Conference Of Wargamers 2024

Friday

One of the organisers remarked that this was "the first normal COIW for five years".  That gave me pause for thought. There's such a thing as a normal COW??? However, I knew what he meant. After the upheavals of COVID and the closure of our beloved Knuston Hall, we were back at Missenden Abbey, a place we used last year, and that we now know works for us. The future of the Conference seems assured, and we were no longer asking ourselves where we'd be next year, or even if we'd be next year.

As this is now a proper road trip, rather than just nipping round the corner, Chris K and I went together, and joined the pre-COW visit. This year it was to the Chiltern Open Air museum, which I can recommend if you are in the area.

The museum is home to many buildings that would otherwise be lost to us. To those of a certain age some are quite nostalgic.

I'm sure many of us used to have a few of these near where we used to live: post war asbestos prefabs that could be put up quickly to replace bomb damaged accommodation.

And the inevitable Nissan Huts:

It has older buildings too, including medieval wooden barns and a lovely iron prefab mission church.

Any how, we were soon at Missenden, indulging in the normal early ritual of mutilating the timetable and signing up for sessions.

Always good to see Evan there (on the right) as he lowers our average age by about half.

Having checked in, bought some beer and had an excellent evening meal (the catering is well up to Knuston standards, if not better at times, except for the lack of hot puddings and custard) it was time for the Plenary Game. I was a "plumpire" for this, being the Florentine Ambassador to Rome during the 1559 Papal Conclave, so I nipped off and donned my elaborate costume.

It was a costume so cunning that several people failed to recognise me. The top lip facial hair survived most of the game - drinking whilst wearing it was a challenge, and its adhesion is severely weakened by any perspiration.

My job was to corral the "Hardline" faction, and get them to engage with the other groups and develop a strategy for achieving their objectives. 

As it was, the group's plan to abstain from voting to prevent the election of a Pope (they had not realised, despite me telling them several times, that this actually increased the chances of a Pope being elected) precipitated the endgame quicker than expected, and our very own Chris K became Supreme Pontiff:

This is Chris at his enthronement, actually pontificating.

It was then time for after dinner games. Richard of Shed West was there, and we went and played Dave Burden's excellent little "Rubble Town", a game of urban conflict he is developing for his PhD. 

You assemble 10 points worth of a platoon and supporting kit (blue topped cards), and then fight your way card by card to the end card and victory. The enemy is generated randomly from another deck of cards, which I forgot to photograph.

This is a terrific little teaching game, with all the different kit choices making a difference and driving tactics. You can recce with drones, or chuck in loads of smoke to conceal your advance. Heavy weapons will clear defenders, but at the potential cost of generating lots of rubble. This makes the card more defendable and harder to drive through.

Through our astute planning and tactical genius we made it to the end with bags of time to spare.

With that sorted I headed off to the room where I'd be running my game right after breakfast the following day. I always find it wise to lay everything out the night before if you can, then you don't have to worry about alarms and can linger over breakfast.

The tables at Missenden aren't as user friendly as those at Knuston. Those in the main room aren't really intended to be moved by one person, but I was soon sorted, and everything laid out to my satisfaction, with QRSs in place. This is the "Tricorn and Bonnet" scenario of Sheriffmuir, as previously run through a day or so ago.

Saturday 

After an excellent breakfast (HP sauce available in bottle form too, which is always a plus) it was time for games.

To the left Nigel, Matt & Ken took the Jacobites, Jon, Alan and Jim were the Government forces, to the right. No pressure here, but Jim has visited the area and written a book on the military importance of the location, and Jon has walked the battlefield. I haven't.

I won't run through a blow-by-blow account. This is the end of the game. The Government left has collapsed, as has the Jacobite's. As the song goes "We ran and they ran". A historical outcome that was not inevitable, with both wings having some dodgy moments and so very satisfying.

What was gratifying was that after the first turn I was able to turn running the game over to the players, pretty much, and have them face off in pairs. I then just had to go up and down the table to answer questions and clarify some of my wording on the QRS (which is clear if you've read the rules). The game was over in 90 minutes, which was about perfect and is in the range of time taken that I targeted for this set.

I even sold most of my "TnB" stock over the weekend too, so I'm doing something right (copies still available on Amazon & Wargame vault if you don't have one).

Having finished promptly I was able to tidy up and then pop my head round the doors of some other sessions to see what was happening. Here's Dave Knight running "Test of Resolve".

Then it was time for lunch, after which I took part in the magnificent lunacy that was Tim Gow's "Where Seagulls Dare".

This was a sort of "impressionistic" game, using location cards and 54mm figures. It's about making a film, which is actually a real operation. Sort of. We were a mixed bag of special operations types, disguised as Fallschirmjäger.

I was a taciturn French man, ex Legion Etranger. I was taciturn as I was only supposed to speak limited English, so my A Level French got a good outing, with a fair few "Mon Dieu" and "Quel domage" chucked in and a lot of Gallic shrugging.

Suffice it to say there were traitors and cock ups galore, incompetence beyond measure, shocking stereotypes and nail biting exploits. Dick S and I chose to strike out on our own, and scale the difficult mountain path to the summit. Our colleagues failed to capture the cable car station, or indeed any usable transport and consequently were unable to blag their way into the secret base. They ended up trying to interdict the arrival of packing cases of interesting stuff at the airfield.

This all went south quite quickly, and they then rushed to their Royal Naval rendezvous on a beach to escape. Quite a few were wounded getting off the beach, before boarding the submarine and getting away.

Dick & I got to the secret base and were able to draw a detailed plan to help with an RAF raid:

We then stole a motorbike and side car, fled the castle and dodged our way to the harbour where we stole a fishing boat and escaped. Heroes of the hour.

Crackin' session.

Next up was another PhD game, this being a COIN solo game from Pete Sizer, using dice allocation as a sort of worker placement:

An ingenious little piece of design, where the green cards are resources available to you and the pink represents the actions of the insurgents. You have to allocate your dice resources to Attack, Defence, Propaganda and so on, then roll off against scores on the pink cards, modified by your green cards (both good and bad). If you do things right you can see the next pink card up, which makes it easier.

I think there'll be another iteration of this, and it could do with a bit more "colour" in terms of what your dice represent, but enjoyable none the less.

Having achieved a 9 turn victory, which I was pleased with, I found time to run my "Murder in the Tower" boardgame.

The game requires the players to take on the roles of researchers to determine the fate of the Princes in the Tower: what happened to them, who was responsible and where it all happened. The game is a light hearted look at the circus that is research into the Richard III era, and features characters such as Don, a TV "historian" who wears tight chinos, and Poppy, a school teacher who researches in her spare time. Others are a superannuated History Professor, a lady biographer, a genealogist from Florida and a slightly pathetic PhD student. The mechanisms are ripped mostly from a well know popular detective game, with a few tweaks, some of which work and some don't. 

We ran out of time for a proper finish, but as dinner approached everyone wrote down their best guess, and someone did get it right. The Princes escaped to Europe from the Dungeon. Looking at the player research notes afterwards it was clear that one of us knew what they were doing, and the rest of us didn't.

I don't think this will be ready for the Christmas market.

After dinner I played in a 1950s role playing game "Lynchville's Burning". A crack team of FBI special agents is charged with investigating a dangerous cell of subversives who are campaigning for equal rights for all sorts of groups.

This was very free form, with the players having a major role in developing the narrative. The black telephone you can see in the picture behind the orange bottle was used at critical points when players had to hold a one-sided conversation with high-ups or other committees to explain exactly what just happened.

Suffice it to say that we were able to make the world safe for democracy and hardly anyone got hurt at all.

This was followed by a late night game based on an NKVD committee set up during the siege of Leningrad. It did not have a happy ending, and some committee members may have severely misjudged their colleagues. I have no pictures of this game. It was getting late.

Sunday

On Sunday I gave a talk about radical politics in Northamptonshire in the early 17th century. For a variety of reasons I had to give this using a Chromebook linked to a plasma screen, instead of using my normal PC laptop. Powerpoint has some issues running under Chrome - for example it doesn't function with Presenter View, so you can't see your next slide on your computer screen. If you convert to Google slides you end up with all / any animations happening in the wrong sequence.

I didn't twig that until I did the set up first thing, so I had to scrub the game I'd signed up for and find a quiet corner to mug up on my script and rehearse the slides.

I was the session before lunch, and had just over 20 people attend (the conference had about 55 delegates). They were attentive throughout and we had a lively Q&A at the end. As always, this tended to stray outside my area of researched expertise, but all those who spoke to me said they really enjoyed it.

Then it was lunch time, followed by the WD AGM and off home.

A thoroughly enjoyable weekend. It did feel like a new normal. The staff at Missenden are getting used to us and are more than happy to accommodate our occasionally odd requests. An excellent turnout of old friends and new acquaintances. Alas our increasing age and for some of us infirmity meant that not all our old friends could make it. Bob Cordery missed it due to his recovery from a leg injury that means he can't walk for now. Phil Barker, I fear, has attended his last COW and wasn't there either. I saw some games that I found very interesting and played in some good ones. COW is more than one conference running at the same time, and Chris and I very rarely overlapped, so we had much to chew over on the way home.

Next up, VCOW in the Autumn.