OLD-ass convention reports

I like doing recaps and AARs of convention experiences, and I’ve been doing it steady since the early 90s. The earlies one I can find online, however, dates back to 1996, probably my fourth HISTORICON I attended at that point. I’m posting it with some of the other comments attached to it, it makes amusing reading in context. I’ll comment throughout.

From: “Walter A. O’Hara”
Subject: What I did on my HISTORICON vacation (LONG)

I just got back from (as my beloved puts it) “wargaming geek paradise,”
and I thought I’d share some thoughts. Delete if you hate travelogues.

Since HISTORICON is essentially a miniatures based convention, it’s no
surprise that there were some excellent events on the venue this year.
Naturally, I didn’t get in half of them, since HISTORICON is usually
attended somewhat better than COLD WARS, HISTORICON’s little brother
(takes place in February-March usually). Next year, I’ll pre-register.
Note: Fall-In! didn’t exist until the year after this was
written
Some interesting stuff was out there for the miniatures market: The Piquet
crowd was there in force, pimping their new “generic rules with
historic modules” approach to miniatures. I didn’t sit through their
spiel, so I’m disinclined to comment beyond the odd similarity to Steve
Jackson’s GURPS approach to role playing games.
looking back ten years, I wonder what the hell I meant by that?
that Piquet is a generic system, adaptable with customizable modules?
I saw a lot of John Hill’s new version of Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb III,
being played. I didn’t get in any of these games, but it looks like a
relatively easy chit-order system from what I saw. I heard some
complaints about the approach towards “regimental grand tactical” gaming
causing a few gamey tactics, but overall the system looks neat. You could
have picked up a copy of the playtest rules for 5 bucks in the dealers’
room– I was kicking myself for not finding that windfall.
Gee! Playtest rules! Such a deal! Seems like I was
excited about it at the time… to this day, I’ve yet to play Johnny Reb III
I found a copy of Roads to Osaka, a Samurai era combat system. Looks
pretty interesting, if straightforward and simplistic. I didn’t get
enough period feel out of the game. I never ended up playing this, and I don’t even remember owning it!

I bought a copy of GZG’s Stargrunt
II (a new SF squad level game) and some bargain basement SF minis in the
flea market. More on SG2 after I read it! If Stargrunt is as good as
Dirtside, GZG’s other ground combat game, I’ll get my money’s worth. I was then, and still am, a fan of DIRTSIDE 2, but never got into Star Grunt. It’s down in the basement somewhere.

Old Glory was there, pushing their new 15mm Command Decision line. These
are some excellent miniatures– I’m regretting my heavy investment in
20mm lead and plastic. Oh well…And now, long defunct….

On the board game front, GMT’s Samurai was sighted (and bought) by yours
truly. 16th Century Japan is one of my favorite eras to read about in
military history and there are darn few games on the subject. I may
actually learn the GBoH system to play this one! The artwork is lavish,
the maps are excellent. The game system is straight GBoH with some
modifications for the period (the viewing of heads, seppuku, and samurai
champions… that sort of thing). A tad pricy at 44.95, but since I’ve
been waiting for this game for almost two years I didn’t mind the relatively
high price.A tad pricey at 45 bucks? Man, I’d LOVE to get my hands on a new GBOH game at that price now!!

I dropped by the Avalanche Press booth. The Great War at Sea was there by
the stack load. Since I pre-ordered it, Brian Knipple just handed me
one to save himself the postage. I haven’t played it yet (obviously)
but my initial impression is that TGW@S deserves the generally favorable
commentary it has received here. I like their approach; 10 pages of
rules (maybe) a scenario book, and tons of counters to recreate virtually
any confrontation in the Med during WWI. I suspect that this game will
get a lot of replay. I’ve only played the Med. game solo, though I’ve played other modules versus real players since

The Armory was unloading any Gamer’s game at 50% off. Such a deal! I took
advantage of it and bought Champion’s Hill and No Better Place to Die
for the price of *one* of their games. The Gamer’s new policy of
cutting out the retailer/distributor chain has had some unexpected
benefits in the short term.
Never played Champion’s Hill, which is still unpunched. Played No Better Place to Die, though. I still love this series. I’ll never get that price again, though…

I finally picked up a couple of issues of Vae Victus (No. 1, Tunisie 1943
and No. 6, Fontenoy 1745). I’m *very* impressed with these
publications– VV would do very well here in the states if a translated
version ever shows up here. Vae Victus takes the same “what the hell,
it’s ALL wargaming” approach that I take to different gaming formats,
thus any issue features computer game reviews, miniature figure reviews,
scenarios for miniatures, board game reviews, AND a complete game in every
issue! Not bad, not bad. This would be my absolute favorite wargaming
magazine if it were published in English (or even American). The
photography is beautiful! Still in business, I still love those guys and still buy ’em!

Speaking of which, are there any translations of Tunisie 1943 and Fontenoy
1745 floating around? My (rusty) French is sufficient to allow me to
slowly puzzle out the rules, but it would be nice to have an aid to puzzle
out the more technical passages.

I found some interesting items in the Flea Market, notably Crescendo of
Doom for 3 bucks (unpunched)– now I’ve rounded out my ASL board collection.
I’ve noticed some great games from only a couple of years ago going
for dirt cheap now, like one of 3W’s few excellent board games, East
Front Battles I, the Blitzkrieg in the South, by Vance Von Borries. I
came *that* close to buying it for five bucks, and it was gone when I
went back. These prices were fairly typical– I may start hitting the
flea markets more avidly in future conventions. Internet auctions are a
ripoff in comparison.

My how the tables have turned of late, eh? Ebay has priced Flea Markets out of the secondary game sale market, that’s for sure.

I played in a couple of battles– To Die in Madrid, a Spanish Civil War
scenario, using the authors home brew No Pasaran! rules (say, there’s an
original title). The Republicans pulled off a marginal victory in a real
squeaker. There’s nothing like assaulting Panzer Ones with SMG’s and
Hand Grenades. Works for me, I was the Anarchist/FEI player. We *like*
dynamite.

I played the Taku Forts scenario put on by our local Wednesday Night Gamers
from Alexandria. They used Fields of Honor from Chameleon Eclectic.
I like the system in general, but find the ranges way to long for use
with 25mm figures– there’s no way I could stage a battle at my house,
given the table space I have, with these rules. Too bad, because FoH is
a blast at conventions.

The GM: Del Stover, before he had his HMGS presidency ahead of him…

I played (finally) Shipbase on Friday night. 1900 scenario, Germans vs.
French. I hate to say it, since SB gets such warm press here on the
list, but I was disappointed. We couldn’t hit *anything* at *any* range –
only a couple of primary hits during the course of the entire game!
Meanwhile, the Germans were pounding us. True, I did have to take the
French, and maybe crew quality is factored into the combat model, but a
capital ship *should* be able to hit a ship of like size at 10″ of distance,
no matter how poor the crew. We conceded in disgust after having
the Germans sink more than half the fleet without sinking anything
larger than a motor torpedo boat on their side.

As it turns out, the GM had made some modifications to the data tables to make the game play more in keeping with an earlier era. It screwed up the program.

Well, that was my HISTORICON Summer vacation in a nutshell. I was very
impressed with it this year. The con management has improved by a
significant factor from days past. I didn’t wait very long in line and
though I didn’t get into every game I signed up for, there were always
alternatives or pickup games to get into. The Holiday Inn has
inaugurated a “Kids Area” for supervised play which made bringing my
wife and child along an easier task.

This was two years before Garrett, and before the demise of the Kid’s room at COLD WARS 2004. Ironic, that I had something to do with that…

Of course, there’s alway nearby “Chocolate World” at Hershey if the day
gets long…

Regards,
Walt O’Hara

PS: I only recognized Mitch Osbourne from the list. Were any other
members there?

This was before Mitch’s presidency, as well!

From: “Walt O’Hara”
Subject: Re: Historicon Recounted

At 10:45 AM 7/22/96 -0600, you wrote:
>Thanks for the look, Walt. Did you happen to see anything interesting in
>naval miniatures / age of sail stuff?
>
>Doug Murphy

Yes I did. There was a computer based Age of Sail set called, I think,
Close for Action. Reminded me strongly of Shipbase III, with perhaps a
better menuing system. It played easily enough– the players do essentially
what they do in Shipbase, which is maneuver, declare targets, and absorb the
results. From the five minutes of kibbitzing I devoted to it, CFA seems to
play in a more streamlined fashion than SB3, primarily due to the fact that
the player doesn’t have the same choices (primary/secondary/tertiary guns
firing at assorted choices).

I noticed my old favorite from the era when I was interested in such things,
SHIP O’ THE LINE/JUGGERNAUT, being played with 1:1200 scale GHQ ships on a
large table marked with squares to regulate terrain. Very nice
implementation of the rules with more up to date player aids (the ref had
made ship cards for everyone on his home computer using counter art from
HEART OF OAK, a nice touch).

There were two or three other wooden ship events that I did NOT catch,
including a miniatures version of WS&IM (which looked interesting), and a
couple of games of Close Action, a rewrite of WS&IM for miniatures that gets
played a lot in this area.

Interestingly, I did not see many AOS miniatures out there. AFAIK, GHQ may
be the sole producer in the States at the moment.

Regards,
Walt

If ye love wealth greater than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude greater than
the animating contest for freedom, go
home and leave us in peace. We seek not
your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down
and lick the hand that feeds you, and may
posterity forget that ye were our kinsmen.

— Samuel Adams

From: Sean Barnett
Subject: Historicon after action rep

Subject: Time: 11:57 AM
OFFICE MEMO Historicon after action report Date: 7/22/96

Went to Historicon this weekend and had a great time. I ran a game, played in
a few, and met many of my wargaming friends I see a few times a year.

I had 22 people for my Guam ’25 game (US vs. Japan) and more wishing to sign
up. The game turned out pretty much like I expected except for the exciting
ending. The two sides had battleship divisions of 4 BBs plus 2 CLs (3 for the
Japanese) and 16 DDs (15 for the Japanese). The game opened with the
battlelines facing off at 25,000 yds. The light forces on both sides peeled
off for the center of the board, with the Japanese better organized than the
Americans. The melee in the middle, with an exchange of fire and a collision,
resulted in the loss of 1 US CL and 4 US DDs, and 1 Jap. CL and 1 Jap. DD.
Two US DDs fired torpedoes at the Jap. BBs, hitting the Nagato once for 3,000
tons lost. The Japanese fired many more torpedoes at the US BBs, although at
a range of about 14,000 yds. At that point, the battlelines had traded fire
without tremendous effect, as both were inside their immune zones with respect
to 14″ gunfire. However, the Japanese torpedoes hit home–two struck the
Oklahoma and detonated her magazines. (I replaced the model with a pile of
orange, gray, and black “smoke”). That cinched the game for the Japanese.
They would have had a marginal just by defeating the US light forces and being
able to push the US BBs away from their landing site (the Japanese were
invading Guam), but with the destruction of 1 BB to no losses of their own,
they had a clear victory.

I played in the Command at Sea “king of the hill with ships” game and survived
about 5 minutes of combat in a French CA before being blown out of the water
by one turn of fire from 2 German BCs. I also played in a “Fleets in
Transition” game in a hypothetical 1870s scenario pitting a US/French squadron
of ironclads (including the Dunderberg in French service) and gunboats against
a Turkish squadron of turreted rams and barbette ships. The Turks won by
sinking a wooden gunboat and the Dunderberg with devastating close range
gunfire, and one turreted monitor through gunfire and ramming. Finally, I
played in the traditional adult Godzilla game on Friday night, when a dose of
silliness is appropriate after a long day of gaming.

Turnout for the con was about 2,000 according to one of the organizers. If
anything, there seemed to be shortage of games, not players.

In addition to gaming, I talked to Charlie Spiegel of Clash of Arms, and
co-designers Chris Carlson and Mike Harris about upcoming Command at Sea
stuff. Supermarina II is going to be a scenario book, and will use the ship
and weapon data from Supermarina I. “Fisher/Tirpitz” will be the WWI rules
and will come out sometime next year (a whole new rules set will be used
because of the technological differences between WWI and WWII). “Battleships
and Biplanes,” the War Plan Orange supplement to CaS, will come out sometime
early next year (I think), and “No Sailor But a Fool Fights a Fortress,”
covering WWII actions against shore installations, will be out by Christmas.

Say, when DID that Battleships and Biplanes supplement come out? Never?

I also met the designer of the “Armati” ancients rules, through another friend
of mine who was involved in the development of “Advanced Armati.” Advanced
Armati, for those who have played the basic rules, makes units more
maneuverable and should be more realistic.

Finally, I spent some money, but not as much as in previous years. I did pick
up a couple of books, including the WWII ship painting guide published by
Clash of Arms. It seems to be a pretty good resource–it covers the US,
British, German, Italian, and Japanese navies, with a little information on
the French, Dutch, and Russians. It also includes a paint conversion chart
you can use to relate camouflage colors to commercially available paints. A
note of warning: the Armory paints specified for various USN colors are only
kind of close to the Floquil/Polly S colors. I would recommend Floquil/Polly
S to anyone who is a stickler for realism.

All in all I had a good time and would recommend Historicon or Cold Wars to
anyone who plays miniatures wargames.

Sean Barnett

From: John Retzer
Subject: Re: What I did on my HISTORICON vacation (LONG)

At 10:48 AM 7/22/96 PST, Walter O’Hara wrote:
>
>PS: I only recognized Mitch Osbourne from the list. Were any other
>members there?

I also went to Historicon … found it to be much more well-organized than
when I went three years ago. None of the long, desperate lines to get into a
game.

Played in a terrible Mexican War game on Friday night — the less said the
better.

Saturday morning found me in a Boxer Rebellion Game put on by the Wednesday
Night Gamers of Alexandria. It used the Fields of Honor rules set from
Chameleon Eclectic games. Its a nice, clean rules set. The only thing that
took some getting used to was the extremely long ranges of the rifles. (Most
of the games I play are horse-and-musket era.) The Boxer/Chinese Regular
Army kicked the rears of the combined German/British/Japanese/Russian relief
force — mainly because we couldn’t find an expedient way to take their
prepared positions. Given a few more hours and about six feet more board on
either side, perhaps we could have used our Krupps guns to pound them to
sawdust, or outflank them, but …

Saturday Night was a new non-DBx medieval game called Might of Arms. It was
a good enough system to get me thinking about painting some ancients again.

Some things I thought interesting :
… everybody and their grandmother was selling Wild West figures. There had
to be a dozen games to play there, too.
… 10mm seems to be gaining popularity.
… half the games had to be using someone’s “homebrew system” Miniature
gamers seem to be much more willing to create their own systems than board
gamers. I don’t know why. Its easier to use your computer’s DTP capabilities
to make up board games than to paint thousands of little figures, and create
3-D terrain (Yes, I’ve done both, and DTP is easier — and cheaper — than
the figures).
… the quality of 15mm figures seems to have gone up. Most lines seem to
have redone their molds, or redone their figures entirely. Whereas a few
years ago, there were a large number of “impressionistic figures” (they gave
you the impression of what they were supposed to be), most, if not all fo
the figures I saw this year had good detail/proportion and acceptable poses.
… Figures continue to get larger. Many so-called 15s now are looking like
the 20mm figs looked ten years ago. The 20s look like old 25s and the 25s
are more like 30-35 in many cases. (Maybe this explains the popularity of
10s — they’re more like the old 15s. All of this points out a need for some
sort of standardized measure.
_______________
jretzer@dial.cic.net

First off, I was kind of suprised by what seemed to me to be a very small
turnout. Last year’s HISTORICON 95 had been my first one and there were
something like 3000 attendees supposedly in the sweltering heat and
thunderstorms. COLD WARS 96 in the freezing rain and ice/snow storms had
about 1300 or so and this years HISTORICON 96 in absolutely wonderful
weather seemed a lot closer to COLD WARS, maybe even smaller. Is it just me?

Well, I didn’t come away from the dealer room once all weekend with as much
cash as I entered with!

I bought some more 25mm Revenge Norman cavalry to send to California for a
wonderful paint job (he is really really good) by one of my old gaming
buddies. This will bring me up to a total of 60 cav and 60 foot (the foot
half archers half spear). Starting to be a respectable army, and it looks
great. Probably get some more cav this winter to really round it out.

I finally found a painted 15mm DBA army with all the options (its hard
enough just to find one that actually matches the rules). Now I can finally
play DBA on Wednesdays with my own figures, since no one seems to have 25mm
lance-fodder for my Normans. By the way, the 15’s are rather poorly painted
Alexandrian Macedonians but I also got a pair of painted 15mm elephants and
the bases so I can put together pratically any DBA successor army now as
well without being too much of a stretch. Paid too much for them but it was
better than the alternative I was considering, buying a couple hundred 15mm
Later Crusaders and still having to re-base most of them.

I also found a complete painted 5mm Norman and Saxon army (for tactica).
Very pleased with these. Should be able to do something with these, even
bought the tactica book and the supplement with the Normans and Saxons but I
think I’ll stick to other rule sets.

Also picked up GMT’s Samaurai, mostly to play with my nephew who’s into that
stuff and liked liked GBoA.

Dropped by CoA to ask them to re-print Austerlitz (which would really piss
off another friend of mine in California who has the very nice looking
original sitting unpunched in his closet)! They said they actually have
plans to do this in this millenium.

Found an old AH Alexander at the flea market. Not sure about the
completeness but worth a chance for $5.

I was very very impressed by Robert Bowling’s 15mm Alexandrian (?) pikemen
but so was someone else because when I went back to maybe buy them all four
were gone at $70 each for 32-man units. The guy can paint. And his prices
are not bad for really high-quality painted lead.

I was also impressed by the job someone had done at the flea market with 5mm
Napoleonics which appeared to be painted better than some much larger
figures I’ve seen.

Another note- the flea market prices seemed to be actually HIGHER than in
the dealer room. This suprised me.

Then the games…

Thursday was Romans against Carthaginians using Might of Arms. Playing the
Romans, we had I think a much better plan and it paid off. We made maximum
use of terrain and extanded our infantry into a single line rather than use
the reserve system (admittedly a bit of gamesmanship but no one complained).
My tiny flank cavalry command didn’t do much against the smaller
Carthaginian wing, but I didn’t LOSE the battle (THE important thing for a
Roman cav commander). On the other wing there was not enough room for the
Carthaginians to take advantage of their superior cavalry numbers so the
battle was decided in the center- and as expected this resulted in Roman
victory, or would have in a matter of a couple more turns.

Friday morning made it to the horse painting slide show which I had missed
last year.
Later in the day I played (arranged in advance to leave early to meet my
family coming up) in the Emporor’s HQ “Empire” Castiglioni scenario. Didn’t
really do anything before I left. One turn I had another Austrian on my
flank and before I knew what was happening (literally) he dissappeared- his
reserves turned to face a French threat to our rear- and I had lost two
battalions to French cavalry charges on my now exposed flank! Left just in
time. Darius would be proud! Accomplished my main objective which was to see
up close and personal how the rules work.

Saturday morning/afternoon was medieval naval. I was the Flemish,
outnumbered 2:1 by English and 2:1 by French (one of whom was my nephew).
With my usual diplomatic skills I wound up sailing down the middle and
fighting both! My nephew practically sunk my ship with fire arrows and only
my proximity to my island allowed me to get my crew off. After my ship sunk
I got to fight off the English for possession of MY livestock on the island.
I lost badly but had a good time.

Saturday evening was the anticipated highlight of the convention- Rumble in
Wales 25mm Norman skirmish game with BattleLust. It was all there- Beautiful
Revenge/Old Glory Norman figures (with which I am very familiar now) very
well painted, great-looking terrain including a novel system for
representing woods (the tree tops lifted off allowing you to move figures
underneath and still look like woods). Unfortunately, our Norman plan was
based on faulty maps and a little too conservative especially for the
alloted time. In fact, the plan probably ruined what was otherwise going to
be an excellent game. I personally still had a great time pushing my 5 cav
figures around but some others might have been disappointed. Better to have
impetuously charged into that obvious ambush and hope for the best. Better
luck next time to the organizers in what is an excellent scenario and set up.

Sunday morning was more Might of Arms with Lechfeld. The Eastern Franks
turned to tackle my light Magyar outflanking command (shared with someone
else) and got whooped real bad by the main body since they had a hard time
bringing me to fight and weren’t racking up enough VP’s since I didn’t have
the real valuable troops. What was dissappointing was that the guy running
the game didn’t seem to know the rules. I had just played them a few days
before for the first time and I think I knew them better than he did!
Managed not make it an issue except when he tried to tell me that a unit
could charge only one of two units facing it equally, and only the declared
target could evade with the other standing to receive. Since the Franks were
not above using this kind of gamesmanship (and who can blame them when this
is what the organizer tells them) had to straighten him out on this.

All in all a great time as expected, and the least drain on my wallet of any
of these HMGS mega-events yet.

-John Murphy