Ed.: Steve Allen is the current president of the Trumpeter Wargame club up in British Columbia. His dynamic style united what had been a loose bunch of ‘basement gamers’ into an organization that puts on monthly gaming nights (really mini-conventions) as well as their annual show Salute. The Trumpeters currently have more members than NHMGS. This year, they are co-sponsoring Breakthrough with NHMGS and Columbia Games.

Please give some background information about yourself.

I am 37 years old, married for 10 years to wife Kathy. Two children, a 7 year-old daughter, and a 4 year-old son.

How, where, when did you become interested in wargaming?

Introduced to tabletop gaming when I was 13 years old, belonged to a basement group in Prince George BC. The group had around 8 members, with ages ranging from 13 to over 30.

What periods, scales and rules do you use? What are the sizes of your collections in these periods?

25mm WRG 6th addition Ancients 7 armies (3500-5000 pts each). 25mm Battle Lust army of Knights and men at arms of approximately 80 figs. Napoleonics Empire Simulation, very large collection of figs in 15mm French, Prussian, Russian, Polish, Wurtemberg, British, Portuguese, Bavarian. As well as thousands of unpainted figs. For future expansion. 60+ ships for Wooden ships and Iron Men. 25mm Fire and Fury Civil War 1000+ figs. 40+ planes for Canvas Eagles, 15mm Tractics WW II one-for-one scale. 1 company of infantry and armor for each of the Russians, British, and Germans, as well as an early war company of armor for the Germans. Home Brew rules of a fellow Trumpeter for WW II naval battle fleets of 20+ mixed ships for each German, British, Japanese. And finally a large scale version of Formula De. Hot wheels scale racing game.

What aspects of the hobby are the most important for you and which are the least important?

I find that as I am involved in this hobby longer my views change, ultimately the important thing is the social aspect and enjoyment. I think if you can get a few guys together for a few hours of fun and swap stories and visit, that is as least half the value of our hobby. The other aspect is it is an outlet for the creative skills of the people involved in our hobby. I am always greatly impressed at the skill and detail put into terrain and painting. I have limited skills in both these areas but take great enjoyment in seeing the latest productions from our more skilled members.

Regarding scenarios, what do you feel makes for an interesting game?

Ha, this is a loaded question. What makes an interesting scenario, everyone has a different opinion. Even though I play mostly historical games, I very seldom do historical reenactments of actual battles. I will sometimes do a close variant of a historical encounter. But I find history is already written and you can never get it exactly right on the table top, therefore the amount of opportunities for disagreement is to great. The other thing I see a lot is set piece battles of equal forces. This tends to be a head basher and not very challenging for either side, the results are mostly the dice. What I like to see is a scenario with mission objectives and unequal forces. So that an inferior force that achieves their objectives can overcome a larger, but misused, force. Or a smart ass with a smaller force can get his butt kicked by a larger force. Where is the challenge of fighting even battles all the time? I would rather be the underdog winning a tough game.

What do you look for in a set of rules? What level of combat do you usually try to portray on the tabletop?

I find I look for different things in rules for different periods. The level of combat for me ranges from one-on-one in Battle Lust and Tractics to Army and Corps level in Napoleonics. I like to see a set of rules that move well and do not get bogged down in the middle of the turn (I don’t know any like that). I have spent some time modifying different rule sets to reflect my preferences.

Have you seen any differences between gaming in the U.S and Canada/

I would have to say no, the similarities are much more noticeable than the differences.

You are the current President of the Trumpeters Wargaming Club. Please give a brief history of the club and how you became involved.

When I first moved to Vancouver 17 years ago I was told about the club by a few friends who had known about the Trumpeters. I looked them up and dropped in a few times. At the time I had left my collections of troops with the group in Prince George, as I had not intended to game anymore. Over the years I decided I would like to get back into it again, so I looked the club up again and started to attend the Sunday gatherings. A friend and I decided to become members and attend on a regular basis. I have been a Trumpeter Member for the past 6 years or so. Over this time the club has experienced some ups and downs. We went from a weekly gathering to a couple of gatherings a year. For a while it looked like the club was about to fold. The club executive was disillusioned and several members resigned and left the club. It was a difficult time for us. On one of the infrequent Sunday Meetings, acting president Doug Hamm and I discussed what could be done to salvage the club before it destroyed itself. We decided the first thing would be to make the regular meetings on a Friday night, and make it happen once a month on a regular published schedule. This discussion was the beginning of my involvement a little more than a year and a half ago. Since that time I have become the President of the club, and I convinced a large group of members to become executives to help reorganize the club. The rest, as they say, is history .

The last couple of years have seen a tremendous rebirth of interest in membership in the Trumpeters. To what do you attribute this phenomenon?

The Trumpeter club has had great success in recruiting over the last two years for a number of reasons. The first is the gaming environment. We meet in an excellent facility on a regular schedule. This allows people to plan their activities to allow for the Game Nights. Second, the club is really a confederation of basement groups and the politics of the club has been designed to accommodate this so that all gamers feel they have a say in the way the club is run. Third, because of the way the basement groups are organized, the club has a much larger executive to draw on for club recruiting activities and advertising. This allows the club to get out to public venues like the museum and gaming stores to put on display games and do further recruiting. And finally, but not leas, the Trumpeter newsletter. This has allowed us to get our story out to the gamers of the lower mainland and it has brought in many new members.

Your Friday Game Nights have been highly successful. Please describe these events, how they came about and why they are so popular.

As mentioned earlier, the decision to host the Game Nights was originally discussed by Doug Hamm and myself. My gaming in Prince George was always on a Friday night and my basement gaming at George Barnard's was on Friday nights as well. I think the membership of the Trumpeter club was ready for the change to Friday nights. Many of the members were getting a little older and starting families. Sunday is a not a good day to spend away from your family. Friday night for many was already the boys night out, and was much easier to accommodate that a Sunday. The other thing is the schedule. If you only meet once a month, members want to get together with the group when the next game night rolls around. It does not happen every day and I think the membership make a special effort to come out and attend.

How has the availability of a first class facility - The Bonsor Community Center - contributed to the club’s revitalization?

I would like to think the facility is just icing on the cake, and not a major factor in the members coming out to game. Oh it helps that we get a reasonable rate of rent so the cost for members of going to game night is very low. And it’s great that we are able to have a concession to help offset the costs of the rental. But I hope the enthusiasem of the club would still exist if we were in a less quality facility. Remember we used the same facility when the club was about to fold. I think the other changes in the club are bigger factors in the club’s success.

Salute is rapidly becoming the success story of the local gaming convention scene. Please give us some background on the convention and how you made it so successful.

It’s hard to separate the club’s success and the convention, mainly because the same people who have worked so hard to revitalize the club are also responsible for the success of the convention. We did a few things this year that we are really happy about. We added a tournament hosted and sponsored by Games Workshop. This required us to add another room to our convention space. We had a painting contest, and I must confess I stole the set up and layout from my trip to Historicon last year. And I think for something added at the last minute it turned out to be a big success. We again had a large number of door prizes for the attendants of the convention. These door prizes were all gift certificates from the many sponsors of the Trumpeter Club. Also we hosted more than 120 games over the weekend. We were able to do this because we sat down in advance and made a list of everyone we could think of who could host games and then took the time to contact them and ask them to host those games over the weekend. So instead of waiting for people to offer to host or pre-register we went out and pre-registered them ourselves. It went very well and I think the members appreciated the fact that we knew who they were and what they could host. Very few declined our request.

One of the benefits of belonging to The Trumpeters is receiving the club newsletter. You, Eric Hotz and the staff have produced a high quality, professional newsletter. Please give some background on the newsletter.

Eric Hotz and myself sat down one day and had a chat about the club, the newsletter and the direction everything seemed to be going. The newsletter at that time was handled by Doug Hamm and Chris Leach. Chris was heavily involved with his masters at school and a new baby. And Doug was the lick and stamp man. After talking to Eric we decided we had the technical expertise needed to get involved with running the club and the newsletter. Believe me, if Eric had not been interested in getting involved in the whole process of running the club and the newsletter I have no idea where we would be today. We decided to have a meeting with the old executive and the newsletter staff and offer our services. I knew Eric was a professional in the art industry, but I had no idea how good he really was. You have to understand I have very little talent with art or computers. I would have an idea in my head of what I wanted or how I wanted it to look. But Eric is the mechanic who had the skills to bring it all alive. With his skills we came up with brochures, flyers, the newsletter layout and much more that took the club to a higher level than ever before. I have to say Eric has been the biggest Trumpeter Club supporter I know, and I thank him for his efforts.

What are your plans for the future of The Trumpeters?

Rest! No, really, in the future, we will continue to do public venues like games stores and we will continue to go to other events to support them as well as get our name out there. We would like to expand the convention again next year, and add one more room. We would then have the whole floor for our event - that would be a great thing to see. We now get between 65-85 members to the game nights, I would like to see that break the 100 mark this year.

Finally, is there any subject relating to the hobby that you would like to comment on?

The only thing I would add is that our club has a very diverse range of interests. Everyone seems to get along and participate. And I think that has a lot to do with the success of the club. We try to make sure we have room for everyone and no one gets pushed aside. Remember its all fun and games. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me. And I hope our success will spill over into all the clubs in our area and the hobby in general will benefit from our experience.