Rumor has it that over 1400 people PLUS dealers and their staffs (are dealers people?) attended HISTORICON during the last week in July. Touring the gaming and the dealer's areas at the Penn- Harris Inn in Harrisburg, Pennsulvania, it somewhat reminded me of the old days at the Ramada, where we were all crammed in shoulder to shoulder, belly to belly, table to table. It definitely looks as if HISTORICON has outgrown the P-H Inn and larger quarters are needed. Some relief may be found next year as the P-H Inn is planning to renovate and air-condition an adjacent building... Bob Coggins, Mr. Program Manager, indicates the WRG games may be moved out to this site, thus freeing a large area for... ? In the past, what has happened is that as more area has been made available, Dick Sossi simply crams more dealers into the space, and the gamers don't get that much of a benefit. This time, games were spread out, not only in the convention center proper, but in various rooms throughout the main hotel building. In truth, the whole affair seems to be a wee bit helter-skelter now... perhaps it's getting out of hand. Bob Coggins is doing a super-job in making do with what's available, but there's a limit as to how much your assets can be stretched. And contributing to the confusion was the flea market set-up in the sweaty main lobby of the hotel and in the area "in back of the bar", again relegating the flea market to the lost limbo of nevernever-land. Remember, however, that I'm a wee bit prejudiced here... if it was up to me, I'd toss the dealers out and give the flea marketeers first priority. The P-H's air-conditioning seemed to be on the blink, and the main convention center, although not unbearable, was just this side of uncomfortable. But all this aside, I had a very good, a very well relaxed and quite enjoyable weekend. Friday I checked in on Friday morning, July 27 (HISTORICON started on Thursday) and all during the convention, strangers kept coming up to me, consoling me and saying something about either it was too bad I had quit the HMGS Board of Directors, or it was better for the hobby, or... I wasn't sure what... but I wondered why I was the focus of attention. Later on, I found out that on the first page of the convention program booklet, in the introductory section, HMGS President Dick Sossi had written my epitaph, a note to the effect: Simon's gone, Simon's no longer with us, we'll always remember him, he was a great guy, etc., etc. Mostly in the past tense. After reading it, I had to pinch myself to ensure I was really there. Luckily, I was. Looking at the various scenarios presented, it seemed there was no end to the clever collective efforts of several groups. The emphasis was on terrain, and some of the effects were beyond belief. Sponsored by Jenkintown Hobbies in Philadelphia, one club set up a 6 x 12 foot (approx) table, complete with 4-foot high terraced mountains, a railroad track, and what appeared to be four separate battles. According to Jay Hadley, who coordinated the effort, the "game" accommodated 20? 30? participants by means of 7 umpires - all wired in via walky- talkies - and three fellas whose sole job it was to go around the table picking up the casualties. Another "monster-game" with more than 20 people participating was a huge skirmish affair in 25mm. This was a "town battle" -- the table was loaded with all sorts of buildings and the little fellas were fighting house-to-house. There were, perhaps, 100 figures per side. Each figure had a fairly extensive data sheet, and it looked like the data- taking was getting out of hand. The host had anticipated being helped by around five of his buddies, but apparently, only two had shown up. There were an extraordinary number of microarmor games... armor has made its comeback and its popularity, for the present, has surpassed Napoleonics. Rich Hasenauer, a PW member, presented his well-laid-out Gettysburg scenario, proudly showing of his newly published, slick-paged, many-photographs, multi-colored, glitzy American Civil War rules book, FIRE AND FURY. This is Quantum Press' second effort; the first was last years ancients rules set, TACTICA, an instant sellout. Rich should easily follow in TACTICA's footsteps; FIRE AND FURY sells for $22.50, and Quantum Press had quickly distributed its first run of 5,000 booklets... I saw copies for sale at many of the dealers' booths. Yes, it was good to be back in conventionland, and walking along amongst the tablas, one could hear samples of typical "wargaming talk": "How many elephants come in a packet?" or "Your normal visibility is 30 inches." or "If you hit him, he'll run on a 4, 5 or 6." I wandered through the hall looking for something "interesting", and found an American Revolution battle in 25mm, neatly laid out and ready to go. I asked if I could participate, was told yes, sat down, and discovered I had invited myself in on a game using John Grossman's THE COMPLETE BRIGADIER (TCB). John first published TCB in 1982 and it has obviously withstood the test of time. The setup was a recreation of the battle of Eutaw Springs, 1781, wherein, with an American: British force ratio of 2400:2000, the Americans caused the Brits to retire after a bloody encounter (about 30% casualties for the Brits, 25% for the Americans). One of three British commanders, I was placed in charge of the forces on the right flank. Our first tactic was merely to hold and wait, letting the Americans (many of whom were green troops, with whom TCB does not deal kindly) come to us. And sure enough, on they came, and we fired, and almost every unit we fired at - after one or two volleys - took off and fell back. TCB is an unusual game... in its original form it was "diceless". If, for example, unit A fired on B, one looked up a number of factors pertainig to the situation (range, type of firing unit, is target in cover?, etc.) and added or subtracted or multiplied the numbers as directed, and out plopped the number of casualties and the target unit's reaction. TCB is, therefore, considered "deterministic"... there are no random variations involved when repeating a given situation. The host of our TCB battle, however, had injected several minor random effects into the system... movement, for example, depended upon the throw of several dice; two for infantry, three for cavalry, etc. After several turns of simply standing there and knocking off Americans, I suggested to my British compatriots that, to make a fair battle of it, it was time to advance and drive the Rebels off the field. Agreed, said they. And so the right flank forces of General Simon... well known to both General Howe and King George as the Lion of the British Army... advanced at the double up the field, attempting to make contact. Give lem some cold steel, thought I. There"s no doubt about it... I'm tough when it comes to commanding these little guys. Due to some poor movement dice rolls, my "at the double" advance failed to make contact on this first effort, and so on the next turn, I tried it again; this time, I was successful. Nothing comes easy, I discovered... under the TCB rules, units that advance twice in succession "at the double" become disordered. And disordered troops in hand-to-hand combat suffer accordingly. My disordered British regulars, having closed on the Americans, were promptly zapped and found their morale ratings rapidly slipping from CONFIDENT! to FIRM! to SHAKEN! to BROKEN! to ROUTING! ... the Lion's entire right flank force simply took off and ran past him and off the field! Well, thought the Lion, standing alone on the field, surrounded by the enemy, apparently Wellington was right... these guys are the scum of the earth! Ah, well, another day, another battle. And, of course, there WAS another battle. At another table, I joined in on Dave Waxtel's scenario: The Charge of the Light Brigade. This time I was a Colonel on the Russian staff, the Lion of Sevastopol, in command of some Russian cavalry and the Russian guns about to be charged by those awesome British horsemen. Dave had a beautifully painted 25mm army, with some 300 Russian infantry figures, none of whom did anything... Dave could just as well have left 'em all in their boxes. Leo Cronin, a Russian Corps General, was in command of most of the the Russian cavalry and several flanking gun positions. As the Light Brigade charged down the field at my guns, General Leo gave 'em hell... for each gun, severaldice were tossed; a throw of 9 or 10 on a 10-sided die knocked off a British trooper. Not enough troopers, however. In keeping with its historical motif, the scenario called for the Brits to charge the guns... when they made contact, the batteries would, by definition, be out of commission... and then run like crazy back down the field, pursued by the Russian cavalry, back to the British lines. The British victory condition called for at least 18 troopers, out of the original 72 charging, to make it back. Our entire Russian force was "activated" when the Light Brigade struck our guns... before that, we all stood there, rather dumbstruck, and the only way to get a Russian unit moving was to get a Russian General over to it to personally tell the commander to get going. And so, the game began. On came the Light Brigade, taking losses all the way, but they easily made it up to the Russian gun emplacements. And then they took off. As soon as our cavalry was "energized" by the loss of the guns, we, in turn, took off after the retreating Brits. All cavalry got up to speed in a gradual manner... the first turn, they trotted the distance thrown on two 6-sided dice; the second, they cantored for three dice, and for the third, they galloped along at a four-dice pace. We caught up to several British units, and hacked and slashed the best we could. Unfortunately, we discovered that in melee, the Brits hacked and slashed first. They got first cut, so to speak, and then we replied with our survivors. Each side tossed a die for every man in the combat, and throws of 9 or 10 would eliminate an opponent. Alas, despite the valiant efforts of the Russians and Colonel Simonski, the Lion of Sevastopol, around 22 Brits got safely back, and the British commanders were awarded the honors of the day. What Dave Waxtel had presented was, in effect, a "chase" scenario... very simple, very fast, very entertaining. Dave's "patience threshhold" is on a par with my own, and more than once he hurried the game along... "Let's go! Move! Move! Throw the dice! Throw the dice!" Most of the time , this was directed at the third Russian commander, a master of indecisiveness, a fella who, if he had to toss the dice six times, would simply wait and wait and wait until he had collected six dice... he refused to toss three dice twice, or two dice three times... to him, a six was a six was a six. This did not merit him high marks in the Waxtel scheme of things. Terry Sirk and Fred Haub presented a WWI eastern front epic for 15mm figures, a scenario using their rules THE GREAT WAR (TGW) . The eastern front WWI battles are usually fairly static affairs, with the Russians and the Germans slowing down and taking pot shots at each other, rather than moving forward under a defensive hail of fire. This time, however, Terry Sirk called me over... "Look! A first! A wargaming breakthrough!", he said. It seems the Germans... their right flank, at least... had decided to surge forward, and had actually overrun the Russian defenses. It appeared as if they were in the process of wheeling to the left and rolling up the rest of the Russian line. Obviously, these were exciting times, and I had just settled down to watch the action when Fred Haub loomed over the table and began collecting the figures and packing them away. To Fred, the German breakthrough signified a German victory... 'why play it out?' was his thought. THE GREAT WAR has a number of interesting gaming procedures which have been discussed in past issues of the REVIEW during the era of its playtesting... an incremental movement system governed by a deck of action cards, a command system in which control of a force's units gradually breaks down with mounting casualties, etc., I feel not at all put out to put in a plug for THE GREAT WAR. Fred and Terry financed and published the rules themselves... the price is $12, the booklet is well written (I helped to edit it), there are examples galore, and a fairly complete appendix of WWI orders of battle. I attended Scotty Bowden's and Jim Getz's "seminar" on EMPIRE V. More correctly, I slept through their lecture on EMPIRE V. Bowden's introductory remarks covered the mysterious EMPIRE IV; he was wonderfully vague about the whole affair, disassociating himself from that product completely. He stated that the finished product was not what he had submitted (to whom?), that numerous changes had been made (by whom?), and he continued on in this vein for some five minutes. My eyelids shut tight about this time, and I have no idea of the content of the rest of his program. No doubt it was immensely interesting and informative. In any case, I was well rested when the lecture was over. Bob Hurst and I presented our American Civil War game using 6mm figures. Bob Coggins had put us in one of the "private" rooms in the hotel proper instead of out in the main convention bullpen, for which we were extremely grateful. It was quiet, it was cool, it was wonderful. We collected three participants per side and had a good time. The gamers were intelligent (they liked the rules), they were smart (they liked the rules), they were wise beyond their years (they liked the rules), they were responsive (they liked the rules) ... what more could a gaming host ask for? Our scenario was a takeoff on the Wilson Creek battle, in which a Union flanking force failed to make much of an indent on the defending Confederates. We added one gimmick, however, which almost fouled up the game. Way over on the western edge of the field, we set the Confederate 1st Corps, a full one third of the Confederate army, bottled up on the wrong side of Pearson's Pass. The 1st Corps was, in effect, asleep, and each movement phase, dice were thrown to see if its units would wake up, f orm up, and set out toward the Pass. As I have mentioned in the past, trusting to the dice to get a unit moving is the epitomy of dumbness... and this game proved no exception. In all our playtest games, the dice refused to get the 1st Corps going, and so it was here. I take full credit for setting up this silly condition... I refuse to profit by experience. And I must admit the Confederate 1st Corps Commander displayed the patience of Job; turn after turn, movement phase after movement phase, he'd toss his dice, discover that his Corps remained comatose, and instead of glaring at the umpire, held settle back in his chair and relax. A good man, that. Bless him. In searching for a title for our 6mm rules, I wanted something out of the ordinary, and we passed up the usual trite run of phrases like DA BLOO AND DA GRAY, or BRUDDER AGAINST BRUDDER, and others of their ilk. Instead, we settled on: THE BLUE-GRAY CAULDRON (TBGC). How's that for a title with pizzazz? We're awaiting an offer, any day now, from McGraw-Hill. TBGC is a large scale game; it uses brigade stands... big, clumpy things measuring 4 inches long. The brigades within a division must stick together, i.e., be touching, to benefit from the morale increase available when divisional integrity is maintained. The last issue (July, 190) of the REVIEW expounded on TBGC; there's no need to comment further here, other than to say that Bob and I want to thank an extremely cooperative group of gamers for sitting in. Especially the 1st Corps Commander. Saturday On Saturday morning, Bob Hurst and I presented our game for the kiddies. Here, too, we were placed in one of the rooms in the main hotel. As I've noted before, there are lots of Big Daddies attending HISTORICON who run off to their own gaming adventures and leave their kids, from about ages 9 to 13, wandering around the halls. Bob Coggins solicited assistance from a group of us, asking each to help keep the kids occupied by presenting a simple game. There were at least two such games put on each day, and each drew around 10 participants. On Friday, I went into the kiddies' gaming area and asked everyone present if they'd be interested in signing up for a science-fiction game to be played Saturday. "What kind of science-fiction?" This came from a number of pip-squeaky voices. "Whaddaya mean, what kind? How the 1$%&*! do I know? Just sign the paper. The game is at 9:30 in the morning." Seven kids registered and I figured I had cleverly cut down the number of attendees by putting the game on so early in the morning. No such luck. Bright and early on Saturday, Bob and I were there, together with the magnificent seven. We had barely started, when in walked a Daddy: "Can you handle one more?" Certainly we could handle one more. Another Daddy: "Can you handle one more?" ... and yet another Daddy, and another, and another ... they were coming in waves. We wound up with about 15 little ones ... far too many to handle... don't kids sleep late these days? There was this cute, foot-and-a-half-tall, teeny-weeny girl sitting at my right side in command of a Xanadugian Assault Squad, when suddenly Bob approached her: "GR-R-R-R! YOU DON'T WANNA PLAY, DO YOU? DIDN'T YOU SAY YOU'D GIVE UP YOUR SEAT? GR-R-R-R!" Unsurprisingly, this cute, foot-and-a-half -tall, teeny-weeny girl, weighing in at 34 pounds, faced with over 200 pounds of Big Bob, quickly agreed to give up her seat. As of this writing, I still don't know why Bob played the Billy Goat Gruff role. Perhaps it's better that I don't find out. Whatever, the game went on. In addition to the squealing of our own group of kiddies, adding to the background noise and confusion were several other kids sprawled in front of the television set, listening to Bugs Bunny, and right beside our table, another of Coggins' volunteers decided to set up shop and run a simplified ship-type game. Our Patience Threshhold quickly dipped, on a scale of 1-to- 10, from around 9 to minus 6, yet despite it all, we managed to put on a Happy Face... well, perhaps a Sour-Smile-Face would better describe it. About halfway through, I looked at Bob and he at me... across the table, it suddenly seemed as if one of the kids was suffering gastro-intestinal problems, and that his large intestine was about to explode. But no... it turned out that this kid was an accomplished expert at making unpleasant, flatulent-like sounds, and we were thenceforth serenaded by a loud, flatulistic accompaniment, since the kid took his music practice rather seriously. The game continued, and a little before noon, Bob suggested that we wrap things up, and I proposed that we give a medal to the next kid that did anything rational. We had brought along a bunch of large medals... each with a long looped string to hang around the recipient's neck... to distribute; this, we thought, would be just as good as giving away figures to the participants. And so, when the next kid moved or fired - I forget which - we reached into the medal locker and presented him with the Supreme Galactic Cross of Valor. Immediately, the dam broke. "Where's my medal?" "Gimme a medal!" "I want one, too!" "Don't I get a medal?" We were swamped. It was useless explaining that one had to earn a medal... a futile gesture, somewhat akin to cautioning a Viking Berserker, spittle running down his chin, not to bite down on his shield because it might injure his teeth. All good things come to an end... we ran out of medals, we ran out of kids, we packed up, we staggered out of the room. A sense of a job well done. I have no idea of how Coggins' other volunteers feel, but I don't think I'll be ready to run another kiddy game until my next reincarnation. one per lifetime is sufficient. I should mention that I missed the HMGS meeting. This had been broadcast as being held between the hours of 8:00 and 9:30 A.M. on Friday morning. I arrived at 9:10 and was informed that it was all over; the meeting had been adjourned early. This sounded fishy to me. In my days as HMGS President, never did we have a meeting at which we could call it quits beforehand. We had tried holding the meetings at 1:00 A.M., at 7:30 A.M, at noon... nothing worked... there always seemed to be a crowd on hand willing to bring up 6,895 different subjects, each of which had to be talked to death, each of which took at least a half-hour to discuss. I just couldn't believe that the present administration, with all its important agenda items... such as spreading the HMGS gospel to Canada and France and far beyond the galaxy... was that efficient. "What about my proposal?" I asked the current HMGS President, Dick Sossi. This referred to a paper submitted to the Board of Directors a couple of months before, a proposition jointly made by Joe Miceli and me concerning the kiddy games, in effect stating that... if you give us a fistfull of money, we'll go out and get a lot of 25mm figures for skirmish gaming, get them based and nicely painted, and every HMGS convention, we'll ensure that they're used in presenting a series of games for the kids, and give a couple of them out at each game as prizes. Here the thought was that the figures would belong to HMGS, would be in the Society's inventory, would be ready to go at each convention, and would be a nice looking show-piece for display if needed. Not to mention the fact, of course, that with around $25,000 in the HMGS treasury before HISTORICON - probably up to $28,000 after the convention - what we wanted was a drop in the bucket. And so:"What about my proposal?" The answer: "We didn't discuss it because you weren't there to defend it." I noted the choice of words... I had to DEFEND the proposal. I must admit I wasn't sure just why it had to be DEFENDED... was someone assaulting it? In my innocence, I had thought the proposed program virtually spoke for itself, that it was such a good idea, that the Board would discuss the concept for a few moments, and then vote at least a couple of hundred bucks for the project. And in truth, even if I had made the meeting, I really wasn't going to defend anything... I would have merely held my hand out for a check, any check, ready to run out to the dealers' area and start buying the figures. Silly me. I am a Simple Simon, indeed. The proposal is still on the table, ready to be discussed (defended?) at next March's meeting at COLD WARS. I can hardly wait. If all goes according to HMGS precepts, then, after a brief discussion, a committee will be formed to look into the matter, the committee to report back at the '91 HISTORICON. At that time, a second committee will be formed to review the findings of the first committee. And all this time the Board will be sitting on around $30,000 in the kitty, looking for "things to do". Some things never change. But enough of my grousing. HISTORICON '90 was, in short, the biggest HMGS success to date. My compliments to Bob Coggins, Dick Sossi, and their crew for the efforts they made in setting it up. Back to PW Review August 1990 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com