The lifebood of wargaming resides in the small gatherings and clubs that dot the country. The South Jersey Confederation of Wargamers is one such club, centered around the Cape May area of NJ, about an hour east of Philadelphia, or about two hours southeast of MagWeb.com. I've known its President, John Burke, for a couple of years, and though I've been invited often enough, I finally packed up the car with the MagWeb.com rig, some goodies, some munchies, and hit the road for the club's October game day. I arrived around noon at the Optimists' Club Hall, which the club rented for the day. Club members started filing in after that, and the usual good natured bantering started immediately--I also felt immediately comfortable. I set up the computer, scattered some material around, and sat down to a brief lunch. After that, it was wargaming central. Naval Warfare I started with a Napoleonic naval game. I have no idea what the rules were called, but they were simple enough to pick up for an old tar, and my good ship started in on this demolition-derby style scenario. I started way away from just about anyone and with the wind against me. I tacked and tacked and tacked, and tacked. Then I tacked some more. The pounding started over at the other end...while I tacked even more. You see, in these rules, the wind changes direction every turn via a die roll. It will generally blow in one "direction" somewhere within a 180-degree arc. Hmmm. I ended up in irons (that is, smack against the wind and without the ability to move) about one-third of the time. Gunfire goes out to 20 inches (not sure of the scale), except to actually do any damage requires you to be within 6 inches. Starting four feet away from any other ship, and being in irons so often, as well as moving only 6" at the fastest rate possible, it took me a long time to pull within six inches of anyone. By that time, one ship had been sunk, and one severely damaged. I finally pulled up and started circling one of the relatively undamaged ships and we pounded away as the wind shifted...and shifted...and shifted. In the end, we captains saluted each other and declared a truce--more to my advantage I believe as the other captain was pounding me more than I was sending cannonballs his way. But we would be spending a fair amount of time pounding, and so we wanted to move on. I will say that the GM made a very clever turning card. In these rules, you can turn up to 45 degrees. His turning gizmo allowed you to make precision 45-degree turns in a stern swing. Sci-Fi Blasted The next game was a sci-fi slugfest using the new edition of Epic 40K. I was a Space Marine commander with a small detachment holed up in a ruined city waiting for the Imperial Guard to ride to my rescue. The bad guy Orks were coming my way to take out a spy under my command who had obtained the plans to the Death Star...er, sorry, that was a movie. But I did have a spy with some sort of important Orky info the Orks didn't want to share. Entrenched in the ruins, I slugged it out as the Orks closed. Big mistake. I should have waited inside the ruins instead of setting up at the edge. When you're outnumbered 2:1... But I figured I was the big bad Space Marines, and so got my recruiting poster mentality smacked. Then we found a variety of rules that we missed... As an aside, Games Workshop has to have the most inept rules writers known to mankind. Besides scattered rules between THREE books, there are passages that we players are reading together and interpreting in two opposite ways--and it makes a difference. This new edition is a VERY clumsy set of rules to play--the old edition was much cleaner in terms of mechanics. The old edition problems were: 1. Everything is slugged to a 6-sided die, and with the multitude of +1, +2, -1, -4 etc. modifiers, you eventually have virtual "auto-kill" weapons, and 2. The ability to fire multiple weapons individually, as well as multiple saving rolls by the target, takes lots and LOTS of die rolls to resolve in larger battles But at least every unit had its own distinct personality to an extent. With the new edition, everything gets generic firepower points, which reduce the number of dice to roll, but add so-called "barrage" markers. So you consult a chart, figure that out, pluck down the markers, alter numbers becuase of markers, and then find out that some units are special and fire individually anyway, and other units get saving throws anyway. I don't even want to talk about hand-to-hand melee. What a mish-mash mess. The best part was the abuse hurled at rules and situations by the players. The comments were insightful, and artfully ribald at times, and showed that even in the midst of rules calamities, the camradery shines through. Dinner and Beyond We had dinner at a restaurant down the street. As usual when a couple of grognards get together, we shot the breeze about a variety of topics military and historical. I found out John's a big fan of military sci-fi novels, just as I am, and we traded knowledge about a variety of authors and books. When we returned to the hall, the group was engrossed in a WWII demolition tank-hunting derby in hedgerow territory. Lots of tactical movement hugging a variety of terrain features, and quite a few plumes of thick black smoke wafting skyward. Looked like fun, but alas, I had to pack up and head northward. The group has the Hall until midnight, so you could get in a solid 12 hours of gaming if you wanted. If you're anywhere in south NJ, this should be a place to head to each month. For more information, contact: South Jersey Confederation of Wargamers 704 A Central Ave N. Wildwood, NJ 08260 609-729-9190 http://users.jerseycape.com/sjcw Back to War Lore: The List Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Coalition Web, Inc. 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