This weekend I took a day to attend the March to Victory convention in Blue Springs , MO. It is just a short drive east from KC and only about 30 mins from my home in Kansas. It is at a larger American Legion hall, so there was plenty of room for games and vendors both, with the mezzanine set aside for the silent auction. I could see the mezzanine being used for more games once growth demands it. This is a fairly new Con, I believe last year was the inaugural year, though I could be mistaken. I don't know anything about how the con is run, however, one of the good things about using a Legion hall is that most, if not all, have bars, and full kitchens. That way food can be offered in house. I do believe the bar was going to be open later on but I did not stay that long. I have badge 281, so I am assuming they had at least that many attendees overall., there was a good crowd when I got there, with plenty of great looking games. Despite attendance being pretty good IMO, I noticed that a bunch of people I would have expected to see there were not, Could have easily been other commitments, though I do know a number of folks that were attending Adepticon this weekend, and being fairly close to KC its not a long drive to get there.
The convention itself is an offshoot of Wiley Games, publishers of the Fistful of Lead family of games. Many of the games featured their rules, but, there were a number of other games with non Wiley rules as well. I arrived late unfortunately, and the first session had started already with most games well on their way. So I did my usual recon around the hall, looking at vendors, and checking out the games. I did get a chance to chat with Thomas Foss a bit. If you are not familiar with him he runs Skull and Crown that created the Triumph of Death, Space Scrappers, and Killer Rabbits miniature ranges, and he has been doing some cool stuff with laser cut wood like jousting knights, renaissance galleys, and even Napoleonics. You can check out his stuff here He had a few wood ancient galleys he is starting work on and he was showing me those. They look really cool. Great guy to chat with. After chatting with a coulpe friends I saw a table that was just finishing setup so I hung out there till he got enough players. It was a Plains Wars game using Fistful of Lead. Here are a few pics of it.
It was a fast simple game and just a ton of fun. I loved playing it. I wish I knew where the mat was from. It was gorgeous but not teddy bear fur. A couple of these would be worth the investment for sure. I liked the game so much I picked up the Black Powder version of the rules. It will make for some fun Napoleonic skirmishes.
Here are a few shots of some of the other games
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| The Table for Cherry Blossom Death, a fantasy samurai game using the FFL fantasy rules. I think this was to run in the late session. |
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| These are from Thomas Foss' Kessel Run game. This started while I was playing my game but i watched the end, Everyone was having a blast. You had to get past the creature at the end, hopefully tou had enough hit points left to survive. The race leader did not make it... |
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| This looked like a fun game. This was obviously before they set up. They were using FFL Terror Island rules, there were various Hollywood type monsters as well as a giant crab. It included characers like Kolchak, and Johnny Quest. |
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| This was a battle of Savo Island in 1/6000 using Ocean thunder rules |
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| This was a "not 40k" game using the FFL Bigger Battles rules. |
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| Star Wars using FFL |
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| They called this Necroplunda. Using Wiley's Galactic Heroes and Wasteland Warriors |
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| This was Aliens v Predators. The terrain was really cool. |
There were a number of other games I did not get pictures of, 54mm F&I War, 54mm Vietnam, Warlord games Victory at Sea, some Team Yankee and a few others. I would love to have been able to come Friday night. They had a 1/600 Spanish American war naval game, and Thomas Foss ran his Breaking Lances game as well.
Overall, a great con. I can definitely see it growing and becoming a go to con. I had only one quibble, that being the game listing and schedules. There appeared to be some inaccuracies as to when games were running . That can certainly happen, and I am sure that's something they will attend to in the future. I will certainly be looking forward to next year!
