From: "Fogel, Christopher" Subject: [consim-l] ConQuest 2001 AAR ConQuest 2001 - Aug. 31--Sept. 3, 2001 - Hyatt Rickey's, Palo Alto, California I arrived on Friday at around 4:30 pm in order to get in on the 5:00 Titan game. Got in on a 5-person game that wrapped up at 2:30 am(!) when I eventually conceded to the only remaining player. I opted for an early Titan stack comprised mainly of Warlocks, so I wasn't able to recruit anything into it, and thus with each passing round my Titan stack became comparably weaker to the other stacks. I actively hunted the third remaining player and managed to knock him out with my Titan stack, but in doing so I was reduced to only my Titan. Not good. I could have held on for another 30 mins in the hope of doing some tower-hoping and regaining some Warlocks, but it was 2:30 already and in all likelihood I would have been pounced on and crushed in the end. On Saturday I got in on a couple of games of Medieval Merchant which Dave Kohr ran. This was a pretty neat game--a beer n pretzels game of opening trade routes and developing cities for revenue. Dave mentioned that it had originally been designed as an airplane/airport game and I can see why. A fun game... we played w/six players each time. Winner was the person with the most victory points and I'm still not quite sure which is the best way to go about getting them. It's a real delicate balance and of course what you plan on doing is always affected by the other players' actions. With 5 other players your plans get tossed out the window quite often! I highly recommend this game if you desire light fare that runs about 1hr, 15mins. I grabbed a late lunch and went to the Miniatures Room which was housed in the adjacent Elks Lodge. Talk about a sweet setup! Full bar w/big screen tv and huge miniatures tables! Awesome. I played a Stalingrad scenario using the Screaming GI's II 25mm rules and run by The South Bay Gamers. The setup was N-I-C-E!!! The level of detail was incredible. Blocks and blocks of burned-out houses and a nice mock-up of the Red October Factory at one end. About 36 players (yikes!) and we each got our own squad. I started agressively with a mad dash as Axis across the main street and was prompty cut down/forced to retreat. The Game Master took pity on me and gave me some sort or armored vehicle which I started rolling down the main street to attack the hordes of Russians (supported with a tank) charging our positions. Like bees to honey, my vehicle was swarmed by Ruskies, but a nearby German machine-gunner and flame-thrower made quick work of the first assult. A second assault ultimately knocked out my crew with a grenade tossed inside. It was fun game, but I had some problems with the Screaming GI's "spotting" and "damage" rules. You needed to roll to spot the enemy before you could even roll a "to hit" die, and spotting was just too hard. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% most of the time. I never got a chance to shoot at anyone as I never managed to spot anyone. And when you DID manage to shoot someone, you rolled on a kooky damage table and got results like "earlobe shot off", "right arm shattered" etc. But, we all had fun which is priority #1. Thanks to the South Bay Gamers for the awesome, time-consuming setup on this one! There was another Mechwar miniature table that looked incredibly detailed too--city blocks complete with detailed buildings and parks. Flintlocks and Tomahawks looked pretty nice. The previous day there was a nice African set up. The ever-present Warhammer tables were relegated to the back room this year. Saturday also featured the flea market which was a zoo as always. Very popular and VERY crowded. I didn't see anything that caught my eye (I wasn't looking for anything in particular), but there was one older gentleman who had a bunch a very old (and odd) looking SPI stuff. Tactics I and I believe Stalingrad in large, flat, plain white boxes with a thin red line across them. I believe I overheard him saying he was a playtester. He had a lot of these games (I don't remember the other titles offhand) and they looked pretty old and unique. I've never games in boxes like that before--about 1 1/2' X 2' and about 1 1/2" thick. I don't know how much he was asking. You also had the odd assortment of miniatures/sf books and a lot of computer games. Not much really interesting except for that one vendor. Sunday was the auction. It started off pretty lame with a lot of Pokeman merchandise, Dragon Magazines and various RPG systems. Nobody was interested and there were no bids. Most of this stuff had reserve prices that were pretty ridiculous. Eventually we hit games... I bid on and won a copy of Tank Commander's Player Guide w/a deck, Guderian's Blitzkrieg (OCS by The Gamers-first ed), a copy of Tomorrow the World by 3W for novelty's sake, and AH's Air Assault on Crete. I think I paid $4, 5, 6 and 11 respectively. I left right after that because I didn't want to get tempted. I didn't see anything of rarity or of special interest on the setup tables anyway, but maybe somebody who stuck around could correct me. Played a few other pickup games, like Formula De and Settlers of Catan. The new location of the convention was pretty nice. Lots of room for boardgames. You had your typicall "all-weekend" monster games set up. Chris Farrell had Guderian's Blitzkrieg II (OCS) setup and running all weekend. I noticed This Hallowed Ground. Someone else brought his own giant map of Western Europe--I would guess it was his own game design. A couple scenarios of Totaler Krieg! were running as well. A impressivle LARGE showing for the Victory in the Pacific tournament! It seemed like there were always several games going on at any one time. Fairly large and nice-looking B-17 group. Quite a few Up Front players too. I met some nice people and actually got in contact with some gamers in my immediate area. Always nice to find new FTF opponents. A great weekend of gaming that was well-organized and in a very nice setting. Thank you very much to all involved in organizing this event!