by Brant Guillory, 9 May 2025
Our annual pilgrimage to Buckeye Game Fest was spiced up a bit this year with the inclusion of QUAD FEST!
As we’d previously noted, this year the Dragoons teamed up with a couple of fans & friends and built a small program of wargames around the classic SPI quadrigames. By the time the dust cleared, we actually had seven games1, so from Wednesday night through Saturday morning, we brought back old-school quick-learning hex-&-counter classic wargaming to the War Room.
While Ardwulf had to pull back of BGF for some personal considerations, he was still able to drop off his copies of the games we needed to keep the program full. Bill Simoni handled the Crimean War quad and Blue & Gray. BBMike GM’ed Island War. Minh covered Napoleon’s Last Battles. And I held down the table for Thirty Years War and Modern Battles I & II. Across all those games, over a dozen players popped into our games, under the watchful eye of our larger-than-it-needed-to-be table sign (thanks BGF!) We even played a quad “off schedule” as David Thompson and I cracked into the 30YW the day before, to make sure I was ready to go when the event rolled around.
Now that we’ve had a successful run with a ‘themed’ set of games at Buckeye Game Fest, we’re going to have to come up with something similar for next year, too.
Have a look as the QUAD FEST! games this year
click images through the article to enlarge
Beyond QUAD FEST!, there were plenty of other games in The War Room, starting on Monday(!) and rolling all the way through Saturday night, with Sunday being a pretty dead day in there2.
Some of the larger games at the beginning of the week included a full table for Third Reich and OCS Smolensk as well as combined Triumph & Tragedy + Conquest & Consequences for a big global game.
A lot of familiar faces, but plenty of new attendees. There were always games available to jump into. Flying Pig was there as a new vendor and had crazy deals.
— Bill Simoni
Bill & Russ set up a copy of A Most Fearful Sacrifice in all it’s king bed-sized glory and made it through day one of the actual battle in their multiple sessions throughout the weekend. Hermann was also there to GM Rock of Chickamauga, which uses the same system, but fits on a table that’s not Brobdingnagian.
This was my second consecutive year at Buckeye Game Fest and this time was even more fun than last year. Lots of great game demos to participate in and I was offered the chance to demo The Rock of Chickamauga for the very first time. But more importantly than the game plays, its the opportunity to see fellow gamers and designers and talk shop, exchange ideas, and just laugh out loud. A terrific well-run convention and I look forward to attending next year again.
— Hermann Luttmann
There were multiple sessions of Littoral Commander: Indo Pacific that made it to the table, including an el grande 4v4 player showdown across 2 maps as the US and Chinese faced off.
Across the War Room, plenty of other games got played: MBT and Fire In The Lake and Successors and Divine Right and the mandatory ASL game, plus Red Dust Rebellion, Crisis 1914, 2 simultaneous games of VUCA’s New Cold War, Atlantic Chase, the same PicoArmor PanzerBlitz we have at Origins, several flavors of Twilight Struggle, 2 simultaneous games of Time of Crisis (on the same table!) and the HMGS Great Lakes folks in the back half of the room, among plenty of others. Heck there was even a Grav Armor game spotted in the wild!
Buckeye Game Fest was once again a fantastic time. I think this is probably my fourth or fifth year attending, and I just love it. The War Room is of course the big draw for me. There’s nothing like getting together with my friends, playing some games, and just enjoying the fellowship. And of course like every year I got to meet some incredible people who I’m sure I’ll see again in the future and forge new friendships with. Huge thanks to Brant, Mike, Bill, and everyone else who helped with QUAD FEST! It was really cool to play a quad for the first time!
— David Thompson
BGF is still my favorite US historical con (PunchedCon is still the best overall). Registration is easy, low-overhead and selection for lodging and chow since it’s not a big con. Best part, as always, is a chance to hangout/network with other folks. On a whim I signed up for Alexander’s RPG3 , and that was totally awesome! Someone should do that at Origins.
— Tim Densham, Catastrophe Games
We were pleasantly surprised! BGF is a small but mighty con with the wargame contingent absolutely thriving! Additionally, everyone was so nice! I am excited to see it grow, especially the panels. My only hesitation from coming again as a vendor is that many folks who attended were not there to shop, they were there just to game – which is totally fine, but not good for us as a company. Not having to wait in line at Barley’s was definitely the cherry on top!
— Denver Walker, Flying Pig Games
There were a couple of wargame vendors there, as Flying Pig Games made their first trip to BGF (with some great deals!), along with Age of Glory, selling minis rules plus plenty of wargames both new & used. Although Steve from Blue Panther was there, they were not set up with a sales table this year.
I got to play a bunch of games, which is super awesome, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed sharing my favorite games by running teach and plays. I met so many amazing people, and I hope to see them again at Origins in a few weeks.
— Minh Nguyen
And while there was a perfectly large open gaming room for the non-wargames, we barely made any time to head over that way, since The War Room was hopping the whole week. We got a handful of pictures from there, but the audio crapped out on us for the video we tried to shoot, and no one wants a room full of ambient noice for 5 minutes. Same thing w/ the video we shot in the library. We never made it to the RPG rooms, or any of the discussion panels, and the one day we had time for the Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator was the same day that he was GM’ing the 8-player game of Littoral Commander. So here are the few photos we did get from the main gaming room, but it’s not much. There was also a consignment sale room, rather than an auction, where folks had to sign up for specific shopping times to keep the room from getting overloaded.
In total? It was a great time and The War Room keeps expanding. That’s good and bad. It’s good because there’s plenty to play and even more to watch being played. It’s bad because we’re running out of space! However, Buckeye Game Fest — and especially The War Room — is still one of the very few conventions in the country where you can set up a monster game on Monday, play straight through until Saturday, and know that you’ve got a protected space to keep it set up and chugging along. And in the meantime, there’s plenty of other wargaming going on for you to join in.
Buckeye Game Fest 2026 is much earlier in the calendar. It’ll be held March 9-16, and still at the Hyatt end of the convention center in Columbus, OH. See you there?
photos from
Brant Guillory
Minh Nguyen
Flying Pig Games
Mike Colello
Buckeye Game Fests Past
2022 ~ 2023 ~ 2024 ~ 2025
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