Little War Convention Pix

I visited the annual Little Wars convention, hosted by HMGS-Midwest, yesterday in Lombard, IL. The weather was horrible, raining buckets of water all day, so it was a good day to be indoors playing a game. The convention moved to a new venue this year at the Westin Lombard Hotel at Yorktown shopping center. This is where Adepticon used to be. This looks to be a great improvement in venue over the previous ones at the DuPage County fairgrounds.

Admission for just one day of sightseeing was a hefty $25.00 but it goes to a good cause. They should have a one day Visitor's Pass at a slighly lower price as $25 seems a bit steep to visit the dealer area and stroll through the game hall for an hour or two (non-playing).

The game hall was well lighted and is a big improvement over the old venue. My one little nit pik is that they should take out a few tables and have a central aisle leading from the front door to the back of the game hall. This would ease access to the games. The tables seemed very cramped and crowded in amongst each other. There were only 2-3 feet of open area between game tables. I was there at about 1PM on Saturday afternoon and about half the tables seemed to be empty, so it would be easy to remove a few of them to create some aisles.

The quality of the games seemed to be rather good, so that was encouraging. I didn't play in any games as it was my intent to just stroll around and socialize with old friends and take pictures. I also did a little bit of shopping in the dealer area, purchasing some nifty book translations from George Nafziger that covered the WAS and SYW eras. The dealer area seemed to be a bit smaller than normal, but a count of names in the convention brochure indicates 22 dealers. Old Glory Blue Moon was the largest dealer and it was nice to see Old Glory supporting a convention so far away from their home base.

I will let the picture captions tell the rest of the story.

Re-enactment groups for Ancients, WW1 and French Napoleonic eras set up their recruiting stations outside the main hall.

Some kind of painting seminar or "how to" setup outside the main hall.

Walking through the front door and this is what I saw. Nice view of the cramped game area.

The Isandlhwana game display was well done - lots of information about the game.

The British set up outside of their camp at Isandlhwana, unaware of what is about to hit them.

A large 15mm Napoleonic game (Master of the World rules by The Wargaming Company).

Very large and attractive WW2 game set in the Pacific. This game probably had the largest crowd around it so that immediately caught my camera's eye.

ACW Battle of Jenk's Ferry. I liked the innovative trees that the game judge used.

Uncle Duke Seifried's Ancient Mythology game. Amazons vs Greeks.

Pat LeBeau's 28mm AWI Battle of Eutaw Springs - best looking game in my humble opinion.

Another view of the Eutaw Springs game. I heard Pat say that he had received 10 game tickets for a game that is supposed to have 6 players. Uh oh!

Winter WW2 Game, I think. I liked the train.

More of the Winter WW2 game, opposite end of the table. I like the use of mesh wire to make the fence.

All Quiet on the Martian Front game. Too little too late perhaps?

Pagusus Bridge game - best looking terrain that I saw. So very life like.

Another view of the Pegasus Bridge game showing the British gliders.

This WW1 Dogfight Aeriel Game is always fun for the players.

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