

I spent the better part of the day coordinating with Don and trying to make sure that we were prepped for the inevitable Saturday rush... of course, we knew that you can't prepare for every eventuality, but we did what we could.

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SATURDAY:

Saturday was the busiest day of the convention and Don and I were swamped with games at the "rush hour" for the con, from roughly 10:00am to about 2:00pm... Out first order of the day was to find space for the big game tournaments of which we had several planned:
- Warrior
- Warhammer Ancients Battles (WAB)
- Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WHFB)
- Babylon 5: A Call To Arms (B5: ACTA)

The room we had wasn't big enough so we had to call on the senior con staff to find more room. Luckily they were able to provide the open gamign tables in the dealer room for the WHFB torunament and we used expansion space in the hallway for the rest of the tournaments. Thanks to Michael who made sure we got the extra tables that we needed. We set up Warrior in the hallway, but they never showed up. That wasn't so bad though because the Axis & Allies folks ended up there and we also put the big cult classic Zombietown Game there.

I wanted to add a side note that I finally got to meet Mark Cuomo of the WAB folks and he was utterly great! I really enjoyed meeting him. He is a gentleman with class.

I still had a chance to play in a few games throught the day:

1. Monster Island
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3700

- I played this several times throughout the day and I have to say that Patrick Sweeney puts on a good game! His table attracted all kinds of convention throughout the game and it was rare to see less than a crowd of players enjoying his game. And his game was the biggest draw for younger convention goers... I played in a several games... mostly with adults though. My King Kong was masterful too... he went 3 and 0 undefeated and stomped the Alien in several grudge matches... (King Kong bellowing yell!)

2. Zombietown Massacre (ZTM)
- The ZTM folks had a great time and attracted all kinds of attention. I seem to recall that they planned for a maximum of 12 players and ended up taking closer to 15! The ZTM game was plain old-fashioned B-movie fun and all had a great time. I played Neal the gun store owner and had a blast. I also met Antonio from Oakland who played poor Timmy (got munched on by the undead). I shared lunch with Antonio and was pleasantly surprised to meet a gamer geek who more than matched my maximum nerd-osity!

3. B-17 with Ron Plunk
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1032

- Two bomber boxes launched and what Ron advertized as a milk run was anything but! The lead box returned home with just two bombers while the other box lost two and nearly every other bomber barely limped home. I had thought that my flight would have done worse, but we managed to survive... Thabks to the many causalties, what would have normally beena very low score ended up snagging me 2nd place overall in the game. Again, my theory is that I only took second because most of the highest scoring players went down in flames... survival has a quality of its own!

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SUNDAY:

Sundays and Fridays often vie with each other as to which day will be slower, but there was no contest at ConQuest Sac 2006. Sunday had a lot going on. The miniatures room had a full venue!
1. Flames of War - Vietnam Variant: "Pile on, A Search & Destroy Mission!"
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/11168

Charles Gomez put on a great game and I ended up playing the Vietnamese against Greg and Don as US forces. I had expected an utter Vietnamese rout, but it didn't happen that way. The Vietnamese lost the war as the US players pulled off a minor victory for finding and destroying two Vietnamese weapons caches, BUT... they paid dearly for those destroyed weapons caches. The Vietnamese took very minor casualties (abut seven stands) and the US was horribly mauled, taking half to three quarters of their forces as casualties (somewhere over twenty-five stands) before the battle was ended. We all had a good time.

2. Monster Island (MI)
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3700

I played my last game 0f MI at this time and Kong finished the convention undefeated.

3. Painting Booth with Roger Mark
I had a chance to sit down and paint a figure with the indubitable Roger Mark. He's a great host and I enjoyed the experience of taking painting advice from him and two other experienced miniatures painters.

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Have a great Tuesday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.