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Consimmworld Expo 2025

Consimworld Expo, or CSWE, is my favorite wargame convention. It's held every year in Tempe, Arizona. It's always during the summer because the facility rates are lower. No one in their right mind goes to the Phoenix area during summer. But since wargaiming is an indoor activity, it doesn't matter. It's over a week long and has 200 to 300 attendees coming from all over the US and the world.

Usually there are about fifteen wargamers from Canada, although sadly this year there was only one, and he was a publisher there to promote his games. I checked with some of my Canadian friends who attend regularly. They were all boycotting travel to the US because of the agressive tactics that President Trump has used against Canada. It confirms what I have read, that Canadian tourism to the US, and Canadian purchases of American products, have dropped dramatically because of the anger over what President Trump has said and done. Listening to them, I think it is going to take a long time to rebuild the friendship and trust that we had with Canada.

I always drive to CSWE. Most people are surprised because its a long drive, about fifteen hours. Why don't I fly? Because then I can't carry much stuff. When I drive I can take the games that I am going to play with me, and even a bunch of extra games that I might play. I also take some of my old games that I no longer want, hoping to sell them in the flea market, and bring back games that I purchase at the convention. An extra benefit is that since I have my car, I can stay offsite instead of at the hotel where the convention is held. It's cheaper and I don't need to rent a car to get around town during the week.

Besides, I always enjoy driving through southern Utah and Northern Arizona canyon country, which is my standard route to Phoenix. It goes right thourgh Zion National Park. This time the weather was beautiful and the views outstanding, although I only made a few quick stops at viewpoints to take some photos. It's one of my favorite parks so I enjoyed seeing it, even if I was just passing through.

The bad news came later as I was approaching the town of Kanab. I could see a lot of smoke from a fire far to the south, towards the Grand Canyon. Sandy and I had made plans to go there in September so I could hike Rim-to-Rim. I've hiked down to the bottom from the south rim and then back up again twice. Back in the late eighties I did it as a backpack, staying overnight in the bottom of the canyon. In 2017, I did it in a single (long) day. But I have never hiked from one rim to the other. This year I was finally going to do it, hiking from the north rim to the south rim while Sandy drove around to pick me up. We had our reservations for lodging at both ends and everything was set. Unfortunately what I saw now was a major wildfire. Within the next week it destroyed the historic North Rim Lodge, where we had planned to stay. It also destroyed the North Kaibab Trail, the route from the north rim down to the bottom of the canyon. By the time I got home from CSWE our Grand Canyon trip was off. Hopefully I will get a chance to do it at some time in the future.

As soon as I got to Tempe I checked in at my hotel and then went to my favorite eating spot, Gus's New York Pizza. When I got my pizza I took a picture and sent it to my son Mickey and texted "Guess where I am?". In 2022 he joined me in Tempe after CSWE. The Brewers were in town to play the Arizona Diamondbacks and we went to several ball games. We also went to Gus's Pizza. Sure enough, he recognized where I was from the picture that I sent him.

I always set up my games at CSWE before the convention. This year I talked my friend Dennis Dowd into attending for the first time. Dennis lives in Omaha and although we are good friends, this was only the second time I had seen him in person. We met at a GMT weekend back in 2019. After that, we played a lot of wargames online. All through the pandemic, we had a weekly VASSAL session. (VASSAL is a way to play board wargames over the internet.) Afterwards we continued our online sessions for several years, and still play quite often. It was pretty cool to actually see Dennis in person again!

We had arranged to play a new game from Worthington Publishing, The Epic Battle of Alesia. It's a reissue of the old classic Avalon Hill game, Caesar: Epic Battle of Alesia. The game came out only a month or so before the convention. Dennis had played the AH version and really liked it. I had never played the older version but thought the new game had beautiful components. It looked impressive so I was anxious to give it a try.

It's also a fairly big game, with a double-size mounted mapboard and lots of counters. At CSWE we had plenty of room to set up and we blocked off the first two days of the con to play the game. I was the Gauls while Dennis took the Romans. I have to admit that we were both very disappointed. Although it was a reprint, there were a couple of rule changes. We felt that some of the changes to combat had broken the game. Maybe I just didn't know how to play the Gauls but I couldn't see any way for them to get remotely close to victory. Dennis agreed afterward that he couldn't see anything for the Gauls to do either. So sadly, although it's a gorgeous game to look at when it's set up, I won't be playing it again. It's moved into my "To Sell" pile as soon as I got home. We agreed to end our game a little early because we both could see how it would turn out. We didn't quite manage to finish in two days. Dennis has been having some health issues and he had to take breaks during the afternoon to rest up. Still, we had fun and felt that we got far enough to give the new game a good tryout.

I spent the next few days playing various games with Larry Davidson. We played WWII Commander: Market Garden, another game that had just come out. It's the second game in the series. Larry and I had played the first game, on the Battle of the Bulge, at GMT weekend earlier in the year. I thought this was a good game, although I only managed one win in our three games. We also played Autumn for Barbarossa. Unfortunately I got beat pretty badly in that game too. The game is by MultiMan Publishing (MMP) on the Battle of Smolensk. It uses their Standard Combat System (SCS), which is a low complexity system for operational combat. It was interesting because a few tables away, two guys were playing MMP's game on the same battle that used the Operational Combat System (OCS), which is much higher complexity. Because they are from the same publisher, they use virtually the same map and counters but vastly different rule sets. Needless to say, our game went much faster than the OCS game, and not because Larry and I are speed demons when we play.

I got in other good games during the week. I scored a win against Danile Berger in a game of Colonial Twilight, a rematch of a game we played several years ago at CSWE. I lost a game of No Retreat: The Russian Front against Brian Scott. At least I had fun talking a lot of baseball with him. He's an even bigger fan than me. I played one game with a new opponent, James Treu. It was Turning Point: Stalingrad, one of my all time favorite games. That game was fairly short. He made some risky attacks as the Germans and had some bad rolls. His situation went downhill quickly and he resigned.

There are a lot of other aspects of CSWE that I enjoy besides playing wargames. Usually quite a few publishers attend and I end up buying a lot of new games. Due to some bad luck, this year was disappointing. Legion Games and Blue Panther were not there because of personal issues. Most wargame publishers are very small and are often run as a sideline, so it is easy for them to be disrupted by events in real life. Vuca Simulations, a German publisher who makes some great games, lost their shipment of games that they intended to sell at the con. Even Decision Games was only there for a short time. Not really anyone's fault, but the vendor room was pretty disappointing this year.

I also look forward to the flea market. Usually I am a big buyer, but this year I brought about twenty five of my games to sell. I did pretty well and sold all but two or three of them. You don't make much money selling games there, but I did get enough to pay for my few purchases and a couple of lunches during the con. I didn't do it so much to make money as to find new homes for my old games that I didn't want any more. It feels a lot better than throwing them away.

In the past, a high point of CSWE was always the games auction at the end of the week. It was only for special, out-of-print wargames that were collectables. But over the years I have pretty much acquired all of the rare old games that I really wanted. Plus some publishers, especially Compass Games, have reprinted a lot of the good old games so that the early editions aren't as valuable as they used to be. And sadly Alan Emrich died this past year. He always ran the auction and was very entertaining (he was a stand up comic for a while in his youth). This year I didn't even bother to attend the auction.

As always, a special attraction of CSWE is that many monster games are played there. These are big, complex games that take a long time to play. They have large maps and lots of counters. The weeklong con is one of the few places with the time and space for them. It's always fun to see these monsters actually being played instead of sitting on the shelf. There were several OCS games, including Case Blue, perhaps the biggest monster of them all, with six maps and over 3500 counters. I've never played OCS but would like to learn it some day, so I enjoy watching it. There was a playtest of a GOSS (Grand Operational Simulation System) game on Operation Market Garden. I've only played GOSS once and it is too big and two complex for me to play it often. It was fun to see it in action though. And every year there is a game of A Time For Trumpets, a gigantic game on the Battle of the Bulge.

There were lots of other big games. A La Bataille game on the Battle of Eylau. The old SPI version of Wellington's Victory, an interesting game but with a very ugly map. There were multiple games of A Most Fearful Sacrifive, on the Battle of Gettysburg. I have the game and really want to play it. I just haven't managed to get it out yet. Some day (sigh).

And that is pretty much a wrap on CSWE for 2025. I'm looking forward to going back again next year.