To me, this HMGS convention seemed to lack the glitter, gloss, and gilt of former conventions. There were more games (around 300), more dealers (about 330 dealers tables were sold), more attendees (well over 2,000 people showed up), a larger flea market than ever ... to the HMGS organization, it was its greatest success ever... but to me, it wasn't the same. Usually, prior to a convention, several Brits visit me, flying in to enter the DBM tournaments, but here, too, the gloss seemed to have worn off, and no Brits appeared. HISTORICON is a 4-day affair, Thursday through Sunday, and I went up to Lancaster, Pa., on Friday, and returned home on Saturday afternoon. After a lapse of about 15 years, again I encountered Hal Thinglum, editor of the Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter (MWAN), and Hal and I sat down and talked about old times. Hal arrived at the convention to receive an award... he had been nominated as a member of The Legion, a small group of wargamers, organized by HMGS, the members of which have provided invaluable support for the hobby. Another award recipient was Bob Coggins, who was to receive the Scruby Award (given out every two years) for outstanding contributions to the hobby. These awards were to be presented at an awards dinner on Saturday night, and what was interesting was that Bob was to receive a 'freebee' dinner, while the el-cheapo Board of Directors didn't provide Hal with a dinner... to collect his award, he had to drive in from Chicago, and attend the dinner and pay for his own supper. Friday morning, I sat down to play a game for a 15mm Tarawa WW II beach landing. The table width was about 5 feet, and the depth was around 12 feet. The beach was some 30 inches from the table's edge (the short edge of 5 feet), and we Marines started out right at the baseline. Our objective was to move inland, Immediately, this game showed itself to suffer from two 'no-no's': a. First, it suffered from what I term the 'Scrunched Scenario Syndrome' (SSS). The Marine landing craft moved at 8 inches per turn, and on Turn 4, we hit the beach... after suffering lots of casualties on the way in. But now the game deteriorated, for the next two hours, into a series of actions focusing solely on the first 12 inches of beach-head. There was no need to set up a table 12 feet in depth... only 12 inches would have been sufficient. The Japanese defenders had lots of assets located inland... they never played a part. Under the SSS, the Marines and Japanese fired at each other, and charged each other, with no perceptible movement taking place out of the 12-inch wide beach. b. Second, the game proved to be a Class A Abomination. When the Marines took their first hits, little white pipe cleaners were placed on the landing craft to denote casualties. To me, pipe cleaners and casualty caps are one and the same... abominations, and Class A Abominations, at that. I was interested in the game because the game hosts, a club from Woodbridge, Virginia, used BREW UP, written by Lee Tucker some 20 years ago. Lee was one of the founding fathers of PW... he had introduced me to wargaming... and then, after several years, he disappeared. BREW UP used 6-sided dice, and the Woodbridge boys had decimalized it, and expanded it. In the original BREW UP, one figure was one man, and one tank model was one tank. Here, a squad was composed of a 3 figure stand... 3 hits and the stand was removed, while the tank remained a tank... 3 hits and it's gone. An hour-and-a-half into the game, and I had lost interest in the beach head. This is the prime reason that I rarely volunteer to sit in at a game at a convention. I don't want to be obligated to remain table-side for 2 or 3 hours as the game grinds on. To my left, holding the Marines left flank, also trying to break out of the beach area, was Brian Dewitt. Brian has more staying-power than I do, "Fire your machine gun", he said. I really didn't care. "Fire your guns on the landing craft", he said. I really didn't care. What a complete drag I had become! This updated BREW UP, in expanding Lee's game, had added lottsa charts to the format. The hosts provided a 'cheat sheet' to the players, and the two sides of the sheet were crammed full of hit and fire and morale and damage charts. POW I sat table-side observing a 25mm Napoleonics game called PRINCIPALS OF WAR (POW). There were 3 stands per regiment, and a division had 5 regiments. Each division commander had a grade in terms of a number from 1 to 6. Then the division commander tossed a 6-sided die... he could activate the number of regiments tossed on the die, providing that it didn't exceed his grade number. This was sort of pip-movement game. One thing that appealed to me about POW was that the host was the record keeper. He tracked every regiment on the field... when the number of hits reached a certain critical value, one stand would be removed. His data sheets relieved the players from the record-keeping task, and kept the game moving. Another item of note about POW was that it used a melee chart of some 15 columns (your total melee points) and 6 rows (your 6-sided die toss). Total your points to read along the top of the chart, and toss a die. Modifiers were introduced by moving your column to the left or right (a plus factor shifted the column to the right). This is a board-game ploy, rarely seen in miniatures rules. Honor and Courage Next was HONOR AND COURAGE (HC). 3 figures per stand, and 4 stands comprised a battalion. A little smaller in scope than POW. Each unit had a Dreaded Divisor (DD), which depended upon the number of men, the quality, etc. Then the unit tossed 4 to 6 dice, and divided the total by the DD to get the casualties it inflected on the opposing unit. HC used pip-dice (6-sided). The division commander first received a freebee movement for all his units and then, according to his pip-dice, could perform additional actions with them. For a couple of minutes, I watched what I thought was a PIQUET (PQ) tournament. The program booklet spoke of 25mm figures. I heard, however, that the figures hadn't arrived, and so the players were gaming with 25mm blocks! I couldn't believe the "figures hadn't arrived" ploy, because the blocks were well prepared... these were no 'spur-of-the-moment' blocks... these were carefully constructed blocks. Alas! How low had the tournament hosts sunk? On one table, there were set up a number of 'flying ships'. These were perched some 8 inches above the table, a World War II convoy of about 20 ships. I thought that the reason for elevating the ships was to be able to visually present a submarine attack, with the subs inching along directly on the table-top. But I couldn't see any subs, and after some 5 minutes, I went on. Bob Giglio, the HMGS President, presented a huge British colonial skirmish game, one-figure equals one-man. Each man fires using a 6-sided die. There appeared to be three sets of dice tossing: First, each man tosses his die for 'potential' hits. Second, confirm the hits, looking for a '6'. Third, roll again to see if the man hit was not a ranker, but an officer. Beautifully presented on a table measuring 8 feet across by 20 feet long, this turned out to be a Class A Abomination game. No casualty figures. When a man was hit, he was knocked down, lying on his side. One WW II presentation was A BRIDGE TOO FAR. Nice terrain, dominated by a 3-foot-long bridge. It looked like 20mm figures were used. The table was so crowded that I couldn't get close enough to see. Now we have HERBIVORES AND CARNIVORES. A table full of jungle and plants. Draw a card and do something. Do what?? Apparently, when a card was drawn, it permitted you to feed or move your herbivores or carnivores. If you had a carnivore, it could move to any spot where a herbivore was located and immediately eat him (it?) up. If you drew a herbivore card, you could (a) place a herbivore on the table, and (b) feed him by taking some of the nearby jungle plants and placing them nearby your young herbivore. The big winner seemed to a be 5-inch tall dinosaurus rex, which chomped up all the little 1-inch tall herbivores on the field. BY COMPANY INTO LINE (CL) is a supplement to BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER (BAB). Whereas BAB is a man-to-man skirmish game, CL is at the platoon level, with 4 stands comprising a platoon. In previous issues of the REVIEW, I've lambasted BAB, but this hasn't decreased its popularity, or prevented it from popping up quite frequently at conventions. And so I stayed an hour at table-side, trying to see if any improvements had occurred in this expanded version. The gaming host was Roxanne Patton, and she definitely took charge of the field. CL, as BAB, uses a deck in which all units are listed. And she'd call out a card and watch while the player moved his troops. Now, right there, we had an improvement over BAB. The man-on-man game uses the card deck, but 2 cards are drawn at once, and the rules say nothing about the priority of movement or firing. The penalty paid was that, with only one card drawn, the game was slightly slower. And so I watched for about an hour, until the Federalize and Confederates approached each other and the firing began. The first unit to fire was a Yankee battery, firing at around 40 inches. The battery had a 75 percent chance to hit. Percentage dice were thrown... the battery hit its target. Then, since the gun was firing shell, a 2-inch diameter template was placed on the target. A 6-sided die was tossed for every potential casualty on the target stands. Hits were registered with tosses of 1, 2 or 3. The Rebels suffered 3 losses. And then... the ultimate disappointment! Rexene placed casualty caps on the Confederate stands to show injuries! I had wasted an entire hour on this game, only to find out it was a Class A Abomination! Is there no justice in this world? I ran from the table, tears streaming from my eyes. Hal Thinglum and I looked for a place to sit and talk, and we ended up at table-side observing a WW II 25mm skirmish game, hosted by EASY EIGHTS BATTLEGROUND WW II. This firm is now producing (sculpting and casting) their own 25mm moderns in pewter and the figures we saw were excellent. Each unit has a card in a deck for activation... when its card is drawn, it receives 2 actions... move twice, fire twice, move and fire, etc. So far, so good. A 'unit' is defined as a 10-man squad, or an individual tank. the men in the squad must be individually tracked for light wounds, serious wounds, etc. The same with a tank crew when hit. The host spoke for 20 minutes on the scope of the rules. Then he drew a card. Very slow going, and after 10 minutes, he drew another card. Another 10 minutes and another card. After the game, he said the slow-going was due to the fact that the gamers knew nothing about the rules. Hal and I spent about an hour watching, and we really didn't see anything... one infantry squad moved, one tank moved, and... nothing else. But it gave Hal and me the opportunity to sit down and reminisce for an hour. Wandering around the game rooms, I noted quite a number of games suffering from the Scrunched Scenario Syndrome (SSS). Evidently, many hosts have grandiose ideas about the scope of their games, and set up immensely large tables, and find out, too late, that all the action occurs in one teeny-tiny part of the field. One such presentation was a WW II SPEARHEAD affair. The table was about 12 feet long, and the forces were engaging each other in one small sector at the end of the table. I started to take notes on this game, when Artie Conlife, author of SPEARHEAD, appeared, sat down, and we commenced to talk. Years ago, Artie had dropped his subscription to the REVIEW when I authored a piece on SPEARHEAD. He said that I didn't read the rules (true), that I didn't understand them (probably true), and that they were completely different from COMMAND DECISION (not so true). On Saturday afternoon, I counted about 30 games being played in the main room, with probably, another 30 in the outlying rooms and areas. And this doesn't count the acres and acres of games being played by the tournament players with TACTICA and ARMATI and PIQUET and DBM/DBA, etc. Back to PW Review June 1999 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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