Dave Armer and I arrived Friday afternoon around 2:00 P.M., signed in and headed for the gaming areas. It took about five minutes for our old friend and NASAMW tournament umpire Frank Gilson from the U or R, now living in Cambria, CA, to entice us into signing up for the open team WRG competition. Being assured of regular WRG books I, II and III being in use in addition to the NASAMW lists, and the option to 'play WRG as you wish' upon mutual agreement with one's opponents was enough to assuage my misgivings about getting embroiled in a full-scale convention competition.

I had never been involved in a team-play tournament before and thought that it would be a rather low-key event as far as emotional outbursts were concern that with four people to iron things out around a table...Why not?

As Dave and I looked at each other, we wondered what the hell we were getting into! We had never fought on the same side before and the only figures we had brought which approximated 1800 points were my old 25mm Later Romans. They had not been out of their boxes for three years and the only reason they were at hand was that I had planned on selling them. We hastily concurred and figured it would make the weekend very interesting...so we would give it a shot.

Back in our room, we pulled out the WRG Book II Later Roman list and put together two possible 1800 point army lists out of our available figures. I knew that this army was fairly balanced and did not think that we could be too easily beaten. Somewhere in my memory was this image of triple-armed MI legionaires shooting holes in anyone they came close to and my confidence grew as Dave and I finalized our armies and set off to do battle.

The Int round was scheduled for Friday evening. Somewhere in the vicinity of ten teams were playing in 25mm and a considerable number in 15mm as well. We were paired against Anglo- Danes, ably commanded by Dr. Daniel Weitz and his co-commander from New Jersey. I had hoped that with the number or teams playing, a more historical pairing was possible, but this is a minor point ... I guess we had been spoiled by our local tourneys where we try to match up 1st bounders as historically as possible. Our opponents managed to place two woods on our left and center and a major water feature on our right. We placed a hill in our center and some boggy ground on Dave's right. Since the Anglo-Danes were outscouted, we observed their set-up before placing our own troops. Dave took the skirmishing wing and I commanded the attacking forces, a situation which we would maintain all weekend.

The highlight of this game occurred when I marched a unit of 16 LMI archers with shields into a woods filled with Vikings. They were immediatly attacked by a unit of Viking berserkers. I rolled up, opponent rolled down and routed. A unit of Bondi proceeded to attack the archers with similar results. The psychological effect of having archers rout the Vikings was evident as my opponent sat back and scratched his head, muttering about the archers, who remained unmolested for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, Dave was having a rough time holding off the Saxon heavy foot, so I threw a unit of Roman legionaires at a 48-man fyrd unit) barely making a dent in them, but tiring my own 16-man unit at an alarming rate. Two 8-man huscarl units anchored the right of the fyrd locks, backed by 6-man Norman wedges. I pushed forward my second man LMI archer unit and shot up one huscarl unit, which retired.

The Norman cavalry advanced. They too were quickly taken care of massed archer fire. Waver tests for retiring within enemy charge reach shook the huscarls who were then charged by the archers ... they rolled to move slow and were caught in the back. Meanwhile, the cohort of Romans in contact with the fyrd routed and Dave's troops were also quickly reaching a point of being forced to go to retreat orders but my archers broke a unit of charging Norman horse, causing more waver tests among the Anglo- Danes. At this point, the game ended with heavy losses on both sides ... but we had a 120-point plurality which gave us a winning draw -- and we were glad to get it!

As it was close to 11:00 P.M. when we got back to our room, we decided to get up a quick pickup game -- Axis and Allies. As Dave prepared his second of TEN Spam and pretzel meals that weekend (I can still smell that stuff a week later!), Jamie Fish, Rod Stafford, Bruce Taylor, Greg Ellsworth and Dave Ottney drifted in to play and help us get rid of our two cases of beer. Unfortunately, I had forgotten how to play, neglecting to purchase units the 1st turn and I was soundly beaten in two turns by Fish's nasty Germans! We then played a seven player round of Barbarian Invaders and managed to destroy Rome in four turns. A bad omen? Tomorrow would tell.

More Historicon 1989 Convention Report

Introduction
Friday
Saturday
Sunday