From: "Walter A. O'Hara" Subject: What I did on my HISTORICON vacation (LONG) I just got back from (as my beloved puts it) "wargaming geek paradise," and I thought I'd share some thoughts. Delete if you hate travelogues. Since HISTORICON is essentially a miniatures based convention, it's no surprise that there were some excellent events on the venue this year. Naturally, I didn't get in half of them, since HISTORICON is usually attended somewhat better than COLD WARS, HISTORICON's little brother (takes place in February-March usually). Next year, I'll pre-register. Some interesting stuff was out there for the miniatures market: The Piquet crowd was there in force, pimping their new "generic rules with historic modules" approach to miniatures. I didn't sit through their spiel, so I'm disinclined to comment beyond the odd similarity to Steve Jackson's GURPS approach to role playing games. I saw a lot of John Hill's new version of Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb III, being played. I didn't get in any of these games, but it looks like a relatively easy chit-order system from what I saw. I heard some complaints about the approach towards "regimental grand tactical" gaming causing a few gamey tactics, but overall the system looks neat. You could have picked up a copy of the playtest rules for 5 bucks in the dealers' room-- I was kicking myself for not finding that windfall. I found a copy of Roads to Osaka, a Samurai era combat system. Looks pretty interesting, if straightforward and simplistic. I didn't get enough period feel out of the game. I bought a copy of GZG's Stargrunt II (a new SF squad level game) and some bargain basement SF minis in the flea market. More on SG2 after I read it! If Stargrunt is as good as Dirtside, GZG's other ground combat game, I'll get my money's worth. Old Glory was there, pushing their new 15mm Command Decision line. These are some excellent miniatures-- I'm regretting my heavy investment in 20mm lead and plastic. Oh well... On the board game front, GMT's Samurai was sighted (and bought) by yours truly. 16th Century Japan is one of my favorite eras to read about in military history and there are darn few games on the subject. I may actually learn the GBoH system to play this one! The artwork is lavish, the maps are excellent. The game system is straight GBoH with some modifications for the period (the viewing of heads, seppuku, and samurai champions... that sort of thing). A tad pricy at 44.95, but since I've been waiting for this game for almost two years I didn't mind the relatively high price. I dropped by the Avalanche Press booth. The Great War at Sea was there by the stack load. Since I pre-ordered it, Brian Knipple just handed me one to save himself the postage. I haven't played it yet (obviously) but my initial impression is that TGW@S deserves the generally favorable commentary it has received here. I like their approach; 10 pages of rules (maybe) a scenario book, and tons of counters to recreate virtually any confrontation in the Med during WWI. I suspect that this game will get a lot of replay. The Armory was unloading any Gamer's game at 50% off. Such a deal! I took advantage of it and bought Champion's Hill and No Better Place to Die for the price of *one* of their games. The Gamer's new policy of cutting out the retailer/distributor chain has had some unexpected benefits in the short term. I finally picked up a couple of issues of Vae Victus (No. 1, Tunisie 1943 and No. 6, Fontenoy 1745). I'm *very* impressed with these publications-- VV would do very well here in the states if a translated version ever shows up here. Vae Victus takes the same "what the hell, it's ALL wargaming" approach that I take to different gaming formats, thus any issue features computer game reviews, miniature figure reviews, scenarios for miniatures, board game reviews, AND a complete game in every issue! Not bad, not bad. This would be my absolute favorite wargaming magazine if it were published in English (or even American). The photography is beautiful! Speaking of which, are there any translations of Tunisie 1943 and Fontenoy 1745 floating around? My (rusty) French is sufficient to allow me to slowly puzzle out the rules, but it would be nice to have an aid to puzzle out the more technical passages. I found some interesting items in the Flea Market, notably Crescendo of Doom for 3 bucks (unpunched)-- now I've rounded out my ASL board collection. I've noticed some great games from only a couple of years ago going for dirt cheap now, like one of 3W's few excellent board games, East Front Battles I, the Blitzkrieg in the South, by Vance Von Borries. I came *that* close to buying it for five bucks, and it was gone when I went back. These prices were fairly typical-- I may start hitting the flea markets more avidly in future conventions. Internet auctions are a ripoff in comparison. I played in a couple of battles-- To Die in Madrid, a Spanish Civil War scenario, using the authors home brew No Pasaran! rules (say, there's an original title). The Republicans pulled off a marginal victory in a real squeaker. There's nothing like assaulting Panzer Ones with SMG's and Hand Grenades. Works for me, I was the Anarchist/FEI player. We *like* dynamite. I played the Taku Forts scenario put on by our local Wednesday Night Gamers from Alexandria. They used Fields of Honor from Chameleon Eclectic. I like the system in general, but find the ranges way to long for use with 25mm figures-- there's no way I could stage a battle at my house, given the table space I have, with these rules. Too bad, because FoH is a blast at conventions. I played (finally) Shipbase on Friday night. 1900 scenario, Germans vs. French. I hate to say it, since SB gets such warm press here on the list, but I was disappointed. We couldn't hit *anything* at *any* range - only a couple of primary hits during the course of the entire game! Meanwhile, the Germans were pounding us. True, I did have to take the French, and maybe crew quality is factored into the combat model, but a capital ship *should* be able to hit a ship of like size at 10" of distance, no matter how poor the crew. We conceded in disgust after having the Germans sink more than half the fleet without sinking anything larger than a motor torpedo boat on their side. Well, that was my HISTORICON Summer vacation in a nutshell. I was very impressed with it this year. The con management has improved by a significant factor from days past. I didn't wait very long in line and though I didn't get into every game I signed up for, there were always alternatives or pickup games to get into. The Holiday Inn has inaugurated a "Kids Area" for supervised play which made bringing my wife and child along an easier task. Of course, there's alway nearby "Chocolate World" at Hershey if the day gets long... Regards, Walt O'Hara PS: I only recognized Mitch Osbourne from the list. Were any other members there? From: "Walt O'Hara" Subject: Re: Historicon Recounted At 10:45 AM 7/22/96 -0600, you wrote: >Thanks for the look, Walt. Did you happen to see anything interesting in >naval miniatures / age of sail stuff? > >Doug Murphy Yes I did. There was a computer based Age of Sail set called, I think, Close for Action. Reminded me strongly of Shipbase III, with perhaps a better menuing system. It played easily enough-- the players do essentially what they do in Shipbase, which is maneuver, declare targets, and absorb the results. From the five minutes of kibbitzing I devoted to it, CFA seems to play in a more streamlined fashion than SB3, primarily due to the fact that the player doesn't have the same choices (primary/secondary/tertiary guns firing at assorted choices). I noticed my old favorite from the era when I was interested in such things, SHIP O' THE LINE/JUGGERNAUT, being played with 1:1200 scale GHQ ships on a large table marked with squares to regulate terrain. Very nice implementation of the rules with more up to date player aids (the ref had made ship cards for everyone on his home computer using counter art from HEART OF OAK, a nice touch). There were two or three other wooden ship events that I did NOT catch, including a miniatures version of WS&IM (which looked interesting), and a couple of games of Close Action, a rewrite of WS&IM for miniatures that gets played a lot in this area. Interestingly, I did not see many AOS miniatures out there. AFAIK, GHQ may be the sole producer in the States at the moment. Regards, Walt If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our kinsmen. -- Samuel Adams From: Sean Barnett Subject: Historicon after action rep Subject: Time: 11:57 AM OFFICE MEMO Historicon after action report Date: 7/22/96 Went to Historicon this weekend and had a great time. I ran a game, played in a few, and met many of my wargaming friends I see a few times a year. I had 22 people for my Guam '25 game (US vs. Japan) and more wishing to sign up. The game turned out pretty much like I expected except for the exciting ending. The two sides had battleship divisions of 4 BBs plus 2 CLs (3 for the Japanese) and 16 DDs (15 for the Japanese). The game opened with the battlelines facing off at 25,000 yds. The light forces on both sides peeled off for the center of the board, with the Japanese better organized than the Americans. The melee in the middle, with an exchange of fire and a collision, resulted in the loss of 1 US CL and 4 US DDs, and 1 Jap. CL and 1 Jap. DD. Two US DDs fired torpedoes at the Jap. BBs, hitting the Nagato once for 3,000 tons lost. The Japanese fired many more torpedoes at the US BBs, although at a range of about 14,000 yds. At that point, the battlelines had traded fire without tremendous effect, as both were inside their immune zones with respect to 14" gunfire. However, the Japanese torpedoes hit home--two struck the Oklahoma and detonated her magazines. (I replaced the model with a pile of orange, gray, and black "smoke"). That cinched the game for the Japanese. They would have had a marginal just by defeating the US light forces and being able to push the US BBs away from their landing site (the Japanese were invading Guam), but with the destruction of 1 BB to no losses of their own, they had a clear victory. I played in the Command at Sea "king of the hill with ships" game and survived about 5 minutes of combat in a French CA before being blown out of the water by one turn of fire from 2 German BCs. I also played in a "Fleets in Transition" game in a hypothetical 1870s scenario pitting a US/French squadron of ironclads (including the Dunderberg in French service) and gunboats against a Turkish squadron of turreted rams and barbette ships. The Turks won by sinking a wooden gunboat and the Dunderberg with devastating close range gunfire, and one turreted monitor through gunfire and ramming. Finally, I played in the traditional adult Godzilla game on Friday night, when a dose of silliness is appropriate after a long day of gaming. Turnout for the con was about 2,000 according to one of the organizers. If anything, there seemed to be shortage of games, not players. In addition to gaming, I talked to Charlie Spiegel of Clash of Arms, and co-designers Chris Carlson and Mike Harris about upcoming Command at Sea stuff. Supermarina II is going to be a scenario book, and will use the ship and weapon data from Supermarina I. "Fisher/Tirpitz" will be the WWI rules and will come out sometime next year (a whole new rules set will be used because of the technological differences between WWI and WWII). "Battleships and Biplanes," the War Plan Orange supplement to CaS, will come out sometime early next year (I think), and "No Sailor But a Fool Fights a Fortress," covering WWII actions against shore installations, will be out by Christmas. I also met the designer of the "Armati" ancients rules, through another friend of mine who was involved in the development of "Advanced Armati." Advanced Armati, for those who have played the basic rules, makes units more maneuverable and should be more realistic. Finally, I spent some money, but not as much as in previous years. I did pick up a couple of books, including the WWII ship painting guide published by Clash of Arms. It seems to be a pretty good resource--it covers the US, British, German, Italian, and Japanese navies, with a little information on the French, Dutch, and Russians. It also includes a paint conversion chart you can use to relate camouflage colors to commercially available paints. A note of warning: the Armory paints specified for various USN colors are only kind of close to the Floquil/Polly S colors. I would recommend Floquil/Polly S to anyone who is a stickler for realism. All in all I had a good time and would recommend Historicon or Cold Wars to anyone who plays miniatures wargames. Sean Barnett From: John Retzer Subject: Re: What I did on my HISTORICON vacation (LONG) At 10:48 AM 7/22/96 PST, Walter O'Hara wrote: > >PS: I only recognized Mitch Osbourne from the list. Were any other >members there? I also went to Historicon ... found it to be much more well-organized than when I went three years ago. None of the long, desperate lines to get into a game. Played in a terrible Mexican War game on Friday night -- the less said the better. Saturday morning found me in a Boxer Rebellion Game put on by the Wednesday Night Gamers of Alexandria. It used the Fields of Honor rules set from Chameleon Eclectic games. Its a nice, clean rules set. The only thing that took some getting used to was the extremely long ranges of the rifles. (Most of the games I play are horse-and-musket era.) The Boxer/Chinese Regular Army kicked the rears of the combined German/British/Japanese/Russian relief force -- mainly because we couldn't find an expedient way to take their prepared positions. Given a few more hours and about six feet more board on either side, perhaps we could have used our Krupps guns to pound them to sawdust, or outflank them, but ... Saturday Night was a new non-DBx medieval game called Might of Arms. It was a good enough system to get me thinking about painting some ancients again. Some things I thought interesting : ... everybody and their grandmother was selling Wild West figures. There had to be a dozen games to play there, too. ... 10mm seems to be gaining popularity. ... half the games had to be using someone's "homebrew system" Miniature gamers seem to be much more willing to create their own systems than board gamers. I don't know why. Its easier to use your computer's DTP capabilities to make up board games than to paint thousands of little figures, and create 3-D terrain (Yes, I've done both, and DTP is easier -- and cheaper -- than the figures). ... the quality of 15mm figures seems to have gone up. Most lines seem to have redone their molds, or redone their figures entirely. Whereas a few years ago, there were a large number of "impressionistic figures" (they gave you the impression of what they were supposed to be), most, if not all fo the figures I saw this year had good detail/proportion and acceptable poses. ... Figures continue to get larger. Many so-called 15s now are looking like the 20mm figs looked ten years ago. The 20s look like old 25s and the 25s are more like 30-35 in many cases. (Maybe this explains the popularity of 10s -- they're more like the old 15s. All of this points out a need for some sort of standardized measure. _______________ jretzer@dial.cic.net First off, I was kind of suprised by what seemed to me to be a very small turnout. Last year's HISTORICON 95 had been my first one and there were something like 3000 attendees supposedly in the sweltering heat and thunderstorms. COLD WARS 96 in the freezing rain and ice/snow storms had about 1300 or so and this years HISTORICON 96 in absolutely wonderful weather seemed a lot closer to COLD WARS, maybe even smaller. Is it just me? Well, I didn't come away from the dealer room once all weekend with as much cash as I entered with! I bought some more 25mm Revenge Norman cavalry to send to California for a wonderful paint job (he is really really good) by one of my old gaming buddies. This will bring me up to a total of 60 cav and 60 foot (the foot half archers half spear). Starting to be a respectable army, and it looks great. Probably get some more cav this winter to really round it out. I finally found a painted 15mm DBA army with all the options (its hard enough just to find one that actually matches the rules). Now I can finally play DBA on Wednesdays with my own figures, since no one seems to have 25mm lance-fodder for my Normans. By the way, the 15's are rather poorly painted Alexandrian Macedonians but I also got a pair of painted 15mm elephants and the bases so I can put together pratically any DBA successor army now as well without being too much of a stretch. Paid too much for them but it was better than the alternative I was considering, buying a couple hundred 15mm Later Crusaders and still having to re-base most of them. I also found a complete painted 5mm Norman and Saxon army (for tactica). Very pleased with these. Should be able to do something with these, even bought the tactica book and the supplement with the Normans and Saxons but I think I'll stick to other rule sets. Also picked up GMT's Samaurai, mostly to play with my nephew who's into that stuff and liked liked GBoA. Dropped by CoA to ask them to re-print Austerlitz (which would really piss off another friend of mine in California who has the very nice looking original sitting unpunched in his closet)! They said they actually have plans to do this in this millenium. Found an old AH Alexander at the flea market. Not sure about the completeness but worth a chance for $5. I was very very impressed by Robert Bowling's 15mm Alexandrian (?) pikemen but so was someone else because when I went back to maybe buy them all four were gone at $70 each for 32-man units. The guy can paint. And his prices are not bad for really high-quality painted lead. I was also impressed by the job someone had done at the flea market with 5mm Napoleonics which appeared to be painted better than some much larger figures I've seen. Another note- the flea market prices seemed to be actually HIGHER than in the dealer room. This suprised me. Then the games... Thursday was Romans against Carthaginians using Might of Arms. Playing the Romans, we had I think a much better plan and it paid off. We made maximum use of terrain and extanded our infantry into a single line rather than use the reserve system (admittedly a bit of gamesmanship but no one complained). My tiny flank cavalry command didn't do much against the smaller Carthaginian wing, but I didn't LOSE the battle (THE important thing for a Roman cav commander). On the other wing there was not enough room for the Carthaginians to take advantage of their superior cavalry numbers so the battle was decided in the center- and as expected this resulted in Roman victory, or would have in a matter of a couple more turns. Friday morning made it to the horse painting slide show which I had missed last year. Later in the day I played (arranged in advance to leave early to meet my family coming up) in the Emporor's HQ "Empire" Castiglioni scenario. Didn't really do anything before I left. One turn I had another Austrian on my flank and before I knew what was happening (literally) he dissappeared- his reserves turned to face a French threat to our rear- and I had lost two battalions to French cavalry charges on my now exposed flank! Left just in time. Darius would be proud! Accomplished my main objective which was to see up close and personal how the rules work. Saturday morning/afternoon was medieval naval. I was the Flemish, outnumbered 2:1 by English and 2:1 by French (one of whom was my nephew). With my usual diplomatic skills I wound up sailing down the middle and fighting both! My nephew practically sunk my ship with fire arrows and only my proximity to my island allowed me to get my crew off. After my ship sunk I got to fight off the English for possession of MY livestock on the island. I lost badly but had a good time. Saturday evening was the anticipated highlight of the convention- Rumble in Wales 25mm Norman skirmish game with BattleLust. It was all there- Beautiful Revenge/Old Glory Norman figures (with which I am very familiar now) very well painted, great-looking terrain including a novel system for representing woods (the tree tops lifted off allowing you to move figures underneath and still look like woods). Unfortunately, our Norman plan was based on faulty maps and a little too conservative especially for the alloted time. In fact, the plan probably ruined what was otherwise going to be an excellent game. I personally still had a great time pushing my 5 cav figures around but some others might have been disappointed. Better to have impetuously charged into that obvious ambush and hope for the best. Better luck next time to the organizers in what is an excellent scenario and set up. Sunday morning was more Might of Arms with Lechfeld. The Eastern Franks turned to tackle my light Magyar outflanking command (shared with someone else) and got whooped real bad by the main body since they had a hard time bringing me to fight and weren't racking up enough VP's since I didn't have the real valuable troops. What was dissappointing was that the guy running the game didn't seem to know the rules. I had just played them a few days before for the first time and I think I knew them better than he did! Managed not make it an issue except when he tried to tell me that a unit could charge only one of two units facing it equally, and only the declared target could evade with the other standing to receive. Since the Franks were not above using this kind of gamesmanship (and who can blame them when this is what the organizer tells them) had to straighten him out on this. All in all a great time as expected, and the least drain on my wallet of any of these HMGS mega-events yet. -John Murphy