The Huzzah Project Begins

Yesterday I registered to run some games at Huzzah, the upcoming wargame convention in Maine. Huzzah is my favorite convention. The game variety is excellent, the tables look amazing, and the people are generally fun and friendly.

I had originally planned to run Funny Little Wars (FLW) and Commands and Colors:Napoleonics but I took a reality break and settled for FLW. This is a toy soldier style game played with relatively large figures over an entire room (or better, a garden!). The game concept is retro, cute, and the miniatures look great when painted.

FLW also has some qualities that make for good convention games. A good game is one that six strangers can play with a minimum of time spent on rules explanations. The game should have objectives that are interesting and easy to discern. The forces should have some qualities which are appealing and engaging.  The players should spend more time moving figures than waiting for a chance to move figures.  There are a vast number of games that are terrific as club games but terrible as convention games. And the opposite is true as well.

The main challenge right now, other than making terrain, making buildings and forests, and painting a few hundred figures, is the game scenario itself. FLW is set in a nebulous time period that combines motorcars, rifles, cavalry and artillery but not so much machine guns or massed artillery. There is still a role for the cavalry charge and the folks at Krupp have not yet churned out hundreds of big guns. Further, all units can conceivably move in a given turn and they move several Feet at a time. In the case of light cavalry a charge can be made across six feet of space! I'm going to need to find some 19th-early 20th century era scenarios that allow forces to really cover ground without ending the game after two moves and a single massive firefight.

H.G. Wells Kicks it Old School

At present I'm looking into Charles Grant's old Tabletop Teasers, happily reproduced here. There's also the possibility of refighting H.G. Wells' original Little Wars Battle of Hooks Farm. Finally, Henry Hyde at Battlegames has a good set of Command Challenges and an interesting set of tutorials called Win More Wargames that feature some promising map setups. I'm not sure which way things will turn but I think I'll find a few good old school battles to run by May.