1. This is a double issue (April/May) due to my inability to get the April issue out before I took three weeks off for a vacation in England. Last year, it took me around four months to catch up; I'm getting more efficient in my old age.
2. In London, I attended the SALUTE convention; my third SALUTE, and probably my last. I'm too old to be poked and prodded and pushed and shoved... this affair outgrew the convention site some years ago, and there seems to be no effort on the part of the organizers to seek another, larger, location.
Although difficult to tell, there had to be over 2,000 people there, all elbows and knees and butts and shoulders and pushing and shoving... it proved extremely difficult to even stand in one place, talking to your neighbor, without getting thrown off balance.
SALUTE is put on by the South London Warlords Wargames Club; in effect, it's a dealers' convention, rather than a gaming convention... no flea markets, only dealers. The admission fee is a reasonable £2.50 (around $3.25), and it's well worth it for the British wargamer, for just about every manufacturer in the U.K. shows up. Unlike our HMGS conventions, this is a oneday affair, and I pity the dealers who have to set up, fight the crowds, and then pack up, all within the time frame of some eight hours.
SALUTE is held in one half of a huge town hall building, and over the years, as I've lined up for a ticket to enter the hall, I've noticed that in back, behind the line, the other half of the town hall is closed and dark. It remains a mystery as to why the host club cannot lease the remainder of the town hall site, the darkened half. No one to whom I've put this question can answer it.
The convention hall has several levels, and there were over 20 demonstration or participation games put on by the various clubs in the U.K. A game needs at least a ping-pong table sized area, plus an additional 2-foot perimeter beyond that for the umpire, the observers and the players. The presence of all these games meant that in the middle of each level, huge holes were chopped out of the available space, making the crowding problem that much more critical.
I attended the convention with Don Lambert, and he and I were invited by Duncan MacFarlane to come along with him and help him judge the various games being presented. Duncan had a poop sheet, on which were listed such criteria as visual display of figures and terrain, the ease with which the hosts got their point across to the watching public, etc.
Don and I accompanied Duncan for about five games before we gave up the ghost and left poor Duncan to do his duty himself. As I previously mentioned, it was difficult, due to the constant buffeting by the passing throng, for one person to remain in one place... it was even more difficult, therefore, for three people to hang together.
Duncan would query the gaming host, shouting at him (due to the ambient noise level) to explain what he was doing, and the host would shout back, and neither Don nor I could understand what either man was shouting.
Additionally, Duncan is a very popular man as editor of the glossy magazine WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED (it would seem he knows everyone in the U.K.), and every three minutes, four people would pop up beside Duncan, wanting to discuss business with him.
And so, choosing discretion over valor, Don and I quit.
3. During my stay in England, I visited Ian Weekly's shop in Buxton. Ian's articles on building table-top terrain items appear frequently in the wargaming magazines. About two years ago, he started his own terrain-producing firm, marketing them under the Weekly brand name.
Prior to that, he had been crafting one-of-a-kind items for individuals... he built a good portion of the buildings for the huge "Tuileries game" put on by Todd Fisher at last HISTORICON, he built a huge replica of Warwick Castle, now on display at the castle itself, and so on.
Ian's forte is the detailed architectural accuracy with which he models his houses, forts, castles, emplacements, etc. Of late, however, he has had to bend a little because of his wargaming clientele, forsaking accuracy for "playability".
For example, if truly modeled, the parapet of a castle wall would be quite narrow, far too narrow to put a stand of figures on it. Feedback from Ian's customers indicated that the architectural niceties of a narrow parapet were far outweighed by the need to have a suitably-sized space on the wall on which to place unit stands.
The line of Weekly products, therefore, whether for 15mm or 25mm, contains an adequate amount of space for figures. My own thought along this line is that all castle walls should contain a parapet at least 2-inches in width, sufficient to put, not just a single rank of stands, but a cannon and crew on the wall... but that would be stretching things a wee bit for the nonce.
4. It appears that during my vacation, I was overexposed to DBA and DBM rules. My understanding is that such constant exposure eats away at the frontal lobe of the brain, rendering the victim incapable of thinking coherently, or doing anything more complex than counting the pips on a die.
Thus far, I've retained my sanity (I think), but I've seen others go under; they commence to babble about their stock of pips, and have been carried off, clutching their 6-sided dice to their breasts (only one breast per person).
Over the period of a week, Robin Peck and I played an assortment of the WRG spinoff rules, ranging from the Battle of Hastings to a British colonial game in which hordes of Zulus inundated a British column.
But I knew that too much was way-way too much when, at Duncan MacFarlane's house, we set up a Marlburian era game with Duncan's superb 25mm collection, four stands to a regiment, beautifully detailed infantry and cavalry and artillery.
And then Duncan explained the system: we each had 12 units, and we'd group the units together, and we'd toss a 6-sided die, and the number of pips would indicate the number of groups of units that would move... Omigawd!
Lord have mercy!.. . the Duke of Marlborough must be tossing in his grave... is there no end to the DBA/DBM pip invasion of our planet? Is some alien force behind this... dooming all of us to have lobotomies?
5. Of late, we've picked up several new subscribers, all of whom have sent in a check for $10 with their request to be added to the subscription list.
It's my impression that the name of the REVIEW is culled from Hal Thinglum's Midwest Wargaming Association Newsletter (MWAN), which, on occasion, mentions the REVIEW, gives my address, and states that the subscription price is $10.
Each time, I've had to tell the new subscriber the unhappy news that the subscription fee is $12, not $10. Thus far, all the new sign-ons have been very nice about the whole affair; none have berated me (in public), and I'd like to thank them for their cooperation.
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© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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