Entry 200: MLK Weekend Gaming

I have a couple of topics I'd like to cover in this entry, my 200th. One topic that's been raised is regarding NHMGS participation at multi-genre game conventions such as ConQuest and Dragonflight. I have a connection and a certain attachment to these cons. They are run by good people whose company I truly enjoy, gamers like me who just enjoy different games.

Gabriel Vega is the owner of Avalon games that runs the ConQuest conventions up the west coast. These are for-profit conventions, meaning if there is a profit, he gets it. It's risky, speculative and challenging. I wouldn't want to make my living hosting conventions. He is a kind and generous man and I enjoyed working with him four years ago as a historical miniatures coordinator. Mark Verdeck is the man at ground zero for Gabe, who lives in Southern California. Mark coordinates the coordinators and has his finger on the pulse of Seattle area gaming. Well, some of the gaming.

Which brings me to my next point, and that is the NHMGS connection or lack thereof to ConQuest and Dragonflight. First there is no official NHMGS policy on these two conventions. I can say that as the president. After my term as Enfilade director expired, I agreed to work for both conventions and tried to drum up business in historical miniatures. For one year I had success at each, but not beyond the one year. I can't account for this. It's the same convention, the same location and not many variables between years. For what ever reason, members were reluctant to support. I can offer several examples, excuses, explanations, and I'm not sure any of them are correct, but here goes:

1. Both conventions are costly--unless folks pre-register months in advance. Our guys just don't do that. At Enfilade folks can pre-register up until about May 10th. The difference for our guys between pre-register and walk-up is five bucks. A much bigger difference for the other two.
2. Historical miniatures are like round pegs in square holes at multi-genre conventions. Guys can show up with board games, or 40K armies, or to role-play and can expect to find someone to play their game. If I show up with a historical miniature game, unless I have friends coming to play it, the chances my game, which I just paid a sizable admission to host, likely won't get played. I have been to cons hoping to do "missionary" work, trying to draw some interest from those who weren't historical miniaturists. It just didn't work. I have scars from trying.
3. These conventions have little to draw historical miniaturists beyond a place to play. We don't all have homogeneous interests, use the same set of rules for a historical period beyond, perhaps, DBA or Fields of Glory. There isn't a big promotion or even a guest they could offer us to spur interest. The money isn't there, and the directors don't know our branch of the hobby well enough. That isn't true for the CCG players, the role-players or the GW gamers.

In any case, I write this not to bad-mouth ConQuest or Dragonflight and their practices. I think what they do is great, but we are just not the audience meant for their convention. I would never discourage our members from attending, and, in fact, encourage them to attend if it suits their time or budget. Many of our guys also cross over neatly to board games, and that's another avenue to enjoy the con. It's more problematic as a historical miniatures venue.

Monday was the Martin Luther King holiday, and as a school teacher I had the day off. There were enough of us celebrating the holiday that we agreed to get together for a game at Game Matrix. Mark Waddington offered to run his Isandahlwana game. I'd heard much about it, but never played, so I raised my hand and said I was interested. The game is a simplified version of The Sword and the Flame, so skazillions of units are easily run. The British start the game knowing they will eventually be slaughtered, but they earn points for breaking Zulu units (which are recycled) and the Zulus earn points for killing British, capturing the camp and wagon park, as well as those fleeing Brits that may wear red or bear the regimental standard.

We got there on time and the game was a pretty quick set up. I offered to play Zulus, and ran the right "horn" with Arthur Brooking. The job of the right horn in this battle is to be the blocking force as British resistance to the Zulu onslaught breaks resistance in the encampment apart and refugees begin to flee the camp. The entry of the right horn was delayed until turn 3, so it took some time to get going.

Arthur and I had five ten man units. He launched one of them against one of the 24th Regiment's companies and played a key role in driving them to destruction. I took the other four units and began driving across the Savannah--smack into the Natal Mounted Rifles commanded by Dave Schueler. Dave played it pretty cagey, always withdrawing in front of surging commands and giving us a blast in the face for our troubles. He always got the draw after my leading units, so was able to evade our charges.

That worked until he ran out of real estate. By then I was across the trail leading to the ford over the river, and the few British refugees from the debacle in camp were accounted for by Zulu units. Though our units had no part in the serious fighting, we did finally dispatch Dave's horsemen and were facing no further organized units when the game was called. The right horn had moved into the narrow pass and the block was complete. Mark declared it a victory for the Zulus, though not an overwhelming one. All in all it was much fun.


It was a sort of weird day however. There was major fire in some shops just up the street. Three shops including a thrift shop and tire store were badly damaged and firefighters fought the blaze most of the time we were gaming. The smoke got nasty at times, depending on the way the wind was blowing.

Drumbeat 2009

Lots of important annual events began as small, informal affairs that magnify in their impact as time goes on. Bing Crosby used to call his little stop at Pebble Beach on the PGA tour his "clambake." I think Dick Larsen's gathering on Beacon Hill each January similar. It's something special. It has the merit of location in Seattle. It is intimate. Although I ran a game virtually all day, I could still get around to see most of the games, say hello to friends, see what was going on.

Max Vekich and Herbie Fairbanks hosted a pretty substantial Sword and the Flame game in Afghanistan. It was almost as long as my own game, and all the gamers seemed to have a good time. Bill Stewart hosted an American Civil War Game using Black Powder Rules. More about this later. Mitch Berdinka and Mark Waddington hosted a Napoleonic game using La Salle rules. Damond Crump hosted a good looking Patrol game down at the far away end of the room. Dean M. ran some WWI WABishness, and Mark Serafin ran Kampfgruppe Commander, and Gary Williams had some very cool 28mm Jacobites. .

As promised, I ran my St. Jean game, and old friends Darin Howard and Tom Biecker were two of the players, together with friend Joel and Darin's brother George. Darren, Tom and I go way back to the old Fire and Steel Napoleonics days and seeing them is a very pleasant blast from the past.

Joel took the role of Prince Edward/Warwick, while George was Holland. Darin managed the town defenses while Tom was Eu in charge of the fortification. Though the result was pretty similar to last week's game, the process was a lot different. Darin pushed the town defenses into the houses, though the French players also built the barricade defenses. I gave them a barricade to defend on the bridge as well, which made some tough sledding for the English. It was historical, and I thought it made sense. The English assault force of knights took it from light bolt shooters on the towers (which I remembered to pack.)

George's assault on the barricade started off well. He employed his arrowstorm effectively, and made average die rolls to beat up militia on the barricade. He effectively dispatched a small force of town militia that Darin used aggressively to buy time. The militia crossbows were pretty ineffective. More thoughts on this later. George pushed aggressively on to the barricade.

Joel's assault also had considerable initial success. He ran his three knight units right up the bridge and attacking at the barricade. He took a lot of missile fire, but absorbed it, and even though he suffered a lousy exchange at the barricade, held morale until the French defenders withdrew inside the barbican. The arrow exchange with the cogs was no contest, with the defenders swept clear after two turns of sustained fire with the longbowmen. The Welsh slowly, but successfully waded the river and eventually joined the attack on the barricade.

George's assault ground down as he ran out of effective assault troops. His Bretons were snuffed by knights on the barricades and he was forced to use his bowmen as shock troops. The results weren't pretty, but he effectively eliminated Darin's command and wore down Tom's regular troops. The barbican defenders were faced with troops assaulting at the front door, and as Joel was able to move to the flanks. By the end of the game (turn 10) with English on the roof of the gatehouse and the barricade thoroughly breached I declared the game in favor of the English. It was a good, tight game and all players were clever and creative. I thoroughly enjoyed gaming with all four of the guys and look forward to doing it again.

In terms of the scenario, a couple of ideas have crossed my mind. I'd like to move the river a bit closer to the Prince of Wales' side of the board and give Holland a bit more ground to cover. I think the English bow fire works well. I think the crossbow fire is penalized a bit too much. I think giving them half fire works, but eliminate the additional penalty for firing at knights. Still penalize for firing into fortifications and behind cover, but allow for the enhanced penetrating power of the crossbow.

Next game is at Game Matrix on the 18th. All of we public employees, or those not working, will get together for a little Zulu action.

ConQuest '09

Today I went off to the fourth ConQuest NW. I didn't go happily. I hadn't gotten much buzz about the convention. It's large, multi-genre and frankly those cons are pretty risky. I agreed to run Thunderboats!, but would there be anyone to play it? What would happen after that? I agreed to play in Chris Ewick's DBA open tournament, but I really didn't want to? Finally, and not least, I've been incredibly busy on the weekends the last six weeks or so, and honestly I just needed some down time. I slept about four and half hours, and left the house a seriously unhappy camper.

Fortunately, the best part about conventions is seeing folks I really enjoy, and today was no different. Thunderboats! is a great convention game. I ran five guys through a one heat race in the morning and then participated in a three heat race myself later in the day. It was fun. Randy O'Bannon and his friend Nate, Bill Vanderpool, Mike Snively and I wended our way through three heats. I blew my engine in both of the first two heats, but did manage to finish the final in Miss Spokane. It was fun. There were many nitrous bottles purchased, some of which lit their boats on fire like so many flaming torches.

Another pleasant surprise was a game that I took part in for the late afternoon. Andy Hooper ran a DBA extension game of the Boxer Rebellion. It took a bit of getting used to, avoiding the temptation to melee as a colonial commander. Once I was able to get used to playing a firepower game-as well as a catastrophic string of rolling the dreaded numero uno-it went pretty well. I liked the game, and may investigate what it would take to do something similar for ACW in 15mm or 25mm.

I did run into folks I knew, Gabe Vega, Ed Texeira, Mark Verdeck and others. By the time I left around 4:00 I was exhausted, but was glad I went. Came home and took a nap.

Reports From Afar

This post has a number of purposes. First, it is my 100th post. I know they were pretty few and far between the first couple of years, but I'm pleased that I've settled into a system of regular posts in 2008. Maybe it's my own form of journalism now that I'm a student journalism adviser (yes that's the correct spelling in journalism-land.) The other fact I'd like to point out is that nearly 1700 visitors have landed on this blog, and I'd like to thank you for visiting. Thanks too for those of you who have had something to say. It's been nice to have posts to respond to.

Next, there are a couple of events coming up if you happen to be in the proper neighborhood. In eastern Washington SpoCon is a multi-genre convention at Gonzaga University in Spokane August 1-3. Information about the con is here http://spocon.us/ . Though this is more a sci-fi convention than anything else, there appear to be board games, rpg's and historical miniatures as well. Mike Clinton has mad noises about hosting Watch Your Six! air games, and there seems to be some Flames of War and other games planned.

The following weekend is Dragonflight in beautiful Bellevue, WA. Again this is a multi-genre gaming convention, probably the largest in Washington state. It's a good con, though historical miniatures are frequently under-represented. It's a tough gig. The con isn't cheap unless one pre-registers, and not only are games needed but gamers are needed. Information about Dragonflight is located here http://www.dragonflight.org/

My good friend Doug Hamm likes to keep me posted about game nights at the Bonsor Centre in Burnaby, B.C., home of the Trumpeter Club. They meet one Friday per month and host some fabulous games. The Bonsor Centre is a community center with lots of stuff going on, and it is a very practical, affordable venue for a gaming club. This month Doug and others played a 15mm Fire and Fury ACW game. How long has it been since you dragged your 15mm ACW out of the closet?

Doug wrote:

Here are a few photos from the recent game of the fictional "Cedar Run" 15mm ACW game hosted by me.

As usual it seems, I remembered most things one needs to put on a good game: terrain (woods, roads, fences, houses etc etc) but forgot the more obvious: like the dice and the rules!! Luckily, my friend Dennis brought his so all was good. Had more players than anticipated but I was making up the scenario anyway :-)

Will not bore you with all the details suffice it to say that my die rolling was a poor as ever as my two brigades never got into action as I rolled six 1s in eight attempts to get any of them off the road!! (the remaining two throws were a 2 and 3 - again not helpful! For the "Fire and Fury" rules 1s are bad and thus I could not even shake out of road column (I was in reserve). Luckily the Union were not in position to hurt me and the other Confederate players were busily defeating a Union force almost twice their size!

I used many of my 'special' units for this game; brigades represented by actual regiments of the war. The picture of the clash in front of the barn shows Wheat's Zouaves defending again the 165th NY Zouaves in the foreground. The close up shot from the back shows the 146th NY Zouaves (please be kind to the painter as these ARE 15mm and I paint fast) and another unit of 72nd PA moving through the woods. The final shots shows part of the action.

If you don't know Doug, he is a fabulous painter and creates some very nice, very practical terrain pieces. He is also half of the creative team of Larry Leadhead, and yes one is the most likely number Doug will roll regardless of the game system he is playing.

Finally, David Sullivan has begun writing a blog. David is another dear friend, possibly the smartest person I know and he loves ancients, cats, conservative politics, and shooting his cool collection of firearms. He is currently the director of Enfilade and has done loads of stuff for NHMGS. I've put a link to David's blog "I Live With Cats" in my links section. He is a great writer and a wonderful photographer. His entry on FoG is awesome.

Dragonflight

Last weekend was Dragonflight. Dragonflight is a multi-genre convention that has struggled over the past few years. It has had little miniature participation, and virtually no historical miniatures. As I have explained in a previous post, I was approached about running historical miniatures through NHMGS and bringing our guys along to play the games.

We pre-registered about 40 guys at a reduced fee, and we scheduled 15 games. In the past, when our members went to Dragonflight and scheduled games, they had difficulty attracting gamers to play them. This weekend every game scheduled went off as planned, though some could have handled more players. I felt that our participation was a success and I hope to continue this practice for next year.

I played in several games. Friday afternoon I played the French and Indian War Sword and the Flame variant. I had a great time. It was Norris Hazelton's game, and it was fun to play the Indians and pirates with David Sullivan and Arthur Brooking.

Saturday morning I jumped into Mitch Berdinka's General de Brigade game. It's been a long time since I played Napoleonics, and honestly I had a lot of fun. It is an interesting rules set, and I think it would be reasonably easy to learn and play. I am not, however, tempted to do Napoleonics. The scenario was Maida. We, the British, lost, but I still had a good time.

Saturday afternoon I got into Steve Winter's Spanish Armada game. It was a hoot. It is somewhat abstracted, but very enjoyable, with each team taking a turn as the English and the Spanish. I teamed with Dave Schueler and Peter Wort. We played well and had a good time, but managed to lose. It is one of those games when being unlucky matters, and we didn't have much good fortune.

I also ran a couple of games. I re-ran my Storming Party game from Enfilade. It was fun with John Kennedy, young Gil Fussell, Norris and Arthur. The English had a difficult time getting started. The French, led by John festooned many of the English attackers with crossbow bolts and ballista shafts. Eventually the English brought their onager into action and the longbowmen began to hit exposed defenders on the wall. However, the ladder assaults were costly, frequently deterred by deadly baskets of rocks dropped from the walls. The English finally killed the armored defenders and cleared their way into the gatehouse on the last turn of the game.

Saturday night I ran a scenario, I've always wanted to play--Kearsarge vs. Alabama--using the Ironclads rules. I went to a lot of trouble during the days leading up to the convention trying to get the ships painted and rigged, and they looked great. Enough rigging to give them a solid appearance, but still good wargaming miniatures. I also applied the gloss gel medium thicker over layers of blue and green paint, and the effect was a very nice watery base. In any case, the scenario was weighted heavily in favor of Kearsarge. I gave points to Alabama for doing damage to the Union sloop, and points to Kearsarge for the quickness with which it sank the Confederate raider. It didn't quite work out as I planned. Both players took turns running each ship, and in both cases, Alabama was fairly impotent against Kearsarge and earned no points. Both players earned five points by sinking Alabama on the fifth game turn, so things ended up a tie.

I didn't return on Sunday, but the weekend was certainly worth my time. It was great.

ConQuest and Dragonflight: Mountains to Scale

Last weekend I attended ConQuest as a guest of the convention. I've never had something like that happen before and I was flattered. On Saturday I played DBA in Paul Hannah's tournament, and played a couple of pick up games too. That is always fun. Many of the other historical miniatures games languished through a lack of players. Even Bruce's Harborstorm event was poorly attended.

Later in the day I met with Gabriel Vega, the owner of ConQuest and John Wootress, a Dragonflight organizer and supporter of Enfilade. Both encouraged NHMGS participation at the two conventions. Gabriel even encouraged a financial relationship among the conventions. I responded that I would do the best I could, that the financial aspects were big picture items I couldn't make promises about, but would encourage NHMGS participation at Dragonflight and ConQuest. I encouraged Gabriel to attend Enfilade and he agreed.

On Sunday, after getting little done at home, I drove back to ConQuest to attend a dinner to celebrate the inaugural sailing of the convention. I met Allan Dyer there and hung out with the convention organizers and supporters. I had a most pleasant conversation with Nicole Lindroos of Green Ronin Publishing about school, and chatted with Allan and Chris Pramas about miniature gaming. In his introduction and remarks about NHMGS Gabriel was quite complimentary and solicitous of our support. I followed up our evening with an offer to coordinate miniatures events at Dragonflight and ConQuest.

Since the convention, I've been trying to gauge the lay of the land in terms of NHMGS support for historical miniature games at both conventions, and I've taken a two pronged approach.

1. On our leadership group I've proposed an NHMGS presence at both of the other conventions. However, rather than focusing on the draw of pulling non-miniaturists into our games, we would have fixed game periods as at Enfilade, with perhaps 5-8 periods over a weekend. We would try to set up four games per period and perhaps pre-register players for that game. That way there wouldn't be games unplayed for a lack of gamers. Bruce Meyer also had a serious discussion about a NHMGS rate that would reflect the customary rates historical miniature gamers pay at conventions, such as Enfilade and Historicon. My view is if we can provide organized, high-quality gaming at a familiar price to our membership, show the flag to non-historical miniature gamers, and bring in paying customers to these cons, then everybody wins.
   
2. On our membership group, the feedback regarding the convention has been largely negative. Those who attended the convention were frustrated by a lack of organization, admission prices they felt were exorbitant, and a lot of sitting around. I haven't shared a lot of my thinking there, hoping to do that here with opportunities for interested parties to respond.
   

My goal is to move this agenda head with buy-in from the stakeholders, and some guidance from our membership.