THE ENDLESS SUMMER
By
S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
October 15, 2005
Any military trivia I might want to write about has been moved from this column to the Cher Ami Newsletter, of which, after much arm-twisting, I have also been charged to write and edit. This column will now devote its irreverent text to our crazy little company, its eccentric products and my own personal foibles and observations. It has been some time since the last Publisher’s Corner (and an interminable wait until the powers that be found time to post it) and this one is all about news of Jeff and Debbie Billings’ three children as well as the three major war gaming conventions we attended during a long and very busy summer.
The first major summer convention was ORIGINS, in Columbus, Ohio, way back in the distant days of early July. Jeff and my much younger self were our company’s representatives for this one and we left at a ridiculously early hour so that we could travel and get set up on the same day. Let me point out that, regarding our personal calendars, Jeff and I are from different planets. Jeff is early to bed and early to rise but I have always subscribed to the theory that that is a schedule calculated to avoid meeting most of the most interesting people. I generally turn in for my nightly fitful rack attack shortly before Jeff wakes up all refreshed and disgusting. As a result, as we tooled on up the freeway to Ohio, Jeff tried to engage me in a meaningful, company-related conversation while I dozed and mumbled incoherently, as I am prone to do during semi-comatose bouts of sleep deprivation.
We arrived, set up and discovered that our expected room adjoining the Convention Center was gone with the wind but had been replaced by a room downtown. This necessitated riding a shuttle back and forth to the Convention Center, which wasn’t really a problem except on Saturday. On Saturday, the mayor of Columbus, who was running for governor and needed to draw attention to himself through deviant behavior, decreed that July 4 (which fell on a Monday this year) would be celebrated on Saturday, July 2. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who both wrote the Declaration of Independence and died fifty years later on July 4, 1826, must have been spinning in their graves. Since fireworks draw a veritable Biblical multitude in these parts, the city was cordoned off by unsmiling policemen to prevent errant motorists, crazed Republicans or convention shuttle buses from driving into the city and running over the happy throngs of potential voters. To further the festive atmosphere, we were issued identifying yellow plastic bracelets by the hotel so we could avoid the bum’s rush if we arrived back there during the rocket’s red glare. The explosive spectacular ended but the shuttle never resumed service, as the traffic jam apparently took much longer to unravel than anticipated. To make a long story short (you wish), we had to walk back to our hotel on Saturday night and, thanks to a worn sock and the fact that I am older than bad cheese, I developed a blister on my right foot the size of a quarter that had me limping and cursing the mayor for the next week.
On a happier note, during our first few days in the hotel we were able to observe the cultural interaction of a convention of the Holiness Preachers, a group of very nice Black people with well-behaved children all dressed in their Sunday best, and some costumed DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS players, who were meeting on the floor just under them and often shared the same crowded elevators. Fun is definitely where you can find it!
ORIGINS, as usual, is a great place to meet people that I haven’t seen in years. Among many others, there were Lou Zocchi of Gamescience, Tom Shaw, the former marketing guru for the old Avalon Hill Game Company and Dan Masterson, who formerly ran an outfit called Erudite Games, a computer game design house. As I recall from an article in the old Avalon Hill General Magazine, Lou retired as a sergeant from the United States Air Force the year before I graduated from High School, yet he is still going strong. Tom is retired in Florida where he traded in his boring old Maryland farm for the relaxation of repeated hurricane evacuations. Dan, who I last saw while I was with Interactive Magic collaborating on the GREAT BATTLES computer games, is currently working with Jim Dunnigan on their very interesting daily FYEO Express military briefing at their website StrategyPage.com.
Jeff and I alternated demonstrating our games in the War Room ("Gentlemen! No fighting in the War Room!"), an arrangement facilitated by Cher Ami Legion member and local resident George "Bud" Sauer of CABS (Columbus Area Boardgames Society). Business at the booth was great as we sold out of half the items we brought. That made loading up when we were ready to leave a matter of minutes and we were on the road home by the early afternoon on Sunday.
Later that same month, we motored up the road to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the Lancaster Host Inn for the annual HISTORICON Miniatures Convention hootenanny. We did our usual promiscuous gaming demonstrations and I ran two sold-out SERGEANTS - In Miniatures demonstrations. The Legion of Honor, a group of fellow gray-haired miniatures grognards to which I belong, had its annual breakfast and inducted two new members by making them eat the Lancaster Host’s buffet. Booth business was brisk but a production problem that had ruined most of the runs of BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL and BATTLEGROUP meant that we sold out of the few of those we had brought after the first few hours, which hurt business a bit. Fortunately, much of that lost business was replaced by sales of PANZER and the PANZER PaK modules, which did very well thanks to exciting events run by master scenarist Bill Frye and the game’s designer, Jim Day.
Jeff’s and Debbie’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, known to many of you as our former company "mascot", the deadly "Katrina", got hitched the next weekend. Liz, as you might expect if you have eyes (she looks just like "Katrina" only she is not always scowling and blowing up your best assault units with her artillery), was a lovely bride. Jeff actually danced with her at the reception, which was not as horrible as you might expect. Jeff got a bonus from the deal as new hubby Bobby is also an accomplished and competitive gamer. Although Liz is no longer with Lost Battalion Games (in addition to her "Katrina" duties – she was never defeated while defending the Tractor Works – she did the fine artwork for BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL, BATTLEGROUP and the cover art for all of the PANZER series), she will still be doing some free-lance contract artwork for us.
And so it goes, or, in this case, goes and goes and goes. A little over a week later, we were back in scenic Lancaster, Pennsylvania for Don Greenwood’s play pretty, the WORLD BOARDGAMING CHAMPIONSHIPS. This was the first year at the Lancaster Host Inn for this convention, which had been at the Hunt Valley Marriott north of Baltimore since way back when it was an Avalon Hill Convention called AVALONCON. The extra gaming space and dealer space now available leaves this excellent convention plenty of room to flex its muscles and add to its events and programs. Becky was up there in the registration booth starting on Tuesday, as we printed all of the convention pre-ordered custom convention souvenir t-shirts as well as all of the gamemaster polo shirts, and she had to be there to pass them out. Despite the fact that every one of the many hundreds of shirts was different and each of a specified size, Jeff’s new advanced automated programs that he installed since last year worked very well indeed and there were only a couple of snafus. Well done!
I arrived on Wednesday to start running the BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL event. Paul Potera was my invaluable assistant gamemaster and gofer during most of the heats and at the formal demonstration. I ran a three-hour heat on Wednesday, a one-hour demonstration and a three-hour heat on Thursday and a three-hour heat on Friday. Whew! Thirty-four individuals participated in the heats, a number of them multiple times, so that 44 positions were filled during the three heats. None of the players from last year’s championship round participated, so we were certain to have an all-new crew in the finals. All this mayhem on the high seas was followed by an elimination round and a championship round on Saturday.
The Saturday elimination round was to be two four-player tables consisting of the eight winners from tables in the earlier heats but one of the heat winners didn’t show. We continued with yours truly filling in as a fourth at one of the tables, with the understanding that I would be automatically eliminated and the other three would automatically advance to the championship round. What a deal! At the other table, Jeff Spaner was the one eliminated but one of the winners, Matt Evinger, had to leave to participate in another event, so Jeff was allowed to remain and occupy the sixth slot in the final, championship table. As it turned out, this very same Jeff Spaner was in the lead and had 39 victory points at the end of the second sortie of the championship round. He successfully fought off attempts at annihilation by his blood-crazed opponents during the third sortie and survived but scored no victory points while Steve Raszewski (the tournament’s "Mr. Persistence" – he played in all three heats before winning a spot in the finals in the third heat) increased his total to an identical 39 victory points. By the game’s rules, a tie for the lead requires another sortie to be played by all players but most of the group had to be elsewhere, so the championship had to be settled by a dice roll. Jeff Spaner won the roll and is the 2005 champion. Fourth and fifth place was also a tie and required a dice roll to position the players. Such is life! They were a good group and I hope to see many of them again next year. The final round, an exceedingly low-scoring affair, was exciting and unusual and the official results are as follows:
FIRST PLACE (WINNER): Jeff Spaner – 39 victory points.
SECOND PLACE: Steve Raszewski – 39 victory points.
THIRD PLACE: Andy Fedin – 32 victory points.
FOURTH/FIFTH PLACE: Bruce Young/Jim Dougherty – 24 victory points.
SIXTH PLACE: Brad Raszewski (Steve’s son) – 23 victory points.
Oh, yeah! While I was engaged in all this, another production problem had screwed up most of the next run of BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL and we sold out of the few we had by noon of the first day the dealer’s area was open. Arrghhh!
I wasn’t alone in running Lost Battalion events. We all ran various teaching demonstrations, many of them for BATTLEGROUP. Paul Potera ran a pick-up game of SERGEANTS! – In Miniature that was the only miniatures event I saw there except for another game that is dear to my heart, WOODEN SHIPS & IRON MEN, which was run with miniature sailing ships. Neal Schlaffer, the designer of both games, ran tournaments in both COMBAT SOLDIERS In the Battle of the Bulge and the old Avalon Hill title ENEMY IN SIGHT, which we will be republishing next year (he also ran a GUERRILLA tournament – busy guy). Neal also put on a World War II major general’s togs, fired up a projector and started pointing with his swagger stick to put on a tour-de-force briefing presentation on how to play COMBAT SOLDIERS In the Battle of the Bulge. Overall, it was a fine convention.
Jeff and Debbie just had time to unload the van before they were back on the road to Savannah, Georgia to watch their son, Mike, get commissioned into the U. S. Navy. Mike is a mathematically-inclined young man who just graduated from College and Naval ROTC. He is now well-set to serve in the "Silent Service" branch of the "anchor clankers" (I am going to get yelled out for that) and we all wish him well in the launching of his adult career. If they ever call you back in, you’ll have to salute him, Jeff (an old "tin can" gob).
The third, and eldest of the Billings children, Becky Mauder, also rates a mention in this column, if only to say goodbye. After doing excellent work for Lost Battalion Games in production, at conventions and especially with her flair for the graphic arts in our games and Cher Ami Newsletters, Becky recently decided to pack up her giant tire (see Publisher’s Corner "By the Twitching on My Thumb, Something Weird This Way Comes" from 2004) and move on to other things. She’ll be missed.
The WBC Convention pretty much ended the season for me and I was able to stooge around the cave for the next couple weeks and then take a two week holiday to Augusta, Georgia to see my sainted mother (and eat her home cooking) and less than sainted kid sister (she’s pretty nice people, though), who drove over from Atlanta for a weekend. While there, my mother and I spent two days sorting through an almost forgotten box of old photographs that included some scandalous snaps of when my parents were dating. I came back with an album my late father put together during World War II with some interesting and unpublished photographs that I will be sharing with you in future features from here in the "Bunker". ‘Till next time.
