Museum of Flight 2010

Saturday was the NHMGS gathering at The Museum of Flight.  I'm sure I say this each year, but the Museum of Flight game day is my favorite gaming event of the year.  I run my air racing for half the day, and the second half is whatever.  This year I hung out at the information desk with Daveshoe and chatted up some NHMGS business with Bruce.  That was perfect because I was trying to overcome the results of insomnia, which is never any fun.  I'm going to keep this entry short and let Dale Mickel's great photos tell the story.  We had nine games going on including a full morning and afternoon session as well as DBA all day.  I enjoyed seeing everyone, as usual, and we had some great interaction with the public.  This is the best free day of gaming in the best venue in the history of miniature gaming. 

The first couple of photos give you a general idea of what's going on.  Bruce Meyer and Dave Schueler are busy setting up the info table.  Bruce ran the Gran Sasso raid to rescue Mussolini with Michael Koznarsky.  Dave did such a great job of interacting with those museum visitors that wanted to find out more about NHMGS or miniature gaming in general. The second shot is a view of the Blackbird, our gaming millieu at the museum.  I'm the guy in the black sweatshirt directing traffic during air racing.

Jeroen Koopman brought his 15mm WWII miniatures as well as guests to help him play his game.  His beautiful miniatures attracted a lot of attention from passersby.

 

Paul Hannah and Andy Hooper play a friendly game of DBA.  Paul stayed on the DBA table all day, played at least 15 games, and kept me up on the unfolding Husky disaster at Autzen Stadium (boo Ducks.)

 

Andy also brought his 20mm Spanish Civil War game to the Museum, which attracted a lot of attention in the afternoon session. 

Dale Mickel guest hosted a Tobruk game using micro-armor.  All the participants seemed to have a good time. Got some great pics of Al Rivers and Denny Hartung.  Al uncharacteristically won the morning air-racing, seems to be enjoying himself in the afternoon round. 

Lloyd Bowler and Dan Carter made the trip up from Astoria to host Wings of War in our morning session.  They are delightful guys who were, sadly, without sick buddy Dave Mebust.  They attracted a lot of interest from younger gamers ready to try out their wings. 

Last, but not least, I always run air racing at the museum.  We had five guys vying for the title of  "He Who Crashes Last."  A fun game this year, with nary a crash in the lot.  Al Rivers was the winner, but it was a nice grouping of racers.  Chris Bauermeister and Tom Bieker did quite well as the noobs.  Chris probably would have won the race in the Gee Bee except for a poorly timed stall in the last lap. 

A great day, and we'll do it again next year.

Summer Skirmish-Retreat to Bilbao

Last Saturday we held a NHMGS summer gig at the Metro Seattle Gamers clubhouse in the Interbay district.  Chuck Monson arranged the get together for us and we began planning around July 1st.  There was space for four games in morning session and four more in an afternoon session, with all the sessions spoken for.

I immediately volunteered to run a Spanish Civil War game.  It's a period and rules set that everyone seems to enjoy, and I certainly like to have an excuse to pull the figures out.  I chose a rearguard scenario in the retreat through the Basque territory in early 1937.  I read Dave Boling's excellent novel Guernica in June, really enjoyed it and thought there was the nut of a game there. 

The set up allowed for a brigade of entrenched Basque militia with a brigade of Republicans retreating on to the board.  Both would be attacked by Fascist forces in larger numbers.  There was also the likelihood the Republicans would be under air attack throughout most of the day. 

A couple of things went sideways quickly.  I planned for a 5-6 player game and instead had 9.  Not the end of the world, but crowded.  I also planned for a six food wide table, and instead had more than eight feet.  Nothing to fuss about, but I stretched out the distance the Republicans had to travel by two feet and that caused major problems for them.  They were immediately attacked by advancing Fascists-part of the plan-but it also kept them much farther from their Basque support, which was bad.  I'm always making little mistakes like this and it makes me crazy.

The first action came from the Italian brigade run jointly by Mike Snively and Arthur Brooking.  The supporting CV-33 company was picked apart by artillery fire and the accompanying infantry advanced across the open into the teeth of fire by Basques in entrenchments and the town. The Republicans sprinted up the road toward the town, but not fast enough to avoid Falangist militia advancing on their heels or a Carlist brigade coming on in reinforcement of the Italians.

The Italians eventually made their way into the town to contest the Basques, grimly holding on, but the Republican brigade, just short of surrounded by Falangists and Carlists, thought  better of things, were broken and forced from the field.

An interesting game despite my several game master errors.

Groups and More Groups, and Entering the Electronic Age

Last night we held our first NHMGS conference call. It was an interesting experiment in group dynamics. As with most Enfilade gatherings, though we don't begin randomly, we often stray from our discussion paths.

We did make some important decisions. First, we agreed that David Sullivan would continue our banner ads at the current intense rate, and throttle back the ads to a more affordable, sustainable level in a couple of weeks. We would also hit TMP with newsworthy announcements after the attendance of several notables is confirmed after Cold Wars. The idea is to keep up a drumbeat of good news about Enfilade.

We also had a useful discussion of the Citadel. We all agreed that the Citadel needed to come out on a more regular basis. My goal was a quarterly, plus one Enfilade preview. Others suggested three plus a preview. Norris agreed he would work hard to learn publisher and try to have something out by the 20th. Bruce raised the question of whether there was an interest in an electronic Citadel. He suggested a moderated Yahoo group for the Citadel in which issues were kept in the files section of the group to be accessed by NHMGS members. We agreed that the Citadel offered considerably greater creativity, with color and pictures for the authors. It was suggested that we offer the change at Enfilade in order to get some paper Citadels out to cover our lack of newsletters over the past year, before making this change.

I agreed to begin another new Yahoogroup covering the decision makers in Northwest conventions. We agreed that some business conducted on our Faithful group should be kept between us, and that some material in our files section was sensitive. I promised to set this up next week.

We agreed to raise the heat on the membership on the NHMGS group to get in their games and make their hotel reservations. I promised to approach Eric Hotz about including information about Enfilade on the Trumpeter website. I expressed my happiness with the number of committed games to date, and also suggested we get out our PEL to as many places as possible with regular updates.

NHMGS Auction a Success

Saturday we held the auction at American Eagles in Tacoma. The attendance was light, but not ridiculous. About 35 buyers and sellers exchanged some $1,300 in gaming treasures. There were no items that brought down the house. The painted miniatures were nice, but small in scope, and fetched low prices from the crowd. There were, of course, lots of rule books, some Ospreys, and many collections of unpainted miniatures. There was a pleasingly higher strata of trash this year, with nothing that fell into category of utterly worthless.

It was, of course, great to see everyone at the auction. I hadn't seen Mark Serafin since Enfilade. I had a pleasant breakfast with David Sullivan. I made future game plans with Dennis Trout. It was great to see Max Vekich, who is among my oldest friends on the planet. It was especially wonderful, however, to visit with Mike Pierce. Mike was the founding mind of Enfilade, the person who said we could make it work, and he was right. Mike ran the convention for the first two years, and showed us how it was done. It was great to catch up, share about our grown up families, and talk the tribulations of running conventions. He is now the director of Fall-In.

I liked the format of the auction. The silent auction was effective, and kept the live auction to a mere 40 minutes instead of the endless affair it usually is. I'd like to change the format a bit next year, with a silent auction lasting about two hours instead of the 4 1/2 hours of yesterday. We'll follow the same rules for silent and live auction-unless we get a lot of feedback from participants. I'm considering other sites for the auction for 2007, but everything depends on availability.

Special thanks to those who volunteered their time to the auction. Bryan Shein ran a Dogs of War game, and still managed to effectively auction off all the painted goodies in the live auction.
Arthur Brookings and Dennis Trout helped set up the silent auction, were the runners during the live auction, and reduced me to the status of door post with all of their work. Bruce Meyer was our comedian, and oh, by the way handled all of the money, devised a system on the fly for getting money from buyers to sellers, and made this one of the smoothest auctions ever. NHMGS made just under $500 through donation items and fees for the day.

Me, I got some cool stuff. I ended up with three sets of ancient and medieval rules--Revenge, Tactica Medieval and Warrior. I got a very nice del Prado figure of an International Brigade soldier, and a gazillion Ral Partha Hellenestic figures from Steve Ghan. The latter will be used to fill out my 25mm Republican Romans.

The NHMGS calendar

It's another rainy weekend, with a great deal more time spent painting the family room than little men. I've begun this blog as a live update for the NHMGS website. As many of you know, our website, which is a great resource, has not been updated recently, and there are many important upcoming events. Think of this as your calendar of events:

February 18th-19th Harborstorm. This is Bruce Meyer's annual DBA tournament. This year it is hosted at ConQuest, a new multi-genre convention, and is held at the Sea-Tac Marriott February 17-20. Their address is: http://avalonconventions.com/conquestnw/index.php?center=coninfo.php

3201 South 176th Street
Seattle, Washington 98188

Expect some other NHMGS members to host events. Paul Hannah is hosting DBA on Friday night and Saturday. Ian Croxall will be hosting one of his excellent Red Shadow games on Sunday.

We're not sure what to expect at ConQuest, but consider taking a shot and spending some time there. This could be a valuable winter event for us. For further information go to:


February 25th NHMGS Auction
This is the date for our annual fund raiser. This year we are American Eagles in Tacoma. This is the information for the auction:

The auction will be mostly silent. The rules are as follows:

· Sellers are limited to a maximum of ten lots.

· Live auction is limited to A) painted miniatures and B) silent auctions that receive bids of at least $50.

· Sellers pay NHMGS 10% of their proceeds.

· Sellers may make donation items available to NHMGS

Sellers must first focus on setting up their auctions. The silent auction will last from 10:00-2:30. At this time auction staff will wrap up silent auction items, have buyers and sellers complete their transactions. My goal is to have silent auction items wrapped up by 4:00, so we can have a short but lively live auction session.

The format will feature a time for morning gaming from 10:00-1:00. If there is enough interest, we can have a second game period from 1:00-4:00 We can host games on two large tables (6’ X 10’.) If you are interested in hosting a game, please contact me—first come first served. We are mostly looking for something fun and low stress that handle a fair number of people.

March 10-12th Trumpeter Salute

This is the annual Trumpeter hoo-hah game fest in Burnaby, B.C. I go nearly every year and always have a good time. There is a huge variety of games: usually a DBM tournament, 40K tournament, and tons of good looking displays and friendly dealers happy to take your American dollars at a reasonable exchange. I often take my wife, who also takes my American dollars, and disappears into neighboring Metrotown, a mondo shopping mall. It's a good thing the convention is reasonably priced. For more information, consult the Trumpeter web page: http://www.trumpeterclub.com/

June 9-11 Enfilade

Yes, it's true, we try to schedule our flagship event for Memorial Day weekend, but we couldn't make it work this year. We have a couple of big events scheduled for this year, including a 300th anniversary Battle of Ramillies, and Little Big Horn. It will be great. We return to the Olympia Red Lion. I will be sure to post more information as it becomes available.