MillenniumCon 2024 Report

2024-11-03 Millennium-Con / Conventions /

M-Con had to move to The Mayborn center in Temple after the previous venue in Austin demanded quadruple the rates. It was a nice place, easy parking, more room, MUCH better room acoustics, on-site concessions that were reasonably priced, and only an hour's drive away.

Adaptation of - Midway (Avalon Hill, 1964)

This one took the Game of the Con award last year and I can see why. Fun, unique, strategic, tactical, a good historical scenario, simple rules with great depth, and a slick presentation. It's based on an old AH hex'n'counter game We divided into two teams of three, one American, one Japanese. Each team had a Fleet Admiral in charge of task force composition and movement as well as searching for enemy ships, an Air Boss in charge of managing the planes and managing sorties which was a lot of work and careful calculation, and a Task Force Commander that handled GM communication and battleboard combat.

I sat in the Admiral chair for the IJN, so I'd move TF2 comprising two carriers one battleship and two cruiser into zone A7G and search in sectors H2, H3, and I2. Then our Air Boss would divide fighters between CAP if we were spotted and sorties if we spotted the enemy, and torpedo and dive bombers between various targets if had different compositions of spotted ships. Finally the Task Force Commander would then setup our ships or planes on the board in the middle, working out the optimal attack paths or AA coverage and step through resolution.

We ran two fleets and managed to go 4 turns with no contact before we spotted a US fleet and did a minimal amount of damage to the Yorktown. One of our Task Forces was spotted repeatedly about every other turn and the Akagi and Kaga both sank. However our other Task Force went completely unnoticed until it was bombing and shelling Midway. We had to call the game due to time but we'd bombed the island into craters and the landing fleet was en route. We technically lost in VP at that point in time but had we stepped through 2 or 3 more turns it would have been nigh impossible for the American forces to stop us. They took little damage, dealt quite a bit, but not nearly enough. Insufficient daring.

A conversation we had more than a few times was that there was no point in searching and chasing their fleet away from Midway, so we stayed on a mostly direct path to Midway with a few jinks and weaves to throw off spotters and meet up with reinforcements.

Alan ran a great game, he's got this one dialed in and running smooth. He's on my short list of GM's for whom I'll play anything they run.

Ambush at New Kara - Heavy Gear Blitz 3.1 (Dream Pod 9, 2021)

I decided I needed to step up and start running games. I'm young-ish for the con's demographics, and 'be the con you want to play' and all. Heavy Gear with my terrain projects was the nicest game I could run without any last minute mad scrambles.

In the first year of the Colonial Expeditionary Force's invasion of Terra Nova, Southern Republican Army forces lay an ambush for a CEF marauder patrol in a shanty town outside the badlands city-state of New Kara. Players will take on the role of squad level commanders within shared platoons, one side controlling the hovertanks and vat-grown soldiers of the CEF, the other the infantry and 4 meter tall bipedal mech suits of the SRA.

I had three players sign up, two no-shows (there were a lot of people that didn't make the con this year, largely because of an unfortunate overlap with Halloween), but then a walk up sat down as we started deployment. So I ran the two of them through it. They had the general flow and mechanics down by turn 3, and I was mostly answering situational questions, making snap calls on LoS/cover there on out.

The table setup was the SRA defending 8 field guns firing on a convoy offboard and virtually no other anti-armor weapons. The field guns could be called down as Fire Missions on the local hovertanks, but then wouldn't score. It worked out in balance in play testing.

The CEF did something unexpected and dumped all the GREL early and the HPCs left the board, while the hovertanks stayed tight to them providing direct fire support. A careful advance finishing off SRA units one-by-one. The SRA player was playing 'cagey' by their own description, refusing battle and hunching down, not using the field guns at all. It came down to the CEF having to wipe all the guns on turn 5, and if a single one survived it would go to the SRA. The Southies were nearly tabled, a sixth turn would have seem them wiped out entirely. The CEF were largely unscathed.

The last decisive moment was a call I made that the last Raven (I used Black Talons as stand in mercenaries) could in fact use his jetpack to reach the top of the monorail pylon but could not stand there, but could hang on because it had a one-handed weapon and fire it at the last field gun with a -1D6 penalty for magnetic interference. A little GM fiat, but that's the beauty of having a GM.

They seemed to have fun, I think it went well, and I gave out some North plastic sprues I had left over for playing.

I had a good number of people stopping by to ask about the game or take pictures and couple that sat and chatted about Heavy Gear. In particular was a friend of a friend that is now my friend and local so that's cool, and the owner of Conflict Horizon who talked about it as an inspiration for his own game.

Notes for Next Year's HGB scenario

I need to improve the play aids, they were not as clear as I'd hoped they'd be. Probably need to go full color photos of the actual models with the unit cards and make better use of their markings. I'll see if I can get together the rest of my 4Ground buildings and an extra mat to run an urban scenario next time. Two people I expected to sign up for the game wound up unable to attend the whole con, but I'm also being recognized as a regular attendee so hopefully people see me as less of a wild gamble to sign up with.

Earth VS The Invaders (2024?)

I make it a point to sign up for something that's overtly a playtest with a designer of the game, in this case Earth vs the Invaders: Atomic Age Asymmetric Scifi Wargaming. I think I give good feedback, and I want to support people making their own games and importantly putting in the effort to actually test them (I can think of too many that just don't bother). 50s monster movie themed with giant insects and flying saucers destroying a tiny town while the local police and hillbillies try to fend them off while the national guard rallies.

We had four players, myself and a guy I know named Andy took the humans. We fought off some giant ants, and then invested heavily in jeeps with MGs and finally in motorized flamethrower units. Felt it fit the aesthetic well, the cheap surplus stuff you can rent for your film. It also helped that mobility was quickly obviously extremely important.

The USP was requisition based on destroyed buildings, to give the invaders something to do other than just clown on the locals and it played in that respect pretty well. The combat resolution worked out to a lot of rolls or 5+ or 6+, and then ample saves for the defenders. That's the biggest change I think this one needs, to shift the rolls towards doing more, fewer feel bad 'nothing happens' rolls. Also there were some clearly superior choices on the reinforcement lists and we didn't give most of the roster a second glance.

But, you know, good bones. Curious to see where this one goes.

Retreat From Lepanto 1571 - Galleys, Guns and Glory!, 2015)

16th century Mediterranean ships, though for our game ever ship was using oars. The models are these simple wooden forms from the publisher Skull'n'Crown but they look really good. Assembly and painting instructions give a better sense of the models than the final pics do.

We had Christians vs Turks in a rather straight foward brawl with special objective to stop one specific heavy vessel from leaving and if possible board and capture it. The game went pretty fast, ended in about an hour 45 complete with instructions.

The lighter ships on the outside of the formation did most of the maneuvering. I had the heavies and it was up the middle fast as you can. The game was simpler than I was expecting, a little too quick and easy actually. I was unfamiliar with it, but it's one of the design remits so hard to criticize it for doing what it set out to do. Still, I was hoping for something more like Ram Speed with mechanics for compound boarding, spreading fire, snapped paddles and the like.

Operation Battleaxe Day 2 - Rommel (Sam Mustafa, 2017)

The same man that ran the Midway game stepped in as relief GM for this one and did a fantastic job despite his repeated claims to be half-assing it and worn out from two other games he ran that day. It was originally supposed to be European theatre, but we wound up in the desert instead. 12x18 grid for Rommel, a division level game I'd been looking forward to playing for quite a while. Most of the players were completely new with only two that had ever played before.

I took the 15th Panzer division and along with my Italian friends we successfully thwarted the British. We called the game after 3 hours as Alan was damned near ready to collapse and it was looking increasingly unlikely the Brits could take enough control points to win. There were a good mix of daring ploys and bumbling mistakes as everyone came to grips with the rules, but we mostly had it by the halfway point, only asking for clarification with certain operation and even circumstances. Mustafa impresses as always.

LEGO Moby Dick (???)

I had originally signed up for a Force-on-Force game, but the GM still hadn't shown up by the start time so I grabbed a seat at a last minute addition (signup sheet was in sharpie) of one that caught my eye last year; LEGO Moby Dick. It's a cool center piece, a berr'n'pretzels affair of careening around in a dingy, battling sharks and time traveling Green Peace protesters to land the great white whale. Also reminds me of Steve Jackson's pirate game he used to run.

Games I Didn't Play

Someone was running Asymmetric Warfare (awful name) which is one of the two competing different 3rd editions of Spectre. They were going to do G. I. Joe assaulting Cobra Island, but had to cancel at the last minute.

At the same time as my Heavy Gear game, there was a Horizon Wars 2nd edition game going on I would have loved to try out. That's a ruleset that just hasn't seemed to click for me, and I feel like a lot of it is in the force org and preparation steps more than in the gameplay, but also the second edition changed a lot of mechanics.

Mike Gomez's perennial classic CIRCUS MAXIMUS sold out in the first 30 minutes of con registration and I need to make a point to play because it looks grand, everyone has stories about it, and he seems like an amazing host.

I spotted someone laying out a Dropzone paper table set with OGRE miniatures, and really well painted ones as well, and was immediately intrigued. Turns out he was using One Page Rules and running something largely of his own making instead of anything I'm particularly familiar with. I've got a note to talk to anyone that played or had a chance to observer that one because I'm curious to hear how it played out.

There were also many, many AWI and ACW games full of detailed terrain and fully painted stacks of boxes of button accounted infantry that I keep meaning to sign up for and it just never seems to work out in the scheduling.

Vendors & Flea Market

Even for a gaming forward con like Millennium, there's the vendor room to patronize. Picked up some light dropships for my Starship Troopers project from Talon's CAV line and a couple packs of k-rails that were super cheap, and filled a quart bag with as many wooden bases as I could make fit for $5 because why not?

The flea market I was sniped on a 2nd edition unpunched box of Renegade Legion Centurion, but I talked a gentleman into selling me Et Sans Resultat 3rd edition and both campaign books for $20 so I'm counting that as a good market day. I need to talk more about that game in particular, and soon.

Conflict Horizon

I dropped by the booth of the same gentleman that chatted with me while I was running my HGB game. I'd actually seen his models on the net before but didn't put the name together til I saw them in person. I took the opportunity to snap some comparison pics, shared travails and triumphs of 3D printing with him, and wound up buying a couple bags of mechs. He had a lot of models that aren't for sale on his site yet, so I'll have to get those pics up when I can, but they had the Appleseed style tiny forehands that I like. I think I can use them in my SST project as fire support light mechs, or maybe just as general 15mm pieces

Most of the models are about Fire Support gear sized, with more strike sized ones in the works.

Reflection & Planning

Overall a wonderful time. The sole bad experience I had was during the final hour of the con when then flea market opened. There were these two cowards that chose to wear their fascist shirts and hats to it. I didn't recognize either of them, so I don't know if they only came to the flea market or they spent the whole con in the Bolt Action tournament or something.

I feel shitty about not confronting them, despite them leaving quickly. I'm confrontation averse in general, but on the other hand those kind of overt assholes need to be made to feel as unwelcome as they make others feel, and on the gripping hand with the election mere days away this feels like maybe it would be an isolated incident. If they'd done it day 1. If they were doing more than just wearing the shirts. If I wasn't sat down playing a game on the other side of the lobby. If we were in Austin. if, if, if...

I don't want to concede this space, miniature wargaming. But if I'm not driving them out, it's the skinhead bar problem. It feels overwhelming.

Breath... Hold... Release...

I think I am more and more a grid/hex/zones wargamer. The benefit of a 'clean board' for tape measure and laser pointer fiddliness rarely ever actually pays off (like 1 in 20 boards are that pretty) and the benefit to play speed and taking all the 'skill' out of trying to hide models in cover at precise distances and instead making people have to be good at the rules and strategy and tactics is just far more fun and interesting to me.
I need to get a good hexed space mat ASAP.

Next year I'm running more games, at least two, three preferably. I'm amazed how quickly my 10mm Starship Troopers game came together, I've got Dropzone and Dropfleet I could easily run with a little more work, and I'm eyeing the ESR3 books, my copy of Rommel, and thinking thoughts about Heavy Gear in a much grander scale.