The HAWKS have some very nice traditions. One is the post-convention lunch at the Plain and Fancy, and another is the post-convention AAR pot-luck picnic at the Palmer's to talk about new toys, good games, etc. Since I will not be at the pot-luck, here is my AAR:

I was not sure how long the drive to Lancaster from West Point would take, so I left Wednesday night after work and a quick dinner, arriving around 2200. I arrived just 10 minutes before Mike Miller, who drove (unaccompanied) from Texas. Mike and I moved our luggage into the room and crashed.

Thursday we woke up and wandered about a bit, linking up with several HAWKS before hitting the dealer area. The past three or four conventions, I have hit the dealer area in commando raids, and I wanted to spend a couple of hours really perusing. I spent more money than I had planned at the Old Glory booth, picking up a few NWF figures, the Governor's Guard for our Historicon 2001 Thunder and Plunder extravaganza, and some other odds and ends. Thursday evening I ran Brian Cantwell's Camels Over Trondheim game. Though I was not too comfortable with the rules, the game ran well, and the folks seemed to have a good time. The game ended with the British trouncing the Germans, blowing up one of the two zeppelin sheds, and getting away with only one loss.

Friday morning I got up early and moved the gear I was going to need for Skull Island into the Marietta Room and then get a bite to eat. This game, Skull Island, was not in the PEL, as it was meant as a replacement for the Regimental Combat Team game. Still, within ten minutes of my proposed start time (1000), I had filled all 8 slots and was on my way. The game went VERY well, and the players really liked the event cards. At one point player A played a "native ambush" card on B. B played a "find a hidden cave" card, but then A played a second "native ambush" card. The guy who eventually won, a guy from California who plays with the folks from Flagship Games, had no treasures two turns before the end of the game.

As he had no luck looking for treasure, he decided to steal as many of the row boats has he could so that he could extort money from the other pirate groups to get off the island. In the meantime, one player with three treasures and two figures left attacked a second player with one treasure and one figure. Then the eventual winner attacked the one survivor of that fight, getting four treasures -- without lifting a shovel. Then another guy with three treasures tried to jump him -- and lost. So in two turns the guy went from rags to riches. There was plenty of hooting and hollering, and a good time was had by all.

Friday evening, I helped Eric host St. Nazaire. Basically we ran this as two games, with me controlling half the battle, and Jamie controlling the remedial math class on the other half of the battle. Eric, therefore, had an opportunity to observe the whole battle while rarely getting involved in typical GM stuff -- at least on my side. It also helped that I had two HAWKS, Duncan and Tank, who could run their own charts. Again all the players seemed to have a good time, with plenty of excitement. The British managed to blow up just about everything except one bridge. Had there been boats to pull them out, the British would have won a smashing victory. As it turned out the victorious commandos were led off to POW camps for the duration of the war.

Saturday was my big day. Having already run three games, I was looking at three more. My day began with a Blood and Swash game using the cowboy variant. This scenario involved the Northwest Mounted Police types bringing revenge down on the Wiley criminals who had gunned down a fellow Mountie in the streets. The Indians immediately attacked a group of bank robbers, and the Mounties jumped into the fray. The bank robbers managed to steal all the money from the hotel and jump on the train. As they got the train moving, one of the U.S. cavalry folks jumped on the train in hot pursuit. There was a scuffle in the engine, with people getting knocked off the train, getting shotguns fired in their faces, etc. In the end, some townsperson was left on the moving train as it sped into the sunset with no one in the engine, and the cavalry trooper returned the money to the hotel. The group of cattler rustlers got one man to the cattle herd. Using the herd as cover, he began moving off, but he was caught in a crossfire between the small group of Buffalo Soldiers and the Mounties. Then the Indians, who were also seeking cattle, jumped into the fray, stealing a couple of cows, but they too were gunned down. In the end, the good guys held the town, and all the bad guys had been killed.

Knowing that I had to run my Poland 39 game on the same table an hour after the cowboy game, I set the cowboy town on the same terrain as the Poland game, but just used half the map. Setting up Poland only took a few minutes. For this game, I used Beer and Pretzels Skirmish and a scenario from the Poland Skirmish Campaigns book. This worked VERY well. With the move and the new job, I did not have time to research a scenario. (For those of you who have not seen these books, they are real gems!) The scenario involved a group from the Polish 10th Mechanized Brigade trying to stop a group of Germans. In the Skirmish Campaigns books, each force has a fixed component and a random component. Rather than have the players roll for this force, I assigned them ahead of time. The Germans has to SdKfz 222's, 2 PzKw I's, and three squads of infantry. The Poles had two tankettes (one with an MMG and the other with a 20mm gun), a Bofors 37mm AT gun, an ATR, and two squads of infantry.

The Poles showed unusual patience (for a convention) and did not open fire as the Germans entered the valley of death. The first Polish infantry squad was uncovered by some German infantry, most of which rushed toward that area. In the tough-fought infantry fight that ensued, the Germans quickly gained the upper hand and kept up the pressure until the Polish infantry disintigrated. This infantry fight also distracted the German vehicles long enough to allow one good Bofors shot -- which hit the ammunition in a 222 and brewed it up. The second 222 opened fire, and after two turns of autocanon fire, destroyed the AT gun and most of the crew. While the Germans had turned their attention toward the AT gun, the Polish ATR began popping away at the flank of one of the Pz I's, mostly missing. Tired of this, the Pz I's chared the Polish platoon leader and ATR. Finally the ATR scored a hit, causing the engine to explode spectacularly. At this point, the tankettes circled around a hill and fired at the 222's. The 222's got off two shots, both bouncing harmlessly off, before the 20mm gun on one of the tankettes brewed up the last 222. At this point, between the ATR and the two tankettes it was pretty obvious that the last Pz I was doomed. We called the battle a draw as the Germans had not exited any forces off the table but had won the infantry fight. A very interesting skirmish, with both sides playing well.

My final game of the con was Stella! On the Waterfront, Chris' and my two tavern, dock, and wharf area pirate skirmish using Blood and Swash. This was its typical fun, with plenty of daring do, blood, swash, and mishaps. One of the funniest moments happened when Kelly Krieble jumped off a balcony, intending to land on two other guys below him. He passed his saving roll, but so did both of the people below him. They paused only a moment to look at Kelly, lying face down and spread eagle at their feet and then resumed their sword fight. The objective of this game is to carry off the most loot. Despite the running fight on a wagon loaded with treasure, when the smoke cleared, there were five players with one treasure each.

Sunday morning Harry ran his really cool game based on the movie Aliens. Because of our scheduled HAWKS lunch at the Plain and Fancy we had to cut the game off at noon, so Harry was kind to us. Even though my guy, Hudson, had all four limbs chewed off and an alien had used my pulse rifle as a tooth pick, we won the game. Great fun!

As usually the lunch was a good time. Rob was ravenous, and I had to watch that he didn't eat my arm, as he began to coat it with apple butter. Keep you hands and feet away from Kurt's face. I think we went through four pot pies and half a cow of chocolate milk... This was an excellent opportunity to decompress and share humorous convention stories after the con. I highly recommend this to as many of the HAWKS who can make it after Cold Wars. Our attendance has been slipping a bit.

Some miscellaneous observations:

This was a great convention for me. Though I ran six events, two of which were not in my original plan, I did not have one jerk in any of the games -- those ruler-moving, nit-picking, loud mouthed know-it-alls who ruin the game for everyone. We philosophized about this for a while, and my feeling is that the HAWKS room has a reputation for running certain kinds of games. Many of the folks who I hate to have in my games were at the convention, but I didn't see any of them in any games in HAWKS room all weekend. I don't think any of us have done anything overtly to discourage those types; I just think that certain types of gamers are not interested in our types of games.

There were many kids and women at the convention -- many more than normal. This was a good sign. Rob noted on another list that the HAWKS are not having any trouble recruiting new members, but that almost all of us are 30+. These two things led me to the notion that the HAWKS should take the lead on this and organize KidCon I some time in the Spring (April comes to mind). Adults are admitted free with a paying child. All games will be kid games. We have (or could easily come up with) enough kids games now. This could be a one-day event designed to get kids excited about the hobby. I'll bet we could even get some folks like Goblintooth (Fuzzy Warriors) to come and run some stuff. In this case, kids would not be a distracter from their parents' games, they would be the purpose of the convention. I think this would make a GREAT one-day event opposite Barrage on the calendar.

I had a chance to run into lots of old friends, including Joe DiCamillo from PA and Dave Cote from Texas. That is almost the best part of the convention -- hanging out with buddies. That is why the HAWKS room is so good!

My current projects -- besides finish up some odds and ends of a few projects that are almost done -- are a Northwest Frontier project with Rob (as well as Big Battles for Little Hands -- where are your parts, Rob) and a Victorian Science Fiction project with Chris. The later involves rewriting Blood and Swash and Thunder and Plunder for this period. While the rules will have all the cool Sci-Fi elements, I think they will also be a pretty good set of rules for British and American Colonial fights. To this end, we ordered a bunch of stuff from Eureka Games, including British Cuirassiers on bicycles and a cool guy on a steam-powered bicycle. Anyone wanting to participate in the playtests should let us know so we can send you copies of the rules. Poor Jamie has already been sucked into another Palmer-Dean-Surdu off-the-wall project, buying some bicyclists himself!

Hope to see ALL of you at Barrage in September.