Believe it or not, Conventions can be enjoyable, well-organised, and include an interesting and skilful competition. Unfortunately, all too often they fail in one or all of these respects, especially in organisation. The basic reason for this seems to me that the Club doing the job does not have enough dedicated workers. A contributary factor is often difficulty with the hotel, often made worse by lack of any written agreement concerning space available and provision of tables. In order to organics the Convention a nucleus of three or four individuals, willing to work hard over most of a year, not for profit, is required. Also needed are willing assistants to test rules, make scenery and help on the day. Apart from the personnel in organising, competition umpires are needed, competent and experienced in the rules. To avoid bias either no umpire from the Club should umpire a match involving a member of the Club, especially in the finals. Indeed it would be better if the Club did not enter a team, especially if it has also written some of the rules. If a Club cannot meet the requirements for manpower and venue, or is situated in a part of the country which makes travelling difficult I believe that Club should forgo it's right to hold the Convention. At present, and as far as I know, only these locations seem suitable - London; Birmingham; Southampton; Bristol and Worthing. Whilst I believe Scotland could hold another Convention, say in Glasgow, the travelling distance is too far for the majority of wargamers over a weekend. On last year's showing the hotel at Leicester was most unsuitable, and there were not enough organisers, although Trev Halsall and Greg worked very hard. An alternative approach is to hold the Convention under the auspices of more than one Club, although there would be difficulties since most people will want to take the decisions themselves and let others do the work. Three or four Clubs working together (perhaps as a "Region") could provide one worker each to form the organising group who would take all the decisions and handle all the finance and correspondence. Now for some random thoughts on the features of the Convention. It should be held during the University vacations, since many people will find it easier to travel the day before the Convention, and those at school or University cannot always get time off. It will also increase the pool of assistants for the organisers. I think it could run to three or four days since a weekend is not long enough to meet and chat to all those you want to, as well as looking at trade stands, competing, drinking, and so on. If extended to four days it would enable individual competitions to be fought on two, and the inter-Club Championship on the other two, since it is impossible to do both at the same time successfully, as well as providing time for 'friendly' games, which do not happen at present. It need not be held in a hotel. If held somewhere where a large number of wargamers are within reach it could hire a Congress hall or similar venue as well as having a hotel. No hotel so far has provided sufficient space. There must be an organisers table, permanently manned by the chief organisers. This business of chasing all over the place trying to find someone in charge is absurd. The rules should riot be those specially produced by the organisers, untried and unknown. There is not time for the competitors to learn them properly, and in the event the rule-writer may put a totally different interpretation on the rules than is contained within them. An established set must be used, even if the choice is limited. Amendments of a minor nature can easily be made for the Convention itself. A further advantage from this is that many competitors will already have sets of the rules available, so the cost of rules will not be included in the entrance fee, making it cheaper for the entrants, although not so profitable for the organisers. And can we have a little more thought and care on the design of terrain please. Leicester was terrible, Birmingham little better, and none of the others much good. There should be possibilities of tactical action, not just line up and charge for the objective. Balanced terrain is one thing, but symetrical terrain is ridiculous. I would rather fight at a slight disadvantage than over these identical. Set-ups where both sides strategy is determined by the same conditions. How about the organiser requesting terrain designs from others? I am afraid there is a real danger of the Convention failing badly before long unless things tighten up before long. Incidently, I do not like this idea of invited players (even if I am one) very much because how does anybody know who the eight best players in say Mediaeval or American Civil War are? Obviously only people known to the organisers are likely to get invited to this Birmingham do, after all they cannot invite someone they have never heard of, even if he is the best player in the country. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 131 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1973 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com