"Demo game/ Punic Wars" Topic

My friends & I (five in total) have been working towards a demo game at a local show. We've done this several times before with Naps but decided, last year, that Ancients & Field of Glory would be our material.The show goes for two days & we're the only wargame, so get plenty of attention.
We like to include Joe Public, not only in explanations but also allowing any interested punter to take a small command, roll a few dice etc.

We've pretty well assembled our forces (4 armies totalling 4800 points) & have gamed several, smaller games quite successfully.

I know there's a lot of knowledge out there on the forum so what pitfalls await us?

All suggestions are gratefully received.

IMHO , one pitfall is the way some people will handle the figures, The second is your scenery if it is made of foam some one will lean on it and it may break. The third thing is to make sure your figures DO NOT walk away!!!!!!!! Mike Adams P.S. I did run a few ancient games and had NO major probelms!!!

Yes Mike, no problems but you were standing with a baseball bat in hand…lol

My suggestion with FOG is to try and keep the sequence correct. It can get a bit mad if players start rushing through the turn and moving units too early.

Cheers

Keith

Keith, it was a SMALL bat!!!!!!!!!!! Mike Adams

@ Spotter: VERY good point.

@ Legion: as I've said, we've done this several times before & no problems.
Originally we agonised over barriers etc but apart from a few enthusiastic kids (bless them!) virtually no damage & certainly no loss.

It's a Train & Hobby show so the crowd are mostly families. Does that make a difference?

I have done some FoG participation games at UK shows with good results. I would echo Spotter's comment on the turn sequence. I had a magnetic board up with a moveable arrow pointing at the phase.

I set my games up with something about to happen (i.e. not at the start, but a couple of sensible moves into the game): my most recent game was a Crusades scenario where the players started with the 'how close do you go' decisions.

But it depends what your intention is and how many times you want to run throught the game (I wanted to give people a flavour and run it several times) – if want to play the whole game as a game and run it twice, maybe only once, then start at the beginning I guess.

And don't be afraid to make the table decorative by adding scenery that isn't relevant to the game (trees and rocks and stuff) … with FoG, if it isn't on a template it is just decorative (but, despite what you see on some wargame tables, bare and open land isn't usually _entirely devoid of bushes and isolated trees) …

My experience of the general audience (such as you are likely to meet) is that they will be blown away by your toy soldiers. Enjoy!

Phil