Society of Ancients Conference 2021 - Madingley Hall, Cambridge.

 After missing a year due to COVID, SOAC was back, and at a new venue, having been unhappy with the hotel in Kenilworth. I attended both the 2019 and 2018 events, and 2019 is where I launched my publishing career, with "To Ur is Human". I was critical of the previous venue, as you will be able to read in the relevant blog posts, so how did the new venue measure up?

Madingley Hall is the University of Cambridge's Conference / Hotel / Wedding Reception Venue. In terms of scale and grandness of it all, it is a step up from Knuston Hall, venue for WD's CoW,  but did that mean it was better? 

The answer to that was yes and no. The conference cost was slightly more expensive than CoW 2022 will be, but you could reduce the cost by not attending on Friday night. There are no planned activities for Friday, so you don't need to be there. The organisers are trying to encourage evening after dinner games, but it isn't a SOAC tradition for now. This isn't aided by the timings of evening meals. The SOAC organisers definitely think in terms of "supper" not "evening meal", so dinner starts later (8pm Saturday), and goes on longer. This effectively kills any idea of a plenary game on Friday, and anything other than a cursory gaming experience on Saturday. This isn't a problem for many of the attendees, one of whom called the Saturday formal dinner* the "centrepiece of the weekend". The tone is taken in many ways from the number of ex-serving armed services present, who create a type of Officers Mess atmosphere. This was accentuated this year as the venue is like an Oxbridge College Dining Room. This is quite a bit different to Knuston, which is certainly more adult ed. 

Bar prices, and the types of beer available, are in line with normal hotel chain type, so it is what it is. The conference is new to this venue (not that it made any difference to the previous one), so the Knuston touch of having the venue get in beer especially for us, and the staff being about to serve you whilst there's someone standing was absent. Perhaps over time they will get used to the event, and lay in extra beer accordingly.

The bedrooms and facilities were good. My room was clean and comfortable, like an up market Travel Lodge. More spacious than Knuston (but with less charm and lower water pressure) but less luxurious than Kenilworth, the room was perfectly fine, bearing in mind all I was going to do was wash and sleep in it.

The catering was excellent. The quality of the food far exceeded Kenilworth, and also Knuston, in respect of the main courses - except for the Sunday lunch, which Knuston has improved a lot over the years. They had nothing to rival the Knuston sweet trolley and hot puddings with custard. My only criticism of breakfast is to query where they get their brown sauce from. Note to self - take a bottle of HP next year. And of course, no one rivals Knuston for homemade cakes and biscuits at coffee and tea breaks.

The event rooms were all on the first floor, which was a pain lugging boxes up and down stairs (thanks to the organisers for providing sherpa support). There were 3, possibly 4, rooms available to us. One room was used for the talks by guest speakers, which were of good quality. There were four talks over the weekend, on a variety of military history subjects, plus an intro for next years SoA Battleday. It was a typical "seminar" room you find at a conference centre. A second smaller room was used for Friday night games, which was good for one largish figure game for the rest of the weekend. 

The main room for games and sessions looked to me to be the Madingley Hall ballroom in earlier times. It was a magnificent room...and close to being useless. The lighting was barely adequate (the chandelier** had two bulbs out), and even with the provision of a couple of standard spotlamps was still very, very, poor. The photos on this page - and I was using a good quality SLR - needed work from MS Photo to make then usable. The organisers were aware of this early on, and have promised to move things round for next year. 

Finally, the Hall is in lovely grounds, but it was October and wet, so no one is ever going to plan a game out there, but you can go for a pleasant morning stroll.

In summary: A better venue than Kenilworth by a long way. However, as a wargaming venue it doesn't touch Knuston.

But then I'm biased. And it is a different style of event.

This is the main game room. The original of this picture was stygian black, so this has the exposure slider over to the maximum to correct. I'm set up on the left, with three "Spartans and Successor" scenarios set up, Raphis, Cunaxa  and Hydaspes.

I was able to pinch a table to show off my wares. Many were picked up and perused. Few were purchased.

Here's Duncan Head and Richard Lockwood of the SoA taking part in the first session of S&S, playing the Raphia scenario. They both soon got a grip on the game, and seemed to enjoy themselves. I'm doing something right, as everyone who played the game bought a copy, plus a couple of others as well.

What I still can't get my head round for SOAC is the reluctance of some people to play a game, but rather sit and watch 28mm figures be pushed around by someone else. The event isn't my natural milieu. I know a few of the regulars, but I've still not renewed my SoA membership. I have no fond memories of the SoA early days, taking part in the early competition and arguing over the niceties of various editions of WRG Ancients, and mostly I am on the outsode of the "in jokes". I'm an outlier here, wondering why people want to keep recycling Hail Caesar or DBx scenarios, rather than indulge in something innovative. COW this is not. Sue Lafflin-Barker was there with her pirates in the Aegean game, which was good to see. Otherwise, the height of innovation was a chance to play "Infamy, Infamy" with Rich Clarke of "Too Fat Lardies".*** At the request of the organiser I put on 12 slots to play S&S over two sessions, and had 5 people play. 

The other bizarre thing is the level of opposition to the idea that sessions should have sign up sheets. You don't need to be a "control freak" as the proposed of the idea claimed to be to want a little bit of certainty around what is going on.If I knew no one wanted to play in a session of one of my games, I'd pack up and go and play something else. Frankly I don't want to sit around and just hope someone can be a*sed to turn up and play on the off chance. Whereas there is a real feeling at CoW that we are all there to make the event work, that is less the case with SOAC, which has more a feel of a purchased product to me.

Anyhow, back to games. On Sunday morning  I helped Phil S run his Montaperti refight with "Basic Impetus". We had a spotlight on the table for this game, which meant we could see the dice, but the shadows were horrible.

Gratuitous piece of Phil Steele painted eye candy.

I got a chance to play an epic game of "Command and Colors", using WoFun 15mm figures, on Sunday afternoon. This was useful for me. I have a number of wargaming friends who really like C&C. I've played a few games from time to time and it hasn't really inspired me. What's more, I haven't really "got" the WoFun thing either, but I haven't seen them en-masse. There was a buzz around the room as they were put out that they look great, especially when they are looked at from table level. 

The battle was Bagradas. I was on the Roman team, facing off against Duncan. 

The game was run by two umpires, or actually three, all of whom like C&C and were on hand to explain things. Alas not everything was clear, and we groped around to try and work out how to make use of our cards. I'm relieved to say it wasn't just me. No one on our side got it immediately, and it may have been that our card mix was poor (we were unable to move any thing in our central zone for most of the game).

I wasn't really enjoying the whole thing, I confess. Everything I'm not really keen on came together in one place. A pre-prepared game with no input from the person putting it on, hexon plastic looking game area, and soulless prefab figures. 

Okay, I'm out on a limb here, and I can see that C&C works as a two player game to pass the time of an evening, but I won't be returning for a multiplayer version, and I won't bve splashing the cash to buy my own box. And WoFun...well, okay, if you can't get painted figures then go ahead. I think they are utterly horrible. The luminescent edges are very off putting. They look flat. They look flatter than flats. I've seen the paper soldiers on which these are based used, cut out of card, and they did have a nostalgic paper soldier charm. But these? I'd rather just use counters or blocks of wood.

Like a game I played at the last SOAC this was a useful session for me. It has saved me parting with any cash on any of these items to find out if I like them or not.

I missed out on playing "Infamy, Infamy". I've played it a couple of times, as readers of the blog will know, and I haven't been bitten by the bug. I couldn't work out what it was supposed to be about. As you can see, Phil got seat at the table, and I will be interested to hear what he has to say when we have a chance. I overheard Rich Clarke talk about his interest in low level infantry tactics, and that would have been an interesting conversation to have taken part in.

As indicated above, the organisers have booked again for next year. My feeling is, and I have said on previous occasions, that it needs to be moved earlier in the year to avoid the horrible drive home in the autumnal dark and driving rain. Several attendees remarked that they wouldn't mind "getting away a bit early" whilst it is still light. I will pencil it in my diary, and start to think about whether I have anything to offer. My inclination is that if I don't have a game to take that says something new I probably won't attend, unless there is an indication of something I really want to try on the programme. That's different to CoW, which I would attend, regardless, as I'm sure they'll be something that'll inspire me.

I've just read that back, before hitting the "Publish" button. It does read a little more critical than I intended, but I can't see anything in there that I want to cut or change, and I can't comment on games I didn't play, except to say that there was a lot of lovely looking 28mm eye candy on display if that's your thing. I should say - in fact, I should stress - that there are people who attend SOAC with whom I am more than happy to spend considerable amounts of time, discussing military history and wargaming and playing games, and there are many others I would like to get to know much better. On the Saturday evening I was part of a small group over dinner who were sat with the guest speaker, Ben Kane. He's a historical novelist, and I was not aware of his work. His talk was on his charity walk along Hadrian's Wall dressed as a Hastatus, which I thought was was both informative and entertaining, and the chance to chat in a group for a prolonged time was a joy. So I'm saying that I did enjoy myself a lot, and any criticisms are minor compared to the fun I had. However, I am committing £325+ of my own folding stuff to attend the event, and I have to decide if I'm getting full value when allocating this sum from my wargaming budget. If you like trying different types of commercially available wargames rules with nice kit, in games run by people who know the rules and love the subject, and you have a passion for ancients, this is the event for you.

*For which the DRESS CODE (I kid you not) was the main topic discussed on the SoA forum.

** Yeah. Chandelier. Posh, innit. The extra bulbs would probably make little difference, as the ceiling is very high.

*** Rule systems on display were "Hail Caesar", "Morten et Glorium", "Comitatus", "Basic Impetus", "BBDBA", "Infamy, Infamy", "Command and Colors" and "Dux Bellorum".