Awoke on my last day with a smile on my face! I have had an absolute blast over the past 2 1/2 days meeting up with several designers (Mark Herman, Gregory M. Smith, Kevin McPartland, Kai Jensen, Mark Holt Walker, Salvatore Vasta, Ben Hulls, Wes Crawford, Fritz Bronner and others), seeing lots of great friends and playing some fantastic games. This is what a convention should be like! A few thousand friends, lots of tables, laughter, shouting and tons and tons of good games.

Saturday started with a fortuitous chat with a few of our hobbies greatest legends in Mark Herman and Salvatore Vasta. These two guys are the most friendly people. Both are not shy to chat and treat me like I’m a friend. Appreciate the conversation!

Mark was carrying a book with him that I think many of you are anticipating. I looked through it and can’t wait to get a real copy soon. One thing I loved about the convo with Mark was that he was teaching me the geometry of battle lines in the American Civil War and how angles and placement of formations was key to get the most fire on opposing troops. I also was schooled a bit on the proper use of the Detachments in Rebel Fury which was fascinating. I actually thought at one point he was going to break out a calculator and protractor and draw me a diagram. It was awesome!

The first game of the day was Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory from Hegemonic Project Games with Tim, Tom and Cullen. Hegemony is an asymmetric politico-economic card driven game for 2-4 players that places you in the role of one of the socio-economic groups in a fictional state including the Working Class, Middle Class, Capitalist Class and the State itself. The design is really very fascinating, and while it is not a wargame, it shares a lot of DNA as players are having to negotiate a bit, work together to get what they want and compete for their goals. Think about it. Capitalists can’t make money without workers, the workers need jobs, the Middle class are entrepreneurial in mind set and create small niche employment and the State offers incentives like loans, educational grants and other social programs.

We had a blast and this is now my third overall play and in the end I won with the Working Class.

I then got the opportunity to sit down with Salvatore Vasta on camera who is the designer of one of the best grand strategic WWII in Europe games I’ve ever played called Unconditional Surrender! from GMT Games. We chatted about a lot of things including the progress he has made on Unconditional Surrender! Western Campaigns, which is currently on the P500, and also an update on his upcoming Armistice! We initially heard about Armistice! in 2018 and there has generally been a dearth of recent info.

Sal is a real gem and such a nice guy. What I saw of USE! Western Campaigns looks to be really well done. The game provides shorter, smaller footprint scenarios for those wanting to play the Unconditional Surrender! design but who don’t have the table space and time needed for the much larger USE. USWC also can serve as an alternative way to teach the system to other players.

Next I moved to meet with Damian Manstrangelo to do a video interview for his two designs that I played on Tuesday and Wednesday called 18 Card Napoleonics and an unnamed American Revolutionary War block wargame. Damien is a really smart guy and I like how his mind thinks about games. He is creative and not necessarily bound by traditional concepts. He shared with me that Worthington Publishing has picked up the Napoleonics game. Very much interested in his future games.

After this interview I was able to play a few more games including Arcs from Wehrlegig Games and John Company 2nd Edition from Leder Games. Both are fantastic games and I had a great time with them!

Well. I am spent. It is currently 11:45pm on Saturday evening and my WBC is now over. I will get up tomorrow at 5:00am and be on the road for my 6 1/2 hour drive home to Indianapolis. I have had a great week and made some great new friends, caught up with old friends and most importantly had a blast! I did though miss my friend Alexander. He couldn’t come because of a family trip home to England and it just wasn’t quite the same without him. But I still had fun and look forward to next year.

Thank you for following and reading along. Till next year.

-Grant