From: David Ferris Subject: Cold Wars '99 After Action Report Allan Rothberg pleads: > To any and/or attendees of Cold Wars this past weekend, > Any after action reports guys? > C'mon, not all of us were so fortunate as to get to attend, so I > (for one) have to live vicariously through those of you who did. Oh, all right. Setup Phase There had been some controversy lately about the actual attendance of the HMGS East conventions, and how attendance was calculated. The headcount for Cold Wars over the past few years has usually been reported at about 1300 to 1600, with the pessimists saying that's probably closer to 1000 and the optimists claiming it was over 2000. I don't know, but I thought the place was packed, and I thought attendance was a tad higher than last year. The more reliable sources seem to be saying that overall attendance at the HMGS East cons is increasing by a slow but steady 5% or so per year. My personal observations over the years would agree with that. Movement Phase I made it to the Lancaster Host Resort on Thursday evening, the night before the con opened. I was surprised to find the hotel packed with wargamers. Many of us were suffering the "wargame convention withdrawal jitters" because Cold Wars took place a month later than usual this year. Economics & Production Phase As in years past, my main reason for going to these conventions is to acquire loot in the vendor room and flea market. The past year had been a good one for me so I was able to reward myself with a mad shopping spree. Heading straight for the Hallmark/Figurehead 1:6000 scale naval miniatures vendors, I spent the next 90 minutes picking out WWI and WWII ships. I now have a complete collection of all the ships of WWII (minus 4 packs (16 ships) which I should be able to get at Historicon) and all of the WWI ships down to light cruiser level, and most of the WWI destroyers. I still have about 40 packs of WWI destroyers and torpedo boats to get, then that'll be done. Next year: age of sail. The really good news from the naval miniatures front is that the Hallmark/Figurehead guy has decided to extend his coverage in both directions, to include American Civil War naval in 1:2400 scale and modern (post-1945) in 1:6000. Joy. I also picked up a bunch of microarmour, and finally started acquiring microarmour scale infantry. I snarfed up many packs of Heroics & Ros Germans, US, British, Soviet, Italians, French, and Japanese. I fear them, for now I must paint and mount them. Of course I also bought the obligatory sets o' rules: Mein Panzer, Command Decision 3rd Ed, SimCan Man o' War, and an ACW naval set called Smoke on the Water. I picked up the old SPI titles Firefight, Breitenfeld, ACW, Modern Battles Quad, Roman Civil War (or Fall of Rome? can't remember which) and Ardennes. For the more culturally sophisticated pursuits, I also bought Falling and Give Me the Brain. Combat Phase Scheduling errors abounded, this year more than most I thought. My friend Pete Frechtling had registered to run a game on Friday and again on Sunday. The Sunday event went as planned but the Friday event was a mess. It was listed in the PEL (Preliminary Event Listing) that was sent out a month before the convention, but was mysteriously dropped from the convention schedule. Saturday morning at 11:00 am I was browsing the schedule and noticed that Pete was listed as running a game at 10:00 am. I wandered around to find Pete and asked him if he knew about that. He didn't, and was somewhat alarmed. We went up to the registration desk to ask about it. They couldn't find any record at all of the mysterious 10:00 am event (even though it was printed in the schedule) but they *did* had him listed as running the event at 2:00 pm. Pete and I looked at each other, did a double take, and went off to gather his game gear. Despite the scheduling agita, Pete's game (the Leonardo da Vinci game with all the gorgeous, meticulously painted 25mm miniatures) went off pretty well. Since the event wasn't listed anywhere (except in the Scheduling Gods' notebook) there were no pre-registrants, but we managed to get some passers-by to play. I couple of kids (I'd guess in the 8 to 10 year old range) and their dad played one side and obviously had a good time. I played opposite them as we had a shortage of players. We had to wrap it up early due to time constraints, but there was much carnage. My tank did not blow up, so I was happy. Saturday evening I managed to squeeze into Walt O'Hara's western game, featuring a hunt for Easter eggs (jelly beans). This game included four kids and three adults. Somehow I won, despite being shot in a dastardly fashion. Sunday morning I met up with Norbert Brunhuber and we played in a naval miniatures game using the Battlefleet rules. These rules are available as a free download from the Internet (what a great idea!). Unfortunately, this system uses range estimation, much to the annoyance of most of the players. Fortunately we were using 1:6000 scale ships on a relatively small tabletop, so we were guessing ranges between 2 centimeters and 60 cm, which is a lot easier than doing that on a basketball court or tennis court and having ranges in the hundreds of inches. Unfortunately again, even when you guessed the right distance, you still have to roll a 1d12 and get a 9 or higher, so it was very tough to get any hits. Despite the frustration, I was hitting consistently from the second turn through to the end when we had to leave. I lost one of my four light cruisers, but broke up an entire formation of the enemy fleet in doing so. This game system worked surprisingly well for a battle of this size; we were doing Tsushima (Russo-Japanese War, 1905) with all the ancilliary ships and destroyers, so there must have been 70 or 80 ships on the board. With 9 players, we had reached a reasonable conclusion after 5 hours. Overall, another great wargame convention. I enjoyed myself. DLF _____________________________________________________________________ David Ferris Senior Technical Staff Member dferris@research.att.com AT&T Labs Research Room B015, 973-360-8664 http://www.research.att.com/info/dferris From: BillR54619@aol.com Subject: Re: Cold Wars '99 After Action Report Uh - I really only got to spend Saturday at Cold Wars. I didn't get in on time Friday before the registration desk closed, and didn't really feel up to Midnight Madness anyhow. Stayed in a little hovel of a motel on US 30 east of town, got tied up watching the first half of "The Alamo" on TV and missed the 10 AM games. Wonderful Bavarian mountain terrain on one of the Napoleonics boards. I ended up in the 12 AM run on the Montmirail table (15 mm From Valmy to Waterloo rules) next door. Well run game, decent terrain. I ended up commanding the Russian center, fighting off the Imperial Guard with line troops and jaegers in wet weather - firepower reduced to conscript, movement reduced, cannons stuck in the mud. I had good defensive terrain, and stacked one division behind the other, attempting to defend in depth. Our opponents were NOVAG boys, the Napoleon's Battles bunch. Tactically crude play (Hey, what do you expect from Napoleon's Battles players ?) - but with the Old Guard and limited firepower, who needs finesse ? One brigade of the Old Guard kept knocking back my forward division, one battalion after another, and I just kept feeding 'em into the fight and they just kept on coming for more, until Rudy realized that I was sucking him in to get hit on his flanks. So they pulled back and waited for the second echelon (Young Guards) to catch up. Well, they captured about a third of the dairy farm, and the Old Guard cavalry was moving up for the kill when time ran out (the Cossack cavalry on my left had charged and valiantly ran away, but they had delayed the French cav long enough to get the Prussians up on our left. So it was basically a wash. Historical results, by and large. I think we would have held on to the bitter end, but the Guards artillery was moving up, and....well.... you can't prove the what ifs, one way or the other. I did learn that I really needed to space my second line more than 200 meters from the first, because From Waterloo to Valmy has this pursuit rule that allows a charging (infantry !!) unit to just keep on charging like the Energizer bunny when a second line battalion is in range behind the first. My lateral dispersion was okay, and as my poor pathetic Russkis kept routing and retreating back, they were nicely covered by fresh friendly troops that helped them rally quicker. (Route distance is 500 meters, retreats usually about 200) But with Guards cavalry around, some of my battalions got caught in square by assaulting Guards infantry - not a good thing. I talked to Jonathan Coulter of ODGW about Battleline. Looks pretty clean - I generally like their stuff. I was tempted to play the Quebec Liberation game in the Mein Panzer room, but found something a bit more tempting - Russian airdrop in the Kanev offensive. I ended up playing the partisan commander. Really good game. Hard fought on both sides, good reasonable opponents. We didn't get through with that game either - I captured the line of fox holes on the southeast side of the bridge, and was trying to work a squad reinforced out of the northeastern trenches. Grenades were working great, but submachine guns were even better if I could get close enough; my Maxim MG was well sited, good fields of fire, but masked from the German's heavy weapons. The Soviet paras were coming up, and assaulting on the west side. There was dispute with the GM over rules (similar system to Battleground - 20 mm figures). After the game, I helped the GM with pickups (after going back to the Montmirail table to see how the night game had gone - the Russians had not done as well, had an entire infantry brigade go away in the center). Turned out he was an army colonel, and we had served in sister battalions on Sullivan Barracks in Mannheim. We talked til about 2 AM, about old times and new trends, then I headed home. Bill R.