Little Wars 2014....A review....

Dear Readers;
This is wordy, long, and photo intensive....Get a drink and relax before proceeding...
Thanks!

The 2014 Little Wars Game Convention held by the HMGS Midwest was once again held at the DuPage Expo Center in St. Charles Illinois...
My wife (Gawd bless her!), and myself decided to make a long weekend of it.
I cursed myself silently for not pre-registering, but will do so next year.

This year instead of taking I-65N all the way to Gary Indiana, (gak), and making a left and then selling two or three pints of my blood to pay the road tolls, we decided to take a left just past Lafayette Indiana, and take 29W past Remington and into Illinois from there.
My wife noticed a set of kitchen chairs for sale, as we passed through the small town of Goodland, that "would match our new table perfectly!"...Unfortunately we were on a schedule. I promised that we would look at them on our way back on Sunday. (Unfortunately they weren't there...)
We came up from the South and through Kankakee, (which honestly didn't impress me that much)...and then around and eventually hit the freeway going in.
Last year we spent almost twenty dollars in tolls going to and from the convention, (as well as seeing the wonderful South Side of Chicago, and public service announcement billboards on prostitution), this year due to our change in course, we only spent six going one way (although the signs do lie, (one sign said toll .90, and then found out it was 3.80!), and I made it a challenge to leave the area on Sunday and pay no tolls...and we had a nice scenic drive...

Unlike last time we went for a day, this time we decided on the weekend.
I was able to get a room across the street at The Pheasant Inn Resort. Little Wars usually has room blocks going on there, and luck was with me, as I was able to get not one of the standard rooms but one of the tower suites. These are $270.00 a night rooms and I got it for the con price.
To be honest, the rooms are a little dated, and I don't think they are worth 270 bucks a night, but they are nice.

Registration went well and pretty speedy although prices at the door for non-HMGS members have gone up some.

So we received our programs....

This years program. These books are always well done...BRAVO!!!!

And I took a gander to see what was going on....and what to register for....
Flames of War was having some type of major area tournament there, so there was going to be a bunch of FoW games going on. This was something that didn't interest me. While I buy some of their stuff, and yes...I participated in their 40% off Vietnam sale, (sigh), I don't play FoW at all.

So we wandered around the place, (pretty much laid out like last time), and bought a few items....

This was the wife's Friday night haul...

For that evening she picked up one of those little handy-dandy magnifiers with clips to hold small fiddly pieces, and she got herself some nice purple flowers for groundwork and some nice white topped flowers, (I see pretty meadows in my future battlefields), and a camel and some horses from Uncle Dukes minis table....

Meanwhile I sucked it up and just bought three packs of figs...

Two packs of Crusader Minis Pirates, and one of "Old West Foreigners"...Gotta have a gunfighter in a kilt! Oh yeah....Ol' Angus McHaggis packing his sporran and two six shooters....

So on Friday night the wife did better me in the "stuff buying"....

We then retired for the night for dinner (Jambalaya restaurant at the Pheasant Run is nice but too pricey I believe and our waiter was a bit pushy on trying to get us to order the drink specials...).

We retired to our room for the evening and prepared for Saturday....

Saturday came bright and early (as usual), and I was up and ready to go. My wife was in "lounge mode" so she bid me a fond farewell!...
Off I trekked, ready to do my duty...
But was quickly diverted by the breakfast buffet directly to the right outside of the elevators...hmmmm....

Now with belly full....I was off and ready to do my duty....

Upon entering the area, I noticed that this year HMGS Mid-West decided to change the hours and times of "The Flea Market". This year they ran the flea market in off hours when the dealers were not open. Though some people whined about it, I think it's a fair and decent thing to do for the dealers. Of notice is that the Saturday evening flea market seemed the prime one....
I bought nothing out of there...and too many people made me feel like I was in a cattle chute.

So I took some pics of the general convention area:

The dealers area on Saturday before opening...

As you can see the place was filled nicely with gamers and games. Fortunately the all too familiar "Gamey gamer smell" wasn't as prevalent as in days past. Although present, I think some of the worst offenders didn't show up, or had been introduced to soap and water....

A quick look at Saturdays events board...

Now I will admit that I DO like the way they have the event board set up. I'm not too sure about how to register for events. Seems that for those that didn't preregister, and did a walk up, you had to wait until one hour before the game you wanted to play started. You then told the guy the event # and he handed you an event ticket if there some available...

Some of the games that looked really cool filled up fast, and some of them were also ALL DAY (5+hour events).

An example of this was the "German Invasion of Oak Ridge Tennesse"...a wonderfully campy pulpy game, that had Nazis, cops, the Army, Aliens, Hillbillies, Townsfolk and all sorts of Iron Sky type madness going on all at once....

"Look! Up in da sky!!!! Is that a....????"

"Nazi's in their V3's from "The Dark Side of The Moon"....

A shot showing the entire table....

The local fire department and pest control....

There were tons of other games also....

One enterprising person was putting on a "Steampunk Time Traveller" game, (in which the game table was divided into four seperate game/time areas). One was Oriental, Once was Ancient Egyptian, One was kind of Steampunkish Europe and the other was a Seaside dockside...

I myself was fascinated by it and took a few pics to get some terrain and scenic ideas for my future pulp/horror/victorian/colonial games.

(Click on the pics to get a larger photo)....

 

 

 


Meanwhile I got myself involved in Uncle Dukes 25mm Alamo Game...

As Jim Bowie holding the Western Wall....

If you don't know what this building is....You need a history lesson....and don't ever go to Texas....

To be honest, I had wanted to play in an Alamo game since last year...and I was looking forward to it. The rules were relatively simple, but my fun was quashed by my opponent who felt the need to cheat and finally 'admitted" it at the end of the game....(more on that later)....

Uncle Duke...2 years past his expiration date...and a nice setup...

The immortal 18 lb'er on the SW parapet...

My West Wall...It would take my opponent to resort to cheating to be able to reach it...and he would...

Part of the attacking force of General Cos hitting me on the West Wall. By rules these were all musket men and needed a 7 or higher on an 8 sided dice to hit.  He had one unit of Lights, (which needed a 7 or higher to hit on a 10 sided dice.), Strangely enough after turn 2 ALL of his men suddenly became D10 "lights" and we only caught it AFTER he cleared the wall...and when the game was called, he ended up admitting it....Sad to have to cheat...

Mexican casualties are mounting in the second turn...(and the first obvious cheat is about to happen as pictured here and below...)

Here you see the Mexican Assault force with the ladders charging straight in to the west wall...right infront of my 9 lb gun. When I measured for cannister shot and they were easily in the template, my opponent suddenly said "Wait..these guys aren't really there...and picked them up and moved them....That was the first "What the H*ll?" moment....The enjoyment of this game soon went away as he started playing "the rules" and not "the game"...

  

Here you can see the recently "relocated" assault ladders OUT of the cannister template, as the Mexican column closes in on the West Wall. Notice that the guys in the green hats up against the wall were the only ones supposed to be using D10's...everyone eles in this photo (Mexican),. was using D8.  Strangely enough....they were all using D10's...

Which eventually resulted in the death of myself (Bowie) on the West Wall....So I left in disgust. May the gods save me from cheaters and rules lawyers.

I found out later that the umpires had been notified but it was too late in the game to do anything about it as it would requre the entire side of the table to "replay" 2 turns...Ah well...hope he's happy.

After this fiasco, my wife and I wandered back around the dealer area while she checked things out. And here I want to vent about something....dealers and their attitudes...

VENT: Dealers...I know you are dealing with lots of people. But please try to put on a professional courteous expression. Don't sit behind your table with your arms crossed and a nasty scowl on your face.  When a customer is looking at your wares don't walk right up to them and say "Something I can help you with?" and glare at them; and if they say "No thanks. I know what I am looking for." Don't just glare at them angrily and turn around and walk off in a huff. Really, if you don't want to be there, and don't want to deal with people...well damnit...don't rent table space....

I promise that unless prodded, I won't "name and shame" this time...since it was only one dealer, and each time I asked a question they acted like I was bothering them.  So I saw some nice stuff that I would like to have gotten from them....but due to their attitudes, I took my money elsewhere...

Meanwhile my wife was discussing the Leonardo Flying Machine Game and thoroughly fascinated by it....

She's a lover of the strange and unusual...after all, she married me!!!!

After making a long visit with Forrest Harris, who seems to be in cahoots with my wife to get me to spend money, plus talk scenery, (He truly is a really nice guy), we checked out the 6 pm pulp game to find out it was filled. Ah well...back to Culvers for dinner and for loot checking...

My wife's swag for the Saturday night...dice, scenics, (more treasure piles), and a Millenium Falcon...

We finally headed out Sunday morning and took an adventuresome run through small country state roads and through Joliet, to get out of the highway robbery activity that is more commonly known as "The Illinois Toll System"....

Once home we tallied up the loot...

Her finally loot tally for both nights once we got home....

She made out pretty good....

So I looked at mine....(remember that she "enabled" me by telling me that "I needed these"...)....

That's a pretty big haul of Knuckleduster and Blue Moon figs....yowza!!!

So I then went ahead and did the final "loot tally" photo....

And then cried when I think about how much we spent....

And how my little lead pile has grown yet again....

The final results of this years "Little Wars haul...."

Final result and observations:

Little Wars is a good convention for the Midwest US. Some people on TMP says that they think it was lighter than last year, but I didn't see that. I know that FoW took up a lot of space, and to be honest, I am thinking that if the con is going to get any bigger they are going to need a new location. It's pretty much maxed out the way it is right now.

The Dealers area seemed slightly lighter this year that last, but OG, Knuckleduster, and others were there. For the one dealer....dude...be nice to people..you might have more business...

There were a lot of games but I also noticed a few cancellations.

I like the way the flea market worked at not competing with the dealers. Although some folks didn't like it, I don't think it is fair for dealers to pay for tables at their cost and then have to compete with flea market guys during peak hours.

All in all, I do like the con, and the only real negative that I can come up with (which really can't be addressed without a major change), is the fact that St. Charles Illinois simply isn't an easy route to get to from "down South (ie: Indiana, etc...)

I'll be going back next year, since I became an HMGS-Midwest member and will support the con by running a game.

If anyone has any ideas, comment, opinions, on this post, please let me know, and if you would like to get in on a fun convention, try this one out.