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Consimworld Expo 2019

Every year in June when it starts to get really hot I make my annual trek to...where? Why, Arizona of course. It's one place that is sure to be even hotter than Boise. The heat doesn't really matter because I go to Consimworld Expo (CSWE), the best wargame convention there is, where the activity is inside, in air conditioned comfort.

This year the trip down was uneventful. Boring, in fact. I took two days for the drive, stopping overnight in Page, Arizona. But unlike most years, I didn't work in a hike along the way at someplace like Zion or Grand Canyon. I didn't even go to my favorite Italian restaurant in Page, settling for a Subway sandwich at the WalMart across the street from my hotel. My only side excursion on the trip down was a short detour through downtown Flagstaff where I stopped at Barnes and Noble. I was looking for a book that I couldn't find at the Boise B&N (Godel, Escher and Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, in case you were wondering) and I didn't find it there either.

With minimal extra stops I got to Tempe in the middle of the afternoon when it was still about a hundred and fifteen degrees. And no, I'm not exagerating. That's typical for this time of year. After checking in at the place that I usually stay, the Hampton Inn, I went to the little hole-in-the-wall bookstore across the street and picked up some good Osprey military history books. I try to get there sometime during every trip I make to CSWE. Even though it's right across the street from the hotel the hours are very limited. Since I leave for the convention early and don't get back till late most days, I felt fortunate to have a good chance to get there.

After the bookstore I went to Game Depot, Tempe's FLGS. They had some interesting games but I didn't want to buy anything just yet. I usually take home a pretty good haul from the vendor room and the flea market tables at the con so I was saving my money for that. After the game store I had dinner at Gus's New York Pizza. It's my go to pizza place in Tempe.

After dinner I went to the Tempe Mission Plams, where the con is held, to set up my game for the next day. It used to be that the first day was just setup, but each year people would arrive earlier and earlier. Now people come the night before to setup for the day that used to be setup. But that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Some people are tired of wargames by the end of the week, but I think that the longer the con runs, the better.

My first scheduled game was Russia Besieged with Paul van Etten (aka PAvE). I've known PAvE since my very first CSWE ever way back in 2010. While I thought I had plenty of time to set up, I found that I had made a noob mistake and forgotten to bring plexiglas with me. Very dumb. Not a big deal though - all I needed to do was go out and buy some poster frames (you can never have too many). It should be easy.

Well it wasn't. First I tried the Target at nearby Tempe Marketplace. No luck. Then I went to WalMart. Strike two. Eventually I had to drive quite ways to a Target where I finally found some. By the time I did all this chasing and got back to setting up the game it was after ten. I had expected to be set up and back at the hotel early but oh well. I did get the map laid out, my Russians set up and the German units neatly placed on the OOB card, ready for PAvE to set up first thing the next day.

All that trouble the night before was worth it though because we had a good game. The first day the Germans pushed hard in the north and did better than historically. They managed to take Leningrad in 1941 but fortunately for me couldn't reach Moscow. The next day when we resumed our game PAvE tried to push on to Moscow from Leningrad. I've seen that tried before and it never works - the terrain is just too difficult going that way. PAvE conceded the game at the end of our second day of play. We had just finished 1942 but the Germans had not made enough progress towards either Moscow or Stalingrad and the Russian reinforcements were starting to pour in. It was a hard fought game though. And it's always fun to play the mega version, and cons are a good place for it because there is plenty of room. It always draws a lot of attention from other wargamers too because of the huge map and the inch square, thick plastic pieces.

Next was a game of Crusade and Revolution with my friend Jose Ruiz. He's better known as Stuka Joe, with a popular wargame channel on YouTube. He is very interested in the Spanish Civil War so we had arranged at last year's expo to play it this year. It was my first time playing and I really liked the game. It uses the Paths of Glory system, which is well known and highly regarded but which I have never played. After two days of long, hard wargaming my Nationalists came out with a win over the Republicans.

The next day I got out my playtest kit for Fallujah Fury, the game that I designed on the Battle of Fallujah. I set up in the foyer where there was a lot of traffic and people passing by would be likely to see it. I was hoping to generate interest in the game and even find some volunteers to playtest it. Since a lot of people from game companies attend the con, the ultimate would be to find someone that would be interested in publishing it.

I played my first game with Stuka Joe. He liked it and even interviewed me and posted the video on his channel. It was my fifteen minutes of fame as a wargame designer. Well, seven minutes and fourteen seconds, but who's counting?

I spent the next several days showing my game to anyone who was interested. I got some really good suggestions from Brian Train, a very experienced wargame designer. It was a conversation with him at CSWE the year before that had given me the idea for the design and insprired me to take on the project in the first place. I played a full game or two and did a lot of demos of the game. I did have one person who was starting a new wargame company come by and express interest in publishing it. He said that he really liked it, but that I should make it a CDG. Ah, no. That's basically saying he really liked it but wanted me to completely change it. Part of the reason I had done the design in the first place was that I wanted to try applying the Turning Point Stalingrad system, one of my favorites, to a modern urban battle. So that didn't seem like my path to publication.

Between doing demos of my game, I spent a lot of time wandering around and checking out other games. That's a lot of the fun of attending CSWE. One group had linked three different Operational Combat System games together to form the entire eastern front. OCS is a complex system and most games in the series are monsters with many maps and thousands of counters. Putting three together was truly amazing. I doubt if the guys doing it got to play at all. I think it took them most of the week just to set it up and then take it down again. It was an impressive sight though.

There were lots of other interesting games to see. I took note of Caesar: Rome vs Gaul. It's a game that Mark Simonitch has been working on for a few years using the same system as Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. That's one of my all time favorite games so I am anxious to see this one come out. This time the artwork was looking pretty good so I think it is getting close. I expect it to show up on the GMT P500 list one of these days.

There were lots of other games in playtest. One that I am very interested in is Parcel o' Rogues. It's by Red Sash Games, a very small publisher in Victoria, BC. Very small means it's one guy, Ian Weir, who does it as a sideline from his house. It's a political game on the battle leading up to Act of Union in 1707, which brought England and Scotland together under one government. It reminds me of Twilight Struggle, although quite a bit more complex. Since one of my wargaming buddies in Boise is a history professor who specializes in that period of history, I've been following the game with a lot of interest. At the con it looked like it was pretty close and Ian said he thought it would be out within a year.

I also saw a playtest of For Motherland! The Russian Front 1941-1945, the new streamlined version of War For The Motherland that will be published by Compass Games. I'm a sucker for any east front game so I'll be anxious to see this one when it comes out.

As always I was busy at the flea market tables. I sold a few old games of mine and bought many more new ones. I also spent a lot of time in the vendor room and got even more new games. I saved lots of money taking advantage of the convention discount that most publishers were offering. As usual, my car was much more heavily loaded driving home than it had been on the way out.

The last day of the con I played a game with Dan Carey, a friend from Seattle. We have made it a somewhat of a tradition to play each other on the last day of consimworld, when most people have packed up and left and the gaming hall is mainly empty. This year we played Breakout Normandy, a classic game and a favorite of mine. It was a hard fought battle but I managed a win as the Allies. That was revenge for Dan beating me the year before at Ukraine '43. Dan did have some bad luck though which hurt him. I always bring lots of dice so people can pick and choose and not blame the dice but Dan tried to tough it out when the purple dice he chose did not do well by him. By the end of the game though he was convinced that the purple dice were against him and had come up with all sorts of nasty names for them. He warned me that he better not see me with them at BottosCon in the fall.

I did see one discouraging thing on the last day. At the table next to us there was a game of...Root. Now although I consider myself a hard core wargamer, I realize that there are other types of games. I understand that after many days of fighting tough battles, a lighter game might be a welcome break. I'm used to seeing Battlestar Galactica. It's a Saturday night staple at the end of every GMT weekend that I have ever been to. I'm used to seeing a game of Firefly late in the evening after several days of hard wargaming at Consimworld Expo. But Root? Yeah, it's supposed to be a great game. It's supposed to have clever mechanics and a lot of strategy. Some of my friends have tried to convince me that it's really a wargame, but I'm sorry. I'm not buying it. Wargames don't have cute cartoon animals that live in the forest. They have panzers and stukas. So a game of Root at CSWE, even on the last day, had me wondering what the world was coming to. I have a picture of the guys playing, some of whom I know well. Maybe I can use it in the future as blackmail.

But there was exciting news on the last day as well. John Kranz, who organizes Consimworld Expo, came by to say hello. Usually he is very busy all through the con with details of organization, but on the last day when it's mostly over he can finally relax. Since he also works for Compass Games now, I asked him if he wanted to see my Fallujah game. Turns out that he was very interested in it and in follow up email conversations we ended up with an agreement for it to be published by Compass. So I am now (or will be) a published wargame designer!

That made me pretty happy the next day as I drove all the way home in a single long day. I took a slightly different route through part of Nevada, mainly because I was cocky and thought I knew the way and missed a turn. But because of that I got a really spectacular view of Wheeler Peak, which I had climbed the year before on my way home from Consimworld Expo.