And so to COW 2026, now at a new home following the closure of Missenden Abbey. The WD committee searched high and low and settled upon Cranfield University Management Development centre. The buzz beforehand was that it was a great venue, perfect for wargaming and with much greater capacity for attendees. But will it replace Knuston in our hearts, and does it do hot puddings and custard? These and many other questions would be answered over the weekend.
It was a blisteringly hot weekend. Before arriving I had to stop and preside over the annual commemoration event for the Battle of Northampton at 2pm. It was poorly attended due to the heat, and cut short at the request of those present. Having dealt with that. it was no more than a 30 minute drive to Cranfield, across rolling green fields as the new roads don't appear on my SatNav.
As you can see it's a modern development with a conference centre attached to what they describe as a hotel. Well, it certainly looks like a hotel, and the rooms were of 4* hotel standard in the UK. Comfortable, roomy with en-suite facilities. They also had air conditioning everywhere. It's a big site, so it was good that I took a festival trolly with me to shift my couple of games and bring and buy offerings.
The bar was pleasant and modern with one real ale on a hand pump. The bar manager asked me if our group would drink much beer. I assured him that we would. The evening meal was serve yourself, but was plentiful and good. Then it was time for games.
Xerxes - Invasion of Greece (Plenary Game Friday evening)
Another impressive John Bassett game, with briefings for 60 players and much scurrying around. As the Persian land commander I had high hopes of our eventual victory, but alas our diplomatic attempts failed to break down the Greek state coalition. Even so, our naval forces won the Battle of Salamis, and we triumphed at Thermopylae by outflanking the Greek position. Unfortunately the continuing and obsessive hunt for spies and assassins in our ranks identified one of our key military commanders - as in he could bring many troops to the final battle - as an enemy of the Great King and he was duly executed. The King in a panic then fled back to Persia with the Immortals, leaving us to face a fully united Greece with half an army and no elite troops. It didn't end well.
Captain Scarlet and the Leperons (ADG Friday evening)
David Burden put on a sf skirmish game using some excellent Captain Scarlet figures and resurrected mutant rabbits commanded by Captain Black.
I chose to be Captain Blue (my favourite from the TV series). Each side had three squads. We had to locate the genuine macguffin box out of five, avoiding the one with the booby trap.
David was using "Albedo Combat Patrol", which is the sf version of "Combat Patrol", which I understand also has a version called "Feudal Patrol", all from Sally4th games. The system uses a bespoke multi-functional card deck to resolve everything from movement to shooting, alongside another deck that randomises player turn sequence. I wasn't familiar with the system, but it played well although the cards are vey busy because of all the options they have to cover.
We skulked around brightly coloured scenery, exchanging fire with the mutant rabbits, before Paul Metcalfe (Captain Scarlet to you) stumbled across the correct box and we ran out winners.
Interesting little game, with neat mechanisms, but as regular readers will know I don't really do skirmish games, so I think my bank balance is safe for now.
On its completion I scurried off to set up my game for tomorrow morning, before heading to bed.
Brick by Bloody Brick (Saturday morning Session 1).
An excellent full works breakfast greeted us in the morning, before heading off to attend another David B session. David is doing a PhD on urban warfare wargaming, and I've played a number of his games over the past few COWs. This one is supposed to model the affect on the urban environment and civilian population.
The tiled game area is based on part of Birmingham where David walks his dog. The game uses wooden blocks and dummies to allow for a bit of concealed movement. We were the Russians, trying to overrun the area and crush our NATO opponents. We had several squads in BMPs, with a T-80 and a bit of drone support. As the Russian Commander I divided up the infantry units one for each of us. I kept the tank, sent Jules left flanking with the UAV attack drones, and Tom on the right with the Spy Drones. My (self imposed) goals in the game were to drive my tank through a building and then mousehole down a terraced street with an infantry platoon.
Our opponents were led by a new WD member from Finland. He let slip that he might have done some urban combat training. Luckily for us he had Jonathan and Alan to assist him and argue with every command and decision as they went along.
It was an interesting and enjoyable game with simple enough systems, although David ran the whole game without intervention from the players. It is counter heavy, in that there are chits to mark whether you are on the ground or first floor, up in the air and so on.
But they got cocky, and drove one up a narrow street. I got an infantry group on the roof of a three storey building (note roof access panel bottom left of picture) and then hit it flush on the top of the turret with an RPG7. BOOOOMMM!!! Very satisfying.
Good game. Off for a tea break and a chance to peruse the snacks. Biscuit selection not that inspiring, and water for tea not really hot enough (I found the boiling water dispenser later on), but the little pots for snacking on dried fruit were nice.
Winning a VC with the 6th (Saturday morning Session 2)
This was my first offering of the conference and was my NBS show game that's been featured on here before.
I said the game was for six players, which was a bit ambitious as its only ever really been run with a maximum of three. I got six people, which meant I could have a commander for each British battalion, plus two players to run the German artillery. I also had several spectators, which is always nice.
Mike Young took the Royal West Kents as the "spearhead" battalion, and bravely hugged the barrage. He was on the receiving end of a lot of drop shorts. His fault, as he loudly proclaimed that it was worth taking the 10% casualties normally received to get on the objective. He took a lot more than that, I think. And then the German defensive fire, such as it was, really hit when it hit.
Mike pressed on bravely, and fought his way into Ronssoy.
He continued to advance, without giving thought to allowing the Bedfords to leapfrog through and let him catch his breath. Behind him the Northants and the Royal Fusiliers jostled with each other to get into their start lines for phase two. There was some nice tension as bottlenecks were created and it became difficult to resolve the priorities of who should be where and when.
The second line of defences proved tough. Mike nearly failed in one assault, but used the "VC" option and succeeded in taking the position. Things were looking tough, so the armour was ordered forward.
Then the barrage flipped 90 degrees and phase two began. The timing and precision required to plan and execute this attack historically made a real impression on those taking part, as it shows a real sophistication in planning and organisation. One of our number, who is researching a PhD on the training of junior officers in the Great War, had missed the performance of the 6th Northants and the other battalions, and made quite a few notes to follow up on their actions and war diaries.
The Bedfords and the armour were now in the thick of it as the fight to clear the villages intensified. The Fusiliers were very nearly in the right position for their phase of the attack.
Phase two started with the Northants clearing Ronssoy Wood, but alas we then ran out of time. I had a 75 minute session, and I probably needed 90 -100 minutes, given the number of players and the interest and discussion the game engendered. The whole session went down really well, so I was both relieved and pleased.
The Perfect Battle (Saturday afternoon Session 1)
Another six player game that also brought in a couple of spectators. The signees included one or two not normally associated with the figure gaming side of the conference, so that was good. Plus Wayne turning up for back to back sessions run by me.
So this is the Sikh War scenario for Taiping Era, transposed from squares to hexes that I've been trialling in the last month or so. I knocked out a quick amendments reference sheet beforehand but the game worked really well and it wasn't really needed, except for the arc of fire diagram.
The Sikhs seemed remarkable confident, despite Pete G's repeated humiliations at the hands of my rules systems over the year.
The British however were convinced of their inherent superiority.
General Wayne-Smith decided to refuse the centre, and clear the Sikh cavalry on the flanks prior to any advance. Whilst this sounds like a sound strategy he obviously hasn't read any of the earlier AARs of this scenario where apparently superior British cavalry has disappeared into a morass of Gorchurra, never to be seen again.
It did look magnificent, particularly on Alan's wing where he brought up his horse artillery in close support.
David had the additional issue of how to get the Sikhs out of the village at this end of the table. His attempt to shoot them out with rifle fire from his Gurkhas accompanied by horse artillery proved not to be a winning strategy.
His cavalry was soon hounding the Gorchurra off the table edge, however.
Peter repeatedly threw his cavalry at anything in the way, including the Sepoy infantry. They held firm, blasting the Gorchurra off with disciplined musketry.
Soon Alan was through the Sikh cavalry, the lancers running amok through the village, spearing everything in sight. In the distance Russell was grimly holding on to the village.
As I'd agreed to run a two hour session to help out the programme organiser I had to end the game there, poised before the entrenchments were encircled and assaulted. Everyone proclaimed that they'd had a good time and really enjoyed the game. Having an elephant with an umbrella rarely fails to entertain.
Time to grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and move on to the next session.
The Blood Road (Saturday afternoon Session 2)
Pete Sizer's insurgency game that I played this year was his first attempt to look at insurgency logistics, in this case the Ho Chi Minh trail.
If I've got this right the inspiration was a simple computer model of nodal movement. I was on the Viet Cong team. We had to allocate a hundred points each year to supplies, speed of movement and defences. Each turn had two phases, dry and wet season. We kept looking for a magic bullet solution, (Shall we go all in with blockhouses? should we just move very quickly? should we flood the area with AAA?) which was probably unwise, and we should have looked at the decade long timescale of the game and built up infrastructure.
The US players mostly had to bomb us to prevent us shifting supplies, apart from when they started to get SOGs on the ground. They had unlimited resources, but there was a victory point calculation based on how much they spent against how much we got through. I think they nearly bankrupted the US economy. They certainly dropped a whole lot of ordnance on Laos. Shame I didn't have my "Ban Cluster Bombs" T shirt on, that I bought at COPE in Vientiane.
Pete made a few changes during the game to keep us in being, as regardless of the possibility we would win out because the USA ended up spending their entire GDP on flattening South East Asia it was beginning to look like we couldn't do anything at all at one point as so much damage had been done to the trail.
The end game discussion sort of concluded that there was definitely a game worth developing. My feeling was that there needs to be a simple process at the end of each turn to determine if enough supplies had made it and whether the insurgency campaign was making progress or not. Very promising.
Now off to the bar for a pre-dinner snifter.
Berlin Nocturne (ADG Saturday evening)
The KGB, GRU and Stasi go spy hunting in East Berlin. Who is the traitor? Can we protect our sources? Who can we trust?
Another John Bassett Cold War classic role playing game. Alex & I played the KGB team. If only he'd let us shoot both the Stasi officers we'd have won.
Essai de jeu de guerre (ADG Late Saturday evening)
COW newbie Antoine, who is a French Army officer, brought along a French wargame designed in early 1916.
The game plays on squares, and Antoine presented it with 6mm figures from Baccus. Each base represented 100 men, and you inflicted casualties at a fixed rate, which was doubled by each favourable factor and halved by each unfavourable. So if you were stationary firing at troops moving across open ground in close formations you inflicted 8 hits (1, 2, 4, 8). That meant you could cover open ground with the bayonet against infantry in trenches with rifles and MGs reasonably comfortably. The hand to hand rules had some dice rolling, but was more effective in that defeated troops had to retire quite a long way.
Some interesting ideas. Artillery causes no hits with its first round of firing as it is finding the range. Quite a good idea for firing at fixed targets, but it means artillery is useless against infantry when it is moving. Not convinced by that.
Essentially the message is that you win by rushing your opponent with bayonet or sabre (yes, I lost a unit to a cavalry charge). It was remarked that this game must have been played by Nivelle.
Being a game run by our French attendee there was wine.
And so to bed.
I decided against watching the end of the footy as it had been along day and so far my record of "England score when Graham's not watching" seemed more important for our progress.
The Bear went over the border – Dunn Kempf refought (Sunday morning Session 1)
James Langham presented a Cold War gone hot game, using the US Army's 1970s/80s tactical rules, based upon the WRG modern set. I got to be the Soviet infantry commander.
The star of the show was James' personalised beach towel. Yep. He uploaded a screen shot from Google Earth to a Temu supplier and they printed it on a 200cm x 120cm large towel. It cost about £12 he said. This is microfibre towelling, not cotton, so it has a low nap (?) and works great with 6mm figures.
He then bought a whole load of Monopoly houses to mark out the built up areas.
The game is played with a screen across the table with about 6" clearance from the table top. This means you have to crouch down to ground level to observe the enemy. Great for young fit army officers, not so great for those of us with grey hair and creaky knees.
The game requires pre-planned artillery strikes on numbered target points placed by the players. You can see the little shiny square on the table to the right centre. There are rules for calling off and adjusting these, but basically to be effective you're working two turns in advance at least.
As we were attacking we got quite badly shot up. Being fired at slows your movement. Being hit and suppressed blocks roads and so on.
Interesting piece of wargaming history.
Dominion of the Roses (Sunday morning Session 2)
I decided to take this at the last minute as there weren't many session for the second half of Sunday Morning. I ran two games of it, Ferrybridge and Empingham, which both reversed the verdict of history.
It was very bright in the Atrium area where I ran the session hence the poor quality picture. Both the people who played the session were favourably disposed to the system afterwards. It is a decent model of Wars of the Roses combat, if not exactly high on player input. It gets to where "Test of Resolve" and "My Oath Sire!" end up in a similar way and with less faffing about. It really is a solo game, however, but I can see that I might use it in the future for a quick show participation game.
And then it was time for lunch and the WD AGM, after which a not too long drive home in beautiful sunshine.
What a thoroughly satisfactory weekend. I shall be back next year.
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