CONFERENCE: Action 2002 WHEN: 12-14 April 2002 WHERE: Rheindahlen Rooms, JHQ Monchengladbach, Germany Well, the "Yanks" are back from Rheindahlen, and all of us will admit that we had great furi. For everyone unfamiliar with the Action conference, it is one of the few wargaming conferences that take place in Germany! Sponsored every year by the British gainers at Rheindahlen, near Monchengladbach up near the Dutch border, the conference attracts British (their forces located in Germany), German, Dutch, and Belgian gainers. For the third year in a row, Ramstein has provided the token presence of "colonials" or "Yanks," as our British gaming brethern affectionately refer to us. Once again, we had a blast thanks to the excellent efforts of our British cousins. Action 2002 took place 12-14 April in the recently renovated Rheindahlen Rooms at Joint headquarters Monchengladbach, offering more than double the space of last year. And gamers from all over Germany used every bit of that space! The offerings varied from 15mm pirates (one game taking at least seven hours) and 25mm ACW skirmish to the sci-fi games such as Full Thrust and Warhammer 40K that seem to attract large numbers of Europeans to miniatures gaming. This year historicals seemed to have prominance, but perhaps that's because I did not get into some of the side rooms. The Rheindahlen club put up a 15mm display of Waterloo complete with scale terrain broken into about twenty 2' x 2' styrofoam blocks that they, pushed together using toothpicks. With the movie, Waterloo playing in the background, the display added visually to the entire great room. Our hosts are to be commended for their efforts. They arranged an excellent -aming-, venue, they acquired low cost quarters for those of us with military connections, and they even provided the British equivalent of a low cost breakfast if you wanted it (I will never get used to baked beans on the breakfast menu!). They ran a number of games especially attractive to the attending Yanks. Still, there is something incongruous about watching and listening to Brits and Scots running a 25mm ACW skirmish game! As for the Yanks contribution to Action 2002, we brought and ran a modern micro-armor game (Cubans vs. South Africans), 1/300th scale WW2 aircraft (mixed American Mritish vs. German dogfight), 1/1200th WW2ships (British vs. Italians), and 1/1200th Napoleonic ships (British vs. French). Does anyone detect a decidedly "British" connection in all of our selections. Scott Wadyko's Napoleonic ships garnered the most mixed collection of gamers-American, British, Dutch, Belgian, and German. Talk about European flavoring! The dealers, a collection of firms from both Germany and Great Britain, and the "bring and buy" lined the walls of the gaming area. To gainers stateside, perhaps Brittania was the best known of those dealers present. One dealer even had some American figures--ten or twelve packs of Old Glory ACW! Otherwise, most of the stuff one saw was European in origin. Some Yanks even "victimized" a dealer or two, adding to the range of games /miniatures available to Ramstein gamers. This is no mean feat as most of our stuff comes via mail order; we have very few opportunities to haggle with dealers face-to-face. Will the Yanks return for Action 2003? You bet! We already have a few ideas in mind for the games we'll run next year! If anyone stateside ever gets a chance to attend Action, we recommend it. Dr. Carl J. Arseneault, CPT, AUSR Ramstein Area Gaming Society (RAGS) Ramstein, Germany Back to Dispatch July 2002 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com