I just came back from my first trip to Historicon, which I enjoyed tremendously. As Foundry trade sales wallah I had a chance to meet lots of dealers, talk about toy soldiers, have a took at a lot of games, play in one - Nic Robson's hardcore historical game "Jurassic Hyde Park" - and put on a couple of my own. Larry Brom had arranged for a room dedicated to colonials, mostly put together by the Colonial Wars Onelist on the internet, and I had volunteered two events. One of them was my big game hunter event, "the Lion Eats tonight', which you may have seen. I had 9 hunters, each with a gunbearer and two porters for extra snacking, against a motley but angry collection of African wildlife - elephants, lions, a rhino, hippos, crocodiles, giant apes (1), many of whom seemed to work together in a style that would have made Napoleon smile. But, when a husband and wife play a wargame together, and she's a pride of lionesses and he's Joe Bob Moffatt from Amarillo, with a truckload of tequila and ammunition, you know it will be interesting! Oh, who am I kidding, the poor bugger never had a chance --- Since I like to encourage young writers, and because I am very lazy, an account of this event by one Matthew Fritz is appended, entitled - The Elephants are Angry My second trip into the jungle came during Howard Whitehouse's "The Lion Eats Tonight" scenario. The terrain was spectacular. Howard's mountains, complete with caves, were truly works of art. The figures were Foundy and the animals were from toy and dollar stores. The rules used were Howard's own home-brew. Baron von Fritz stalking a Cape Buffalo. Just moments before he was trampled into pudding. Half the players controlled animals. The rest of us were given a big game hunter, a gun bearer, and two porters. Our first task was to come up with a name. My hunter was called "Baron von Fritz." When this was announced I was the recipient of some half-hearted boos. Apparently Germans are not very popular with Colonial wargamers. The game itself was hilarious. The oneliners and wisecracks were nonstop and the whole group was laughing the entire time. On the first turn a pride of lions burst from the bushes and rushed a hunter. The lions were gunned down. This was the highpoint for the hunters. The situation quickly deteriorated. I rounded a bend and spotted a herd of Cape Buffalo. Before I could fire a shot they charged. I was trampled to death in the blink of an eye and my broken body was tossed onto a nearby hill. My gun bearer and porters had to dive into the river to save their skins. Another hunter aimed his rifle at an elephant. The annoyed herd of elephants walked up and got in his face. The largest elephant stuck his forehead against the gun barrel, daring the hunter to shoot. Bang! The elephant fell dead. The retaliation was swift and bloody. Announcing that "The elephants are angry," the hunter was stomped into pudding and his body tossed around like a volleyball. The gun bearer and porters fled to the safety of a nearby cave. Unfortunately this was the home of a pride of lions. They woke up feeling grouchy and went to work on the unfortunates. The survivor staggered out of the cave to find the herd of elephants waiting for him outside the cave entrance. While the elephants were exacting their revenge a Texan climbed a nearby hill and starting shooting at the "long nosed cows." This made the elephants angry, but the Texan was out of reach. So the elephants thundered past him and trashed his truck. The lions were subtler. They executed a brilliant flanking maneuver and raced towards the Texan. He ran for his life, leaving a porter to delay the lions. The delay was a brief one and the lions got him in the end. A leopard assaulted another hunter. While the leopard and a porter wrestled the hunter fired a shot into the furball, killing the porter. This futile tactic was repeated as the leopard attacked the second porter and the gun bearer. In desperation the hunter jumped into the river where he was killed by hippos. The elephants charged across the river in search of fresh prey. One brave female hunter managed to kill one. Her victory turned to ashes when she was informed that she had just killed the baby. The elephants announced that they were once again angry and charged. She climbed a hill but the elephants were able to reach her with their trunks. Another hunter bit the dust. Meanwhile, in my part of the jungle, two hunters foolishly decided to climb a mountain. This turned out to be Gorilla Mountain and a gorilla soon attacked them. They desperately retreated and shot the beast from a distance. By now all the survivors had been thoroughly intimidated by the animals and were afraid to make a move. Deadly animals seemed to be everywhere. Most of the hunters began to head for the safety of the table edge. When it was my turn again I decided to act boldly. My gun bearer climbed the hill and took the Baron's pith helmet and gun (it was in mint condition, having never been fired). He declared himself the new Bwana. Baron Bwana! He looked around for an animal to kill. in the distance he spotted a gorilla wrestling with a porter. Taking careful aim, he squeezed off a shot. Right between the eyes. The porter died instantly. After the game I would claim that I shot a "skinny gorilla carrying a box." No one was fooled. My second barrel wounded the gorilla. I unloaded my second gun at the gorilla and was finally rewarded with the satisfaction of actually killing an animal. But in this game success or failure was measured in laughs, not kills. In this regard the game was a smashing success. We all laughed our selves silly. In the months to come I will be prowling the local toy stores with a 25mm figure in my pocket, searching for suitable animals so I can run my own version of this game, I will always be haunted by those terrible words: "The elephants are angry." What noble words! I had rather expected to be attacked by large, undersocialised and underbathed individuals, possibly lifting sweaty armpits in my direction, after my diatribe in the last "Skulking". Turns out a lot of people agreed with me! Yes, the more recognizably human of our hobby all seem to share my concern about not merely the ugly truth of our fellows (go home, get a shower!) but, much more significantly, the air of hostility and negativity shown in some quarters. A gamer (hey Geno) I know refers to one category as 'Lugerheads', and I don't think I need to explain too much to indicate that these are not cheerful, fully-functional adult gainers who enjoy a friendly game of toy soldiers. For my sins, I have been visiting some of the internet newsgroups, both wargaming and historical, and find that the degree of civility involved in all of them (alright, not the PG Wodehouse group) is disturbingly low. Not everybody, of course, but a significant number of what I shall term clothing maniacs (and I say that with all due respect, of course) feature loudly in all of them. One historical NG (not wargaming) has a man who considers it his duty to call a spade a damn shovel at every opportunity, and regards all efforts to rein him in as 'net-cop'. The young guys on the fantasy/SF groups can be astoundingly profane, while the historical wargamers tend to be simply grouchy and whining. The shining exceptions are the 'one-lists' which show up as E-mail rather than as separate lists, and - perhaps because of this more 'personal' aspect - are vastly more civil. Of course, I don't have to go visiting these internet newsgroups any more than I need to eat bees, but my point is that once again a public face of wargaming is apparently unfriendly rather than welcoming. Sermon over. Let's play toy soldiers! Intersting Two of my most entertaining games lately have been with Tyler, who is eight, and is staying with his grandmother, our neighbour. Tyler likes western movies and horror tales and Indiana Jones, so I put them all together. I had built a 'tomb' piece of scenery, a corner pice where, by entering through a trapdoor down a flight of stairs into a hallway (you had to lift that part oft) you were encountered with a couple of chambers, which had part-roofs to conceal what was underneath. Tyler was Indiana Jones and friends, while I - doing a simple RPG format controlled all the rules, the villains and everything else. All he had to do was to say what he wanted to do next, roll some dice on the rule of '4-6 if it's fairly easy to do, 5-6 if it's hard, 6 if it's very hard'. This makes sense to an 8 year old, and, indeed, to me. The villains were, first of all, a pit of crocodiles, then a guard of zombie Egyptians (alright, they were regular ancient Egyptians, don't ask me where you can buy Zombie Egyptians --), then - when you opened the sarcophagus, a mummy of the unpleasant kind. Being the cissified liberal you knew I am, I wanted the enemy to be basic evil non-humans (you know, the whole Zombies/Nazis/ Texans thing - just kidding there, pardnuh --) and for Indy and pals to get beaten up, tied up etc but not killed. He's not my eight year old, after all! We had a great time, playing for about an hour or so, because that's all an eight year old can really handle. By doing it as a 'decision-making game', where he has to work out what makes sense and what doesn't, and by having lots of moments where the sensible thing to do isn't to blaze away at everything in sight, I was able to give Tyler a good time, while being a bit educational. And I had fun too. Now, if I could only persuade those 40 year olds that there are times when blazing away at all times isn't always sensible -- Back to MWAN #108 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum 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