Little Wars Melbourne for 2019 is done and dusted
Great day for Saga in Melbourne and massive thanks to Pip, Robbie, Kat, Ben and Tony for helping out with all the demo games, setup, pack up and just being a great bunch of people to hang out with.
The table and display
We were allocated 12'x5' and needed every inch of it. The table base lives on top of my pool table at home so needed my tailer to bring it to the hall. Everything was packed in tubs and the team had lots of fun laying the hex tiles out. All the key terrain pieces are made according to Saga terrain dimensions and 4" hex system always means you keep them S away from each other. The only down side is that you need to fit them in the frame so you can't move them that 1" more. But that is a small price to pay. The MDF hex tiles are made by Mike @ Battlefield Accessories and I flocked them up. We also added some extras for a little eye candy including a 3D printed cathedral that Robbie had made which is amazing.
Demo games
In order to give people a feel for playing Saga with it key mechanics, we made 3 point / 4 Saga dice warbands. Vikings v Anglo Danes and Crusaders v Mutatawwi'a were the go to lists though we had Spanish, Moors and a couple of others in reserve. Using 3 points allowed for 2-3 quick turns which more than adequately demonstrated the key phases, activate units and the battleboards.
Kat, Robbie and Pip were the demo masters in chief with Kat playing non-stop from 10AM to 3PM. For most of the time we had 2 games going at the same time and early on we had 3. I stopped counting when we hit 20 demo games, so I think we got around 30 with lots more people looking on.Saga miniature display
We had over 200 miniatures on display plus some terrain samples from Ainsty Castings and Renedra.
Unfortunately the V&V shipment didn't arrive in time, but we got
1st Corps, Aventine Miniatures , Bad Squiddo Games, Conquest Games, Crusader Miniatures, Drabant, Eureka Miniatures, Fireforge Games, Footsore Miniatures, Gorgon Studios, Gripping Beast
Magister Militum, Newline Designs, Old Glory UK, Shieldwall Miniatures, SHQ Miniatures, Steve Barber Models, Stronghold Terrain, Wargames Foundry, Warhansa, Warlord Games and West WindThe display probably got more attention than the demo games and I was constantly answering questions about the companies, playing and collecting Saga armies and discussing long lost piles of metal which people thought about bring out of boxes and onto the the table.
There were lots of complements on the display and surprise at the number of companies making 28mm Saga suitable miniatures. The most common comments were:
- the miniatures look so much better in the flesh and that some company's websites just didn't do their figures justice
- whilst there was some difference in scale most people were comfortable with the idea of mixing and matching ranges
- lots of people took close up photos and the copies of the contact details for further research.
Day in review
It was a great day out in general. Lots of demo games, with some really great terrain and armies on display throughout the hall. It was also great to see that my club, the Nunawading Wargaming Association was incredibly well represented and the talent and commitment displayed was amazing.From a Saga perspective we hit all the goals; lots of games were played; lots of new gamers and those who owned th game but never played it were uncovered; and we created lots of interest. Melbourne is a big city in area so it is easy for people to live 1-1½ hours from each other, so it was great to be able to direct people to gamers and gaming clubs local to them. I don't know exactly how many people attended Little Wars, but we had a couple of hundred drop by our stand.
Looks like we will be doing the same thing at PAX in October 2019 and working towards a Melbourne Saga tournament later in the year too.
