It would be a bit strange, this year not having Jamie Fish around, but he had important family obligations, so would not be attending Historicon, the biggest and the best U.S. historical miniatures convention. Not to worry, though, our newest 'convert' to wargaming, Paul Schneider would try to make up for Jamie's absence…but is that at all possible? Only time would tell.

Paul decided that since he had the biggest, most comfortable vehicle, equipped with a TV and VCR, we might want him to drive. Do you think? That momentous decision took all of two seconds - long enough to say "If that's what you want." So Bruce Taylor and I were to be passengers for a change - a rare treat for the 6 hour drive to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Thursday

So it was that on Thursday we all loaded our boxes (and cookie tins, in Paul's case) of figures, terrain, clothes and coolers full of beverages into Paul's luxurious van and headed south.

It was a beautiful summer day and Bruce took the opportunity to watch the PBS Nova videos on building a trebuchet as well as other specials he had missed, while Paul and I discussed military history. Paul is a 25-year veteran high school teacher so has a bit of knowledge! Before too long we uneventfully arrived at the Lancaster Host convention center and checked into our…room.

Now we've had great rooms before here. I remember the best was room 500. You could literally roll out of bed and down the stairs to the bar! Not to mention not having to lug the boxes of figures up and down stairs and hallways. As we were instructed on how to get to our room "Take the elevator…" Elevator? "…up to the top floor," we knew something was up. As we were whisked up to the top floor (well, there are only three floors, anyway) we speculated on what the PH button we had to press to get there meant. Ah, penthouse! Walking down the hall to our room, it seemed unremarkedly different than any other hallway in the hotel. It was close to the lobby, however, a great advantage for hauling boxes of gaming materials.

We found the room and opened the door. At first, we thought the maid had left the door between our room and the next open, but no. Lo and behold, we had two rooms, instead of one! The second room was a conference room with two sofas, a sofabed, another 25" TV, a small balcony and even a rock wall motif. Had we died and gone to wargames convention heaven? We immediately dubbed our rooms the SAGA Suite and unpacked, still incredulous at our 'home' for the next three days.

The fourth member of our party, Mitch Abrams soon arrived from Massachusetts and we all headed to the dealer's area. Now at Historicon, the Tennis Barn is the dealer's area. It is huge. You name it, someone has it. We ran into our old Rochester friend Art Fossa, now a used military book dealer from New England. I paid a quick visit to Dennis Shorthouse of On Military Matters to drop off a shipment of SAGA's for Dave Ryan (Caliver is now the overseas rep for SAGA. For subscriptions in the U.K. and Europe, please contact Dave). It took all of five minutes to make my first purchase from Dennis, the two volume Montvert publication Armies of Bactria by Valerii P. Nikonorov.

Bob Jones was at the Piquet booth and I said a quick hello to him before running into William Keyser (From Valmy to Waterloo), another former Rochester resident. Chris Parker (Day of Battle) was eager to get to his demo games and Phil Viverito (Knight Hack, et. al.) is always up for a weekend of hard gaming. All of us only get together at the conventions where we can compare notes, experiences and the latest rules news. This social aspect of the hobby has always been the most enjoyable part to me. All of these guys are friends who I never would have gotten to know if not for our mutual interests.

So we made the rounds, checked in with Scott Holder at the NASAMW table and received our table assignments for Friday's Medieval Warfare tournaments, before going to dinner and heading back to our room. Several of our compatriots from the Rochester wargaming club paid us a visit to check out the suite and we managed to talk our way into the wee hours.

Friday

The Ancient's area this year was not in the familiar surroundings of the Lampeter Room. Instead, it was set up above that area in the dinner theatre area. We were a bit apprehensive at first, this area had been used a few years back and was poorly lit and very dark. This year, lights had been set up. The area was quite roomy, still a bit dark, but very quiet thanks to the acoustics of the theatre. Instead of just the ubiquitous DBM/WRG tournament gaming, there were WHAB, ARMATI, Might of Arms and Warrior (redone 7th) as well as our own Medieval Warfare being played. NASAMW has been very receptive to becoming all-inclusive of all rules sets for their sanctioned tournaments. This is much appreciated.

Our own tournament drew fourteen players, eight in 25mm and six in 15mm. I would cover both tournaments and had brought armies in both scales just in case I had to play. It turned out that I would have to as one player had to cancel out of coming to Historicon at the last minute.

My first game was against Jeff Hady. I was using my 25mm Later Medieval Scots against Jeff's Russ. We rolled for the quality of our generals and neither of us had an advantage there (no charismatic leaders this day). Terrain set up found Jeff opting for areas of clear while I chose hills (to put my spearmen on).

I had my left and right flanks anchored on hills. A lot of good this did me! Jeff aggressively pressed his attack against my center with units of close order foot, while demonstrating against my right with four units of skirmish cavalry and tying down my left with more foot.

At first, my superior number of missile troops forced a few of Jeff's units to slow down (he formed them into shieldwall, so as to cut down on the number of missile casualties, but this slowed their movement to 1/2 speed). As he charged my center, I formed my Scots cavalry reserves up in anticipation of charging into his flanks when (and if) he managed to break through. This did not take long, as in three turns after contacting my center, Jeff blew a hole in my lines (in MW and AW, once you lose one round of close combat, you are disordered, a second loss, you are fragmented, a third loss and you rout). Instead of enthusiastically charging into the flanks of Jeff's pursuing foot, my 'nobles' did their historical counterparts a disservice by leaving the field of battle as soon as possible (they had failed their morale tests for seeing routing friends). A quick game, but an interesting one.

The second round I sat out as we had a player sit in. I had a chance to watch the other tournaments. WHAB looked like they had over a dozen players while MoA had perhaps eight to ten. Armati looked like they had six or so games going while DBM and Warrior filled out the rest of the 200 plus slots. All the guys playing looked to be having a good time and it seemed like the gentlemenly attitudes of the past few conventions continued throughout this one as well.

In the third round of our tournament, Jeff Ball's son bowed out in 15mm, so I sat in to play. This time I was using my old favorites, Early Normans (Guiscard's Italian version). My opponent was Kevin Boylan, using Anglo-Irish. This game went a lot like the first one. Kevin pushed his troops vigorously and my knights found themselves in a bottleneck, trying to fit past a large forest Kevin had placed and his blocks of gallowglas to smash into units of bonnagt. By the time I managed to maneuver into position to attack, Kevin had destroyed my right flank and my army morale collapsed (I lost 1/3 of my units).

The winners of the tournament were: 25mm - Jeff Hady's Russ in a three-way tie. Jeff won the tie-breaker by virtue of size of his victories over his opponents. In 15mm, we did have a tie between Mitch Abram's Early Byzantines and John Martin's Mongols. All of the above received a NASAMW plaque.

Afterwards, we sat down for our annual rules 'discussion'. The concern this year was not getting a decisive victory in three hours. Alex Aimette and Sean Patrick both thought we should allow more time for our games. We agreed to extend the games to 3 1/2 hour rounds. We also accepted their suggestion to allow a further set-on of 9" for 25mm and 6" for 15mm. A couple of other incidents were also dealt with, mainly limiting road placement to one per player (no superhighways, please!) and in order to get the victory point for having no non-skirmisher units on your own 1/2 of the table, the troops in question could not be aboard ship…they would have to be on land. I won't mention who thought these 'strategems' up!

Howard Whitehouse stopped by to watch my third game, sorry to say. The Normans certainly did not cover themselves in glory. We took a quick tour of the bar after the game and then headed back to the suite to rest up for Saturday's demos.

Historicon 2000 Saturday and Sunday