At Historicon 2019, the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielsers hosted another Armies for Kids game. This year’s GM was Chris Johnson.
I think this is the eighth or ninth year we have done this. We paint six sets of armies, one for each “side.” We package those along with rules (Milk and Cookies Rules from Big Battles for Little Hands), rulers, dice, paper terrain, and other goodies. The game is a participation game for kids under ten years old. When the game is over, each of the kids gets to take home a full set of painted figures and all the accessories.
The idea is that hopefully these kids go home and start playing games with their buddies. The kids at the convention come with their parents, so in many ways we are preaching to the converted; however, we hope that these kids go home and introduce their little buddies to wargaming.
We only had five kids this year, but we were prepared for six. Do these kids look happy to you? A couple of recent years we’ve had trouble getting enough kids for this project. Maybe we’ll need to put it away for a while.