Dearest Lolita,
    Meet me tonight at our love nest. My wife suspects nothing. In fact, no
one knows of our secret. My credit card number is -- DOH!!

Um, er... I had a great time at the Cold Wars convention this past weekend.
There was lots of historical miniatures. And stuff.

Attendance seemed to be pretty good again, despite the dismal weather over
the previous few days; the carpark was packed even moreso than usual. I was
pleased to note a healthy presence of younger gamers, seemingly more than
last year. Also noted an increase in naval gaming and computer-assist gaming
this year. Only saw one boardgame, AH Blackbeard going on in a corner.

As usual I spent way too much money in the vendor room, but this time I went
in with a plan and stuck to it. Picked up the entire (or as close to it as
supply would allow) Japanese and US fleets for WWII and the British and
German fleets for WWI in the 1:6000th scale naval miniatures from Figurehead.
Many many packets of tiny ships, total came in just under $450 US. I still
have to pick up some packs of destroyers and a few cruisers here and there,
but for the most part I've got just about everybody for WWII. I'm hoping the
WWI line expands to include the non-UK/non-German navies in the near future.
As it is, when this batch is painted I'll be able to retire my 1:3000 WWI
naval set as well as my 1:2400 and 1:4800 WWII sets, rotating them all over
to soon-to-be-retired Bob Ross (ArmourSoft co-founder and
soon-to-be-convention-groupie).

Contrary to my usual form, I actually got to *play* in a game this time!
Well, part of one, at least. At Mrs. Ferns' urging I joined a pick-up game
based closely on TFG's Battlewagon rules, set in the Pacific around 1944.
Unfortunately I sat there through three hours of setup and admiral-level-only
map maneuvering and was starting to doze off at 11:30 pm when my four
destroyers finally appeared on the board. Most of the other folks didn't
mind, but it was pretty pointless for me. (For those of you who haven't met
me in person, my hearing is shot, so sitting in a game con (essentially a
large room full of people shouting) trying to listen in on idle game chat is
an exercise in futility for me.)

Meanwhile, my wife was having a great time in the "women only" fantasy
miniatures game going on in one of the side rooms. True to form, she was
slaughtering all who opposed her, driving away all the forces in front of her
and starting to push both opposing flanks back when the game ended. That'll
teach 'em to argue with a lawyer.

Got a chance to watch a miniatures game set in the Indo-Pakistani Wars @
1965, featuring lots of M47s (my personal favourite!) and using a set of
rules from Simtac call Blood, Oil, Sand, Sugar, Sex, Magick, and I'd Like
Fries with That Please (or something to that effect). Looked like rather a
lot of fun with a handful of dead AMX13s and some dummy counters holding off
a roadfull of M47s.

On the naval side of things, Nathan Forney's SB3 game of Wake Island took a
very interesting turn early on: the Japanese spotted two US destroyers and
blew them to smithereens. The US commanders, following their pre-game orders,
turned tail and ran off the board. Game ended in two hours with everyone just
a little bewildered!

Finally starting to get over my case of convention burnout, I ran a game of
SB3 on Sunday morning. This is going to have to become a Sunday morning
tradition I think. As before, the gamers chose to do the Spanish-American War
(as opposed to Russo-Japanese), and this time I think we stumbled into the
ultimate dead-even game setup. We used the ships from the Manila Bay battle,
but started them at full steam and ready for combat from opposite sides of
the board, with visibility cut down to 32 inches (maximum range for the
Spanish guns) as if the ships were coming out of a fog bank. Turned out to be
a close match right to the very end, with the US limping away with two
heavily damaged ships. The first game ended in about 60 minutes (not bad for
a 13-player game!) so we had everyone swap sides and played it again. Second
game lasted a little bit longer than an hour, again with the US limping away
with one heavily damaged ship. Both games could have gone either way right up
to the last couple of turns. Not particularly historical, but a great deal of
fun, and a perfect way to end the con. Worst of all, we had the whole thing
set up and ready to play 20 minutes early (highly illegal at a Cold
Wars/Historicon event) and managed to play *two* games in two hours, and
wrapped it up two hours ahead of schedule. The Scheduling Police and going to
come after me for sure.

The most significant effect of the con (for me, anyway) (other than finally
getting all those 1:6000 ships for my collection, that is) is that my wife is
now all fired up about the idea of running games at Historicon this year.
Nicole has been to these cons many times before and has helped me run games
frequently, but this time something clicked. She came up with the idea of
running a big Tankbase: Commando game as well as some sort of Malta convoy
with Shipbase III, so she's busy working away at getting those ready for
July. Meanwhile, I've finally got the ships to put on a good Midway scenario
in SB3, so I'm starting to prepare for that, and of course I'll be running
the now-obligatory Traditional Sunday Morning Shipbase III Explode-O-Rama.

I was thinking about how cool it would be to bring several computers and run
networked versions of SB3 and Tankbase: Commando, but then reason set in and
I decided to put that idea off until at least next year... sigh...

ferns1@aol.com     David "Ferns" Ferris
ArmourSoft Inc., PO Box 323, Bloomsburg PA 17815

*&!4   <- really bad "text graphics" picture of a tank

From: Sean Barnett <sbarnett@IDA.ORG>
Subject:      Re: Cold Wars- After Action

        Reply to:   RE>Cold Wars: After Action Report

Dave Ferris writes about Cold Wars:
I had a great time at the Cold Wars convention this past weekend.
There was lots of historical miniatures. And stuff.

Attendance seemed to be pretty good again, despite the dismal weather over the
previous few days; the carpark was packed even moreso than usual. I was
pleased to note a healthy presence of younger gamers, seemingly more than last
year. Also noted an increase in naval gaming and computer-assist gaming this
year. Only saw one boardgame, AH Blackbeard going on in a corner.

[snip]

On the naval side of things, Nathan Forney's SB3 game of Wake Island took a
very interesting turn early on: the Japanese spotted two US destroyers and
blew them to smithereens. The US commanders, following their pre-game orders,
turned tail and ran off the board. Game ended in two hours with everyone just
a little bewildered!
--------------------
I struggled through DC rush hour and the snow on Friday morning to get to Cold
Wars in time to run a game.  When I got there I was worried, as the parking
lot was strangely empty.  However, by 11:00 I had 9 players signed up for my
Guadalcanal naval miniatures game, and by the time it kicked off at noon, I
had 13.

The game was a success, with all players getting into the action quickly and
having a good time.  The Americans, as they also did in the playtest I ran for
some consimmers in the DC area, split their forces, with half going up the
Slot to the northeast of Savo Island, and half going to the southeast.  The
Japanese kept their force concentrated, and essentially fought half of the
Americans as they faded back up the Slot. The net result was a long range
gunnery duel between two battlecruisers and three heavy cruisers on the
Japanese side, and a battleship, a light cruiser, and two heavy cruisers on
the American side.  An American destroyer charge, with five DDs in line
abreast, was shot up by the Japanese as they fell back, with the loss of three
of the DDs. At that point, the  American battleship had no protection from the
Long Lance-armed Japanese cruisers and had to stop pushing up the Slot.  The
Japanese successfully protected their landing and won the game.

Friday night I played in a WWI Coronel variant game that had a British
squadron of cruisers and a predreadnought battleship surprising a German
squadron of cruisers coaling along the coast of Chile.  The game used the
Seekrieg rules, which I think are only fair, but the action was exciting and
the scenario was interesting.

Saturday morning I visited the dealer's area and the flea market and spent
money on games, books, and miniatures.  Picked up Supermarina I, which Clash
of Arms was selling at a discount ($38, or only $3 more than the cost of the
ship data and scenario books sold separately).

Saturday afternoon, I played in the SB3 game that Dave mentioned and helped
sink the two U.S. DDs.  The scenario was interesting, with a pregame map
movement and search phase, but maybe a little light for a game that was
scheduled to go four hours.

Saturday night I played a new computer moderated naval game called
"Dreadnought:  The Battlefleet."  It covers the period from 1890-1922 and
plays kind of like SB3, except that the players command squadrons of ships and
fire at squadrons of enemy ships.  I noticed two novel features of the game.
First, the players never know precisely how badly damaged their ships are.
They receive damage reports like "bulkheads giving way, severe flooding
forward" instead of "lose 2,000 tons" or "lose 15% of flotation."  So you
don't know when you're going to sink until you actually do, although
continuous reports of "flooding out of control" should give you a hint.  The
second novel feature is the colorful and sensational initial damage reports
you get along with the former more business-like reports.  For example, a
glancing hit aft might be reported as "shell screams across deck and sends
shower of sparks flying."  A turret hit might be, "shell strikes amidships
turret, ripping it open and killing many men."  After a while you might get
tired of the damage reports, but they were fun for the first time.  The game
is published in the UK, but I don't know where to get it.  I think it might be
published by the same company that does the computer moderated age of sail
game "Clear for Action" (not to be confused with the manual WWII game), but
I'm not sure about that.  BTW, the game used the 1/6000 WWI ships Dave alluded
to.  They're probably the best way to do a Jutland-sized game, but it's a
little hard to identify the ships without picking them up  and examining them
closely.

Sunday I played in a big Close Action age of sail game, and helped the Royal
Navy defeat the French once again.  Thus I ran one naval game and played in
four.  Like Dave, I noticed a larger number of naval games than usual being
played.  (The Command at Sea folks were also there in force and ran games on
Friday and Saturday)  Turnout was a little down for the con as a whole, but
that seemed to be mostly because of the bad weather on Friday.  All in all, a
success and a fun weekend.

Sean Barnett