In MWAN issue number 109's editorial, Hal requested feedback from the membership on how some of the wargame clubs function. With HATSOFF (Heart of America Tactical and Strategic Order of the Followers of Featherstone) being one of the "greyist of the greys", we thought it would be a good idea to forward a few tidbits on how we operate ... even though it's questionable that some of us potential a1zheimer patients would remember how we got started.
First of all, HATSOFF is a group of individuals, usually about ten to twelve strong, that for the most part have been gaming together for the past 35 or so years. We range in age from 60 down to the early thirties. Four of our club members have tables in their basements, our primary gaming table being a 7 by 21 foot table at Dan Groves house. The other three tables are 7 by 12, 7 by 14, and 7 by 18 feet. We schedule gaming every Sunday evening on one of these tables. When I say we game every Sunday, I mean most not all, as not even our group is brave enough to schedule a wargame on Mother's day! A scheduling board is kept on the wall at Dan's house, where we list the games that will be played on what dates over the following two months or so. This works out great, as it allows individuals with conflicts, i.e. family vacations, work schedules, honey do's, or Sam Gill's required attendence at fifteen family birthdays a year, all of which astoundingly fall on a Sunday every year, to ask for the rescheduling of games they want to attend.
As to the structure of our club, it has been alluded that we are a stuffy bunch of old curmudgeons, if I'm recalling correctly what Pat Condray called us in the 1970's. In reality, we are primarily a closed group, meaning that game nights are not just open to anyone who wants to show up. Please don't take this to mean that we do not allow others to visit our games. We regularly seek out that special "like-minded" person to join the group when we lose a member. Also, we often have "guest" gainers over when they ask to drop by, or we meet someone at a local convention that we think would fit in. I suppose it should be noted that HATSOFF is a group of friends who socialize together as well as wargame. There is a standing joke within the club that we are a three tiered quadrivium. This means we have the first tier of old guard, that is the four of us who have been together the longest, the second tier of four, or the middle guard, and finally, the young guard, that is the FNGs or the friggin new guys, that have only been around ten years or so. If you ask some other clubs in our area, I think they believe we really are structured along these lines. In reality, we are probably closer to a benign dictatorship, with Dan, who's house we do most of the gaming at, as our titular head.
The HATSOFF group is not made up of folks who just want to get together to push lead. We are all "amateur" historians, and are serious historical book collectors. Most of us have fairly good size libraries, with Dan being the largest at around 2,000 books on military history. Even so we pale in comparison to nefarious collectors as Ken Bunger, the collector of all collectors. We do extensive research in our "pet" periods, and most often the rules we play with are written by a member of the group. Occasionally we will play with a published set of rules, but I would say this is the rare exception. We all differ in rule concepts, just like anyone else, but we may be unique from what I have seen, in that we have no arguments that last past the next turn in any game. We have an unspoken agreement that we will always defer to reasonable accomadation in any discussion on any topic, except when we are all abhorant at Dan's graphic review of the 14unusual" website he seems to find every week.
We are currently gaming in roughly 29 different periods, ranging from Ancients to WWII. However, our concentration is the horse and musket periods of the 18th and 19th centuries. As an example, we have gained in the SYW period for the past twentyfive years, and are currently using Dan Groves 38th amendment to the rules. There are a couple of members in our group (yours truely included) who like to do fictional historical periods. For example, we have expanded R. Conroy's book, 1901, about the German invasion of Brooklyn, New York, into a full scale 15mm game, using our WWI Germans, and the Americans from our Spanish-American game. This started out as a "oneoff"game, and has turned into a full fledged campaign. We also do the occasional airwar game, mostly WWI, but Sam Gill devised a unique scenario for the Dirigables of Death, or gas bags over the Andes. He found some plastic figures/containers and made Dirigables for the countries of Uraguay and Paraguay, with tiny aircraft and everything. It was naval warfare in the air, and quite fun. We also have a number of games in naval periods such as ancients, age of sail, ACW, Predreadnaught, and up to WWII. Again, most of these are with rules written by members of the group. Our rule motto is, "simple rules for complex minds; complex rules for simpletons". A HATSOFF game ordinarily lasts about three hours, with the usual banter and blustering, with much quoting of Shakespeare and Kipling, and possibly a few ditty's made up by members of the group. As often as not, if our game is not finished, we leave it set up to finish the following week. This I think is one advantage our type of group has over the club that meets in a hall or rented space, as there is no timeline for when we have to finish a game and pick the figures up.
Finally, HATSOFF is a group of friends, who get together for the purpose of wargaming, socialization, and comraderie; not the competitive aspects that one sees at some conventions. This hobby is made up of a unique class of people with very like interests, who for the most part find the study of military history fascinating. Whether one games in a basement, garage, the backroorn of a hobby store, or in a formal club room, and whether one games once a week, once a month, or once a year, the resulting interest is the same. We all have that desire to meet with others interested in military history, and share what we are doing. HATSOFF has a group standard in the shape of a vexillia, with the design of the old Rousellot logo of the French SYW officer saluting his oppenent by removing his hat. We take this to conventions when we are putting on a club game, because we think this says it all about who we are ... always let the other guy fire first. Thanks for reading.
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© Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum
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