Steve Phenow, who lives and works in Hollywood, runs the Armati tournament. This year, it was a round robin affair. During the open gaming session after Thursday's dinner, he ran me and another novice, Kevin (both of us had never played before), through the rules. Kevin fielded a Byzantine army. I borrowed Steve's Seljuk Turk army. In a few moments, we got the basics down and started to deploy.

Phenow (right), Featherstone (center), and Lockwood (left) on the dealer floor.

Technically, there should be a screen between us, but this was a friendly learning game, so I deployed in the open, and somewhat poorly. First, Steve corrected my deployments. Armati groups units together in divisions, depending on the army. I had units spread all over the place. Then, I discovered I had set up my archers behind a hill--nuthin' like blocking a field of fire.

With the majority of my army as light forces, I figured I had better do a dance and shaft the Byzantines to death. That's when I discovered that wheeling is rather restricted, so movement tends to be what your set up is. That's just about the time I discovered rolling 1s is a bad idea. I changed dice...multiple times.

I shafted. I missed. I got shafted. I died. I was down 3 units to 1 (4 and the battle would end). Units were taking hits and starting to disintegrate. Then we meleed...and then I found the magic green six-sided die. All those 1s and 2s of the previous several bounds turned into 5s and 6s. I broke a unit. I shafted another into oblivion. I ran over a bunch of light archers (which didn't count against the 4-unit defeat total, but stopped them from raining arrows at me). I won initiative and ran away from tough guys. It was 3 to 3, I grabbed initiative and finally, excrutiatingly, I rolled that magic combo to break a fourth unit. It was real close. Two of my heavy units were within 1 hit of breaking.

Kevin was pleased, too. He went on to the tournament the next day and won a couple games. He didn't win the tourney, but learned enough to hold his own against veterans.

Strategikon

Steve is also the editor of Strategikon, an ancients magazine. The 4th issue came out at Historicon, and like all magazines, gets better with each copy. We had a long discussion about Hannibal and the route from Spain to Italy, especially concerning the differences between Polybius and Livy, as well as various authors' interpretations. Steve reads Latin and Greek. I rely on English translations, which then leaps into Loebs, Penguins, and other translations. OK. If you're not an ancients buff, we'd bore the hell out of you dissecting nuances. In any case, we had a great time and went out to dinner twice more, picking up other history buffs as we went along.

More Historicon 2002

Welcome and Introduction
Registration and Tournaments
DBA On-line
Flea Market: Bargains
The Theater: Big Wargames
Re-enactors: British and French
Distelfink Ballroom: Main Gaming
Back Out in the Hallway
"Courier" Room
Dealer Area: Tennis Barn
Don Featherstone
Steve Phenow, Strategikon
Restaurants and Restaurant Fires
War: Age of Imperialism (review)

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