Today is the Fall 2026 outing for Wargames Among the Warplanes, a twice-yearly day of wargaming held at the National Warplane Museum in beautiful Geneseo, New York, one of my favorite towns on the planet. I attended college in Geneseo and for 20 years now have dutifully attended the gaming convention the college gaming club puts on every year (and as a student, served as Minister of Wargames, Minister of Roleplaying Games, and treasurer of the club!). I had to miss the spring show this year, but wanted to make sure I made it to the fall show, not least because Mike Demana of Lead Legionaries and his girlfriend Jenny were making the trip out from Ohio to attend. Mike's terrain builds have been a big inspiration for me, and he's just been genuinely a nice guy and supportive reader.
The show is actually still going on as I write this, however I've been on a new medication for the past couple weeks that wonks with my sleep, meaning I've been really struggling with daytime fatigue. With an hour and twenty minutes' commute each way to attend Wargames Among the Warplanes, I decided to err on the side of caution and skedaddle on home after the morning session.
I used the same table layout (for the most part; some of the scatter is arranged differently) as I used for my last solo game, and had enough time in the morning time slot to play twice; the first game had three players - Mike, Jenny, and John, a gent I used to run a lot of roleplaying games for when I was living in Rochester. After the first game, John stepped away to join a Battletech table, and Mike and Jenny played a second round, changing the deployment zones they started in.
The only major house rule I implemented was that zombies who were not in range of seeing/hearing/smelling survivors didn't automatically stand still. I rolled a scatter die for each of them, sending them wandering where the arrows pointed, and only keeping them stationary if the die came up with an "on target" result. This did result in zombies spawning on the edges of the board and immediately wandering off of it, as well as a stretch where five or six zombies were all lined up on one table edge, standing still because I just kept rolling "on target" results for them.
I think the second game is where things really started to get interesting. There were six potential loot drops on the table each time - one in each building except for the tiny little pizza place, since that was the one building on the table without a detailed interior. Or, even, a floor. When the survivors investigated one, they rolled to see what they found; these could be supplies, medicine, weapons, etc. One result that didn't come up in the first game but did come up in the second was that these loot drops could yield a survivor. And in fact, that result came up three times in the second game.
So while Mike and Jenny each started with two survivors, by the end of the game Jenny had a crew of four* and Mike was commanding a team of three. The second game also had the largest number of zombies appearing and wandering off the board, or standing stock-still for 3+ turns.
You remember that asterisk on Jenny's crew of four last paragraph? Well, three members of her crew were clustered on the table edge, on their way towards the rendezvous point to get back in the VW Vanagon that was their home base, when four zombies spawned right on top of them. The survivor "Mark" put up a valiant effort with his wrench to try and keep everything at bay, but ultimately succumbed even as his compatriots escaped with their lives.
I also got to see Mike's infamously bad dice luck in action. With most rolls in Zombie RV requiring a 4+ on a six-sided dice, there was a stretch where - Poor Mike! - he couldn't roll above a 3. Even switching out dice after every roll didn't help him any.
It may have been my fault, though - as soon as I stepped away to use the men's room, Mike immediately rolled two 6s with "Hank" and his machete, felling two of the three zombies trying to gnaw on him!
With the second game at an end, it was just about noon; the morning time slot technically ran from 9am to 1pm with an hour lunch break before the afternoon time slot began at 2. I thought trying to squeeze a third game in might be a bit much, and Mike and Jenny were ready for lunch, so I got packed up, said my goodbyes and texted Gina to let her know I was on my way home.
All in all, a day (morning) well spent! I'm glad I got to finally meet Mike and Jenny in person, and it's the sort of event that's just really pleasant and affirming; I'm a bit of a shut-in given Gina's health issues, so going out and having people tell me how happy they are to see me, how glad they are I could make it, how much they love seeing my models and terrain on the table... it's a good feeling that I don't get as often as I'd like. I talked a little bit to a couple of people who were happy to just walk around and watch games, including a family with some young kids. At 39, I'm one of the young bucks at Wargames Among the Warplanes - lots of guys in their 60s and at least one in his 70s, so we're all pretty keen on trying to lure in the next generation of wargamers.
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