Seven Years' War Association Convention Report - Part One

 

Jurgen Olk's famous SYW games set in India

I just returned from this weekend's trip to the annual Seven Years' War Association convention in South Bend, Indiana and while I am tired and in a daze right now, the show was a big success and I had a ton of fun.

It looks like the attendance was substantially higher this year compared to last year and kudos go out to the organizers (Jude Becker - organizer of the game events; and Ken Bunger - organizer of the dealer area and convention site logistics). Plus this year the show had "official staff" helpers recognizable by their cornflower blue tee-shirts (Sam, Paul and Brian) and I appreciate the help that they gave me in loading and unloading game terrain and figures from my car.

Here are several pictures of the convention hall where the war games were set up. The dealer tables were set up along the walls of the perimeter of the hall.

Many of the dealers were already set up by the time I arrived Thursday evening.

Thursday evening set up time

A view of my Trenton game, looking towards the front entry door.

I arrived at the site in the early evening and the sun was still out which made it easy to back up my car to the side door and unload equipment. There were already a number of games set up for play on friday and it looked like three or four games were already playing thursday evening. Over the past few years some of our games have shifted back from friday into thursday to accommodate early arrival convention goers. 

At the same time, there aren't as many games on Saturday night as there used to be about 10-15 years ago. Saturday Night was once considered to be "Prime Time" and featured the best of the best games. Now there might only be two or three games running after the dinner hour on Saturday. Hopefully future conventions will see more activity on Saturday night. This year I could not get a hotel room for saturday night because all of the hotel rooms in South Bend were sold out due to a Country and Western star doing a Saturday night concert at Notre Dame University's football stadium. As a result, i had to pack up my things and drive home rather than hanging around for the convention. (my own fault for waiting until the last minute to reserve a room).

Friday morning arrived and I hurried down to the game hall to play in Jurgen Olk's famous SYW in India 28mm games. This year's game, The Relief of Mangalore" was set during the American Revolution era. The British East India Company was tasked with lifting a siege of a British garrison at Mangalore. We tried our best but all four of us British players were receiving unkind behavior from our dice. There was a point during the game when it appeared that we were going to punch a hole through the enemy's ranks when all of a sudden it seemed as if every other British/Indian allies unit was routing away from the action. I had one of those instances where I faced a "roll anything but a one on a D10 die", to which I said, "I'm doomed". And indeed I was as a rolled a one. I could only laugh as total failure brings its own form of joy. 

Me, doing what comes naturally, routing. My command personality figure tries to stem the rout
of some European East India Company troops.

A gigantic cavalry scrum of exotic Indian natives

Fort Managolore is defended by French Sepoys.

More bad cavalry action from the British point of view 

One of my "almost highlights": my miserable peon levy coming to grips with French sepoys
but it didn't turn out well for them as the Dice Gods thought otherwise.

Me

Jurgen had various random event cards that each player took turns drawing a Fate Card from the deck. My card indicated that I had not paid my sepoys lately and so they would sit down and go on strike for D6 number of game turns. I rolled a "6" of course. So my Sepoys had to stand down for six turns, which actually turned out ok for me, for whilst my other troops were running away, my relaxing Sepoys were holding down the flank and saving us from total annihilation. The Dice Gods work in mysterious ways at times.

More coming up in Part Two

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