"Winter War, what a disappointment " Topic

I curious if anyone here attended Winter War in Champaign? I use to go years ago, they had a ton of games going on, some vendors, and over all a pretty fun event.

I missed prereg but l saw they still had some games going on. I asked if they were going to add any events on their FB page and was rudley told the flyers were already printed and that none would be added because they did not have enough tables. When l got there l found all the events filled, and over half the tables empty. I thought they had no room.
The vendors available numbered 4 and to be honest they did not have much to pick from.
The auction was pretty poor with very little in the way of minis being offered. To make matters worse they would not let you look at the items being auctioned off. In fact they never even bothered to auction some items even after charging people per item.

Over the years they have been unwelcoming to people wanting to run games and it shows.

This con was a Joke and I will not be coming back.

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. A lot of staff were still in shock over losing the con chairman and trying to keep things going.

Numbers wise the con was one of our best with just over 400 attendees. The Pathfinder area was full. Did you take a look at the Winter War website?

I do know that a lot of games were late getting in. A lot of games did not get enough players this year and that is probably why there were so many empty tables.

I have never known a game to be turned down. Of course if you showed up to run a game and all the spaces were full that is probably why you were turned down.

I hope you will reconsider attending and send games in for the prereg as this is the only way to have a good con.

Game submission ended on January 16th and we did not add games once the program was at the printer. We have found that people do not sign up for games added after the program is printed.

Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon were light in the main gaming room. Of the three games that I ran two were light in players, but everyone had a good time.

We had 6 vendors this year (three of them were only one table) and have been trying very hard to get more dealers, especially someone who sells miniatures. We try to keep the vendor ratio at 50 attendees per vendor otherwise no vendor makes money and vendors don't come back.

As far as I know if a game gets submitted in time it won't be turned down.

I know a good number of my friends have contacted you to run games over the years and never heard back, so I find that last statement to be true.

As for saying there were 6 vendors, I do not consider over priced TShirts and homemade craft items to be vendors, but you can spin it how you want.

I personally have nothing to do with scheduling games though I do try to get games for the con from the CITW and other people that I may meet during the year. When someone does talk to me I do try my best to help them submit games.

As to vendors, the situation is not ideal as the con has been having a very hard time getting vendors for the last several years. I would really would like a good miniatures dealer at the con. As to the vendors that were there, each of the 6 did pay a vendors fee so I'd guess THEY think that they are vendors.

The days of conventions being exotic shopping opportunities regardless of size or location appear to be over. Too many stores have fallen into the safe path of two or three manufacturers to the exclusion of anything else, and since stores are the best way to get shopping variety at a Con…

Also, didn't Winter War lose a long-time important staffer in December? Major organization shakeups that close to showtime will throw everyone off.

Yes, the con chairman, Don McKinney passed away a few weeks before the con. It's been hard trying to pick up the pieces.

And the con has been trying to get more dealers. From what I understand they have been lucky to get what they have. I've tried to help out with names and addresses but not much luck.

Greetings, I am Donald's son, Michael McKinney, and I figured I would resolve and illuminate some of the process involved for deciding whether games make it into the final program or do not.

1) The timing of when the judge submits their games. While we will take judges up until the program goes to the printer in January, often times the judges who get 'exactly' what they want for their games put their registration in the soonest. Meaning, if you get your game in November or December to the convention, it has a higher chance of being approved.

2) The amount of tables being asked for is a constant problem for Winter War, simply because space is limited and we have to take games in certain varieties for certain rooms. For instance, if you wandered the M-room this year, you might have seen empty tables during convention. However, the M-room is designated as that mainly for miniatures, but for board games and for what would be big-battle kinds of games. We don't put roleplaying in here because of the noise generated. In the first years at the Hawthorne we did that, and we had both Roleplayers and miniature folks protest the amount of noise generate by the other. If you look at the program and not just the map necessarily on the back of the program, you would see we have roleplayers in another part of the hotel, along with other rooms, to give them their noise space, and for the Pathfinder folks, their space for mustering and operations.

3) Dealers are a constant problem, and have been since 2000. It's not just that dealers may have similar product, it's that a lot of dealers do NOT want to travel anymore. Not to mention, we had some dealers who were active service in the military, or who have gone out of business. We constantly are pushing out for vendors to come, starting with local, and then regional. Some vendors have refused to attend, others cannot simply make the time or whatever means to get here.

4) The myth that we say 'no' because of names or people. We do not, however, when vendors and judges submit events or demand nice things in exchange for being a vendor or judge, we say NO. We do not have a policy of favoritism, and that goes both ways. If someone is refused as vendor or judge, it's because they made a demand that we give them the entire M-room, or prevent 'insert vendor here' from attending. This is a policy of the person shutting the door in our face, not the other way around. We had in early January a situation where didn't have enough games for the M-room and we had some folks offer to run games and we gave them the tables. When they decided to not run those games, we had an issue this year, and a clearly vacated table. But that is not the norm because we don't usually have a need for miniature and board games. We also reject games that have too-few player slots, or have pre-assigned player slots. We fully discourage all efforts of favoritism. We understand Winter War is a once-a-year event, and that people may not see each other the rest of the year, but there have been several attempts to do this over the years and we say NO to that.

That isn't us going "we don't want a certain type of game, like Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu from running", it's either NO ONE is submitting those games for the convention, or the people who are, are asking for some request or privilege the convention does not give. And before someone says, "such and such person did not, they told me," in order for those weird requests to be hiccups, they must write them down themselves on the judges' form. And yes people have tried.

So no, Winter War doesn't not purge types of games, it doesn't discriminate against certain judges or dealers. We always have accusations of this, none of them ever prove real, and the convention carries on. Like every other convention, we get accused of catering to a niche however, and that is true. We are named for the Winter War in 1930s between Finland and the Soviet Union, we have an open-support miniature players and miniature events, hence why they have the Main room. Miniatures is an art that has taken a beating in recent years, such as Games Workshop ending and crippling its own product lines (speaking on Warhammer Fantasy).

My advice for judges who got rejected: Submit in early December, late November; request the minimum number of tables you need, and if you have a bigger need, fully explain WHY you need that many; run a game with a larger amount of players (more than 6); run a game that isn't common or find the manpower to run something like 5th Edition D&D Living Campaign. We would love to have greater diversity in our games offered. WE, as WINTER WAR, need judges to run those games.

We also keep an active record of all games submitted and the performance of those games each year. Donald McKinney had a policy of scrutinizing judges who tried to run games that performed poorly back-to-back years. We had a lot of people this year, we broke records on attendance. Despite the loss Convention Chairman Donald McKinney, the convention went pretty well, and we had a good amount of games. 400 people is the estimate of how many we had.

That was more than what we had the Chancellor years ago, or at the FLB on the campus grounds. is Winter War dying? Nope. Were there some snags because our leader died from a sudden and brutal condition? Yes. Are those snags hurting us enough to hurt attendance? Apparently not.

beowulfdahunter, I'm sorry you had a bad experience.

I'm sorry you missed out on Pre-Reg, it was open for six weeks, game submissions were accepted for 4 months. It has been Winter War's policy not to add events after the Program has been finalized and sent to the printers, because we have found that these games do not get players. As i am not on FB, I am curious about this "rude" message. Could you quote it and the person who sent it?

All of the events were not filled, I like my predecessor Don McKinney, track not only the overall attendance but the number of people playing in the games. While this year we did set or tie several slot records for those numbers, there were always available games to be played.

The time that over half the tables would have been empty was Friday Afternoon, and Sunday, traditionally times when the gaming is slow. Friday afternoon, because many attendees are still at work or school, and Sunday because they are heading home or attending Church. We did end up with one event cancelling all weekend, the Judge was extremely ill, another because of a Judge noshowing, and a last because of a last minute conflict.

We had six vendors, the game stores; Armored Gopher, Bowen Dragon 1, and The Game Room. Artwork by Elaine, d20 Stitchery, and Troll Lords Games. While Bowen Dragon 1 was selling lots of t-shirts, he also had games, foam swords and other items. d20 Stitchery sold a very high quality dice bag, and she was very pleased with the business she did and will be back next year. Since I've attended conventions where "vendors" were just trying to promote there current or upcoming Kickstarter, and didn't actually have a product to sell, I am not sure how having vendors that are selling items do not count as vendors?

The auction went well, as for not having minis, we can only auction off what is submitted. We have never allowed people to examine items before hand, and this year all items that were submitted for the auction were auctioned off. A number of items didn't sell, but they were put on the block. I am not sure how you can say that all the items weren't auctioned, after you said you were upset that you couldn't look at the items beforehand? Looking through the door, you might have seen items on a table, but those would have been items sold to someone with a number, they are stored there until after the auction. On those years that we don't get through all the items, any item not put on the block are returned to their owner and their fee is also returned.

While I cannot speak of previous years, this year I only rejected one Judge, and that was because of demands that judge made for running his game. Demands that I would not accept.

I am sorry that you won't be returning, but we will carry on even without your attendance.

Paul Pomykala
WW 43 Acting Chairman
Winter War Convention Chairman

With the attitude you guys have shown, I am definitely not coming back. Thanks.