Conference Of Wargamers 2022

Yes, it is COW time again. But not COW as we know it. Due to COVID and the local government reorganisation in Northamptonshire WDs long time home, Knuston Hall, has been closed temporarily by North Northants Council for some vague reason. Fortunately the WD organising team managed to find us another location. This was the Defence Academy at Shrivenham, and access was facilitated by a WD member who is Directing Staff officer for Simulation and Modelling in the Technology Division there. There were some slips twixt cup and lip, but thanks to the tireless hard work by those involved we all turned up Friday afternoon for a weekend of wargaming fun.

The venue is very different to Knuston. We were using several buildings, with accommodation, food, bar and games room all in different locations from one end to the other of the site. With the warm weather over the weekend this was no trial, as a pleasant stroll in the sunshine was very enjoyable. I got in 13,000 steps each day with hardly even trying.

Of course, what it does have as well is a Tank Shed. That has more than tanks in it.

The plenary session on Friday evening was a "counter factual" exercise. We were split into eight groups and given a list of alternative history events (e.g "Lee Wins Gettysburg") and 15 minutes to prepare a three minute presentation on the outcome. We chose the Persians winning at Marathon and in a series of logical steps showed that Zoroastrianism would become the great world religion, the Varangian Guard would have been mounted on elephants, the New World would have been discovered much earlier, and  the Black Death would have spread to the Americas and China much more virulently. Needless to say, the elephant mounted Vikings was a session winning innovation.

After that I took part in a game set in 1943/4 in Italy as part of a team of intelligence offers in Naples trying to weed out fascists and control the rise of the Mafia. This was a work in progress, and a deeply saddening and depressing period of history it is too.

The Saturday morning session saw me run out three games of "Spartans and Successors". 

This picture shows another of the major differences to Knuston, with most games all being in one large room. In the distance you can see Cunaxa, in the middle Gaza, and near the camera Gaugamela. It is a challenge teaching a new system from scratch to six players across three games simultaneously, but after about 10 minutes the games seemed to run themselves, and I only had to flit between tables to deal with the odd question. I think most of the players bought a copy of the rules. 

For the record, Cyrus won Cunaxa, Alexander died at Gaugemela and his army collapsed, and at Gaza Demetrius and Ptolemy fought each other to a stand still.

This was a short session, so I packed up quickly and got into another game.

This was Jim Roche's "Another Bloody Normandy Book" game, where players compete to play cards to create a grammatically correct series of sentences about the Normandy campaign. It is a light hearted entertainment based upon the "Neighbours" boardgame, and Jim has previously done a Waterloo variant. It is a bit of a hoot as historical accuracy is not a requirement for playing cards, only grammatical sense. I did some work with Jim on this, and produced the game board design to his requirements. I think it looks rather spiffy, and includes a number of graphics such as the Divisional insignia for the units in the game. I am hoping to do a pdf version with Jim and put it out on my Wargames Vault library for download.

After lunch I was back with a game of "Indian Mutine-era". I put on the Battle of Maharajpur scenario I wrote up a little while ago. Based on my last play test I dropped the players from six to four and that worked much better. The British ran out winners, having adopted the tactic of standing off with the European regulars with Enfield Rifles and delivering aimed fire from long range in open order, like  they did historically,  and bayonet charging with the musket armed Sikhs. The Indian Mutineers/Patriots countered in a variety of ways, and did well with their cavalry, but ultimately couldn't compete with superior technology. I hope the players enjoyed it, as I felt that it was one of the best run throughs of this scenario.

The evening session was a game of "Petrograd Nights" which is about trying to build a post Tsarist government. My partner and I managed to build a broadly right wing coalition (we were the "Conservatives") by throwing crumbs to the revolutionary parties whilst blocking their big ticket items. Street fighting broke out several times, but we survived that. We would have formed the final government too, if the "Liberals" hadn't taken a bribe to back the Mensheviks at the last moment. Stupidly for them I had a bigger bribe pot than what they took, so if they hadn't been so duplicitous they'd have ended up with more dosh and still been on the winning side.

Sunday morning I played in an RPG type game based on low level infantry tactics in a modern central European campaign. In this I proved to have a poor grasp of modern low level infantry tactics and weaponry, but we still got away with a fairly successful outcome. At least no one died on our side, although my van got blown up..

There followed a lecture on modern professional wargames that was very thought provoking.

And that just left us with Sunday Lunch and the WD AGM The main item of business was to delegate the authority to the committee to organise next year's event, including finding a suitable venue, as use of Shrivenham is unlikely to be repeatable.

Then it was time to drive home, a longer journey than my usual one, but accomplished in very good time. 

A very good weekend all round. 

Except....