In my excitement to wrap up the first day of Conquest 2007, I forgot about couple of rare finds that I bought.  These were not rare games but vintage magazines from the 70’s.  Normally I don’t border with magazines and books but since finding a few obscure one on EBay, I had been paying more attentions to them during the conventions.  Most of my EBay buys have been war gaming related books (particularly those about miniature gaming from England) and a few of the older war gaming magazines like Panzerfaust/Campaign(Don Lowry), Conflict (Simulation Design Corp), Ares (SPI), The General(AH –  vol. 11 to 32) and Command (XTR – Ty Bomba).  Along the way I also obtained some WWII Campaign studies put out by Department of Army, in particular the one from German Generals that they interviewed after the war.  This meant I have to clear out some space on my bookshelf to accommodate these.  Couple of invaluable reference sources are Mark Boone’s Wargame Page which listed many of the magazines along with some cover shots, http://www.intonet.co.uk/~rblack/books.htm and http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/history.htm  both have list of the miniature gaming books from 1957 to 1975,  http://www.acaeum.com/ which covers TSR and http://rdushay.home.mindspring.com/Museum/Index.html#SF which has most of the information about vintage RPG items.

Back to my finds, I was checking out the seller just behind Greg who I recognized as an old miniature/rpg gamer from Game Table days.  He was mostly selling old history books and some miniature magazine like The Courier, plus a lot of miniatures from both historical periods and RPG.  He also had a copy (fair condition) of The Dragon #1 which he was pricing out at $150, the main reason is that WoTC had discontinued printing The Dragon magazine and may be planning to release it in digital download format.  I had no interested in the miniatures (too heavy to carry home) and I don’t think I would have pay for the Dragon (the oldest Dragon I owned is around #36).  However he has a couple of box of miscellaneous magazines sitting on the floor that a lot of folks had dig through, these were his 50 cent boxes.  I decided to take a quick look and not really expecting much of anything.  I found this little magazine called Strategic Review (#6) and also another one called Little Wars (#10).  Skimming quickly through both, I discovered that they were by a company called TSR (Lizard Logo) and published around 1975-76.  They have articles about RPG (reference to new class called Bard) and war games like Fight in the Skies.  Since these were published around the time of Panzerfaust, I decided to snap them up for 50 cents each.  Of course I had no idea what they were, but any gaming publications from 30 years ago are pretty hard to find.  I was going to resell them if they turned out to be worth keeping.

When I got home, I did a quick search and found out that these were actually rare and hard to find magazines.  These were put out by TSR when they had no idea about the popularity of this little game called Dungeons and Dragons.  There were only 7 issues of Strategic Review and 12 issues of Little Wars before everything was folded into The Dragon, the rest is history since The Dragon was effectively the house organ for TSR.  Between the two, Strategic Review was worth around $35 and Little Wars was round $10-20.  This is not bad for couple of old rags from the 50 cents boxes.  That’s what I like about the flea market at the gaming convention; one never knows what one might find.  So before you clear out those rags in the garage, you better goes through them first.  They may be worth much more than you think.

 Since the auction finished up in two hours, I called up Niall (Greg forgot his cell) and found them checking out the games in play at the Board games event room.  I took a few more snapshots including Brawling Battleships and this interesting game called Crokinole (according to Rick).  I took a quick lunch while Greg and Niall decided on a game to play.  We settled on the game Taluva that Niall brought since I had heard a few good things about it from Lyman.  Taluva is kind of like a combination of German games we had played; it has features from tile-laying, expansion and structures construction.  The object is to deplete two out three token types available.  You started on huts and expanded your villages and tried to build either a church or a temple.  However you are not allowed to have more than 1 church within a settlement and forced you break up your settlement intentionally using the tile to alter the terrain.  This game played fairly easily but the subtlety is in developing a winning strategy since you have to watch out and not accidentally help your opponent win.  Niall barely won with two of us a close second and third.  This is yet another clever game that Niall seems to have a knack in finding like Tongiaki.

The next game we tried was Euphrates & Tigris Card Game which was a variant of the old Knizia favorite Tigris & Euphrates board game.  This one is more portable since it is a card game and the various kingdoms are represented by columns of cards.  The same principles of internal & external conflicts and territory expansion were played out via card play.  Greg was victorious in this one as I came to conflict with Niall too much.  We decided to try for a short game since Greg needed to set up for the Flea Market and we have to head out for an early dinner. 

The game we settled on was Formula Motor Racing which was an auto racing card game by Knizia.  This one you started out with two same color cars representing your racing team and you tried to end up at the head of the line either by playing card effect on your card or on another player’s cars.  Some of the cards allowed you to gamble and repeat the effect if it’s your own card with sometimes hilarious results since failure could put you at the tail end of the line or worse be out of the game (engine blown).  In some cases, you play it on a neutral car to ride the slipstream for your car if it is directly behind the mover.  This game is definitely good as a family game with very low learning curve, it is recommended to play several rounds to get the overall winner instead of the one round we did.

At this point we decided to head out for an early dinner since Greg has to set up for the Flea Market at 6:30pm.  We headed out to his car and drove down to The Elephant Bar which has a good food menu at decent prices.  Niall wolfed down this huge Lamb Shank meal that I was contemplating while I ordered old fashion fish and chips and Greg had the salmon.  For once we were not really in any hurry since we actually managed to play three games and had a great time.  Greg was looking forward to the flea market since he had wanted to sell some of the games he no longer plays.  I volunteered to help him since he had several cases of items and I wanted to do some pre-flea market browsing before the gaming horde descended on it.  One thing that seemed to work well is the pre-flea market sales between sellers who would ask each other to hold certain games that they wanted.

We headed back to the Marriot and unloaded Greg’s truck with all the goodies for the flea markets.  I had brought along a portable hand truck but Greg had a full size one that worked much better.  We hauled everything up to the Open Gaming area to await the set up times.  This gave me an opportunity to go through looking for games I wanted from Greg.  I picked up Royal Turf (Winner’s Circle), Louis XIV and Modern Art from Greg.  I was tempted by some of the war games Greg was getting rid of like East Front, Bonaparte at Marengo, Storm over Arnhem but I resisted with all my might!!  We waited for about an hour while the staff cleared out the flea market and we proceeded to queue up with all the other sellers.  We set up quickly and I noticed that we seemed to have most of the more decent games that everyone will want.  While we were laying out the games, Jason Pipes came over and make a deal for at least $100 worth of games that Greg sold to him for $60.  We got more sellers browsing Greg’s games and we ended up pre-selling around $100 of the games before the flea market even opened!  Greg and I took turns walking around to check out the other seller’s wares and this is when I spotted a copy of Cradle of Civilization (Historical Concept) in Jason’s pile that I had been looking for the last several years.  This one had 3 blown corners on the cover but the content was pretty much mint.  I quickly made a deal with Jason to hold the game since I knew we will be busy.  I was very excited since I knew it was a rare game that had very limited print run and we actually had tried way back in our college days.

When the flea market finally opened, the horde of buyers descended on our table and wiped out most of the inventory quickly.  The transactions were fast and furious and I had to tell the buyers to slow down since Greg was the only one who knew the prices (he didn’t have a chance to put little price sticker on them).  Even the old Mage Knights miniatures were selling fast since he had set the price very low ($0.25 for basic and $1.00 for the larger figures).  After about an hour we were down to mostly family games that Greg was going to donate to library/school, all the good stuff were gone.    The only game that seemed to attract a lot of attention was his 1^st edition East Front with the Volga Front expansion.  This game was picked up at least a dozen times with no one willing to pay for the low price, may be perhaps due to the availability of 2^nd edition.  Finally at the end of one hour, even East Front was sold and Greg was counting up his cash and contemplating shutting down.  We hang around for another 15 minutes and started to pack up.  At this point Jason came over to pick up his loots and we agreed to the final price of $80 which covered his purchases from Greg and then some.  I was very happy since this game went for over $100 the few times I saw it on EBay.  I went off to do last minute browsing and picked up S&T #56 with Breitenfeld for $15.  This put my combined total a little past $200 with Cradle according for most of it, not bad since I had hardly spend anything at the auction.  Greg was also very happy as this was the first time he had a chance to sell at the flea market for the last couple years.

I finally have time to write about Conquest 2007 which I attended on September 1^st and 2^nd.    This is the final year that Conquest will be at the SF Airport Marriot, next year it will be at the Santa Clara Marriot (next to Great America) which will be a stone throw away from my house.  I am really looking forward to that since it cuts down my commute considerably and I will probably bring Aaron since he will be eight and old enough to be in the Young Player’s Room.

            I received an email several days before Conquest indicating that parking will be free at the Marriot, this may be in part due to the closure of the Bay Bridge for the earthquake retrofit.  This was not very good news for me since that meant there will be hardly any parking left by the time I headed up to the con on Saturday morning.  I remember that Marriot has one of the smallest parking lot avail and paid parking has actually forced gamers to carpool together.  So I was not looking forward to finding a parking space which I knew will be non-existent.

I guess I was too excited at the prospect of gaming since I woke up around 7 am on Saturday and was able to arrive at the Marriot around 9 am.  I drove around for about 10 minutes in the parking lot and didn’t find any spot, so I headed across to the side streets and found a space near the peripheral road next to 101.  I usually don’t arrive until around 10 am but Conquest decided to split the regular auction and the charity auction apart and put the regular one on Saturday.  This was not very good for me since Greg and Niall usually meet up with me for gaming on Saturday while I attend the auction on Sunday.  Usually the auction takes about 4-5 hours to complete and I ended up with no time to game, so I was not looking forward to this schedule change.

One thing I noticed about Conquest/Avaloncon this year is that it is more business oriented, by this I meant more attempts to actually make it profitable or at least self-sustaining.  I have heard rumors that it has always operated in the red even though the entry fee is fairly high.  There are more money generators like T-shirts, lanyard, early bird registration, auction commission fee, auction tab fee (with $40 minimum).  Fortunately they didn’t implement the tab fee which I thought was rather silly since it required you to win a minimum of $40, not sure about the auction commission fee (10%) though since I don’t usually sell at the auction.  On the plus side, there is a flea market each day of the con and they scheduled it at 7:30-9:30pm which worked out quite nicely.  I also noticed that there were less Blue Jackets (staffer) around and the program guide was a no frill 28 pages booklet in black and white with only 2 sponsor ads (ENDGAME & Black Diamond Games).  May be the management (Gabriel Vega) decided reduce a lot of the non-essential staffers, more on this later.

Since I was so early, I decided to walk the floor to see what is going on plus I had brought along my digital camera to take some pictures to show Wendy and Aaron what the con is about.  The fact that I was using a digital camera made it easier since I can re-shoot immediately if the picture didn’t come out properly.  I went around the miniature gaming area since I knew that has the most colorful stuff to shoot and I was not disappointed.  Some of the most colorful mini was Warhammer, Flames of War, Zulu war, Aerodrome and also an Italian Renaissance game.  I then went around the Open Gaming area and found it empty since I was too early.  I headed down to the Board Game tournament area since WCBC (West Coast Boardgame Championship) was hosted by Conquest this year.  Richard Borg was the guest of honor and he was doing demo of Memoir ’44.  The games that were being set up were Civilization, Ra, VITP, Europe Engulfed, Kasserine, Great War in Europe, and Diplomacy.  I also snapped some pictures of the Young Player’s room and then headed down to the auction room to check out the goodies.  I was disappointed to see bare shelves in the auction room but it was still early.

Around 9:30am, Greg and Niall arrived and we met up to discuss our plan.  We wandered around a bit until the Dealer’s Room opened up and then checked out the goods in there.  We decided to meet up later since I didn’t know the length of the auction.  I ran into Lyman and his friends (Phil & Michael) on the way to the auction and we checked out the goodies which were even more meager than last year.  The only thing that caught my eyes were DOD 3, SW Assault on Hoth, Up Front (with Desert War expansion), Caesar At Alesia, ETO (European Theater of Operation), Viceroy, Rail Baron, Civilization,  and Wreck of the Pandora.  Of these Viceroy was a must buy since I had received a shrink wrapped copy of the Columbus expansion from a collection I picked up on EBay and it will resell better with the main game.  Hoth was one of few decent Star War games from West End Games and Pandora is on my want list.  ETO was a curiosity since it looked like a cross between A&A and 3^rd Reich, the counters were factory pre-cut, and another one was Vanished Planet which no one has heard of.  In the past, the Auction Mania crews would set aside those of collectible values into a separate section but this was not the case this time.  It may be due to the new crew or just a lack of items but I thought Up Front, Pandora, Civilization, DAK should have been set aside.  DOD 3 was interesting since it has its own maps and can be play without WIF.

            Alan Emrich was the designated auctioneer and the first thing he did away with was the minimum bid on those items with Reserved.  This made sense since it was a great waste of time to win your bid only to find out that the reserved price was beyond reasonable.  He was very funny and innovative in that he raised the bid based on number of bidders, so the price of some items rocketed up so that only those seriously want the item stayed in.  Looking at my record, I was surprised to see such high bid for items like France 1944 ($22), Hitler’s War ($13), War & Peace ($14), Ivanhoe ($16), & Medieval ($18).   Some bargains were Civilization ($17 AH, $20 Descartes), Acquire ($10), Kingmaker ($12), War ($14), Ares #11 (Albion $10) and Junta (original $10).  The pace of auction was very fast and we finished off all 86 lots in about 2 hours which was a record.

My haul was fairly minimum since the quality of the games for sale were very low, there was just too many of these family games that no one really want.  There was hardly any AH classics, SPI flat box, DG reprints or even all those Euro games I had bid on in the past.  My total didn’t break $100 which was a new low if you compare with what I had spent at Auction Mania; this is probably a relief for Wendy as she complained I spent too much on EBay already.  Once again my main nemesis was Mark Kramer who overbid me on both Pandora and Up Front.  I was the leading bidder at around $40 for Up Front which has the extremely rare Desert War expansion but he knew it was worth much more and threw in $100 bid; I counter it until $105 when I realized he was not going to back off.  Pandora was another one we faced off and it turned out he was a fan of the series and it was a pristine copy for his collection.  We had a very friendly discussion afterward about AH and Pandora afterward which was great since he is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable collector/historian out there.  I found out that he was in the process of moving and didn’t have anything in the auction which was a real disappointment; most of his items are usually vintage or very hard to find.

Couple auction changes I liked:  speeding up the bidding helps but just be sure you are bidding for items that you really want, ability to pay via credit card or even Paypal (in the future) is more convenient for the buyer since I don’t have to carry around so much cash except for the flea market.  Unfortunately Conquest is also making it harder for those who sell a lot, they now are going to pay out via a check for any amount over $250 and on top of that they are charging a 10% commission, the lot tag fee was way too high at $1 per lot.  They were going to charge for keeping tab but didn’t implement this, thank goodness!   To be Continue…