By the invitation of Udo Grebe and his generous help as host, I was able to attend Euro-Homercon in Braunfels, Germany at the end of May. Euro-Homercon is currently teamed up with the German wargame club (GHS) and is co-located with their convention (Hexacon). This working relationship put together a really nice group of guys (as big or bigger than the "real" Homercon). My thanks to Detlev Brochet and Uli Blennemann for their cooperation with Udo to make this a wonderful event.

After the usual red-eye flight from Chicago, I arrived in Frankfurt bright and early in the morning. Finding that my luggage had made it as well, I passed through customs (run by a very bored teenage border guard with a nose ring--more movie-based myths destroyed) and found Udo waiting for me.

We then "hit the autobahn." Visions of speeding along without a speed limit were immediately shattered: Udo drives a Peugout with, I think, 25 HP (with all three regular cylinders firing and the fourth one kicking in every once-in-a-while) and the traffic locked up regularly to a crawl. Yes, in most places there wasn't a posted speed limit . . . but then again we weren't going anywhere any faster than you would in any major US city. The net result seems to be that the German driver feels that more potential speed is being stolen from him--with a resultant increase in stress.

We arrived in Braunfels successfully after a blazing 40 mph average speed. It only took a moment to pry my white-knuckled fingers loose from under my heavily sweated-on seat.

Braunfels itself is wonderful village. Very nice architecture from the 1600s. The weather was perfect the entire time I was there. We tried several of the local restaurants: all very nice with my favorite being "the Tower." Good food, good beer, good friends--it just doesn't get any better!

We (Udo, Ernesto, I, and two of Udo's friends) stayed in a small apartment a few kilometers away in Neukirch. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there awake, and the only real memory I have of this little village is the death-defying rides there in the Peugeot and the fact that although we went back and forth each day for several days, our success rate in actually entering town and going directly to the apartment was almost nil. Usually, we ended up in the far corner of town from where we entered and had to backtrack most of the way across town to get to where we wanted to go. Except for Dirk (also our champion Chariot driver), no one could crack the code of the streets in this tiny town (smaller than Homer). Just for the record, never entrust Ernesto with giving driving directions!

Convention

The con opened the next day. The hall itself was the local convention center and consisted of a large open room with an adjacent bar and sandwich stand. In the balcony above the main hall, the various seminars and such were held. The whole thing was a short walk up to the center of town (where the restaurants and ice-cream parlor were). As a place to hold a game convention, this set up would be very hard to beat.

First on my plate was a chance to play in a many-player game of UGG's new release Blitzkrieg General. Normally, I don't care for strategic-level games at all, but Udo's great job of being a good host convinced me that the polite thing to do would be to smile, suck it up, and give the game a try anyway. I'm really glad I did.

Blitzkrieg General is a much simplified version of UGG's Armies of the Apocalypse series of games covering all of WW2 at the strategic level (three modules have been published so far--covering each of the three European theaters). BG attempts to hit a level something more than Risk, but far simpler than its bigger brothers. It does this job superbly. It is an area movement game (usually another strike against it in my book, but it works just fine here) and comes in two flavors (basic and advanced).

The basic game is very, very basic, but the first game I played used only those rules and there was enough there for me to enjoy it. The advanced game adds more detail, and I was able to play with those rules in the second game I participated in. This might not seem like much, but the first game consisted of only one or two turns (the Germans turned their entire army on Poland and the French, looking at the vacuum in central Germany, advanced and captured the undefended Reich! The Germans surrendered.) In the second game, the German player did not make this mistake. I was the European Russians in the first game and other than sending troops to my Asian Russian counterpart, I did little or nothing in this game.

Japanese

I played the Japanese in the second game and ate it up. I busily built up my ground forces looking toward complete victory over the Chinese. I ignored naval construction on purpose (until a later card was played on me that forced me to build it all, every ship, as a national objective--that one hurt!). My armies advanced into China and slowly began mopping up the Chinese. Life was good. Then the Russian player, bored with watching the Germans work over the French and at peace in Europe, decided to kick my butt. I cried foul to no avail and the Red Army smoked the Sons of Nippon in northern China. My army backed into a corner just south of Korea and had to pull a massive Dunkerque operation to escape back to the home islands. The Emperor was not pleased and many heads rolled. I retained my command and promised to redeem honor.

First on the list was to rebuild the shattered Imperial Japanese military machine. It was 1940 still and the US was at peace. I had two goals in mind: getting back into China and knocking out the US while it was unprepared. The Russians who saved China pulled out and headed toward Europe (something about a potential German border incursion or other such trivia). Given the pressures of time, I chose the US option as number one. China could wait. I assembled the largest fleet and army combination the countermix would allow in a position to threaten Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast. I waited for the weather to allow a landing. Against this massive invasion force, there was a small garrison in Hawaii (I hoped the US player would reinforce here as the threat against the islands was a feint) along with the US Fleet. Alaska was unmanned and the West Coast looked like easy pickings. I couldn't wait. The weather refused to clear and I had to beg the other players to hold the game until I got back from a seminar so I could land and conquer the US.

At this point, I attended an historical seminar on the Battle of Chickamauga by "General" Molder, CSA. This was done in English for my benefit (my German is only enough to get me into a fistfight at a pub). He followed the battle using wooden blocks and the Barren Victory map. It went very well and included much detail. Anybody at the seminar who didn't know how the battle went had a good grounding by the time it was over. The English was wonderful (better'n mine!) and the group good sports. While it didn't have the professional actors and mechanics of the Gettysburg Park moving map, the material was as good or better. Since I was pretty familiar with the battle and dying to invade California, my mind drifted somewhat.

Rushing back to the game after thanking the speaker, I found that the others had, indeed, waited for me to come back before continuing the game. I left with my forces poised to threaten Hawaii, Alaska and California. Meanwhile in Europe, the Germans had dispatched Poland and France on schedule and turned their attention to the Russians. The surprise in Europe was the Italians (led by Elais Nordling). He decided to go after Egypt and took it from the Brits. The Spaniards joined the Axis and took out Gibraltar. Finding himself with the Mediterranean as a Roman Lake, Elias turned his Italians to the complete conquest of Africa and (eventually) took over the entire continent (to include South Africa). As the rest of use reeled in shock, Elias calmly turned his attention toward advancing toward India. He also dispatched a large force to help his second-rate Axis partner (the Germans) in Russia.

On the Allied side, after being kicked out of the Med and Africa, the Commonwealth began to build a force capable of invading France (a long process). The Russians withdrew in the face of the Germans and called on the Chinese (otherwise unoccupied at this point...my fault) to help them. Soon, they were locked into a strange battle for Stalingrad involving Chinese vs Italians with a smattering of Germans and Russians as seconds.

Back in my seat in Tokyo, the weather cleared and I was ready to roll on the invasion I had been looking forward to for most of the game. The US was wide open and I was salivating at the chance to redeem Nippon. I shot a small force up to take Alaska and the main fleet went to California. I thought I had it licked . . .

Then the Americans reacted. The fleet in Hawaii ran to the help defend both coasts. In Alaska, my token landing force couldn't land at all as the enemy had a greater fleet. My detachment was sunk. Off the US west coast, a massive naval battle began (which I had to win to get my landings underway against the still unprotected US mainland). At this point I found that my grand fleet couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. After several all-or-nothing rounds of combat (I figured I had to win the war here and now), my fleet was crippled. No landing took place and I pulled back with my tail between my legs. I had a blast but was certainly frustrated at the lack of results.

Coming back from the US fiasco, I landed in the all-but-unoccupied Australia and started working over Indo-China (in an effort to cooperate with my Italian allies in India). I also landed on mainland China just in time to find a large Russian force available to kick my ass again.

Russians

Where did the Russians come from? Well, it seems while I was busy sending quality Japanese steel to the bottom of the Pacific, a major "win the war now!" battle occurred over Moscow. When the dust settled, it seemed that there was almost nothing in the way of German troops between Moscow and Berlin. The Red Army advanced into this space and it rapidly became clear that the Germans couldn't rebuild fast enough to stop them (and the Italians were stretched to the limit defending their far-flung empire).

So, there I was, crippled from multiple fiascoes and facing yet another Dunkerque-style evacuation back to the home islands when the war ended. The winner was undoubtedly the Italians. The Russians did just fine as well, but didn't have the kind of territorial conquests the Italians did when the war ended. The CW/US was hanging on by a thread. They tried their invasion of France, but I wasn't able to follow what actually happened very well. It seemed as though the landing was a failure, and they spent the rest of the war trying to find a way back onto mainland Europe. They may have finally gotten a lodgment in Spain before it was all over, but I'm not sure. The US concentrated all of its effort on Europe and left my Japanese alone after I was crippled in the Battle for California.

Basically, Blitzkrieg General is a great game and a lot of fun. It is very simple, so don't come into it with excessive expectations. Everyone will have one beef or another about the compromises made, but I think Udo did a great job of selecting what to show and what to not show in his effort to make the game simple. Worth a look.

For the rest of the show, I helped various groups play Circus Minimus (see my separate article on that game), drank beer, ate well, and enjoyed being with a bunch of gamers. After the con shut down, Udo and I drove to his home in Bedburg where I got to see the UGG World Headquarters and a house built in 1943 with its very own bunker (seriously). Bedburg (not counting its late 1700's castle/mansion) is much more typical of post-war Germany--efficient and semi-modern, but lacking the near-Medieval charm of Braunfels.

The highlight of this period of the trip was eating a half-chicken while sitting on a downed tree in a small park-like space (we jumped a construction barrier to get there). On top of a small knoll right in front of us was a pasture loaded with sheep which took turns "bah'ing" at us. There I was, an American eating a half a roast chicken with a German after having lost WW2 as the Japanese. It just didn't get any better than this.

The sheep just didn't care.

Udo Grebe (checked shirt), Gen. Thomas Moder, Dean Essig (striped shirt) with other attendees.