Subject: COnquest 1 From: SCOMAR@ix.netcom.com Well, ConQuest has come and gone this past Labor Day and since I've yet to see any posts about it I thought I'd start one myself. In it's 2nd year, (replacing the now defunct Pacificon), ConQuest is greatly improved over last year. Held at the Clarion Hotel just south of SFO Airport, there was a wide variety of gaming to satisfy just about any diversion one could come up with. Being a miniatures fanatic, I have to say that Dave Partak (miniatures coordinator) put together an excellent selection of miniature games over the 4 days. I never noticed any problems with tables or scheduling conflicts and I know this was due to all his efforts over the past few months. THANKS DAVE! Even with the air-conditioning not working in the miniatures room on one of the hottest days of the year, everyone was in good spirits and enjoying themselves. Quite a few neat miniature games going on during the day. Some of the coolest were Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Assault on Hoth, Pirates!, Chicago Breakdown (KegWars - 20's gangland fighting in HO scale), Mein Panzer demos and of course Circus Maximus (from Friday night). I played Aerodrome (Stan Kubiak) on saturday morning and our table was continually surrounded with onlookers watching the small WWI biplanes manuever around the table. This is a very fun game to play, visually pleasing and entertaining for spectators. I don't know how far Stan has travelled with his set-up, but if you ever get the chance to try Aerodrome, I'd highly recommend it. After, Aerodrome, we hit some boardgames - Cosmic Encounter and Avalon Hill's Starship Troopers (the new one) and Monster's Ravage America. All three are fun, simple and easy to learn - good, as none of us had played MRA and only I had played ST. There were also quite a lot of other boardgaming events going on and the room always seemed to be quite busy no matter when you looked up. There was Victory in the Pacific, Hannibal, Age of Renaissance, Axis and Allies, Diplomacy, (LOTS of Avalon Hill stuff going on!), Rail Baron, A selection of Cheapass games, Formula De', Settlers....the list was varied and much longer - and this was just Saturday! Got some great stuff at the Flea Market too: 1st edition Roborally for $10.00 (4 new robot miniatures!) Battle Cry (American Heritage) $20.00 (no missing pieces!) Some AH games to fill the gaps in my collection: Gunslinger, Advanced Civilization, Advanced 3rd Reich, Chancellorville and Midway. Back issues of the General I'm missing (only 2 to go and I'll be complete back to volume 15) After a few games more it was time to turn in...but there was Sunday still. 9:00 am. Man O' War. Great game. Played till 2PM. Then more naval miniatures as we hit Pirates!. I had a BLAST as I tied for highest points (kill the giant shark, sink a couple of ships - and a rowboat!, cause much destruction). We then checked out the Flea Market again and had some food. Then it was some Titan - The Arena, before another really cool miniature AH game conversion - Kingmaker. The guys at the Gauntlet in Modesto (who run the Circus Maximum game as well) did a great job in converting this to a miniatures game. The board was 8' square! A really great game to play or just watch. I left around 9pm as I was suffering from sleep deprivation! There had been just as much going on on Sunday as there had been on Saturday All in all, an EXCELLENT time was had by all in our group. One of the really cool things from the weekend: Seeing two guys playing a Star Wars CCG game at around 11pm n Saturday night. Not unusual you say? They EACH had over 500 cards in the Force pile. They were at a long table and the planet and site cards spread out about 10 feet. Unbelievable. I loved it. Scott Di Bartolo Did you go? Subject: ConQuest and review of TacOps From: granvold@futhark.Eng.Sun.COM (Tom Granvold) In article <35F75505.528C@ix.netcom.com>, wrote: >Well, ConQuest has come and gone this past Labor Day and since I've yet >to see any posts about it I thought I'd start one myself. In it's 2nd >year, (replacing the now defunct Pacificon), ConQuest is greatly >improved over last year. Scott, a good overview of Conquest. I also attended and will give on 2 cents about the convention. There were fewer people this year though still enough to have a good time. The number of dealers was down though which had the result of me spending less money than I did last year. The flee market was decent, with less mud (it was held outside) than they had last year. I'm always looking for spaceship minis, especially those that are out of production. All I found this year were are few Silent Death minis. I bought a few of these which will go style wise with a fleet I'm building. For my dice collection I picked up a set of the Star Trek dice game for $3 and two sets of Dicemaster for $1.50 each. Last I bought GDW's Imperium for $5 and FASA's Renegade Legion: Prefect for $10. I ran two events. One was the board game Victory: The Blocks at War. I ran this so that I would have a chance to actually play the game. While only three people showed up, we had a good time. The second was a spaceship race based on the new Full Thrust rules in the Fleet Book. Five people showed up and had a great time. One of these was William Char who is making and selling the miniatures from the old Superior Starfleet Wars line. He even gave out three of the smaller ships as prizes in the race. We had a great time with this race. My 12 year old daughter was there on Saturday only. She played Settlers of Catan and Formula De. She won all three games of Formula De and almost won at Settlers. She had a great time and wants to go other game conventions in the future. I played in a couple of Full Thrust scenerios, and had a great time. The mini's were well painted and the house rules about how a nebula effect a ship's weapons worked well. Firing into or though a nebula added 3" to the range. Also, the scenerios were connected, so that the result of one effected what forces were available in the next. These additions added interest to the game. Games of interest that I did not get a chance to try were the expansion to Settlers of Catan, Monsters Across America, some of the train games, Babylon 5 card game, some game about primitive life forms in the primodial goo, and Dirtside II. The escape from Hoth scenerio looked fantastic. I always like to try at least one new game at any convention. This time it was TacOps. This game was being demoed by Faultline Studios. Though they would not say what TV/movie show it is based on, since the license negotiations are still going on, it is obvious that it is Star Trek. The game looks to be less complicated that Star Fleet Battles and more so than Full Thrust. The game looks to be fun, though I wonder how replay value it will have. One possibility is to provide a large number of ships types that can be used. Another is to provide a lot of different types of scenerios besides just a straigh forward battle. The game components are nice. Each ship in the game get a metal control panel that is designed to sit on the edge of the table. Part of the panel lays flat on the table, and the rest is angled down a bit to hang off the edge of the table. All of the system and status markers are on magnets so that they stay in place on the panel. This works well, and look good. There is one control panel for each ship in the game, and it appears that each player is intended to play only one ship. I would guess that three ships for one player is the max. that is reasonable to handle. Movement and combat is simple. Movement it plotted and then all ships are moved at the same time. To plot a move you pick a speed, expressed in impulses or warps, and the number of degress to turn. To move the ship, first you turn it the specified amount then move according to your speed. Each impulse moves the ship around 2" while each warp was around 10". (These distances are from memory, and are probably off some.) A ship can move from 0 to 9 impulses or 0 to 9 warps. The only restrictions on movement is the amount of engery available and if the engines are damaged. One turn you can move at max. warp all the way across the table, and next only go impulse 1 and move 2". Not very realistic, but then Star Trek is realistic either. Combat involves the selection of weapons to fire. Each weapon has certain directions to fire in, layed out in multiples of 45 degrees, and a max. distance it can fire. Other restrictions to weapons fire are engery available, weapons damage, and for torpedos the number on board. A roll is made to see if the weapons hits, and then a roll is made for the amount of damage done. Once the amount of damage is found then the effect on the screens is calculated and if the screens don't stop it all the damage is applied to the ships' systems. The systems that are damaged are determined by the side that the ship is hit on. All of the systems are listed in a column on the ships control panel. Hits from the front start damaging systems from the top down. Hits from the rear go bottom up, from the right go from the middle up, and from the left go from the middle down. I am not clear how damage is applied to the systems, nor what the effect is, or how it can be repaired. In the game I played, my ship never got damaged, so it was not explained to me. We also assumed that there was enough engery to do anything we wanted, so engery allocation was not explained either. But it is clear that engery allocation, damage, and repair make up a good part of the game and are the most detailed part of the game. This could be a good game, especially if they cover the whole of Star Trek, i.e. the orginal series, the movies, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I hope that I get a chance to try it again, where all of the game is explained and used. Enjoy, Tom Granvold Subject: Re: ConQuest and review of TacOps From: del_grande@netvista.net (Don Del Grande) granvold@futhark.Eng.Sun.COM (Tom Granvold) wrote: > Scott, a good overview of Conquest. I also attended and will give >on 2 cents about the convention. I was there as well. The only "mistakes" were (a) once again, parking was a pain (I didn't dare move my car on Saturday or Sunday morning), and (b) the charity auction had too many lame items (if they wanted to make money for charity, they should have taken a 5% commission on each item sold, especially that $150 one.) As for gaming, the only game I played was B-17 (after taking no fewer than 122 hits, I ended up with the Bent Wing award). > I always like to try at least one new game at any convention. >This time it was TacOps. This game was being demoed by Faultline >Studios. Though they would not say what TV/movie show it is based >on, since the license negotiations are still going on, it is obvious >that it is Star Trek. The game looks to be less complicated that >Star Fleet Battles and more so than Full Thrust. I saw this too. I was confused, though, as to why they needed protractors and rulers if there was a hex grid on the table covers. (I assume the grid "just happened to be there".) > The game components are nice. Each ship in the game get a metal >control panel that is designed to sit on the edge of the table. Part >of the panel lays flat on the table, and the rest is angled down a bit >to hang off the edge of the table. That is the one big problem I saw with the game: if all you have is a circular table available, the control panel design won't work very well. Even with flat-edged tables, it looks like more potential problems than benefits. > This could be a good game, especially if they cover the whole >of Star Trek, i.e. the orginal series, the movies, Next Generation, >Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I think that requires five separate licenses (maybe just four, if the original series and the 1-6 movies are counted together - I noticed Star Fleet Battles included the "Enterprise A" but ADG said they had no license to make ships from the later series. ------------------------------------------------ Don Del Grande, del_grande@netvista.net Let's hope the Regency Plaza ("don't call it the Dunfey") added more parking in its renovations Subject: Re: ConQuest and review of TacOps From: majorh1@aol.com (MajorH1) <> The game demoed at ConQuest by Faultline Studios should not be confused with the TacOps contemporary wargame game system currently marketed by Avalon Hill and myself. Faultline Studios was using 'TacOps' as a working title for their new game when they made their arrangements for space and time and printed materials at the convention. At that time they were unaware that the title 'TacOps' had already been in continuous published use since 1994. Now that the convention is over, it is my understanding that Faultline will not continue to use 'TacOps' as the working title for their new game. I.L. Holdridge Designer of TacOps, TacOps Classic Edition, TacOps Classic Edition New Zealand, and TacOps Classic Edition USMC. Best regards, Major H majorh1@aol.com From: Linden Moore Subject: Re: Conquest James, Sorry you could not make Con-Quest.  Would have enjoyed meeting you.  I think the convention was the best I have been to for a couple of years. Convetion featured.  LARP's, RPG's, CCG's  and Miniatures in addition to board games. CCGers's seemed to be down this year and I notvcied miniatures spilling over to their area.  Board games featured a much greater variety of games then in the past. I played VITP on Saturday and Krieg on Sunday in scheduled tourney's.  On Friday and the wonderful pleasure of playing Ray Freeman in his creation Tigers in the Mist.  I highly recommend the game.  Late Saturday night I refereed a tought a couple gamers the old Jutland by Ah that one had picked up at Auction. Notable Consimmers that I saw were Chester Hendrix, Jeffrey Tibbetts of Just Plain Wargames, Dave Kohr, who had a Hannibal tourney going and Dave Wesner. Other tourney's I recall in the boardgame area were train games of a variety, settlers, cheapass games of a variety, civ, are of ren, bot oh boy it is late and my mind is foggy.  All I can say is Kevin O'Hare did a great job organizing the board games. Board game companies represented in the dealer room were Just Plain Wargames, Terran Games and Spearhead games.  Would love to see GMT, Decision, MIH and XTR make a showing at Conquest.  Those guys were at Celebrate History, IIRC.  I heard Bill Alderman is moving from No CAl so that may be why GMT was not representatives.  Good luck in Chicago Bill, I moved from Northern Illinois for a reason, Bill will discover that reason his first winter there. John Marcella (?) of Modesto had a wonderful blown up map of Kingmaker with miniature figures for the pieces I estimate the map size to be 15' by 15'.  The Central Valley Wargamers, North Bay Wargamers and the South Bay Wargamers were well representated at the convention in both the miniatures and board game area. Quite satisified with my limited haul from the flea market and auction. The new group seems to have their act together and I hope they keep this going.  Most of the parking problems that plagued last years convention were addressed. LM