I missed last year's Society of Ancients Convention as Mrs T and I were doing something else that weekend, but after Richard L badgered me a little bit and I had an idea of what I might do (my offer of a talk being turned down) I signed up. Besides, my COW experience of Cranfield, SOAC's new venue, was very good, so why not go back? Phil also wanted to attend, so I agreed to take him along. Cranfield is a slightly friendlier environment for those with mobility issues than previous venues.
You can pick and choose your days of attendance for the Convention, but increasing numbers are turning up Friday night to play games people have brought along on the off chance. I treated Martin Rapier and John Bassett and John Curry to the highly detailed and accurate medieval siege game "Kastles". I can't recall who won, but I was eliminated mostly due to a dragon knocking three of my wall cards down. Totally realistic.
After dinner I took part in Nick Harbud's post Cunaxa/Xenophon game. John B ran Xenophon's Greeks and I did "The Natives". The Greeks have to make it to a port on the other side of the board, I have to try to stop them. Nick was delighted when I spotted that he'd nicked the basic mechanism from Avalon Hill's 1978 "Source of the Nile".
As you can see you sketch in randomly generated terrain as you go along. The Greeks try to forage enough food ("gifts") to keep themselves alive. I (as the natives) have a secret map where I've drawn towns and trade routes. John mostly missed all of them on his relentless, nay single minded, march to the West.
He made it with one out of 20 Greek units remaining. Mind you, he didn't have a lot of luck. I suggested some modifications (when do I ever not?). I hope Nick wrote them down because I'm damned if I can remember what they were.
Saturday started with the first talk of the Convention was about the Numidian monument at Chimtou, given by Adrian Naylor. I knew nothing about this and the two or three similar ones overlooking battle sites, mostly in Tunisia. Adrian has posted his bibliography on the Society of Ancients forum.
First scheduled gaming session for me was Mike Lane's refight of Frigidus, using "To The Strongest". This was one of my intended picks for the weekend as I still hadn't played TTS up to this point. Luckily for me I got a place on the sign up sheet and also most other people hadn't played it either, so it was a teaching session rather than just a refight, which suited me.
Mike had got out hordes of 15mm figures (hooray!) and also labelled the backs of the bases clearly. Top man.
After lunch we had a quick update from Duncan Head on his recent research into the Achaemenid Persians which is to be published by Helion. No doubt this will be come a "must buy". I offered him access to my Persepolis photo dump, but he said it's too late for that as he's nearly done. Damn. May have to pay for a copy. Strangely, Helion are publishing another book covering practically exactly the same period and subject at the same time. Why? Who knows. I'll be buying Duncan's.
We also had a 20 minute explanation from Ian Piper who told us why he likes "One Hour Wargames" from Neil Thomas. In summary, he finds the rules easy to amend and adapt. I would also say the same for his "Ancient and Medieval Wargames" rules. You can fiddle with stuff without breaking the rules, unlike more sophisticated rules such as DBA.
When that was done, Richard L had to tell us that the evening's key note speaker, Anne Curry, had called in sick. There was a brief discussion of options. Anne offered to email her talk to be read out. My view was this was a bad idea as we'd miss the Q&A, and we'd be better off booking her for next year. More ideas were kicked around, then I put up my hand and suggested the talk I had offered previously but had been turned down in favour of Anne's (TBF, I'd have booked her over me any day of the week). This was accepted, and we could go off to our late afternoon sessions.
In this slot I ran a 3 hour "Wars of the Roses Workshop", which purported to be an update on modern scholarship and recent rules sets. I massively over-prepared my introductory remarks(!) and we only had time for one break out sessions instead of the three I intended and I never got round to covering the rules in any depth nor running the multiple games of Dominion of the Roses I had set up. Mind you, we had some lively discussions in the full group - I had about a dozen show up - and there was quite a bit of note taking.
I wrapped up a few minutes early, then headed down to the main lecture theatre to set up my laptop for the evening talk. I clicked through and realised I couldn't remember a lot of it. B*gg*r. Quick check of my phone (the laptop isn't mine - it belongs to NBS, so it doesn't have my files on it except for the Powerpoints for talks) and I found my notes on my One Drive and emailed them to the laptop. Quick transfer to my USB stick and down to Reception. They won't print from the stick, but would from an email. No problem. With a nice warm pile of notes I headed off to change for dinner before settling down in the corner of the bar with a bottle of Malbec to swot them up.
It was this one that I did. It went down okay, with a number of people admitting they knew nothing about it.
Dinner was excellent, and our table had more than my bottle of Malbec to keep us going.
Sunday morning was Matt Bennett on Bannockburn ahead of the Society's Battleday next year. An interesting talk for an event I won't be attending.
The last game I signed up for was a game of Midgard covering the last stand of King Edwin in 632 AD.
I didn't think I'd played them before, but I'm not sure now.
They're a typical nuts and bolts modern BODs game with attributes and bits of chrome here and there. We ran out winners, although that wasn't important and I'm not sure how. Some knowledge of the rules and systems would have altered how I'd run my part of the game, but that's neither here nor there.
We had to advance and attack King Edwin on his hill top. For my part I did the approach methodically so no one got left behind (activation roll required for second move and you can't do a group move unless you have that skill, and you can only do it once in the whole game). Amusing to be called "coward" for such an attitude by an enemy that say on its ar*e on a hilltop and didn't move. The rules give advantages if you charge into contact, and there's no infantry counter charge option, so you want your enemy to approach to within charge distance then you charge home on them. True you can roll for a second move, with a re-roll using a "Mighty Deed" but the best idea is to make your opponent come to you so you can save you Mighty Deeds for extra dice in combat. I can think of some people I've played with where they would just do nothing until you lost patience with it all and threw the game away by moving up and letting them charge. Which is what our hill-sitting opponents did. This is one reason why I won't be bothering with the rules. Another is that they pretty much sit in the same space as "Dux Bellorum" which I already own and have played.
This is the end of the game (we ran out of time) I've smashed through the centre up the road and have King Edwin, sans his now expired bodyguard, pinned up against the monolith. My colleagues have done champion work on the flanks, earning reputation and generally being a nuisance. We ended up ahead on Reputation, which might mean we won.
Nice looking game regardless.
And that was mostly it. Lunch was followed by the Convention "wash up" where there was much hand wringing over the sign up sheets and why people attend. My view is that a weekend like this only functions if people bring stuff to do and other people then do it. Turning up to float around and drag your mates down to the bar doesn't help. Okay, drop out for one session to recharge and take a look around, but not the whole weekend. I did hear that one session at least fell short of numbers, and there's no reason for that to happen in an event with 60 people attending.
Having said that, Phil and I didn't hang on until 5pm. Phil wanted to sit in and see some of the Cunaxa game, and there were a couple of conversations I wanted to have with organisers, which I fitted in, then we headed off so I could get home before it got too dark.
It was a very good weekend. It's different to COW, but there was enough to keep me interested. I met a few people who are blog followers, which is always nice. Makes it feel its all worthwhile if someone is reading what you write.
I should think that's in the calendar for next year.
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