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BottosCon 2018

My last trip of the year was to BottosCon in early November. It's a wargame convention in Vancouver BC. Last year I didn't make it because of a big early season storm that dumped a lot of snow on the Cascades. Snoqualmie Pass was closed and I had to cancel at the last minute. This year the forecast was for good weather. I was looking forward to the con because it had moved to a new location the year before when I missed it. I was curious to check out the new venue.

The new home for BottosCon was the Inn at the Quay, a hotel right on the Fraser River in New Westminster, part of the Greater Vancouver Metro Area. Checking the hotel website it looked like a nice place in a good location. I had to drive a little farther into Vancouver than for the previous location in Surrey. Traffic in Vancouver can be really bad but I had the directions memorized and was expecting to get there in the mid to late afternoon. Hopefully traffic wouldn't be too bad yet and there would be no problems.

There were problems.

Even though it was only 4 pm when I reached the city, I hit bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway leading to the bridge over the Fraser River that I needed to cross. No way to go around that. Next I saw a sign that said that because of construction, the exit I needed to take was closed. Now I had a real problem. I don't usually get international data roaming when I go to Canada for BottosCon. I rely on getting wifi access in my hotel. But now I had to find an alternate route, in real time, in rush hour traffic, in a city I didn't know. I didn't have the address of my hotel and I had no way to look it up. I didn't know their phone number. I couldn't bring up google maps to help me find my own way. Traffic was horrible and would only get worse. This was definitely not good.

I took a guess as to where to get off the highway. Fortunately the surface streets were busy but not totally backed up like the freeway. I knew the hotel was by the river and I took a guess at how far to go before cutting over to it. Fortunately I was close enough that I recognized a landmark I had seen on Google Street view. I had been smart enough to use it to scout out the area around the hotel ahead of time so I would know where to go when I got close. Whew! I was pretty happy when I got to the hotel and pulled into the underground parking. I wouldn't have to drive anywhere now for a couple of days.

That evening I met Rob Bottos (the organizer of BottosCon) and several gamers from California and Oregon who had arrived early for the con to go out for a beer and dinner. We walked a few blocks to Pizza Ludica, a pizza restaurant with a twist. It has a large stock of board games so that you can order a pizza and then play a game. They didn't have many wargames though. I don't think that they wanted you to be there for two days till you finished. It was still a pretty cool idea though. There were similar places in Singapore but sadly there's nothing like it in Boise.

For a change I had taken a pretty casual approach to scheduling games for the weekend. At both Consimworld Expo and fall GMT weekend I had lined up games ahead of time that filled every possible minute of every day. That's not a bad thing but this time I wanted to be more relaxed. I wanted to have time to talk to people, kibitz other games, check out new wargame designs and demos, and spend time looking at the wargames for sale in the flea market.

The weather was nice Friday morning so before starting gaming I spent a few hours walking around to check out the area. New Westminster is actually a pretty yuppy place, with a lot of high rise apartments, restaurants and shops near the river. For about a mile and a half in each direction from the hotel there was a nice pedestrian walkway along the river, complete with flower beds and benches to sit on and admire the view. Very nice but definitely an upscale area.

I had scheduled time with my friend Dan Carey from Seattle to play Patton's Vanguard. It's an area impulse game by Mike Rinella, who also designed Stalingrad: Verdun on the Volga, a game I had played quite a bit since it came out last Christmas. PV used the same system as SVotV so it appealed to me. I had played it once in Boise with my friend Dale, but we wondered afterwards if the game was balanced or not. It seemed to us like the Germans couldn't win. Since it's hard to judge a game based on just one playthrough I wanted to give it a good tryout at BottosCon. I watched Dan play against somebody else and sure enough, it was an easy American win. Then Dan and I played twice. I did manage to win one game as the Germans but it was a fluke. We decided that the game did indeed seem to be unbalanced.

There are two scenarios in the game so since BottosCon, Dan and I have continued to play via email using VASSAL to try out the other scenario. We still get the same result. It's too bad because I really like the system. It's just that this specific battle/game isn't very interesting to play.

While I was at BottosCon I took the opportunity to talk to some friends who have worked on game design, development or playtesting to get tips on how they approach the process. It's probably not too surprising but this past summer I started to work on my own game design. (That's a whole story on its own that I will cover in a later post.) One disappointment was that Brian Train, a highly regarded designer who I have gotten to know (and had some time scheduled with at the con) couldn't make it because his son was recovering from (not serious) surgery. Dad duty comes before wargaming though.

I also looked at demos of prerelease games. Someone from Columbia Games was showing me the 2nd edition of Pacific Victory. Although I have the game (and do like it) he was pitching that the new edition will be much better, with a larger map and blocks. Since map crowding was a significant problem with the first edition, I suppose I will consider it. It's just a pain to have to reacquire a game, and get rid of the previous version, every time a new edition comes out.

I spent an afternoon reading the rules and checking out a new game called Parcel O' Rogues. It's about the prelude to the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland in the eighteenth century. The two players try to gather support either for union with England or revolt. It was pretty interesting, kind of a super complex Twilight Struggle type game. Erik Hadley, one of my wargaming buddies in Boise, would love it, since it's on one of his favorite periods of history.

I made some good acquisitions at the flea market, which was surprising at such a small gaming convention. A local gamer had passed away recently and his game collection was being sold off. He had a lot of games in pristine condition. I helped contribute to the family with a couple of purchases. And of course I got a BottosCon tshirt.

I have to admit that I felt a little guilty being away from home. Abby had knee surgery just two days before I left. (I'll cover that in detail in a later post). She did well but Sandy was playing nurse on her own. I had made plans for BottosCon way in advance but Sandy didn't want to delay Abby's operation. She said I should just go which I appreciated but I wanted to get home as soon as possible. Instead of playing on Sunday and leaving late in the day, I left VERY early on Sunday morning. I was at the US border by 5:30 am. Usually it takes me an hour to get through but it didn't take that long at 5:30 in the morning. I was the only car there. With such an early start and good weather, I was home in time for dinner.

That ended my travels for 2018. It had been a busy year and I was actually looking forward to spending some time at home.