by Aaron Danis, 26 November 2025
“Compass is my passion!”
– Bill Thomas, Owner of Compass Games
This is the third Fall Compass Expo I have attended since 2022. The Expo is held on Veteran’s Day weekend, or in this case, the weekend prior (7-9 November), at the Comfort Inn and Convention Center in Meriden, Connecticut, not far from the Compass Games warehouse (which is not a convention venue). Although the Expo opened on Wednesday afternoon for the early birds, I didn’t arrive until Thursday evening, sans my longtime friend and gaming partner Lance English, who was recovering from a medical procedure.
Conference badge and Compass’ fall welcome photo of its official expo sign
click images to enlarge
My mission for this Expo was different than my last two trips. In 2022, I just wanted to see what the Expo was all about and buy some discounted (50% off!) games. In November 2023, I was interested in meeting The Last Gamble designer and “Mr. Bulge” Danny Parker, which I did. He even signed my copy of his first book on the Ardennes Offensive. This time around, I was covering the Expo for the Armchair Dragoons wargaming website and planned to interview Compass Games owner Bill Thomas for this article. It is a different mindset than if you are just playing and eating pizza. I even dug up Bill’s writeup of the first Expo in November 2018 published in Paper Wars (which I happened to own) to do background research. Since 2018 there have been 7 Fall and 3 Spring Expos.
The calm before the storm in the Compass storeroom. Games sold briskly thanks to the conference (50% off) and current discounted holiday pricing and excellent inventory.
Do you want to know what new Compass games are on the cusp of release? Upcoming games are placed on a table in the foyer for attendees to peruse, as well as the next two issues of Paper Wars. That copy of Sinking Yamato disappeared mysteriously by day two of the Expo…hmmm.
What is Compass Expo? While one would think that it’s a venue to play exclusively Compass Games, that is not the case. Bill lets gamers play whatever they want (he wants attendees to have fun!), although in my unscientific rough guestimate it was about a 70/30 balance in favor of Compass products. For this article, I am focusing on Compass games (particularly those in the production pipeline), but if you go to the Compass Games Enthusiast’s Group Facebook page, you will see pictures of many of the other games played there.
Game play at the convention is self-organizing. When you register and pay the $50 for the Expo (which includes a Saturday night pizza party), your registration sheet asks what games you would like to play, then Brittani-Pearl MacFadden, one of the indispensable Compass staff, places them on a spreadsheet that you can access for signups. I proposed about ten games initially but later asked Brittani to remove several when they gained no traction. In addition to my game demo playthroughs, I played the Compass version of The Russian Campaign, South China Sea, and one non-Compass game. I took advantage of the sales and picked up 3 games!
This is the annual Bitter Woods tournament run by the game’s designer Randy Heller that uses 3 giant maps (UL) with 1- inch counters mounded on lightweight acrylic blocks (LL). These large counters make manipulating the dense opening moves much easier (LR). One enterprising player made his own homemade upright turn track (UR). Anyone can sign up for the tournament.
Game Playtests, Displays, and Demos
In addition to game playing, there are many Compass game demos, displays, and playtests occurring, as well as copies of games releasing soon. If you are one of those players who is always eagerly awaiting the next game (you know who you are!), then this is a must-visit event. Notably, prolific designer Greg Smith brought a stack of games in various phases of design, and that didn’t include the ones piled in his car…
(L) Greg shows off Israeli Tank Ace, and you can zoom in to see some of his other prototypes. On the right is Greg’s Viking design, which was removed from a future issue of Paper Wars in favor of a boxed treatment. Unfortunately, he forgot his copy of Insurgent Tide about Iraq.
Greg teaches his solitaire game B52D to Mike Fowler (R) as game playtester Ken Wasserman (L) looks on. Greg generously gave away t-shirts of the future B52D Paper Wars 120 cover to anyone buying a copy of any issue of Paper Wars at the store (I got mine on the right)!
Mike Vitale also brought several designs from his “Tide” series, to include Desert Tide and prototypes of Hannibal’s Tide and Iberian Tide, above.
Ernie Copley (L), designer of the forthcoming Breakthrough Russia strategic game, shows off the Bougainville campaign from the playtest version of his Island Infernos quad to Martin Spetz.
Ernie Copley’s Island Inferno playtest session was of great interest to me as I am reading John McManus’ trilogy on the U.S. Army in the Pacific in WWII. I currently am reading Volume 2, titled Island Infernos, and happen to be in the section on the campaign for Bougainville, which is the game that Ernie was previewing at the Expo. Martin Spetz and I sat with Ernie as he gave us the background on how he selected the four amphibious assaults (Guadalcanal, Saipan, Biak, and Bougainville) in the quad. He had played the original 1975 SPI Island War quad (Guadalcanal, Saipan, Leyte, and Okinawa) and wanted more competitive games with more maneuver options (most U.S. island campaigns against Japan tended to be grim, frontal assault, grind-them-out affairs). The quad has a variety of capabilities cards but is not card-driven. He stated these four games have been extensively playtested for two years with more playtesting scheduled ahead.
Designer Dave LeLacheur stands next to the playtest copy of his mini-monster Lighting Strikes, which gives players and opportunity to relive global history from the outbreak of war in 1914 through 1954. Dave previously designed Blitz! A World in Conflict, also by Compass.
Designer Chris Selman had his Medevac demo on display and demo. It is an impressive package, but even more impressive was his dice tower in the foreground on the left!
Coming in mid-2026 to Paper Wars 114 is a streamlined version of the Combat! system applied to the 6 June 1944 assault at Brecourt Manor with “Easy” Company, 101st Airborne of “Band of Brothers” fame. If you are a fan of the HBO series, the names on the counters should look familiar. This will be a great way to try the Combat! system if you are new to it like me.
Designer Raymond Fiore brought this trio of demo games to display. The only one on pre-sale now is Chopper Pilot Vietnam.
Adam Starkweather brought a bunch of demo games that he has in the design process. He brought three games of the “Warrior” series and had Warriors of Mexico on display. He also demonstrated Shattered Swords, his 1942 Pacific War card game (bottom).
The author sat with Adam Starkweather (L) to try out an intro mini-scenario of his Cold War-goes-hot “Doomsday” series, focusing on the battle for Berlin. Could we see this little gem in Paper Wars at some point?
Game demos would not be complete without designer Bruce Maxwell putting his new Air & Armor V Corps game through its paces (L). Bruce also gave an enlightening talk (R) on how intelligence and reconnaissance work in the Air & Armor rules set.
Sitting down with Bill Thomas
Bill Thomas is Compass Games. As his quote at the start of this article states, it is his passion, beyond his ownership pursuits in the healthcare & commercial janitorial field. It started as a hobby for him back in 2006, doing a max of a couple of games a year, but in 2018 it became a business in its own right, thanks to his son Bill Jr. expressing an interest in running it someday. Compass overnight ramped up to publishing 20+ games a year. With the big uptick in production came the inevitable growing pains that all large game companies face (see SPI in the 1970s). Errata (a word that Bill hates due to a double standard), minor errata, counter errors, map miscues, etc., reared their ugly heads, but along the way the Compass team learned to deal with them, and continued to enhance quality. “We are always trying to improve our game experience for our customer. Our products are better quality-controlled now than they were 5 years ago.” Bill proudly stated.
“We have instituted new levels of quality controls and have assembled a great and dedicated team,” he continued. Bill feels that there is a “double standard” in the industry when it comes to how some companies are viewed concerning errata and how they remedy it. In Bill’s view, when a Compass game has minor errata, critics claim the game wasn’t reviewed or developed, but when other companies have errata, nothing is said. Compass responded by sending out free (!) replacement counters and posting errata, when necessary, though that is rarely the case now under their new review processes.
Bill also is the most accessible wargame company president in the business, thanks to Compass’ every 2-week online townhall streamed on YouTube and its Facebook page. Julian Thomas (Bill’s nephew) and Brittani-Pearl host the show, review the production schedule, and give game previews while Bill and Bill Jr. do unboxings of new games, provide “color commentary,” answer questions from dedicated Compass fans, and give away at least one new free game or issue of Paper Wars every episode (they also provide the comic relief). The author won a copy of Paper Wars issue 99 Assault on Tobruk about 4 years ago and rarely misses an episode.
I asked Bill where he sees Compass Games going in the future, and where he sees it in the wargame marketplace. “I am not concerned about that,” Bill said, “I do what I want to do.” He doesn’t worry about being the #1 company in the field or compare Compass to others. “We have a different business model…we don’t do a minimum order sign-up.” Bill and his team decide what they will and will not publish and when they will do reprints. For example, Compass currently has three World War II operational-level desert games in production, two by the same designer (Desert Tide and the just published Desert Blitzkrieg both by Mike Vitale, and Desert Generals by Ernie Copley), but Bill believes there is a market for all of them.
Bill is a businessman first, and this has stood Compass well with the ongoing national tariff kerfuffle. Compass keeps up to fifteen new games in stock in the warehouse for future release, which allows it to weather any interruptions in supply from overseas. There was no wailing or gnashing of teeth at Compass when the tariffs hit. It was business as normal, and Bill has absorbed most of the tariff hit since then.
I asked Bill why he doesn’t take a booth on the road to show and sell his games. “It’s not needed in today’s economy,” he replied. “It’s also logistically hard to do. We have 20-plus new designs a year, not including reprints of our own games. I also asked if there are any changes planned for Paper Wars, which has shifted from a broad hobby magazine to an in-house Compass-product-only journal in the last 4 years. “No, it works (as is),” he replied. The magazine is published quarterly and is a cross of Strategy & Tactics with a game in every issue, and Moves magazine with analyses, scenarios, and variants about various Compass games from readers and designers. One thing that does bother Bill about Paper Wars is the fact it is never nominated for the Charles S. Roberts award for best wargaming magazine. “It doesn’t matter if it wins, but it absolutely should be nominated,” Bill said.
As for the future, I clearly got the impression Bill thinks the company will be in good hands. Compass’ top-selling fantasy game Burning Banners (it is already being reprinted with another volume on the way) was suggested by his staff, who had played it and loved it. Other new, less conventional wargames such as Panzer Mech (an alt-history WWII Russian Front game) are in the works. Compass also is reprinting the 1979 GDW sci-fi classic Belter, originally designed by Frank Chadwick and Marc Miller, with new artwork and additional rules by new re-designer Christopher Moeller.
The draft cover art for Panzer Mech. Looks ominous!
This Expo was well-attended with 156 gamers, second only to the November 2023 Expo. I hope to attend the Spring Expo on 14-18 May, which tends to be slightly smaller. If I have any suggestions for future expos, it is to push the conference venue to continue updating its facilities and furniture (the ballroom was repainted and new lighting was added, an improvement much welcomed by the attendees). I didn’t get a chance to post all of my pictures here, so go to the Compass Games Enthusiast Facebook page (and scroll down a bit), and check out Half-Assed Gaming’s YouTube walk-around video. Hope to see you in the Spring!
Bonus Content
I think I am the only person to capture playtest copy photos of William Cooper’s Torpedo Junction: Beneath the Southern Cross (Vol I). Note the label for the yellow-dotted international date line photo in the lower left corner. That makes it easy!
A parting shot of the Lightning Strikes playtest team still working on Sunday morning, after covering 22 years in game time. (Above) That’s dedication! Picture courtesy of my compadre Martin Spetz, who also took the impressive shot below of Adam Starkweather with the maps from the first two volumes of his Doomsday series laid out over several tables.
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Well done. I didn’t realize Adam was a Re-Animator fan.