Drumbeat 2016

NHMGS held Drumbeat, our annual mid-winter game day, this Saturday at the Lake City community center in Seattle. Drumbeat is the brain-child of Dick Larsen (Yes, Dick has a brain and his brain has children) who looked and beheld the winter doldrums and saw that it was not good. I'm not sure when the first Drumbeat was held, but it's become an annual effort, helped immensely by the efforts of John Kennedy of The Panzer Depot. (Drumbeat is perhaps the only event where you can observe John outside the native habitat of his store.) We started out at a location in South Seattle, but moved to the more convenient (at least for me) location in Lake City some years ago.

I played Bill Stewart's Battle of the Marne game. He wrote a 2-page rule set with simple move, combat, and morale. The situation was a handful of French troops in 1914 holding off what must have been the entire German army.

The last battalion stands between Paris and the Hun

Bill painted all the figures (beautifully), made the buildings (also beautifully) and most of the other terrain. He even supplied the pennies to use as "prone" markers for the units. The rings around the figures heads in the pictures aren't scale versions of toilet seats or those small styrofoam flotation rings. They're what old-school gamers know as casualty markers.

A sea of feldgrau about to wash over the few islands of bleu

Steven Puffenberg and I were Les Français, Dick Larsen, Scott Murphy, and Mark (?) were Les Boches. I had a feeling from the start that this game would make Custer's Last Stand look like a even match, only our Sioux were in feldgrau and carried Mausers.

The imminent collapse of the French left

We were outshot pretty early on in the game. Scott's Krupp Feldkanone knocked out my Soixante-Quinze in short order and then proceeded to play havoc on my troops in the buildings. Before long were were in a last-ditch effort to survive the onslaught. We made it through about five turns before the inevitable end.

After the game, Bill, Mark, Scott, and I repaired to The Elliot Bay Brewery for lunch and suds. The brewery occupies the location of the former American Eagles hobby store. Bill used to work for Mike Edwards at American Eagles in the 70s (in their Greenwood location) when he was a student at the U. Lunch at Elliot Bay always has a bittersweet taste.

After lunch, I fell in with Mike Lombardy and Troy Wold. We got Kaffee und Gebäck at a little German coffee house (Haus?) just a few stores down from the brewery. I'm not sure how recent it is, but it's a pretty nice place and the pastries (das Gebäck) are wunderbar! On the way back to the community center, we decided to play a game of Jugula, which Mike conveniently brought along.

I have the rules and cards and have been painting the 35mm minis for Jugula, but have been mostly ambivalent about which rules to use for gladiator games. Playing Jugula for the first time has convinced me that it's the way to go.

Across the deadly sand I go...

The game is heavily dependent on card deck management. A player's turn involves playing one of the cards from his hand and doing one of the things the card allows. The allowable actions can be moving x number of figures, attacking x number of times, increasing your popularity with the crowd, drawing more cards from your deck, adding primo cards to your deck, or some other special action specific to the card.

Troy's boys waiting

Mike read the rules and Troy and I squared off against each other. I had two heavy gladiators and two lights; Troy had three heavies and one light. I advanced right into the arena from the start, while Troy bid his time increasing his popularity and adding primo cards. The advantage of popularity (the Vox Populi track) is that your gladiator's attack and defense values increase as your popularity does. By the time I hit Troys figures, he was already at +1 against me and soon made it up to +2, +3, and +4 while I was still mucking about using my cards to move and attack.

My scissors wounds Troy's secutor

I managed to finish one of Troy's gladiators and wound a second, but the disparity in Vox Populi started to tell against me. Troy's wounded secutor came back and finished my scissors and then proceeded to go after my others. I eventually caught up in Vox Populi, but too late to matter. My last gladiator went down surrounded by Troy's three surviving gladiators.

Drumbeat turned out to be a nice diversion as I head into a very busy week with work and parish activities. Next Saturday I'm cooking Cajun for about 60 people.

Enfilade! 2015 - There and Back Again... And Again... And Again

Enfilade! 2015 was this weekend. As I have done a few times past now, I drove there and back each day, rather than stay in the hotel. The experience makes me appreciate the wisdom of staying at the hotel. I live 82 miles north of the convention site, so every day was a 164 mile round-trip. Nevertheless, I appreciate being home every night more than I appreciate the convenience of staying onsite.

Day 1, I brought in a car-full of goodies to sell at the bring and buy. Unlike last year, however, I committed to running no games. That made round-tripping each day a little easier because I wasn't attached to a game schedule.

Day 2, I brought Phil Bardsley down with me. He and Kevin Smyth are the only founders of Enfilade! who still make appearances at the convention. This was Phil's first appearance for a few years, but Kevin is still an annual stalwart and ran three games and survived the obligatory drinking bout with the Canadians on Saturday night.

Day 3, I went to early Mass at my parish and then down again to cash out on my bring and buy sales and take home whatever I didn't sell. After lunch in the hotel bar with Kevin Smyth and Dave Schueler, I headed north. (Although I had to stop at Dairy Queen in Fife, WA to wake up, by this time I was getting pretty groggy.) Home by 5:00 PM.

Games

The games looked pretty impressive. The White Rock and North Shore Gamers from Canada put on a couple games in honor of the upcoming 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815/2015): the June 16 Battle of Ligny, where "Boney beat the Proo-sians (Way-aye-yah!)," and Waterloo itself.

Waterloo: The Prussians move in

Waterloo: The Frenchies mass

The Ligny/Waterloo games were impressive, but looked a bit crowded for my taste.

Chris Craft put on a game of the Battle of Agincourt (an upcoming 600-year anniversary, October 25, 1415/2015) that won best of period. Unlike the original battle, the English were run over.

Agincourt: The French before the attack

Agincourt: The French press the English line

Kevin Smyth ran the first of his two Lion Rampant games on Friday night, but I didn't stay for it. Dave Scheuler and I had "bangers and baps" (and beer) in the bar and then I headed the long way home for the day. (The title pic for this post, taken by Doug Hamm, is from Kevin's first Lion Rampant game, the raid on Agen.)

On Sunday, Kevin and Dave ran their Raid on St. Nazaire game using David Manley's Action Stations rules, with some special rules of their own for the ground action as the commandos get ashore. They won best theme game for the convention.

St. Nazaire

New Stuff

I didn't buy much. The whole idea of selling things at the bring and buy is to reduce the clutter of stagnant or dead projects. I still have plenty of irons in the fire and I didn't want to just replace new stuff for old. However, I did pick up a few things:

• More Gripping Beast/Jugula gladiators. The Game Matrix had a boxed set of Famila 1 for sale plus some single figure packs. I got the boxed set and one single-pack scissors gladiator. 
• Books. Gary Williams was selling off a chunk of books from the estate of a friend of his in the West Sound Warriors gaming group in Bremerton. The friend died with a library of more than 6000 books on military history. I think Gary and his widow sold the more valuable volumes for the best price they could get, but Gary brought several boxes to sell at the price of $2.00 per book. It took me three days to realize that the price was that low, so I gleaned through what was left on Sunday afternoon, which was still enough to make me happy. One of the nicer finds is the book Redcoats and Courtesans: The Birth of the British Army (1660-1690). I've been interested in this subject and in the Restoration period of English history for many years. I started reading the book on Labor Day and so far it's an interesting read. I recall in Churchill's Life of Marlborough that young John Churchill got a good start in life through his dalliance with Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Castlemaine and somewhat neglected mistress of Charles II.
• Paint 'n' stuff. I got a few Howard's Hues paints from Monday Knight Productions. No local retailers sell them. I can order them online from MKP, but I tend to look forward to Enfilade! as the time I replace and replenish my collection. I also bought a resin command post model for 28mm WW2 gaming. It's a model of the command posts emplaced on Tarawa by the Japanese. I knew MKP had the model and didn't find it last year, so I was happy to see one available.
• Rules. In addition to the books, Gary Williams had some old rule booklets for sale at $1.00 a piece. I picked up a copy of All for One, which is a sword-fighting game for the Three Musketeers, along with a scenario booklet for All for One. The rules and the scenarios were produced for use with the Redoubt Enterprises Three Musketeers range. I also picked up a copy of Tabletop Games' Sword and Pistol Renaissance skirmish rules. 
• More rules. Dave Schueler spoke well of Two Hour Wargames' Hell Hath No Fury rules for tank v. tank games, so I bought a copy from Ed Teixeira. Ed ran a game on Saturday morning (while I was driving there), which went well. I have a lot of unpainted 15mm WW2, so I don't have to buy any new figures for it (just paint 'em).

I hoped to find some Warlord Games' Beyond the Gates of Antares figures, but no luck. Not a big problem; John Kennedy carries them at The Panzer Depot.

Other than that, I stayed pretty good. There was nothing tempting me at the bring and buy. I might have picked up some Pulp Figures from Bob Murch on Sunday. He came down from Canada to sell his figures, but he appears to have left Saturday night.

Ex Stuff

I finally sold my 28mm 3rd c. Romans. Thus passes on a project started a decade back. I also sold my unpainted Romans and Sassanids. A lot of what I thought were bits and pieces sold as well. In the end, I did quite well and cleared a lot of shelf and closet space.

I also sold off my Field of Glory Ancients and Renaissance rules and all my army lists. I sold the two painted armies I had last year. They took a lot of shelf space.

Divesting myself of old projects and unwanted toys, books, games is cathartic. So far, no pangs of regret. One thing I didn't manage to sell was my copy of Terry Gore's Medieval Warfare rules. I bought them years ago for a small fortune and never managed to play a game with them. There was another copy for sale at the bring and buy and Kevin mentioned that he almost brought his copy to sell. There is apparently no market for these rules.

Serendipitous Encounters

Ed Teixeira of Two Hour Wargames was at the convention. He used to be one of our stalwarts up here until he moved to Arizona. I have been looking for some betting rules to use with my gladiators and faux Roman coins (the best damn faux Roman coins ever). I was discussing it with Dave Schueler when Ed walks in. He has something. I'll have to email him to get it...

Lost Tribes Update

The fabled lost tribesmen of NHMGS gathered at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland on Saturday. Eschewing Enfilade!, they played an 1814 Napoleonic War scenario instead, using the Black Powder rules. John posted an account of it on his blog.

Dragonflown

I spent the last weekend spottily attending the Dragonflight 2013 convention in Bellevue, WA. I've been a few times before, mostly to check out the miniatures scene, which is minimal. Dragonflight is primarily a boardgame and RPG convention. The latter just doesn't draw me in, but I am an aficionado of boardgames in general and of hex 'n' counter wargames in particular. So, early this year I pre-registered for Dragonflight and set myself to go and focus on the wargames opportunities.

I, Infidel

My first game (on Friday) was the Ascalon scenario from GMT's Infidel. This is the second game in GMT's Men of Iron series. I have the first game in the series, which I quite like. The game sequence uses a variable bound approach where a player activates a command and, after completing movement and combat for that command, can go on to activate another command and so on as long as they remain successful. I've resisted purchasing Infidel, but now that I've played it, I'm re-thinking that resistance. I have to admit up front that I played the Fatimids and got completely slaughtered by my opponent, Ken Cassidy. Ken played the crusaders and his knights just ate my lunch. Obviously I made mistakes, but in my own defense I have to state that Ken got five activations in a row right at the start. At several other points he got multiple consecutive activations, while I typically got only my free activation after Ken, rarely, lost an new activation attempt. Nevertheless, I thought it was a good game and the Men of Iron system plays very well and fluidly--even when you're just sitting there watching Godfrey de Bouillon mercilessly slaughter your elite Mamelukes.

Rob Bottos from Vancouver ran the Men of Iron event, which featured other players tackling the Bannockburn scenario from the original 2005 release Men of Iron. There was a possibility of playing a playtest version of the upcoming Blood & Roses. I've been a dilettante student of the Wars of the Roses since reading my father's copy of Winston Churchill's The Birth of Britain way, way back when. Instead, we played the Infidel scenario. I need to trouble Ralph Shelton, who helped run the Men of Iron event and was the producer for Infidel, for a Blood & Roses playtest opportunity. The game is scheduled for release in 2014 and I'm eager to give it a shot before then.

Men who shop

The rest of Friday was spent connecting with gamers and browsing the dealers. Since wargaming is a minority presence at Dragonflight, most of the wares brought by the vendors for sale were Eurogames, RPGs, and such. In my wanderings, however, I ran across the Greenlake Games booth and discovered IRONDIE.

These are very nice metal dice from Italy (apparently the designer does the metalwork for Armani belt buckles). There is a game system built around them, which looks worthy of exploration. I was attracted to them because of their heft. Being made of iron, a fistful of these are as heavy as a sack of nickels and they make a deeply satisfying thunk when they land in the dice box. I bought several of one type (the "smasher") in all colors. I also bought a couple of iron D10. (I used the bronze D10 in the Infidel game, not that it helped.)

Saturday, The War that Wasn't

I connected with Jeff Newell on Friday and arranged to play Lock 'n' Load Games' World at War series on Saturday. I ran across this series a few years back and it became an instant favorite. I used to play SPI's MechWar '77 back in the day (i.e., the 1970s) and this is an elegant upgrade to the Cold War hypothetical wargame. The game system is very playable and smooth.

We played two scenarios with me as the Commies both times. Jeff, being a former Army tanker, has an aversion to playing Ivan, which I was happy to indulge. Russian armor dies off like flies, but, like flies, there just seems to be a lot. It's a bit heady to set up a game with stacks of armor against a few platoons of Abrams tanks--even if by the end of turn 2 there are many fewer stacks of Russian armor and the Abrams are still there ready to knock you silly again on turn 3.

The first game was a small five-turn scenario from, I think, the World at War Compendium. It turned out to be a pretty tight game, which I might have won if I hadn't stuck my chin out by advancing my T-62s into a victory hex (one of three hamlets that the NATO player had to hold) while an Abrams had a bead on it.

Game two was scenario 1 from Eisenbach Gap, the first game in the series. I've played this before with disastrous results and I was eager to see if I could do better. I did, even though I didn't win. I was able to use my smoke and artillery to better effect and managed to take the larger of the two towns required for victory, knocking out a good bit of Team Yankee as I did. However, Jeff retained a nice kill-stack in the remaining town that I couldn't get to. The game board was littered with wrecks from both sides. Given the high death rate of the T-72, I call the result a morale victory.

I already had three of the games in the series (Eisenbach Gap, Blood and Bridges, The Untold Stories), but I was so inspired after Saturday's games that I ordered another three (Death of the 1st Panzer, Paris is Burning, World at War Compendium), two of which have already arrived in the mail (quick service!). I have a lot of counters to trim...

Gadgets and Gamers

One big advantage to attending Dragonflight was connecting with area gamers. Being a miniatures gamer, I'm not plugged into the board gaming community. There is less crossover than I would have thought.

I was able to get information about other events held in the Pacific Northwest that focus more on hex 'n' counter wargames. Rob Bottos runs Bottoscon in Vancouver, BC (Surrey, actually) in November. It's been going on for seven years and pulls in a lot of people. Jeff Newell runs Game ON! in Issaquah, WA in February. Game ON! features a lot of World at War play. I joined the Bottoscon Yahoo! group and am hoping to get connected with a regular, i.e., weekly or bi-weekly, gaming opportunity. I have a lot of games that need playing.

The hard-core gamers use large tweezers to manipulate their counter stacks. It looks pretty geeky, but when you've got stacks of counters in close proximity, it's pretty easy for fat-fingered gamers to knock everything asunder while attempting to move their pieces. The tweezers help. I haven't succumbed to lure of big tweezers yet, but Jeff Newell pulled out a gadget that got my attention. Behold the wonderous vacuum pen:

Using this wee suction device, you can easily pick up counters amidst the densest stack of cardboard heroes. I was so impressed, I whipped out my iPhone, searched the interwebs for a vacuum pen, found one on Amazon.com for $5.99 and ordered two. They arrived in the mail on Wednesday. O brave new world that has such technology in't!

I've also ordered more counter trays from Chessex and GMT. This assumes that I will follow up my new game purchases with the energy of actually trimming out hundreds of counters.

Even though I didn't spend a lot of time at Dragonflight, the experience was rewarding and I will attend next year and run an event of my own.

Enfilade! 2013

I arrived home from Olympia yesterday afternoon and crashed (after feeding the demanding cats, of course). Another Enfilade! has come and gone and I'm in recovery.

I took the week off, as I have done many times in the past. The goal of the week is spring cleaning around the house (not much accomplished there) and prep for Enfilade (again...). I always have more ambition than my efforts can support.

This year I originally planned to run just two games of my Row Well and Live! rules. I got another six heptiremes from Xyston last fall and planned on adding them to a game featuring a lot of big Hellenistic super-ships. Alas, by Wednesday night I had managed to clean and partially assemble the models and gave up all expectation of getting them done in time. I decided I would just use the ships I have already (about 20) and build the big ships later.

The urgent pre-convention calls from the events coordinator for MORE GAMES led me to plan on running a Silent Death game on Friday afternoon. However, I had no Silent Death ships painted. I ordered some from Metal Express, which took a very long time to arrive. Most of the last week was spent painting Silent Death ships and wee torpedo models for the game. In fact, I was still painting torpedoes at 3:30 AM on the first day of the convention.

I also wound up getting psyched to participate in a Bolt Action tournament that would be held at the convention on Sunday. I planned to run a 1000 point force of late-war US Marines. This was coincidental to the fact that I have been painting Marines for our regular gaming, so I had a good head start, but I still needed a few more units for the tournament force I would run. I spent a lot of effort getting things completed for our last Bolt Action game—time I might have spent painting heptiremes or Silent Death ships. As it turned out, I bailed from the tournament a week before the convention so that relieved me of having to paint more Marines before the convention.

Day 1

As I mentioned above, the first day of the convention started at 3:30 AM when I got up to feed the cats and continue working on my Silent Death ships that I needed for the game I would run 11 hours later. I had gone to bed earlier that same morning (12:30 AM). Thanks to the miracle of coffee, I was pretty well primed. I also had some house cleaning to complete so my cat-sitter wouldn't think I was completely feral (my week-off-from-work goal of deep-cleaning the house having gone by the wayside).

I finally left the house by 10:00 and headed first to Kinko's to get a couple copies of my Row Well and Live! rules printed and spiral bound. After getting more coffee from the espresso stand outside Kinko's, I was off to Olympia. It's about a 90 minute drive from Lynnwood if the traffic is good. Just south of Fort Lewis (a.k.a. Joint Base Lewis McChord), I had to pull off the road to keep from falling asleep at the wheel, an inauspicious event in light of the fact that I had two games to run before going to bed that night.

Silent Death

Silent Death was the first game I ran from 2:00 to 6:00 PM. I had a full contingent with a handful of nostalgic former SD players. I hadn't played in years, but everything went well and I had a chance to run my favorite (mostly mediocre) ship, the Epping.

The good ship Epping, scourge of the outer void

Our side took crippling losses right off the bat. I was off to the side with Dale Mickel's two Hammers mixing it up with Mark Serafin's two Sorenson IVs. We eventually took care of Mark, but our ships on the other end were facing a Betafortress and a couple Nighthawks, nasty ships—especially against little fighters like Blizzards.

Torpedoes about to rendezvous with Mark's Sorenson

By the fourth or fifth turn, It was just Dale and me left to face the little-damaged victorious enemy. I decided on a death ride through the mass of them. Fired at by blattguns, plaz cannons, torpedoes, and all kinds of what-not, I managed to avoid sure destruction for two more turns while dealing out misery to my tormentors. The Epping is a spacefaring missile battery and I put the hurt on the two Nighthawks.

The death ride begins with much nastiness ahead

Nevetherless, they got me in the end. I was one hex from exiting the board when I blew up. Dale lost one of his Hammers, but got the other one off the board. The sole survivor, like Jason McCord in the TV show Branded. ("All but one man died...There at Bitter Creek...and they say he ran away...")

Row Well and Live!

Game two started at 7:00 and ran until 11:00. By this time I was nearly incoherent—more so than normally. I had eight players and 13 ships in the game.

Into the narrow waters...

The squadrons mix it up

Being in a sleep-deprived state, I recall very little of the game except that Henry Thompson, with two little hemiolas, took on the world and managed to survive, although he caught fire a time or two.

Something's burning...

There was one fateful ramming attack, which was fortunate because I didn't manage to finish painting the other nine ship wrecks that I have.

Fire and Flotsam

Gamers are a curious species. They always do what you least expect and the result of the game left me needing to rethink some aspects of my rules. Overall, the game went well and I think the players had a good time.

By 11:30 I was in a nice king bed with a pillow-top mattress. I have never slept better in my life.

Day 2

Day two started at 7:00 AM. When I first awoke, I moved cautiously in the the bed so as not to disturb the cats lying all around me—but then I realized where I was. Cat wariness is a hard thing to just abandon.

My only scheduled event was another Row Well and Live! game at 7:00 PM, so I had the bulk of the day to wander, talk, shop, and have lunch with Phil Bardsley and Kevin Smyth in the hotel restaurant.

There were several interesting games. Chris Leach from White Rock B.C. put on an impressive Zulu game using his soon to be released rules Battles for Empire II. Tom Condon, who played in my Row Well and Live! game the night before was running an ancient naval game using his own Galleys & Glory rules. There was also an impressive game of the battle for Crete using Bolt Action rules.

Dave Schueler ran an event using his War of 1812 adaptation of the Sail & Steam Navies ACW naval rules. In the 2:00 period, he and Kevin Smyth ran their Sink the Tirpitz game, which resulted in a win for the Fleet Air Arm.

Shopping

There are things I usually only buy at Enfilade. My initial shopping netted me a Company B T-35 and LVT(A)1 Alligator. I also got a Type 94 tankette a bit later. That's a lot of tanks to paint.

I had a bit of serendipity in the much overloaded bring & buy. I found a bag of 28mm Crusader Miniatures WW2 Russians, all cleaned and mounted on Canadian nickels. The cost was roughly half price—not including the $1.83 rebate from the nickels (after conversion). I've been planning on painting Russians for Bolt Action, so this is a nice kick-start to the project. I already have some Crusader Russians and this extends it to a full platoon.

Wizard Kraft was there with some new dry riverbed pieces. I picked up a few of those to use with the river sets I bought years ago as well as some new swamp pieces. Wizard Kraft keeps getting better and offering new, interesting stuff.

I also picked up some resin terrain from Monday Knight Productions. MKP casts some Company B terrain products and I got five Japanese earth bunkers that will look very nice when they're painted and flocked. MKP also had some very nice bridges that were designed and mastered by Sven Lugar. I saw his painted versions in the Saga tournament he was running. He pointed me to MKP and I got two of them. They're a nice rustic foot bridge suitable for Dark Ages to WW2 (and beyond), although I shan't try to drive a T-35 over one.

Row Well and Live Game 2

The second RWAL game had fewer people so I was able to run a few ships (ingloriously) myself. This game saw some intense bow-to-bow ramming, which of course provided more thoughts about rules changes. The bows-on ram left both ships taking on a lot of water, but also going at each other like the Kilkenny cats. I must admit that it's a glitch in the rules that one player, whose ship was sinking, nevertheless attempted to keep ramming. He ultimately boarded the bigger ship and captured it, even though it, too, was bound for Davey Jones'. There will be changes...

Product of Scotland

The day ended (and actually the new one began) imbibing scotch in Gary Pomeryq's room (the "q" is silent). This is a new tradition that conflicts with the old tradition of drinking beer with the Canadians. We were all Americans in the scotch crowd except for one Canadian defector (Doug Hamm). I was well oiled by the time I went to bed at 3:00 AM.

Day 3

With nothing scheduled for Day 3, I got up around 7:00 feeling very cotton mouthed, showered and went to breakfast, where I met Doug Hamm. We chatted about my galley rules (he played the role of Henry Thompson in game 2) and I ran by some of my ideas. After breakfast I roamed the convention floor a while and then packed up my belongings and checked out of the hotel. After a little while more, I said my good byes and headed home at 11:00 AM.

The trip home was a little like the trip down. I was very sleepy at the midway point, but kept at it. I reached home without falling asleep and would have crashed immediately if the cats hadn't beset me on arrival wanting to be fed.

Home Fires

While I was at Enfilade! Phil Bardsley's wife Karen took care of my cats. Grendel was predictably pushy, Maebh was surprisingly friendly, and Rhiannon was sure that evil had come to town. She hid under the bed (her safe haven from whatever befalls) when Karen came in and had to be fed up there since she wouldn't come out even for food.

Is it safe to eat?

After feeding the cats when I came home, I sat down and leaned back in my recliner; I awoke some time later under a pile of cats, who were no doubt happy to have their warm-blooded furniture back where he belonged.

It was a good Enfilade! I wish I'd rested more beforehand and wish even more that I'd arranged to take the next four days off as well. Maybe I could deep clean the house like I'd intended.

Enfilade! 2012 Up Down and Sideways

NHMGS just completed our 21st running of the Enfilade! historical miniature gaming convention this weekend. I wasn't around for Enfilade! I, but I've been to the last 20, although with diminished enthusiasm these last few years.

For a number of years, I hosted several games each convention, ran the painting competition, and for several years straight, I was the convention director. I think I'm just tired, but all my experience has taught me a few things about gaming that affect my outlook on conventions—which I'll return to below.

I managed to psych myself into hosting one game together with Kevin Smyth for Sunday morning. Otherwise, I wasn't sure if I would come at all on Friday and Saturday, or maybe just one of those days plus Sunday. As it turns out, I went all three but drove about 85 miles each way every day to do it.

Friday - reconnaissance

I took the week prior to Enfilade! off, as I have often done in the past in order to focus on all the last-minute tasks needed for running games, organizing things, etc. None of which I did this year. I just relaxed at home enjoying a staycation away from work for the first time in more than a year. So when Friday came around I was raring to go. It was great to see a lot of gamers from all around the Pacific Northwest whom I either rarely or never see during the rest of the year.

As each year passes we are older, fatter, balder, and-—sadly—fewer. Attendance has hovered at about 220 for several years now, but a lot of the grognards are scarcer every year. The reason for that varies from moved away, other family plans for Memorial Day weekend, loss of interest, or sickness and death (we're all getting older). There's also the legendary "lost tribes" of the Seattle area who eschew Enfilade! out of some principle or another.

Friday gave me a good chance to scope out who was there, who was doing what, and what neat new things I could buy.

Saturday - no pancakes for me!

I wanted to come on Saturday because Sven Luger was running a 28mm game using the new Pike & Shotte rules to game one the the battles (Lystra Mouth) from the excellent sci-fi novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. I had missed out on pre-registering for the game. The website to do that was not working... not working... not working...  CLOSED! I blinked during the brief window when I could pre-register and was unsure if I'd make it into the game.

I got up as early as I normally do, i.e., as soon as the cats become too obstreperous to ignore. I thought I'd get on the road and stop for breakfast at Elmer's in Tacoma on the way down. We used to have an Elmer's here in Lynnwood. They had the BEST Swedish pancakes ever. I missed them for a long time and looked forward to having them again. However, when I got to the restaurant, I discovered to my great dismay that they no longer had the Swedish pancakes on the menu. Apparently, lingonberry is hard to come by. I made do with French toast and bacon—but the magic had been lost.

I arrived at the convention at about 8:15, just in time to miss signing up for the last available slot in the Lord Kalvan game. Ironically, if I hadn't stopped to not eat Swedish pancakes, I would have made it in. While disappointing, not getting into the game allowed me to maintain my perfect record of never managing to get into a game I wanted to play at Enfilade! that I wasn't running myself.

I stayed around for a while chatting and shopping, but decided to head home and putter around on various projects for the day instead. On the way home, I stopped by The Panzer Depot (the "lost tribe" HQ) in Kirkland only to find "lost tribesmen" Bill Stewart and Dick Larsen unloading boxes of English Civil War figures for an impromptu game of Pike & Shotte. All the usual suspects were there including Phil Bardsley who games once every blue moon.

Between them, Bill and Dick have a lot of ECW and our first taste of the rules wound up being a fairly big game. Bill, Phil, Mike Lombardy, and I were the Royalists. John Kennedy, Pat Clifford, Steve Puffenberger, and Dick were the Roundheads.

The game went well for a first play. It's enough like Black Powder to pick up the differences easily (plus we had a "these are the differences" cheat-sheet). Nevertheless, we still managed to fumble at several points and muddle through by recalling "rules" from other games or just making things up (until someone said, "No you can't do that; you're just making it up.")

Phil left early, but managed to win in absentia. His battalia of foote had been heavily engaged in a grand clusterf*** with Steve's battalia. Phil kept winning the melee, but Steve's troops refused to break. By this time the fight was on autopilot and shortly after Phil left, Steve's battalia broke and we called the game a Royalist win.

It was a nice kind of serendipity to go from missing out on the Lord Kalvan game (and Swedish pancakes) to gaming Pike & Shotte with the grumbliest of the grognards—which is what I had wanted to do anyway, I just didn't know they were playing until I showed up.

After that I went home to feed the ravenous cats and prepare for my game Sunday.

Sunday - pancakes and iron

After being roused out of bed by the cats, I got going Sunday morning by heading to Kinko's to print and laminate a few more ship charts for the Sail and Steam Navies game I was hosting that morning. That being done, I stopped off at the Family Pancake House in Shoreline for some Swedish pancakes. While quite good, they're not to scratch with the former Elmer's version, but I had to get my fix in any case.

I got to Enfilade! just after 9:00 AM and got everything set up. Naval games are easy that way. Kevin already had a big blue felt mat out. All I needed to do was position some shoals and set out the ships and ship cards.

The game pitted a Confederate force of three ironclad rams against a Union force of mostly wooden ships with a stiffening of a couple river monitors. The Confederate force included the CSS Tennessee, which is a nasty, brutal kind of ship. Good armor, good guns, and a deadly ram. However, like all Confederate ironclads, its motive power was weak and so the ship's best speed was much slower than the slowest Union ship.

I thought the Confederates would tear up the Union, but they succumbed to the dreaded stack hits, which left them dead in the water. I begin to think that it's a bit of a glitch in the rules. Hit locations are determined by a random D10 roll, so there is a 1:10 chance of hitting the stack. Stacks are unarmored, so even pop-guns can score big against them. When the really big guns come into play, they can blow away the stack in a single roll. I'd rather see the stack being a critical hit, rather than a main target location. That way there would be fewer stack hits in the game and ships wouldn't be immobilized so easily. The last S&SN game we played also saw the Confederates done in by getting their stacks shot away.

The Tennessee did manage to sink one river monitor by ramming and disable a 90-day gunboat by blowing up its steam drum. However, it wasn't enough. CSS Baltic had surrendered, CSS Nashville had its stack and paddle wheels shot away, and when the Tennessee's stack went away it was all over but for swimming to shore.

After the game, a bit more chatting and shopping then off to home. The drive up and back each day was a bit much. 170-mile round trips three days in a row will take it out of you in a hurry. I'm happy to have one more day off to recover before I'm back to the grind.

Swag - the goal of every convention

I managed to pick up a lot of neat new things at the convention. There are a few sellers that I only see once a year, so I maximize my purchases, and there's always a few surprises elsewhere—especially at the bring and buy.

Books - I picked up several books from the bring and buy. One two-volume set was a memoir of a French officer who had served from 1672 to 1710, just the exact period for my Pike & Periwig project. I've read through a bit already and it's fascinating stuff. I also found a copy of GDW's out-of-print Combined Arms "modern" rules (i.e., circa 1980s). These are mostly valuable for the TO&Es that cover all the NATO and WARPAC forces. It's good to have as I plan to expand my "modern" micro armor collection to include more Soviets. I also got Kevin Smyth's copy of FGU's Blue Light Manual from the 70s. I'll probably never play them, but I had a copy way back in the day and you never know what insights you may glean from a rule set.

Terrain - Both Monday Knight Productions and Wizard Kraft were at Enfilade! again. MKP has a line of 6mm buildings that I thought about when we started our modern micro armor project last summer. I was determined to get enough for a several town blocks and did. I hope by our next game to have them all done. I'll opt for a quicker and dirtier paint job than usual, which I can get away with because it's 6mm scale. I figure If I can't see anything that small to pick out the flaws nobody else can.

MKP also had some 40mm scale stone walls at 50¢ for an 8" section or corner piece. End pieces were 25¢. I came away with $15.00 worth, but now think I should have gone the full Jackson's worth. Still it's plenty of stone protection for the ACW figures I'm working on.

I got several fields from Wizard Kraft. William is using a new style for his fields and he only had partially finished versions with him. I got these at $8.00 per square foot rather than $14.00 and all I need to do is finished off the rows of crops on them with some Tacky glue and Woodland Scenics flocking.

Ships 'n' stuff - MKP also had on hand a bunch of items from Bay Area Yards. I had tried getting some of these from the BAY website, but several of what I wanted were unavailable. I picked up several models of smaller river gunboats as well as the initial armored version of the USS Galena. Unable to help myself, I also bought their Fort St. Philip model (Kevin snagged the Fort Jackson). It's very nicely cast in resin with metal guns. I can use it as a generic fort. We don't do a lot of ship vs. shore actions because they're mostly just about shooting.

Thoughts on convention gaming

As promised, here are my few coherent thoughts on convention gaming, which generally run from negative to ambivalent:

A crowd's a crowd - I prefer gaming between friends because the camaraderie is always better and there is some communal commitment to the game we're playing. The atmosphere is also less hectic. Conventions draw a lot of gamers who want to participate in a lot of games. While the gamers truly appreciate the work that game hosts do to put on a game, as a game host, I find it frustrating to try to teach people a game they will likely never play again in a single gaming period so that they (or I) can find something enjoyable or meaningful in the experience. All the while the convention hall is teeming with humanity making a dull, yet sustained, hubbub that renders actual communication to an audience of more than one other gamer impossible.

It's the simplicity, stupid - I like games that provide more complexity and depth in the rules. Whenever someone gushes to me about the sheer genius of a two-page rules set, I have to smile politely and back away slowly. However, that's what a convention game really calls for. To me, the idea of developing a set of rules that can be learned in minutes and then working for months on a project to host a game for other people that I wouldn't want to play myself is crazy. The alternative is to host a game of what I'm currently playing and hope people pick it up; but having done that on more than one occasion, I'm no longer sanguine about the success of that endeavor. I've hosted too many games where I ran the charts for every combat action for every player. It's easy enough to do for small games, but games with more people are exhausting. Simple is better, but I just don't like simple.

Schlepp you much - Ever since I got my 350z, my ability to host an away game (and they're all away games) has been limited. My previous cars weren't big, but had much more storage room. The Z is an engine with two seats. The very limited storage space is rendered even more limited by the stabilizer bar that runs across it. I used to be able to load a lot of stuff into tote boxes, but I can't fit the tote boxes in the car. This means that until I get a new (practical) car, which I don't see happening soon, I'm limited to hosting one game that doesn't require too much in the way of terrain, figures, etc. The only alternative would be to rent an SUV for the weekend.

Doctors are the worst patients - Having hosted so many games at conventions, I find that I don't actually like playing them when I'm not hosting. Being one of the crowd of gamers I don't know being taught a set of rules I don't know by someone I don't know just doesn't make for the best experience. I either pick up a set of rules instantly or get dazed and confused immediately. An hour into a three-hour game and I want to be anywhere else. (Sometimes I feel that way when I'm hosting.)

All that aside, I will surely continue to host games at Enfilade! and may even rent the SUV to schlepp more stuff for multiple games.