CONVENTION CRASHING: GAMES EXPO

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.

Fifteen-year-old Daniel Wicks is testing out a sword, holding it sideways with his skinny arms, checking the heft and admiring it. It would go well with the battle ax at home.

"It's not real," Daniel says. "Trust me with a real ax?"

Neither is this sword. It's a thick foam sword painted to look like a real one (retail price: $100). But still, Daniel feels he needs it to protect his native New Zealand from deadly peril.

"The world's being taken over by sheep," Daniel warns. "We've got to be able to fight back."

Daniel left the Mutton Menace at home to come to the Games Expo at the South Point to help his dad, Len Wicks, sell a board game.

Wicks is an air traffic controller in Petone who designed his game, called Global Odysee , for his kids to teach them a bit about geography and the people who live in it. When he went to a map company to print the board, they told him he should try to sell the game. Now, he's got his giant 3-D board all made, his cards printed and the whole thing kid-tested - he just needs to find someone to buy it. He's hoping to attract the attention of retailers and distributors.

"We've never shown it before," Wicks says, "but we figured if you're going to make a splash, we might as well make it in Vegas."

On Monday, though, it seems like almost nobody is making a splash. The problem? Not enough water in the pool. Only a handful of buyers wander the floor, stopping to look at the educational games, the historical games, the family games, the model war games, the dice games and the just-asking-for-a-wedgie Pokemon-style card games.

Mostly the people wandering the floor are bored, grumbling exhibitors who have left their own booths and are playing each other's games.

But one company was doing very well. Crystal Castle makes role-playing dice, which come in sets of seven. One has too few sides (four) and another has way too many (20). Some sets are made from metals and gems, with the amethyst ones going for $80, or more than $11 per die. Kenneth Bowling, whose son, Michael, founded the company, says that in one day they had enough sales to pay for the whole four-day conference.

"The gamers are really into their dice," Bowling says. "The nice thing about dice is you lo se 'em and you need more of 'em, and they're cheap enough you can buy a lot of 'em."

It would be such a stylish tank

The thing about computer war games is that they have neat explosions and ear-shaking kabooms, but darn it, when you slaughter a guy's infantry, you can't see his face. And war should be about people.

That's why Ben Bostedor, salesman for Battlefront Miniatures, enjoys using toy tanks and soldiers to refight World War II with his friends, even though a starter army costs about $200 and you have to glue it together and paint it yourself and he's not that good at the painting, not like the guys who go nuts with the shading and battalion markings. He's a little more laid back than that, within limits.

"You can do it as historical or loose as you like," Bostedor says, "but obviously you don't paint a Panzer pink."

'The player with the most remaining teeth wins'

No, not hockey. It's The Game of Redneck Life. It's sort of like the Hasbro version, only with more divorces, trailers and monster trucks, and you use beer caps as pawns.

(The box comes with Parcheesi-style pawns, but it's meant to be played with beer caps. If you can't figure out how to make your own, the company will send you some, although, if it comes to that, you probably have no business even playing at being a redneck.)

As you move through your redneck life, you get in fights, raise children and earn money. Actually, most of the money in the game is just for show, because usually you're in debt because your children cost you money on every turn.

"You don't have to keep your young'uns, though, like if you land on the stepparent card, you can lose them," co-creator Lori Dieda says. "That's why we think this is educational."

$27.99, from Gut Bustin' Games.