I copied and pasted my H'con 2018 report from my AAR (a PDF) here. No photos, just the text about games I umpired and played in, observations, and other items of interest. The full PDF ran to 23 pages, so I split it up depending on the topic. This is a recap of various games I stopped to watch for a little while. --RL
FRIDAY: Walkabout
Besides a trip to the dealer hall and flea market, I walked around, stopped to chat, gawked at some of the craftsmanship, and watched some of the tabletop events play out. The Distelfink and Lampeter rooms were generally hopping with activity.
Command Decision: Double Blind Sicily
Jake and Marc have been running these double blind WWII Command Decision games for years. These are usually night actions, so spotting is limited to 4 inches (I think that's about 200 yards in CD terms) and both of them hop back and forth between the two identically terrained tables that are separated by a sheet.
This scenario was US versus Germans and Italians in Sicily. I snapped the photos one after another so it shows one brief moment in the game. I believe the US objective was to drive from one corner of the table to the other, or at least that's what the tanks look like they were doing.
Of note was a US tank thrust in the middle of the board, unawares of a German tank column just a little further on… Or maybe it was a German tank column unaware of a US tank thrust…
Normandy 1944
Prof. Steve Waddell of West Point ran a WWII skirmish game with a heckuva nice board. Of note, each infantryman had a small label clipped to the back of the base with name and important stats. A buddy of mine does that with English Civil War units -- helps quite a bit during a game to just look at the base and find the stats.
HAWKS Room
The HAWKS (Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers) always host a weekend-long variety of games enjoyed by enthusiastic gamers and this convention was no different.
A Combat Patrol skirmish game offered an Operation Sea Lion feel with a Heinkel HE-111 crash landing near a seaside English village while Germans wade ashore. The various British forces, from soldiers to Home Guard to women with farm implements try to repel the Germans, who are busy shooting up the defenders.
From the short time I observed the game, I believe Combat Patrol uses a deck of cards to resolve combat instead of dice. At least when the Germans shot, Pat flipped over cards looking at one part of the card for his shots to be in range, then flipped another card hoping that a tree (target cover) did not appear on another part of the card, and if the first two cards were a go, then flipped a third card to find damage.
On the adjacent table, a GM was setting up his Train Heist game with what looked to be a 1920s or 30s car nearby. The train was built for function, each car being a rectangle with plenty of space for figures inside. I'm going to call it a gangster heist game, but it could be used for Wild West, modern spy, or any other game calling for a train.
Operation Scimitar: NATO vs. Turkey
If my room wasn't down a particular corridor, I never would have known this game of Russian interference that prompts NATO to invade Turkey existed. Technically, this modern 6mm game was located in rooms HO 1 and 2. I passed it a couple of times, then finally stopped in. The game would play throughout the entire convention, for when I showed up, I saw some of the defending Turks and attacking NATO allies were destroyed as other attackers pushed inland, only to be hit by ambushing defenders.
One room held the main landing area, complete with ship models, while the other room held an airfield. As I recall, some random Turkish elements would oppose NATO while others would support the invasion.
The first time I was there on Friday, the Greeks with M-60 tanks were following up the initial NATO attack. When I stopped by on Saturday, German armor had pushed into a little town and were pretty much wiped out by a swarm of ambushing infantry with RPGs and anti-tank weapons.
Paint Class
I'm not sure, but I think the first rule of Paint Class is not to talk about Paint Class. Located in the front room of the hotel, which old timers would remember as the country western bar and dance club, talented artists offered tips and techniques to improve your painting.
I watched 'Evil Bob' offer tips for painting a 25mm WWII German soldier, including base colors, washing, highlighting, which parts of the miniature to paint first, and so on. Better yet, the students -- for this reminded me a real art class -- used the same brushes and paints to put the techniques to metal.
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In another class, and I'm sorry I did not get her name, the artist explained differences in brush types, manufacturers, and retailers while providing painting advice.
Lampeter Tournament Area
A full range of tournaments were available all weekend long. I don't know how many played in any given tournament, or the standings of those who participated, but I saw a lot of people rolling a lot of dice, so that's got to be a good thing.
I'm not a tournament player, but I imagine that after three rounds in a day, the players must feel pretty drained.
SATURDAY: Walkabout
Rally 'Round The Flag
Just off the hotel lobby, I stopped by to watch a demo of Rally 'Round The Flag (RRtF) by Jeff Billings of Lost Battalion Games. I had noticed a large map in the dealer area and this proved a perfect opportunity to try and learn what it was all about.
RRtF uses cards to activate commands and units, with some allowing moves and fires, 'reloading' units after firing, Sharpshooters, rallying stragglers, and so on.
This ACW boardgame includes a jigsaw-style, tan and green, contour map to put (and hold) together and plastic 'flats' molded onto bases for units. I watched the Culp's Hill scenario -- not sure if this is a stand-alone RRtF game or if it's just a small part of an entire box for the Gettysburg campaign.
The regiment-sized units have a number of flat figures on them to represent larger and smaller strength units and numbers on them for quality and efficiency: Red numbers for firing (modified by the terrain the base is sitting on and other situations) and green numbers for saving rolls. Erasable markers are used to mark off losses on the base (white circles serving as rosters, so to speak). With losses come morale checks, which can really cause a cascade of failures if one unit retreats through another, triggering a morale check, etc.
Each section of the map includes a command number relating to the difficulty of getting messages through (somewhat terrain based if I recall right), although the commander figure base is so large, it can overlap boundaries and use the 'easier' section number. This is paired with the cards to tell how many units than can be moved and RRtF includes a mechanic for activating an entire brigade.
It all seemed to go well enough, with reload cards being especially handy -- Thad dropped one on artillery batteries just as Jeff moved up a brigade of troops into canister range. Kaboom! Jeff's Confederates at the front of the attack failed a morale test, retreated through the supporting rear units, triggering more failed checks and his brigade fled.
A second attack on another part of the fishhook nailed a Union battery by its lonesome, although a Union counterattack and more failed Rebel morale checks sealed the temporary breach in the line.
The plastic makes everything all rather shiny, but at least the numbers are big enough to read at a glance. There is a back and forth flow to the game among the brigades rather than an Igo-Ugo system.
I don't know the price, but I imagine the Lost Battalion Games website will provide all the details.
Lightning North Africa
I watched Dan (Rommel) and Sean (Monty) play a game of Lightning North Africa: On To Tobruk -- a card game from Decision Games. They had used the Games Lending Library to check out the game.
North Africa is represented by six terrain cards -- from Tunisia to El Alamein -- across the top and each sides' unit cards get played underneath the terrain card. Various cards deal out damage and force units to retreat into other terrain, but the player can match the descriptor at the bottom of the card to cancel out such a card.
Every once is a while, a 'battle' (that's what I call it) occurs and one side gets a number of cards with different descriptors and secretly plays one. The defender tries to guess which descriptor. If the guess matches, the attack fails. If the guess misses, the attack succeeds in putting a hit on the defender. A certain number of hits eliminates a unit card.
From my observation, it flowed well enough, but Sean had stacked the El Alamein terrain card with four unit cards. These were so far behind the lines, the Germans couldn't reach 'em. This allowed Sean to use the 'draw' function for each unit card -- in essence drawing four extra cards each turn. This gave him more unit and attack/cancel cards to place.
In addition, Sean had an uncanny ability to guess Dan's attack descriptor. Monty squeezed Rommel and Dan conceded.
paints grey horses - specifically, dapple greys.
