Best. Game. Objective. Ever.

I'll have more on my adventures at Spartacon, the annual convention in Lansing, Mich., directly, but I just had to post a quick report on one of the games I played there.

In short, it had the best objective I have ever been given in a game. "Proceed to your private gentleman's club and go upstairs, leaving a guard at the door." I kid you not. Have a drink and check out the girls. I can do that!

OK, so in all seriousness, it was part of an epic 1929 gangster game. The setting was Detroit, with the hypothetical scenario being that Bugsy Malone and his boys came in from Chicago to get revenge on Detroit's Purple Gang for the Valentine's Day Massacre. With nine players running everything from Abe Bernstein (me) to federal agents to dockworkers, I don't think I've ever seen so much chaos or mayhem in a game. It was a blast!

Of course since all of us are from Michigan, part of the fun was the local flavor set by the immense urban gaming area. Woodward Ave, Fort St, it was all there, right down to the ads for Vernors Ginger Ale and Stroh's, ahem, ice cream.

The game quickly turned Detroit into a war zone, which I suppose one could argue matches the reality. Cars were exploding, bombs going off in windows, Tommy guns spraying bullets everywhere... even a good old fashioned brawl on the docks. The game had it all.

It was run with a set of home brew rules, which for the most part worked well. There were a quibbles, I think we fudged a few things here and there, and I would have liked to have seen more opportunity to react to certain things, but overall it achieved the result of fun. (In fairness, I think there is a mechanism for reaction, we just didn't always use it. It was hard to keep that many players in line, with that many things going on.)

I'm really getting more into games like this than the "traditional" wargames with troops lined up in regiments going at it. I have enough to get something on a small scale going. I think it's time to come up with something!