Having started a new job, I don’t have a lot of vacation saved up yet, so I worked most of Friday and didn’t get to Fall In until dinnertime, so I missed a whole day of gaming. When I got there, Kurt was running his battle of Chickamauga game, using A Union So Tested. After saying hello to everyone, I went to the hotel room to do some work for my consulting job. I tried to hit the sack early to get ready of a day of gaming on Saturday.
Steve also ran the battle of Marengo, using Shako II. Everyone seemed to be having a good time in this game, and the table looked quite good.
While I was doing some shopping for toys in the vendor area, Noah and Greg ran another of their Dr. Who extravaganzas for 20 or so players on two tables. The game went long, because everyone was having fun and didn’t want to quit.
Eric ran his Saipan counterattack game. We played this last week at HAWKs night, and I was the Japanese tanks. It’s a fun scenario.
Saturday afternoon I ran what was supposed to be a six-player Napoleonic game: the Battle of La Rothiere, 1814. Nine people showed up for the game, and by subdividing a couple of commands, I was able to accommodate all of them! This is from the scenario book that Dave Wood and I have been writing. The French are trying to hold three towns until nightfall, when they will execute an orderly withdraw in the face of superior allied forces. The allies (Russians and Austrians) are trying to take all three towns to disrupt the French withdrawal.
The battle was a narrow allied victory. Neither side had uncontested possession of all three towns, so the allies won more victory points based on destroyed French battalions.
We had several folks in the game who had never played the rules before, yet they picked them up quickly and seemed to have a good time.
Duncan ran a very nice War of 1812 game. One of the folks who showed up at the table was the author of an book on this battle.
Saturday night I sat in the hotel bar with Mark Ryan and a couple of other folks in the business. Howard Whitehouse gave us demonstration of his Battle Troll rules, for Norse saga type games, which I enjoyed a great deal. Plus we spanked Mark and Howard! By the time I got to bed, it was after 0100, and I was beat. Sunday morning, I wasn’t in the mood for deep thought, so I wandered around the vendor room and the flea market in a daze.
I did play in Duncan’s Charted Seas WWII naval game against Dave Sunday morning. Charted Seas is Duncan’s mashup of Uncharted Seas, Axis and Allies miniatures, and X Wing Fighter. It really works well. The X Wing (and other airplane game) activation mechanism addresses the biggest drawback of Uncharted Seas. This was quite fun. I sunk half of Dave’s convoy, which made the game a draw.
While I was playing Charted Seas, Eric has run his traditional Sunday morning Blood and Swash fantasy game. Eric takes all comers and runs a battle that spans the table you see above and also an underground labyrinth with bits from Dwarven Forge. Eric’s layout gets better looking each year.
It was a thin convention for HAWKs. Fall In is usually lighter for us, but this year it seemed like life really got in the way of the hobby. A lot of folks who would stay all weekend just came up for Saturday and the HAWKs room was half empty.
I found many of the things I wanted at the convention vendor hall and had time to try a set of rules that I’ve been wanting to try. For me it was a good, although fast, convention. I’m looking forward to Cold Wars.