A review of the Havoc X game convention, Apr. 16-17, 1994, in Framingham, MA, USA. This convention had *only* miniatures games - no board or roleplaying games at all.

This was my third Havoc convention, and the best one yet. Battle Group Boston (BGB) is to be congratulated on their convention: it was a *lot* of fun. There were a few programming glitches, but I didn't feel they intruded very much into the convention - at least, none of the folks in my games were complaining.

The physical arrays ranged from Fair to Superb, with the average easily above Good. Most of the game masters had put a lot of work into their layouts and figures, and it showed. The hotel also had a Coast Guard Auxiliary convention going on, and some of them wandered into the main gaming rooms, and were blown away by how physically attractive most of the scenarios were.

The three games I played in were amazingly fun - and I didn't even win any of them! I was in a French & Indian War pseudo-skirmish game (Woodland War rules, 15 mm figures). As the British beseiging a French fort, we definitely got creamed in the forest and village, but we took the fort - our main objective. The GM ruled we couldn't have taken it, though (we ran out of time just as we took the outer defense), so he gave the game to the French. I didn't mind, even though I know he was clearly wrong. :-) True, our militia and ranger units were, for all practical purposes, no longer in existance, but our regulars had the outer defenses of the fort almost unscathed, and outnumbered the defenders more than 2:1. Since our major objective was to burn the fort, and they could no longer use the devastating artillery on us, I don't see how they could have stopped us from winning had we another half hour to play. What's important from a review perspective is that the setting was nicely done, and the game was well run, and everybody had a good time.

The next game I was in was an English Civil War skirmish game using Once Upon a Time in the West Country rules. This was great fun. I got to play a Royalist pike unit - six figures. Two other Royalist players each had six figures of Musketeers. There were two Roundhead players, each with 4-6 cavalry, I was never sure how many they had. There were also three townsfolk players, each with 6 villagers. We had to haul off food, I never knew the Roundhead objectives, and the villagers were to try and lose as little food as possible.

The town was a collection of commercially done buildings, hedges, walls, trees, stream, etc. Very aesthetically pleasing. The figures were 25mm from Wargames Foundry. Very nicely painted. The rules are fun and smooth. All in all, a joy to game.

We came in second - the villagers won! The Roundhead force wasn't very effective, and the villagers really were the ones who beat us back - plus our own inability to coordinate tasks among the three players. Never lead a group of raw troops against a hysterical woman or a berserk sheep dog . . . we would have won if it hadn't been for those two figures! The quote of the day was, "Give me 6 women and 4 sheep dogs and I'll take any town in England!"

The next game I played in was the creme de la creme for me. It was an Old West skirmish game (using Desperado rules) with 18 players (!), each player having only one piece. The plot was loosely based on the movie The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with Clint Eastwood. There were three teams, each with six figures. (Randomly dealt out - I was a Good guy.) The Goods were each given a white chit, the Bads a red chit, and the Uglies a blue chit. Somewhere in the town (Mexican border town) was buried a horde of Confederate gold. If you could get a chit of each color, the game master would tell you where the gold was buried. When your figure was killed, you placed your chit on the board underneath it

Anyone who felt like moving over to it and taking an action to get the chit could have it. Heh.

I don't know if the GM made the buildings or not - they were very well done, having a strong flavor of a poor border town. Lots of real rocks and twigs made up most of the terrain, along with lichen sagebrush and some plastic Saguarro. The figures were 25mm, very nicely painted, Anglos and Mexicans. The rules are among the most light-hearted, fun, cinematic skirmish rules you can imagine - I highly recommend them.

This game was more fun than I can possibly convey in mere words. The Uglies died fairly early in the game, and very spectacularly. This included the last one left, who was the only character to have any dynamite. He regretted it when he was shot, and the location was dynamite . .. The player took it very well, saying his character was wanted in four states and could now be found in three of them.

The Baddies were acting quite cowardly, as a rule, so by the time my character died, there were only 3 Good guys and 5 Baddies left in the game total. It finally came down to 1 Good guy and 2 Baddies - the latter knowing where the gold was. They ran to it (one of them walked - he was wounded in the leg), and took an action to dig it up. They were a move or two away from the edge of the board (victory was to get the gold off the board) when the Good guy, on a heroic long shot after a sprint, nailed the guy carrying the strongbox and killed him. The remaining Bad guy spent his action picking up the gold, and the Good guy, standing still now, still at long pistol range, fired his last two bullets and fatally wounded the Baddie! What a great cinematic ending.

I walked around the convention a bit to see some of the other games in progress. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. There were two main rooms, one was primarily historical and the other F&SF, though there was some intermingling. Some of the sets were astonishingly good. There were anywhere from 11 to 16 games per slot, so there was a lot to see. Some innovative stuff, too: one group, for example, was recreating the battle of Eben Emael, Belgium, 1940. This was a glider attack force against a fortification. The GM had two gliders for each player: one was handmade from scratch, scale replica in 25mm (this was a skirmish game). This was carefully placed on the board once landing position had been determined. The other glider was a commercially bought styrofoam one - the players whose troops were to land by glider had to stand back from the table and throw this one onto the table to see where they landed!

There were lots of genres represented: Ancients, Medievals, Renaissance, ECW, F&I, Am.Rev, Napoleonics, ACW, Old West, Colonial, WWI, WWII, Viet Nam, SF, and Fantasy. There were large scale. skir

mish, and lots in between. There were land battles, air battles, naval battles, and underground battles.

All in all, one of the best small conventions I've ever been to. While not nearly as big as Historicon or Little Wars, this was a lot closer for me, and packed with quality. I'll be there next year, God willing!