Little Wars, the premier gaming con in Chicago was this weekend. They had both sides of the racquet club this year, as opposed to only one last year. As it was the 20th anniversary (maybe 25th?) they were giving away free cake. A lot was left over, rather amazingly given that the room was chock full of wargamers! I was there Saturday. Unfortunately, John Kisner's Kuwait 1991 game was cancelled, so I missed meeting him, and playing what looked to be an interesting game. Regal Minis was selling "fleet packs". Each box has several 1:6000 Ships. The "Midway pack" had US CVs, CLs, DD. (sorry I don't know exactly how many). They also had "GQ game packs" with about 8 ships, (two different sides) and GQ rules. An interesting idea, I hope it works well for them. The GQ packs were 30 US, I think the fleet packs were the same, but am not sure. I personally picked up some World maker terrain, dragon's teeth and a small village for a town sector. I also got some JR Miniatures stuff, some European small houses, and an "Arabian" set of small buildings, one of which looked rather mosque like. Perhaps very similar to the one in the 2mm Arab Israel pictures? Now comes the test of my painting skills! Last was a book, The Battle of France, 1940, Warner. The coolest looking game was a pirate game. The ships were about 12~18 inches long, and were on pedestals about a meter high! You walked about with a fleet waist high, and a fort and island similarly raised. Visually stunning. Have no idea if it was fun to play, but it was certainly fun to gawk at. There was a game run using what was called "home made" rules. But it used a map, not terrain. It looked rather like the board game Breakout Normandy, which I thought it was when I first saw it. A lot of WWII stuff was there, and a nice looking WWI air combat game. The "player aid" was a nice wooden console, looking like a cockpit control! It had 22 caliber shells to track your ammo left. A lot of work went into those. There was a very nice looking Vietnam game, portraying a "Lang Vei" type battle with NVA armor. Not much colonial stuff was evident, but a lot of DBA and DBM was being played. A ton of kids were there, playing a "Big Battle Cry" game, and three Lord of the Rings games. These were quite vocal, with cheers going up, and groans, as the fortunes of Gondor waxed and waned. I also saw what looked very much like a game of "Naval Action" being played with 1:700 ships on the floor, but with no Lou C., it had to be something else. In what must be a first personally, I didn't see any ironclads being played. All in all, a great day. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 5 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com