A Little of This and a Little of That

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
March 30, 2004

As with last time, this column will ramble aimlessly as I repeat long, pointless stories appropriate to my ever-increasing age. The gang here at Lost Battalion Games, when last heard from (see Publisher’s Corner - Panzer Battles), was headed to Lancaster, PA for the annual Cold Wars Miniatures Convention, except for Becky, who was headed for a Strong Man competition (see Publisher’s Corner - By the Twitching of My Thumb Something Weird This Way Comes ). There is many a slip between the cup and the lip and, although the rest of us made it to Lancaster, Becky was unable to compete thanks to a sore back. Better luck next time, Becky’ now, will you please let me out from under the giant tire?

We had a great time at Cold Wars and enjoyed meeting many of you at our booth or during our demonstrations. Debbie manned our booth most of the time. Don’t believe her for a minute when she claims that I brought her a huge cup of coffee and then abandoned her there alone for four hours. The truth is that it wasn’t a second over three hours and fifty minutes. Really! If you came by the booth during that time and thought that something was amiss, I think that she just likes to dance.

Bill Frye and Jim Day ran a PANZER MINIATURES game on Friday and another one on Saturday and both were well-received. We award kudos and a hearty “Atta Boy” to Bill for two nice-looking tables and nicely-painted miniatures. Jim’s rules weren’t bad either. Katrina wandered over at the end of each to award some t-shirts as prizes .

Katrina continued her perfect record in her “Tractor Factory Challenge,” thrashing an unnumbered multitude over a two-day period. Among her victims, she convinced me to concede after only about 15 minutes of play and actually took Jeff’s base from him! Joey Guth actually beat her on points but was annihilated and did not take the Tractor Works in Katrina’s hardest-fought victory. Jeff also got in a BATTLELINES: Stalingrad campaign game with Gregory Guth, that both seemed to enjoy. Jeff lost, even though I am sure that he was cheating shamelessly.

I spent most of my time demonstrating BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS, although everyone did some of that, if only to relax after some grueling BATTLELINES games. We played small games, big games, every variety of team games and individual cutthroat games. Many a stout dreadnought passed under the waves and into the briny deep. One fellow tried the old trick of demanding that we go easy on him if we expected him to like the game and buy it. You can just imagine how much sympathy that brought him!

Game conventions are also great places to meet old gaming buddies. In addition to the usual suspects, I ran into John Hill, the designer of SQUAD LEADER and JOHNNY REB, who now lives out west. I haven’t seen him for some time. I also, almost literally, bumped into John Ford, who was a play tester for us back in my Battleline Games days in the mid-70s. He still lives in the Atlanta area and I haven’t seen him in over 20 years. Great to see both of you John guys!

On a more personal note, I just had another birthday (sigh!) and Becky’s eldest, Sabrina, age 3, cheered me up and baked me a really swell birthday cake. It was a small cake that included almost as much icing as cake. It could not hold all the necessary candles, which is just as well, as the proper number of candles would have resulted in a fire code violation.