From: "Ted Kim (Random Dude)" Subject: LA GATEWAY 16 con The Strategicon GATEWAY 16 convention was held over Labor Day weekend (30 Aug to 2 Sep 96) at the Wyndham Los Angeles Airport hotel. Overall, it was great time. I did not get enough sleep. I don't know about overall attendance. I do know I got hotel parking every day (instead of the overflow lot), which is a bit unusual. With the new LA cons coming (Strategicon's TACTICS 1996 miniatures con and Decision's wargame FOX CON 1), it will be interesting to see what happens to Strategicon's main three cons (ORCCON, GAMEX, GATEWAY). Wargaming is only a small part of the overall convention, but there was enough wargaming to make it interesting. However, much of the action (at least for me) was not in the scheduled tournaments, but in open gaming. They moved open gaming (yet again). The new location is divided into two rooms, but is on the main floor. I kind of liked it. Since much of the wargaming was concentrated in one section, it seemed more like a cozy wargame hangout. I dutifully setup the CONSIM sign-in and put out the flyers. The flyer advertised the CONSIM meeting, the CONSIM email list, Web-Grognards and the Virtual Wargame HQ. About a half-dozen showed up at the CONSIM meeting. We spoke for a short time and adjourned to open gaming where the KRIEG-fest was going on. All 50 or so flyers were snatched up. Hopefully it will fuel more LA participation in wargaming on the Internet. Many of the usual suspects were around including Chris Cummins and Joe Miranda. Perry Andrus put in an appearance also. Those that actually put there name down on the CONSIM sign-in were: Erik Jessen ejessen@ix.netcom.com Ted Kim tek@ficus.cs.ucla.edu Al Carpenter lore@worldnet.att.net Richard Hazlett rhazlett@pomona.claremont.edu Hank Meyer hcmeyer@uci.edu Danny Holte dannyla@earthlink.net Ed Flior beflior@cinenet.net Jon Gingerich jcg@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com John Setear setear@law.ucla.edu Dennis Clark jmuhly@pacificbell.net Chris White cwhite@chem.ucsd.edu Jim Winsor jwinsor@earthlink.net Neal Sofge neals@aol.com Joshua Kaufman jkauf@mpb.com On Friday, attendance was pretty light. Danny and I played a few turns of KRIEG to get me up to speed on the rules. Alan Emrich (KRIEG developer) put in a brief appearance. Many others came by to admire Danny's copy of the game. Danny used Joe Youst's method for vertical gaming. The board was mounted on foam-core poster board with acetate on top. The countersheets were wrapped with clear packing tape and then cut out with an Exacto knife. The counters are stuck to the board by small amounts of artist putty. This system has advantages over magnets. It's light-weight and portable. The counters can be easily inverted and stacked very high in any orientation. (Danny waved the map upside down with a stack 15 counters high with no problem.) On Saturday, Hank was showing off stuff for the new edition of DESERT FOX/TRAIL OF THE FOX, which he is developing. I held the CONSIM meeting at which Hank handed out MRE accessory packs. Then, I got into a game of KRIEG. I like the game. It plays pretty fast and it's fun. KRIEG concentrates on the ground game. The air and naval is abstracted with a few counters each. The political, economics, production and strategic warfare aspects are all abstracted in the cards. But amazingly enough, you get a lot of mileage from those abstractions. Though I could quibble with some details, overall things seem to work really well. The heavy abstraction of air and naval means that a Pacific version would have to be reworked significantly. Anyway, Richard Hazlett's Axis collapsed my Soviet empire by the end of 1941, despite Erik Jessen's Western Allies attempts to distract him. Al Carpenter, Danny Holte and Hank Meyer were in another KRIEG game, where the Balkans got carved up every which way and the Germans took London. I am not sure what happened in the other KRIEG-FEST games. Some TOTALER-KRIEG games were also play(test)ed. Both Alan Emrich and Steve Kosakowski (KRIEG designer) were on hand to answer questions and give strategy advice. Kos is really quite a nice, friendly, laid-back guy and very approachable. On Sunday, I got to the con after church. Unfortunately, I was too late to get in on another KRIEG game, so I ended up playing "family" games! Danny, his friend (forgot his name), Chris White and I, played EL GRANDE (one of those excellent German games). The game is an abstract strategy game ostensibly about controlling 16th century Spain. You recruit troops and then place them on the board to score VPs in territories. The twist is that a different set of one-time special powers is available each turn, and you bid for turn order from a hand of numbered cards. Danny won in a close game. Then, we tried MANHATTAN (Mayfair edition). This is a game about scoring VPs based on how many buildings you control, how many cities you control and who has the tallest building. You control or build buildings by stacking building sections according to card position so that you have at least half of the levels in a building. Danny won again. Chris White's wife was also on hand for these games, so we were on our best behavior. Though, she declined to play at the time, she admitted that she would be willing to play EL GRANDE and MANHATTAN in the future. Somehow, Alan then convinced Danny, his friend and I to play (SPI/TSR) SPIES! with him and Kos. Apparently, Alan is doing a new edition. Anyway, after a few turns we discussed some ideas about improving the game. The next game was (AH) KREMLIN. Danny, Danny's friend, John Spaulding, John's friend, Ted Carlson and me fought for control of the Soviet empire. Danny made it three victories in a row, after fending off a purge attempt, spy trials, two assassination attempts and infirm health to make the third wave. Afterwards, I talked to Ted Carlson about his (PacRim) CHOSIN design and the history of the battle. Ted also makes very nice wood die-rolling towers. We joked about how he makes much more money from the towers than from designing games. Monday was an all auction day. Early on I registered my auction lots. Later, I sat through the whole auction (about 6 hours?). Danny was there too. John Setear also came by for a few hours. This time, they auctioned more than 600 lots, which is almost twice the number of last con. Prices were lower than last con and there were some incredible deals. Plenty of stuff went for $1 to $5. There were also some big SPI collectibles like ATLANTIC WALL, HIGHWAY TO THE REICH, WAR IN THE EAST, etc. Surprisingly, old role-play stuff was also doing well. I did well, myself, and cleared about $90. Danny bought a BIG pile of stuff. The main auctioneers were Nick, Hawkeye and Alfonso. (Alan only appeared for a short period.) They did their usual colorful commentary and ended the auction with a (AH) BISMARCK game which, of course, provoked the usual "Sink the Bismarck" song. In the dealer's room, GMT was noticeably absent. I am not sure why Gene could not make it. There were some particularly good deals at a place, which looked like they were going out of business. Of course, Weekend Warrior and John Gafni were also setup in their usual spots. Tony Lee returned to his LA to represent Imperium games at the con with their new edition of Traveller. Parts of WIF 6th edition were also available. The new map has metal-colored mountains. The flea market was okay on Saturday, but was dead on Sunday. Between dealers, flea market and auction, I picked up several WWII games and a few books, including a copy of the book CAMPAIGNS OF NAPOLEON by Chandler. I overspent my budget. Oh well, time to start saving for the next one. -ted Ted Kim Email: tek@ficus.cs.ucla.edu UCLA Computer Science Dept. WWW: http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/tek 3564F Boelter Hall Phone: (310) 825-7307 Los Angeles, CA 90095 FAX: (310) 825-2273 From: Danny Holte Subject: Re: PACIFICON At 05:16 PM 9/7/96 -0700, you wrote: >I arrived here for the flea market only. Last year I went to the gaming >portion of this convention and found that there was very little to do. >Maybe next year I'll try to play again. At the L.A. Con on the same weekend, I would guess that there may have been as much boardgaming as CCG playing. Of course, this includes board games of all sorts; Train games, European strategy stuff, 3 tables of KRIEG!, and the usual sprinkling of GMT and The Gamers games here and there. There was a strange lack of block games, but a lot of the same guys who normally play them were there - they were just playing other games this time. We had a great game of ***** ('guess I can't mention that game twice in a post...) on Saturday, and for some strange reason I couldn't lose on Sunday, whether it was RISE OF THE LUFTWAFFE, MANHATTAN, EL GRANDE, or KREMLIN. That was probably the day I should've been playing poker... There were two large rooms downstairs for board play, with the tournaments being run upstairs. The ASL and CIV tourneys were held in a separate areas of their own. So, if this was compared to the one large room that handled the CCG games & tournaments, I would guess that boardgaming ruled the roost. I picked-up one of Ted Carlson's (designer, CHOSIN) excellent dice boxes and some great stuff at the auction. I finally replaced my long lost copy of HIGHWAY TO THE REICH! (One of my favorite battles to game) -Danny