THREE MORE FOR THE ROAD

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
March 30, 2006

Sometimes I feel like I’m living my entire life either working at home or at the bunker and only get out to attend conventions. Back in mid January, Jeff and I cruised down I-95 South and then down I-20 West until we reached sleepy Augusta, Georgia. We were there to man a booth at the Siege of Augusta Miniatures Gaming Convention but I had an ulterior motive and we stayed with my mother, who lives there, and enjoyed cushy accommodations and home cooking the entire weekend.

Augusta, if you are unaware, was the location of the plant that manufactured the superior Confederate gunpowder that was fired at my ancestors in blue during the late unpleasantness in the 1860s. Augusta is now best known as the home of singer James Brown. There is a street named after him and a statue, complete with his trademark cape. My mother, who was completely unaware of his career, saw the cape on the statue and asked, “Who does he think he is; Superman?” Anyhow, that’s as close to any culture as you will find in this column.

Anyhow, affable Jim Birdseye has run this convention for many years and it’s been at least a dozen years since I last attended. Although small, it’s a good one with lots of gaming and time to chat up the gamers and other dealers. We did good business, were packed up by early in the afternoon on Sunday and back in the Baltimore area before midnight. Apparently, about a month later, Jim Birdseye suffered a stroke, so keep him in your prayers.

Being a glutton for punishment, I then attended the HAWKs “Barrage” Miniatures Gaming Convention in the local Bishop C urley Catholic High School (are there also Bishop Larry and Bishop Moe High Schools) on the following Saturday. This was a very small (about 75 people) gathering. Getting a booth was very cheap so I didn’t mind that much that we did so little business (people came to play, not to spend money). I actually had time to play some games. Jim Day ran a PANZER game, we managed to seat a table for a game of BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS STEEL and I ran a SERGEANTS! – In Miniature event. Old friend Cleo Liebl (her husband Bob and I go back to a 54mm gaming club in the mid 1960s) was in the SERGEANTS game and kept griping about her rolls with the beautiful $1.00 dice I had so thoughtfully provided. I finally loaned her another, grubbier one and she liked it so much she offered to buy it from me! I gave it to her as a gift but watch out if you spot her sneaking her own six-sided die into a game where high rolls are good.

The latest lost weekend was Cold Wars a couple of weeks back. This is a standard large HMGS East event up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that we attend every year. We ran our standard string of demonstrations for the card games and I ran two SERGEANTS! – In Miniature games that, for the first time, included tank support for the infantry. Both games, including teaching the newbies how to play, were over in less than two hours of exciting mayhem each. A notable problem, at least for us, was a printing glitch that delayed the delivery of our one new convention product until Saturday. Argghh! I say, Argghh! I ran into the usual batch of old friends and acquaintances but was especially pleased to see that Bob Coggins (my co-designer on NAPOLEON’S BATTLES) was there. He missed all three of the big HMGS convention last year with heart trouble, but had angioplasty at the local VA hospital back in January and is looking much better, although he is still far from one hundred percent. As an aside to mentioning Bob, after much trying, we have recovered the rights to NAPOLEON’S BATTLES from Five Forks and are planning to re-publish it here at Lost Battalion Games, probably early next year.

Did I mention that our new product was delayed until the second day of Cold Wars? That new product is our SERGEANTS! – Expansion package. This product is packed with goodies and adds U. S. Army and French soldiers to the mix of marching grunts but this is not a complete game as in the past. There are no dice, no pin markers, no fire markers and no rules for the soldiers – just use those four pages of rules, dice and pin and fire markers already included in SERGEANTS! - On the Eastern Front or SERGEANTS! In the Sand. Incomplete by itself, this new product adds much, much more. There is so much more that the rules for just the new units and markers are eight pages long, twice that of the rules found in the complete games. There are two extra-large Mapboards and four scenarios that include all the nationalities included in the Expansion and in both game sets. Then, there are all those other markers and units. Additional free online scenarios featuring the new units and markers will be going up on our site in the coming weeks and months.

So what else is in there? First, there are the objective markers. These include grounded aircraft and depot markers to guard or attack and tent and building markers to supplement the building hexes printed on the Mapboards. Then, there are those alternate ammunition markers for preliminary bombardments/craters, smoke shells to hide day movements and star shells to illuminate night movements. Obstacle markers (dragon’s teeth/road blocks – which may be booby-trapped, barbed wire, marked minefields – real and fake - and antitank ditches) prevent or slow maneuvers. Entrenchment markers (foxholes and trenches) protect units in their hexes; in effect, they convert open hexes into hard cover hexes. Fortification markers (pillboxes, caves and bunkers) protect units and may be linked together with underground tunnels. It is possible to have some units inside a fortification marker and enemy units in the same hex trying to place a stachel charge, which can lead to some real hairy close combats.

Finally, there are vehicle and antitank gun units for Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States and Japan (yes, the Pacific War is coming later). These include small but useful assortments of vehicles from powerful tanks like the Pz-V “Panther” to armored cars, halftracks, trucks and jeeps and antitank guns in many flavors and sizes. Although pure tank battles are possible, the vehicles are normally employed in ones or twos to support the soldiers. It’s all in color and all for only $15.95.

As a final note, you might want to check out Phil Gardocki’s “Cold War Stories" on our website. He’s already got six posted and I’ve already seen almost a dozen more that will be posted in future months. There’s at a least a chuckle or two in each one and they are all true-life stories of nautical derring-do.