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Mike Ricotta
United States
Norfolk
Virginia
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So I go to two conventions a year. Mainly that’s all the ol’ wifey will let me get away with. I just go on Saturday, not spending the weekend or anything. The last one was the Williamsburg Muster, which is held in Williamsburg VA (I live in Norfolk VA about an hour away). Williamsburg muster is an interesting time. I think the crowd tends to be a bit older, more interested in historical, and mainly miniatures. Also there aren’t any 40k players which is a nice touch. (feel free to substitute Magic for this joke)
So a few friends and I car pooled to the convention early Saturday morning so we could get there around when the doors opened. Probably a bit too early, but I usually get up at 5am (and at work by 6am) during the week so it’s not too early for me! Sadly it may have been to early for everyone else since the convention attendance was sparse that early in the morning. Ahh well.
Now I was running a game in the afternoon time slot (1pm) so I had my morning free. Looking over the schedule I saw a few options. I’d say most of the games being run were using some kind of home brew rules. These guys have spent a ton of time designing and setting up a scenario and building awesome terrain for it. Walking around there was a cool cowboy town, massive battlefields, and plenty of other stuff. Some of the cooler set ups I saw included a massive 6mm WWII game, a pulp fiction style game where the British regulars were attacking some Native African tribes, the massed infantry of the Napoleonic era and some very large Victorian science fiction flying boats/spaceships.
Well in the morning I tried out a game of Close Action. Close action is an age of sail game. Every player runs one ship. So we had a battle between the British and the Americans. I ran the only 64 gun ship on the Brit side (everyone else was smaller). We had 5 ships to the Americans 4. The basics of the game are each player secretly plots there movement for the turn, then all movements are done by the game master. Then gunfire is secretly plotted. The really cool part is that the players aren’t allowed to talk to each other. We are on different ships you know! The way players communicate is with semaphore. The players write a message at the start of the turn. It is a maximum of 4 words. The message is delivered at the end of the turn. Mainly this consists of the admiral trying to issue instructions to the fleet. When the cannon smoke cleared the British had carried the day. The Africa (my ship) did nothing of merit and was basically out of position the entire fight. Turns out ship handling is not my forte. The game was a ton of fun though and the game master had some very nice ship miniatures that made it look cool. It was an exciting game as well with lots of damage, near misses and even a few collisions.
After a quick pulled pork sandwich from Pierce’s (yummy!) it was time for Dystopian Wars. Now we had been working on this scenario for a while in an attempt to figure out a solution to what I think is a major flaw in the Dystopian Wars game. The problem is that there aren’t any rules for transporting land units over the water. There are rules for using portals, but no amphibious landing ships or anything. Portals act like semi reliable warp points (enter one, roll a die on a 3-6 come out any other one, roll a 1 spend a turn lost in the warp, roll a 2 your opponent picks where you come out). The map we set up features a big coastline on one side and ocean with some island on the other. The land had a large radio tower on it (that looked like the Eiffel tower (cause it was an Eiffel tower model I bought at Michael’s for $1). The object was for the invaders to destroy the radio tower. To overcome the transport problem we developed the long range teleporter. I placed 4 dice along the coast each set to a number (1-4) and two dice on two outlying islands (5 and 6). I also set a line (using some oil rig models a friend had) in the ocean a bit off the coast. When the attackers got a unit past the line they could activate the teleporter. So, if a large unit crossed the line a large (or smaller) could teleport, a medium allowed a medium, and so on. To use it you picked the unit you wanted to transport and rolled a die. The result dictated where the unit showed up. The dice I had originally placed showed this. Once rolled the placed die was a permanent portal.
We had 4 players, each side brought 1000 points following the standard force construction rules. It was a fun game. The turning point was when the invaders got a large tank in range of the tower and put an amazing shot into it doing so much damage it became evident that they had won. The game was nicely set up and the models all look great so we had lots of people taking a look!
Finally I played in a game of Polyversal. Polyversal is a minis game my friend is writing and is in the playtest phase. The idea is that you can take any 6mm science fiction models you have and make an army. It’s a good game with a neat system. There are still a few wrinkles to get worked out but overall it’s a good time. The scenario was the UN forces trying to restore order from some evil rebels that had shown up (I played the UN side). Giant robots, tanks and even some infantry duked it out. MY huge warlord walker got hit early on and became immobilized. Luckily it’s guns had enough range to keep it in the fight. After a good fight the UN may have had a slight edge when we stopped.
It was a good convention all in all. We got home around midnight or so. The wife made me get up with our son (at 7am) the next morning of course.
I just added a picture of our setup, ready for battle!
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