This is going to be a Convention Column, since its being written a little over a week after HISTORICON, and between May and late July I've been to ENFILADE up here in the Northwest, and ORIGINS and HISTORICON both in the Midwest and East.

ENFILADE is the annual Northwest HMGS convention, held on Memorial Day weekend just north of Seattle. The first thing I noticed was that fully 25% of the scheduled events at ENFILADE were world war two games, and 75% of the world war two events were land battles (the rest included both naval and air games).

The rules used for the ground actions included Command Decision, Spearhead. Jagdpanzer, Advanced Panzer Tactics Century of Conflict (a local set of rules, due for publication next year), Through the Smoke. Squad Leader (played with 20mm miniatures), and the Canadian Wargamers Group's Great Battles of the Second World War. Interestingly (to me), no less than half the games were set on the Eastern Front. The scales ranged from 1:1 individuals (squad leader) to company (Canadian Wargamer's Group), with the majority of the games using the platoon as the basic unit.

As for the miniatures themselves, the bulk of the games were micro armor, with only one 15nun game and one 20mm game in the lot. On the other hand, a large contingent of 20mm players from Vancouver, Canada didn't put on a game, and the 15mm WWII painters have mostly just started this year and probably don't have enough units completed to put on a game. One other interesting note is variety: although, naturally enough, all the games included Germans on one side, their opponents ranged from 1940 French to 1945 US and Soviets. The Eastern Front games alone had scenarios set in 1941, 1942, 1944, and 1945!

ORIGINS is? on paper? the GAMA (Gaming Artists and Manufacturers) annual convention, which means in reality that it's overwhelmingly devoted to the fantasy and card games, where the bulk of the money is in the gaming hobby. HMGS sponsors some historical miniatures at the con and there is a very well organized War College program of lectures on military history - which is what I was doing there. Despite the collapse of the historical boardgame market in the past year, the military history lectures were better attended than they were in Philadelphia in 1995. In other words, there is a lot of interest in military history in all parts of the gaming world, but the distributors are making all their money on the card games and don't have any particular interest in carrying the historical boardgames.

On the other hand, I saw a world war two historical card game that a friend bought at ORIGINS. I won't reveal the name of the game, because, for all I know, it plays like a dream and increases your IQ as you play. I did notice was that the first 20 cards I looked at had about a 50% error rate: photographs of the wrong equipment? or inaccurate information about the equipment portrayed. Now, I understand that it costs upwards of $200.000+ to produce and distribute one of these card games. It's beyond comprehension how people can invest that amount of money, and not do $ 100 worth of research to make sure they get the basics right like not labeling a picture of an American P-40 fighter as a Russian IL-2 ground attack aircraft!

HISTORICON is the miniature wargamer's Mecca, of course, and this year it was worse than ever. By that I mean usually there are two things going on at all times that I want to see at HISTORICON, but this year there seemed to be at least four simultaneous interesting events at all times, and no way I could even get a glimpse of all of them. It is a thoroughly frustrating convention in that respect.

Out of 235+ events at HISTORICON this year, almost 50 were world war two games, and like ENFILADE about a fourth of those were air or naval games. Of the ground games, no less than 1 in 4 used 'home grown" rules rather than commercial sets, and several of the "commercial" rules used were modifications of boardgame rules.

This brings me back to the request I made in my first column, a couple of issues ago, for people to let me know what they were playing in world war two around the country. I've gotten a few responses from various parts of the US and Canada, and adding them to what I've seen at the conventions in these past few months, I've come to a few conclusions:

1. Like ancients or Napoleonics, there is a huge diversity of interest in the mid-Twentieth century wargaming. Not only do people play scenarios ranging from strategic air and naval games to man-to-man skirmish actions, but the same ground battles in the same time and space (Eastern Front 1941, for instance) are played with rules ranging from 1: 1 squad or platoon level to brigade actions.
2. Evervone has a slightly different view of what was going on the WWII battlefield. Some of this comes from original research, but a lot of It, like a lot of things in this hobby, comes from people reading bits of the mass of -popular' histories and memoirs from the period and thinking that gives them a "true" picture of what went on.
3. There are a lot of gamers, both at the conventions and, according to those that wrote to me, in the game rooms around the country, who are interested in small unit actions in WWII: the individual squad, platoon, or company-level stuff. Paradoxically, the best selling commercial miniatures rules all seem to be for the "higher scale of platoon - regiment (Command Decision, Spearhead!. The number of boardgames being converted to play the games at the smaller scale indicates that there is a big hole here for some rules writer to fill in the hobby. Trouble is, there is no apparent consensus out there on What It Was Like at the "sharp end" and, therefore, what the rules to fill that hole should be like...

Reading List

One way to start filling the hole is to introduce more people to some better references. Homework, if you will, but homework that you should enjoy (also, It's a break from painting that may inspire you to new flights of lead-buying!). There are literally countless publications on world war two, both official and unolficial. What I want to give you are some readily-available books, in English even, that should enliven your picture of what went on at the tactical level of the battlefield. - Both what was supposed to happen and what actually happened. I'll start with everybody's favorite opponent, the German military:

Handbook on German Military Forces (US War Department, intro by Stephen Ambrose) published by Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1990. This is a reprint of the US Army classified study produced in March 1945. It includes complete chapters on tactics, movement, defenses, and non-lethal equipment (like signal and engineering). The tactics described are right out of the German Army manuals, so this volume gives you a complete run-down on how the Wehrmacht expected to fight the battle from the squad level upwards. There are also color plates of uniforms and insignia which include the SS and Luftwaffe troops. Again, these are the "textbook" materials, which could undergo considerable modification in the field.

German Squad Tactics in World War T\vo by Matthew Gajkowski, published by George Nafziger, 1995. This was written for the reenactment community, and It includes the actual "by the book" tactics for the infantry squad and platoon, the panzergrenadier company, and even the equipment carried by each man in the infantry unit. To get more 'low level" than this you'd have to cover appendix scars and denial records.

Panzer Truppen by Thomas Jentz, published by Schiffer Military History, 1996, PA. Don't let the title fool you, this is in English, and subtitled Volume 1. It covers all the tank units in the German forces from 1933 to the end of 1942. Aside from more detail than you ever needed on how many tanks were where and running at what time, the gold mine. In this book is collections of actual after-action and combat reports from the panzer leaders. This is low level stuff, from regiment, battalion, company commanders and below. You want to know how a Panzer II could knock out a French Somua tank? There's a report of how one panzer commander did it. Want to know how effective the Russian tanks really were against thc PzKpfw III in 1941 - 1942? There are reports and suggestions from after-action studies on how to figlat them, with weak and strong points enumerated. In addition, this book includes excerpts {rom thc 1939 tactical directions for the panzer platoon, company, and battalion, including formations used for maneuver and attack. This book is $50 or so, but well worth it - I can't wait for Volume II, which will covcr the last years of the war!

Frontsoldaten by Stephen G. Fritz, published by University Press of Kentucky, 1995. I assume that just about everyone has seen The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer and Paul Carell's books Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth. These give a very "German" view of the front lines in the eastern front and Carell, at least, was writing at a time when the political climate called for a "rehabilitation" of the German military to take its place in NATO. Fritz, from a later vantage and from an "outside" (non-German) viewpoint, uses a host of front line accounts to get a wider view of conditions for the troops at the lowest levels throughout the war. Compared to the official picture of tactics in the handbook above, this is the picture of the real conditions in the trenches and foxholes.

Finally, after the war the US Army collected a bunch of German officers under Franz Halder, former Chief of the German General Staff, and produced from them a collection of hundreds of monographs on specific operations, conditions, and appreciations, mostly of operations on the eastern front. A number of these were published as Department of the Army pamphlets back in the early 1950s, and have since been reprinted in numerous formats, including as "Historical Studies" by the US Government Printing Office in the 1980s. These are not from the "low level" viewpoint: the most junior officer involved in the program was, I think, a regimental or divisional staff officer or commander. But, they do have a lot of data on small scale, battalion - company actions and "non-standard" modifications to the official tactics that were regularly employed in the East. Among the most useful titles are:

Military Improvisations During the Russian Campaign (DA Pam 20-201 dtd Aug 51 OR CMH Pub] 04- 1 dtd 1983, 1986)

Effects of Climate on Combat in European Russia (DA Pam 20-291 dtd Feb 52 OR CMH Pub 104-6 dtd 1983,1966)

Night Combat (DA Parn 20-236 dtd Jun 53 OR CMH Pub 104-3 dtd 1982,1986)

Combat in Russian Forests and Swamps (DA Pam 20-231 did Jul 51 OR CMH Pub 104-2 dtd 1982, 1986)

Terrain Factors in the Russian Campaign (DA Pam 10-290 dtd Jul 51 OR CMH Pub 104-5 dtd 1982, 1986)

Finding and reading all of that should keep you busy until next issue. There will be a short quiz at that time, followed by a discussion of boardgames that can be mangled to provide strategic background tor miniatures or turned into miniatures rules ...

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