HISTORICON took place the 20, 21, 22, and 23 of July in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Attendees were well over 2,000, lots of games, lots of happy gamers, but, in truth, for me, it was a wee bit of a disappointment.
I wandered from table to table, looking for "something different" ... and didn't find too much. Incidentally, wandering from table to table was no rapid task; there was so much available space that it was fairly time consuming to visit all of the gaming rooms and halls.
The terrain, of course, gets better and better every year, but I'm not a "terrain person" ... my own ping-pong table displays rather primitive stuff. The figures are beautifully mounted... but not being a "beautifully mounted" person myself, I don't have a very vested interest in this aspect of the hobby.
To me, the name of the game is "rules" ... how you push the little men around the table top, and how they react.
The very first game at which I parked myself was called MIGHT OF ARMS (MOA), which the author admits is a WRG clone. There were two huge armies facing each other... Carthaginian and Roman... and the host explained that in the battle on which the scenario was based, the Romans had a superiority in cavalry.
MOA uses two types of markers, fatigue and actual casualties. So many fatigue markers equal a casualty marker. There's also a huge chart of figures versus factors, a la WRG.
The host took a few minutes to tell of the battle, and then the sides broke for a "strategy session". What "strategy session"? Both armies, in one continous array, faced each other across the width the table, and both had to advance directly forward. Strategy?
I waited about 20 minutes for the strategy session to end ... no use... I never even saw the first move being made ... the participants were still plotting when I left.
Next was a neatly laid out American Revolutionary battle, using some group's house rules. About 12 figures, each singly mounted, to a battalion. The terrain was composed of geo-hex pieces, with little clutter, and lots of room for maneuver. This was the battle of Monmouth, at which the American General Lee had second thoughts about encountering the British, and started to lead his men off the field. Then along came General Washington, waved his sword once or twice, and the Muricans held and gave the British what-for.
Here, I lasted about 3/4 of an hour. The participants were very slow in moving their troops. The only reason I stayed so long was that the rules - in every applicable procedure (firing, melee, movement, etc.) - used average dice, which piqued my curiousity.
I asked the author why he employed average dice (which run from 2 to 5, instead of 1 to 6). Would the toss of a 11611 completely foul up the game? I really didn't completely understand his answer, but average dice it was.
HMGS held its elections, and a new Board of Directors appeared to guard the $60,000 treasury. I should state that the $60,000 figure didn't contain the proceeds from HISTORICON itself.
The Board was expanded from four members to seven... an odd number is required to break ties. Each year, elections will be held for about half of the Board, so there will be a constantly rotating membership amongst the Directors.
One of the proposed programs discussed by the old Board, with which I vehemently disagreed, was to sink some $20,000? $30,000? into the making of a video tape which was to be unleashed on the outside world and bring in, we were told, countless new members of the hobby.
The old Board member pushing this effort was Todd Fisher, from Chicago... Todd didn't make it to the new Board, and perhaps the current Board will let the project die a peaceful death.
Of interest to me was that, as head HMGS vote-counter, I determined that out of the 1,200 or so membership, only 194 people voted, a 16% turnout. This included the mail-ins and those who placed their votes in the ballot box at the registration desks.
HMGS rented additional space at the convention center... an area known as the Tennis Courts... a half acre under roof. To reach the Tennis Courts entailed a walk of five minutes from the main building. The Tennis Courts held the WRG, DBM and DBA tournaments, and the flea market.
Initial flea market prices for painted figures seemed a wee bit higher than those for sale in the dealers' area... which was unusual. The asking prices, of course, were not the actual selling prices. Flea marketeers were often willing to reduce their prices.
I dove headfirst into one of the dealer's crappola boxes... he was selling baggies, of old, distorted, ugly - really ugly - 15mm ancients figures at less than 50 cents each. But these little fellas were painted! To my mind, this was the prime consideration, not the beauty of the figure itself. In my rules sets, an ugly archer fires with the same effectiveness as a goodlooking archer. But then, perhaps that's what's wrong with my rules.
Another game I witnessed... "witnessed" may be too strong a term... was the COURIER presentation of Larry Broms' CHASSEPOT, ETC., A Franco-Prussian affair. Dick Bryant of the COURIER was the host and Larry Brom was present, and Ed Mohrmann was also watching.
Some ten minutes after I sat down at table-side, I fell asleep. What was truly unique about this (ordinarily, there's nothing unique about my falling asleep at the table) , was that neither Dick nor Larry nor Ed noticed I was of f in never- never land, and continued to talk to me. Evidently, my replies, a series of deep-throated, glottal stops, were as comprehensive as my usual conversation and no one suspected a thing.
Dave Waxtel hosted an invasion scenario; the Marines landing on a Japanese-held island. This was to demonstrate Arty Conliffe's latest rules set for WWII, SPEARHEAD.
Unfortunately, the SPEARHEAD table was so crowded, it was hard to elbow your way in, and I quickly gave up.
I did push troops in an ancients game of ANCIENTS, A THROUGH Z... Greeks versus somebody else. I was a Greek commander, and it turned out that the somebody elses were bow- heavy, inundating the Greek lines with arrows every turn. When we closed to contact -- which was a rare occasion we got in our jollies, but the scenario wasn't on our side.
ANCIENTS, A THROUGH Z has been around for several years; it's a private publication of the authors and they indicated that they had sold a total of 1,200 copies. 7 They push their rules at every convention, always presenting at least two games... which shows that hard work pays off.
At HISTORICON, they presented an ANCIENTS, A THROUGH Z tournament, and signed up several more customers. The rules require a fairly large clump of figures per unit, and the authors always set up their games in 25mm, making for a nice display.
My Greek units had 3 6 figures each, and seemed never to have to take a morale test, despite the fact that the men in the ranks were dropping like flies due to the enemy archers. only when a unit closed did it test its morale level.
The game itself was fairly short, due to the helacious losses within the Greek ranks.
FUSILIER AND FORTRESS (FAF) was next. This rules set was published in the mid-seventies... it shows its age. It's a Seven Years War effort, and requires a good deal of interpretation. The host had set up an interesting 25mm scenario but ran into trouble at the first encounter between the forces on the table.
Defensive Battalion A set up shop in a village, which, due to the scale involved, was depicted by a single house model.
FAF states that units can fire straight ahead, and the stands of Battalion A were facing south, restricting A's fire to "straight south". Battalion B of the attacking side, on its movement phase, moved to a position alongside. the village, just to the west.
The umpire ruled that Battalion A, facing south, could only fire to the south, hence Battalion B could not be fired on by Battalion A, even though the two were almost touching. This was not taken with grace by the participants. Even those on the defending side took issue with this interpretation.
I chimed in with the thought that Battalion A, once located in the village, would have dispersed and covered the entire perimeter of the village. I also voiced the thought that the rules should be interpreted rather freely, if only from the gaming point of view.
Not so, said the host/umpire. The rules state that a battalion can fire only in the direction of facing, and since Battalion A was facing south, they could only fire to the south. And, said the host, he wanted to interpret the rules as strictly as possible. He finished with: "If I wanted to be a lawyer, I would have gone to law school!"
This cut to the quick, and I left the scene bleeding internally.
The zombie game that I described in a previous REVIEW was presented; it drew a small crowd of zombie lovers. on a par with the zombie game, there were several COMMAND DECISION presentations, each with its own small crowd.
A group from Oklahoma set up the siege of Alesia in 15mm. The club had done quite a bit of work in constructing the battlements, the siege towers, the assault ladders... a beautiful and very well laid- out scenario, probably the "best of show".
I also noted a number of sea battles set up, both modern and ancient. If there's anything that doesn't hold my interest, it's a sea battle, whether between modern cruisers or between slave-driven galleys, or of the Limeys-Slimeys variety. I studiously avoided these presentations; if I have to select a game at which to fall asleep, it won't be a sea battle.
Air battles also appeared; all sorts of airey-plane games were presented. I boycotted these. I am not overly impressed with fights in the sky. The only item of interest in these scenarios was the method chosen by each host to support the planes above the tabletop... there were clothes-pins and alligator clips and so on.
Tom Elsworth, who accompanied me to the convention, won first prize in the 25mm DBM tournament. Tom went to the DBM army listings and selected an early-Judaic, mid-Maccabean, late-Hebraic army to smite his opponents. This causes one to wonder what an early Maccabean, late- Judaic, early-Hebraic army would have done. Or, perhaps, a mid- Hebraic, late-Israelic army. I feel certain the DBM army lists contain all these variants.
Anyway, as first prize, Tom took home a neat little plaque. I took home only my empty wallet.
Back to PW Review August 1995 Table of Contents
Back to PW Review List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1995 Wally Simon
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com