I once considered fantasy role-playing to be the intellectual kudzu that ate the adult gaming hobby, and I used to resent the way the "magic crowd" had over-run such wargaming events as ORIGINS.

Stephen Clark (left) and Clair Conzelman with Semper Fi!
(left to right) James Cordell, Henry Robinette, and Andy Hughes

But now I am grateful that these guys pay the freight and allow us wargamers to tag along. Tenncon, which happened from October 27th to the 29th at the Knoxville Convention Center next door to the Holiday Inn, was a rather sedate affair as fantasy cons go. Aside from the brief costume contest on Saturday night, no oddly dressed persons or skimpily clad vixens wandered about the large hall. I saw no faux vampires with surgically implanted fangs or lost extras from a Christmas pageant wearing home-made robes. If it had not been for the life-size cardboard cutouts of sword wielding barbarians standing at each table in the hall, you might have mistaken the event for something else--a flea market, perhaps.

For registering early I received a T-shirt decorated with, what else, another barbarian warrior. To this was added a program bulletin sporting a garish orange cover with a hideously grotesque skeleton looking like a cross between a human and a chupacabras, and an orange die with an outline of the Volunteer State where the one should be. Inside my program was an envelope containing a small slip of paper with the location of my wargaming events.

I had registered for the OCS Tunisia Kasserine Pass scenario which was supposed to start at 7:00 pm. When the gamemaster for the event, Roger Hyman failed to show, I drifted over to Clair Conzelman's table where he had a three-dimensional map of Leros on display. I had been tempted to participate in one of the TCS events for the weekend as my friends have begun playing this series and I could use some training on the orders part of the game. Anyway, Clair was explaining how to play the Fox Hill scenario from Sernper Fi! to Stephen Clark, a wargamer from Knoxville. Clair asked if I wanted to play, so I said yes. I liked the way Clair had made the map three dimensional because the line of sight is much easier to determine. (I wish The Gamers could make the maps out of plastic like the three-dimensional contour maps you can buy from the government.) Stephen had never played TCS before so he ended up losing with the Chinese against my shot-up Marines.

By the time we finished around 10:00 pm, I was ready to call it an evening as the hall was due to close in about two hours' time. Then Dean Essig and Roger Hyman made a grand entrance. Dean had flown in from Illinois, but he had been forced to land at an airport in southern Kentucky about an hour and a half from Knoxville. Visibility was poor and deteriorating so Dean had decided to land. "I like to keep my take-offs and landings equal," he said. (I had gone to the Smokies that afternoon; well, the map said I was near the Smokies, but I sure couldn't see the mountains!) Roger had gone to pick up Dean. We then proceeded to set up Sicily for the next day's event.

We got off to a slow start the next morning waiting for the two gamers who Roger said were driving up from Chattanooga. After half an hour or so we started without them. Roger let me choose the side and I took the Allies because I wanted to learn how the new naval rules worked. Also, Roger had played several times before and it's probably better for the more experienced player to take the Axis side. Anyway, Roger made it easy for me the first turn as we were playing the historical campaign and he had prepared the entire first turn's move ahead of time-nine pages worth. Roger said he had thought about the first turn set up long and hard before realizing that the historical command staffs composed of military professionals had come up with the optimal plan and all he needed to do was express it in game terms. It was quite detailed and I had little discretion other than where to move my destroyers and what to barrage with them. After the bombing raids failed on some of the German reserves, I had to use the only two reserve air units to interdict the road into Licata.

The first turn landings, including the assaults, went well, and my losses were light both in units and landing craft. The air drops, however, were a mixed bag. The British landed well, and one 5AR company landed in hex 43.32. Altogether the British lost an artillery unit and a HQ. The 82nd's drop was an unmitigated disaster! All of its dropped units died. The LST three hexes east of Licata also died, but Roger, inhis gamemaster role, let it live to create a port. In the German reaction phase, the interdicted road proved just sufficiently costly to prevent the reservists from entering the city. Otherwise, the assault would have failed. As it was, I won the assault and put a healthy sized stack of units into the port. Elsewhere, Hermann Goering's parachute panzers moved up to threaten the U.S. beachhead that was strung out along the coast from Licata to east of Gela. They chose not to try to overrun the two small armored units in 46.11 and 46.12, one in each hex. The river here definitely channeled his approach and saved the other American LST port. The Americans had no paratroopers to screen the beaches.

Dean Essig (left) and Roger Hyman enjoying Sicily.
Costume contest winners: The editor thinks the guy wearing the Yuppie costume, thirdfrom left, looks pretty convincing.

Other German reserves moved up to support Syracuse. Roger used the historical unit surrenders; we did not roll for Italian surrender on the first turn. The two fort guns in Syracuse and all of the Italian coastal units in the U.S. and Commonwealth sectors left the game.

In the German half of the turn an attack on the British paratrooper in 43.32 was repulsed with two step losses for the Germans! Goering's panzertruppen smashed the two armored units, but took some casualties doing it as attacking with move mode units against combat mode units can be very dicey. The Americans in Licata were DG'd and took a step loss. In my reserve turn, I split off a stack of destroyers and sent four or five of them steaming towards the American beaches. (The naval forces had been evenly allocated between the U.S. and the Commonwealth.)

Just the night before Clair Conzelman and I had had a discussion on the effect of the double turn on the play of OCS. Clair said the fifty per cent die roll made luck too important in the game. And I agreed with him as many of our games would have played out quite differently if double turns had not occurred when they did. At the end of the first turn, the Hermann Goering units threatening the U.S. beachhead were vulnerable to a counter-attack. Obviously, if I had won the die roll for the turn, the game would have played quite differently than it did. As it was, the Germans had a double turn to wreak havoc on the hapless Americans.

At this point the two gamers from Ooltewah, not-Chattanooga-but-it's-close, arrived. James Cordell joined Roger's side and took over the defense of eastern Sicily. Andy Hughes agreed to take over the U.S forces, and I let him run all of the planes except those based in Malta. Neither had much experience with Sicily as they had just finished a few years of mostly playing World In Flames.

Meanwhile, someone had set up all the maps for the Seven Days' Battles on two tables. (Since I overdosed on Terrible Swift Sword some years ago, I've had little interest in Civil War titles, so I didn't pay too much attention to this.) However, the person had set up the map and then wandered off. Several times during the day people would stop by our table and ask about the game, but they never managed to link up with each other until quite late in the afternoon when I saw a couple of guys playing a small scenario on a mere corner of the map. Clair's attempt to bring knowledge of TCS to the masses flopped as nobody signed up to play Leros. It was a shame because I had played Leros and was looking forward to seeing how others played it. Instead, Clair joined Dean Essig and several other gentlemen in playing Circus Minimus. In fact, Dean managed to keep at least one game of Circus Minimus going almost the entire day.

After some twelve hours of play, the four of us managed to play five and a half turns of Sicily. (I didn't really take notes so I'm not going to give a turn by turn synopsis of play.) Andy played a good game. He survived the turn two blitz but lost Licata. By the end of play he had done an end-around landing and had pocketed the entire German force opposing him! The Germans on his front were on life support, relying on air drops for subsistence. On my front three overruns against the defenders of 42.31 did nothing but lose me two tank brigades and a couple of good AR paratroopers. So I had to take Syracuse the hard way and actually took Augusta before clearing Syracuse. By end of play the Germans were defending the river line south of Catania and my naval units were pounding them. Had this gone longer I would have paused a turn or two to accumulate supplies but I rushed an assault against this position--or I would have if we had not run out of time. The Canadians were poised to make an end run on the open right flank of the German defenders where a couple of positions were vulnerable to being completely surrounded.

All in all I enjoyed my weekend at Termcon. I met some very nice wargamers, and that's always the best part of these events meeting other gamers.