The HMGS convention, COLD WARS, took place in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in mid-March. The weather could not have been worse... very cold, windy and rainy. From what I've been told, attendance still topped the 1,200 mark... business as usual for HMGS. I played very few games... the big deal in which I participated was what had been advertised in the program as a gigantic WWII battle... the Eastern Front. I've mentioned in past issues that Bob Hurst had volunteered our group to play the Russian side. Consequently, prior to the convention, we played several rounds of Artie Conliffe's SPEARHEAD to familiarize ourselves with the rules. Dave Waxtel hosted the event... he hoped for (according to the program) 40 players. Wishful thinking. About ten showed up. Dave wanted to present the battle on four separate tables, but the actual presentation fell far short of that. Only two tables were used, and on our table, the @#*$%! German commander never showed up... Dave was forced to cut out and use paper tokens to represent a major portion of the German side. Shades of System Seven!! The use of paper cut-outs made el Senor Hurst very unhappy. He had lugged to the convention a huge assortment of Russian 15mm tanks, figures and supporting vehicles, and at Dave's request, he had also brought 10 tons of German armor to fill in the German forces. Firing at paper tokens didn't go down well with Sr. Hurst. Dave's note in the program solicited all potential participants to bring their own armies... in effect, he said: "I'll supply the green cloth, and you guys furnish the figures." Evidently, the program note invited lottsa interest, but when push came to shove, not too many gamers showed up. To tell the truth, I think the "I'll-fumish-the-green-cloth-you-furnish-the-figures" is a super idea. Our PW group has been discussing such an approach toward presenting a game at HISTORICON in July. This way, the host does not have to bring hundreds of boxes of infantry, cavalry, artillery, terrain, etc. Let the participants bring their own. Game On our SPEARHEAD table, we, the Russians, had 12 battalions, each battalion consisting of around 12 tokens. The Germans had a similar number of troops. The table was crowded, but no more so than other modem armor games in which I've played. Artie Conliffe wandered by after the battle started. His comment, after looking at the numbers on the table: "Dave always likes a big game!" I asked Artie about the size of the game he plays with SPEARHEAD. He said that for a 'comfortable' game, he uses about 5 battalions per side. The use of fewer battalions not only speeds up the movement phases, but it greatly accelerates the firing procedures, since, as in most armor games, every token on the field fires, i.e., tosses a die. Joining our Russian ranks was Brian Dewitt, who was assigned the Russian right flank. He commented on the requirement that "gee... all those tokens have to fire..." Brian's right flank defense was, at first, far from perfect... He needed to toss a 5 or 6 on a six-sided die to either suppress or destroy an enemy target. For some 20 consecutive dice tosses, he hit nothing, suppressed nothing. His morale dice tosses were also nothing to brag about. Our Russians turned out to be 'green' troops, which mean that they'd have to take a morale test when they suffered 33 percent losses. In short order, Brian's dice resulted in three Russian battalions fleeing off the table. But Brian recovered his aplomb... he managed to produce five "6's" in a row to decimate one of the German units. SPEARHEAD uses 6-sided dice, and there's a limit as to what one can do with the 6-sided cubes. When firing, one subtracts the target's defense factor from the firing unit's attack factor, and adds the resultant to the 6-sided die roll. Here, the modified toss of a "5" produces a suppression, a "6" produces a kill. But what happens when you "run out of pips" on the die? For example, if the target's defense is a "5" and the firing weapon has a "3" for offense, the resultant is "-2", which means that even if a "6" is thrown, the target can't be affected, can't be touched at all, since the most you'll get is a modified "4". In such cases, SPEARHEAD requires you to toss two dice, and if the result is an "l 1" or a "12", the target is suppressed. I have always been amazed at the ploys used in rules sets to broaden the scope of the 6-sided die. Barker's WRG and DBM systems are fine examples of this, as these systems toss in a "+1" here, or a "-1" there, to expand the dice result. I consistently advocate use of percentage dice to greatly open up the available scale... instead of a very restrictive random toss of 1-through-6, the result would now encompass 1-through-100, and the available gradations would nullify the need for fancy footwork and modifiers. Our Russian-German game lasted some 10 turns, at the end of which the Russians had lost 5 battalions. All of us were disappointed at the poor turnout for the game. Another example of a grandiose scheme gone wrong. I did note that, at the convention, modern armor games seemed to far outnumber those of other eras. There were 6mm, 15mm and 20mm games presented. One huge microarmor layout, some 25 feet long, depicted the invasion of North Africa, complete with ships and planes and landing craft. This game, however, never seemed to get going... the tokens never seemed to move, and there didn't seem to be a lot of gamers to man the 25-foot long frontage. In passing, I discussed with Keith Leidy of ELITE MINIATURES, the popularity of WWII games. He indicated that his 20mm WWII figures are currently the best selling items in his inventory. Keith handles ELITE, CONNOISEUR, and the BRITANNIA lines. Computers There were a few laptop computers present, used for naval games and such. Several CARNAGE AND GLORY (CAG) games were set up, and these drew respectable numbers of people. I've never played CAG; I've heard good and bad things about it, but I must admit that at every convention, CAG games appear to be well attended. Over a decade ago, I play tested a Napoleonic computer-based game. The inputs to the computer were essentially three in number: Unit status Unit strength Formation The computer did not track the position of the units on the field, i.e., didn't know where units were located. When the fire phase came, the computer would ask: Which unit is firing? Which unit is the target? What is the range? Is the target in cover? And the machine would work out the casualties produced by the volley. In fact, the computer would notify you if your unit couldn't fire because (a) your unit was not deployed, or (b) your unit's weapons were not loaded. I wasn't too impressed with this early Napoleonics game. This was well before laptops were in vogue, and the need to lug a large size computer to table-side didn't go over well. In one game, as I remember, I kept firing and firing on a unit of French Guards, and wondering why the Guards didn't do anything, i.e., didn't return fire. It was only later that I found out that way, way back in the battle, I had wiped out the Guards unit. The computer, however, when it asked for a target unit, still took my target input as the Guards... it never told me there was nothing to shoot at. Jim Butters reported that he had heard of a computerized naval game for the table-top in which the computer did track actual locations of ships on the map. The question arises... if the computer knows all, why not play it all the way as a "computer" computer game, and forget the table-top? Two British fellas accompanied me to the convention. After the fine showing of the British contingent at HISTORICON in July, '96 (they won everything in sight at the WRG, DBM, etc., tournaments), they had high hopes of walking off with all the COLD WARS medals. 'Twas not to be so. The Brits returned empty-handed. Saddened, bloodied, but unbowed... they'll be back. I should note that the Brits, during our discussions concerning other rules ("other" means anything other than WRG, DBM, etc.), had good words to say about SPEARHEAD. They said they'd tried it out back in the UK and were pleased at the results. The HMGS COLD WARS business meeting was a wee bit more "rowdy" than usual. In recent years, the man on the podium, whether the President, the Treasurer, or whomever, had maintained a certain decorum at the meeting. This time, however, people in the audience seemed to shout out their comments as they deemed fit, without paying too much attention to the Robert's Rules requirement of being recognized. Regardless, business is business, and the meeting ended after about an hour. Back to PW Review April 1997 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 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