Barrage 2025 After Action Report

 The HAWKs staged Barrage XXIX (really, 29?) on 26 and 27 September, at the Havre de Grace Community Center.  Things suddenly got busy after that, so this has taken me longer to write up and post than I had hoped.  I have been finding that things have expanded to fill most of my available time in retirement, so I’m not sure how I used to find time to go to work and still get anything else done. But here we are … 

Since we became a 2 day convention a few years ago, we now set the hall up on Thursday night.  We generally have about 20 tables set up for gaming in the main room, and there’s also a side room that gets used for an Art de la Guerre tournament on Saturdays.  I believe there were about 50 scheduled events and we had about 190 attendees overall.  

I had the opportunity to play in one game on Friday, a session of an ancient naval game using the Thalassa rules and some 1/300 scale 3-d printed ships, hosted by Walt Leach and a couple of his friends.

A convention is always a nice opportunity to play some games I wouldn’t have time to prepare myself.

Both of my sons came up from the Washington D.C. area on Saturday and helped me run a 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War game with Charge!. Once we had it set up we had a little time to spare, so Norman set up a quick game of DBA using his most recently completed armies, and William and I played it out.

For the NQSYW game this year I dipped into my standard resource, C.S. Grant’s Scenarios for Wargames, and selected Scenario 15: Reinforcements in the Defense (On the Table), a scenario I have used many times before.

The attacking force was provided by the Pragmatic Coalition (forces belonging to myself, Norman, and William) and the defenders by the Northern Alliance (forces belonging to Chris Palmer and Duncan Adams). 

The defenders occupied a large hill, seen here in the far center of the photo, and the attackers need to clear it before reinforcements arrive. As is common in this scneario, both side’s cavalry ended up in a scuffle in the clear area on the near side of the hill (from the point of view of the photo above).

The Pragmatic assault eventually carried the hill, but not without ferocious casualties. 

Everyone agree that the Pragmatic Coalition would not be able to hold the hill against the counterattack from the Alliance reinforcements which had deployed:

I did get a chance to add my most recently completed unit to the Alliance defenders, seen here shortly before they broke:

A few musketeers of the North Polenburg Queen Jennifer Regiment have become intermingled with them in the swirl of the battle.  Overall, it was an unusual run of this scenario; the forces on the hill held out longer than expected, and my sons and I were discussing the possibility of doing a little mathemtical modeling to see how unusual that was, but we haven’t done it yet.

I had good luck with the flea market this year.  I sold almost everything in the three boxes of stuff I brought, and went home with a few books and a couple of small bags of Airfix figures to add to projects befopre actual and potential. 

Now it’s time to prepare for Cold Barrage in March …

All Based and Ready to Go (NQSYW and 54mm Fantasy)

 It has taken a few days since my return from visiting my father to finish up what I had painted, and I also had three more of the NQSYW figures which needed basing.

That brings a Charge! company up to full strength, so I will need to find a way to get it on the table this Saturday.

I also finished the one witch.

Next up on the painting table will be a few more 54mm fantasy figures.  I’m trying not to look too far ahead, so I won’t predict what might be after that.

Some NQSYW (and other) Painting

Please pardon the cluttered table picture!  I have been visiting my father on a regular basis this past year, and I usually try to bring along some sort of hobby project I can work on in the down time.  This trip I brought along the travel paint set and some NQSYW figures for the red-coated army of the Archbishopric of Schlüsselbrett.  When we picked up the redcoats in the Annexation in 2011 there were a few figures with yellow facings that didn’t amount to a complete Charge! company, so I eventually cast up the rest of the needed figures and have worked on them very intermittantly for the last several years.  (More libations for the Muse Clio would be in order, I suppose … ) I was down to the last four I had in progress, so that’s what I brought, figuring that finishing them wasn’t too ambitious.

So, while my father was off to his volunteer gig at the Henry Ford Museum I buckled down and knocked these out. I should have time to get all the basing done to allow the company to appear on the table at Barrage next week.

After playing A Fistful of Lead last week I was also inspired to bring along a few 54mm fantasy figures.  (I have the magic/fantasy expansion for those rules.) I finished off one sorceress, from the old Toys R Us Mythical Warriors play set. (Less the basing, as I didn’t bring the basing or final varnish materials with me…)

During my last burst of inspiration for 54mm fantasy I picked up a bunch of Marx recasts (knights, Vikings, and Robin Hood), so I have plenty of possible figures to paint.  With a bit of help from the Muses, perhaps I can get an initial game on the table some time this winter.

 

Geezer Game

Today's Geezer Game is a 10mm WWI battle, from 1914. The Germans and British clash near Ypres. Rules in use are "Look Sarge, No Charts", with WWII modified to support the WWI scenario.

Foundry Day

 I have been preoccupied this summer and have not taken advantage of the warm weather to do any casting since May. My wife, being an industrial hygienist, has advised me to keep all of the casting outdoors, so hot sunny days are the best for this.  (In fact, as long as you stay well hydrated, ridiculously hot days are the best of the best, so I don’t mind the occasional heat wave.)

Earlier this summer I bought a new clean melting pot so that I could keep any potential lead contamination out of things to be cast for my grandchild, and it seemed like a good day to give it a test.  It’s an actual Prince August device that requires you to dip the metal out of an open-topped pot with a ladle, so I wasn’t sure how well that would work.  Future grandchild toys are not urgent, however, and my younger son has been waiting for me to cast some Prince August marching grenadiers for him, to complete a unit.  Working alone, casting three or four molds makes for a good work flow, so I pulled out the grenadiers he needed, a pair of grenadiers firing, a drummer and standard bearer, and an officer and musketeer advancing.  I did three at a time, swapping the officer and advancing guy out for the drummer/standard bearer after producing a couple of good copies of each. Getting 50 successful figures this way took me about two hours, including the set-up time.  I’d have done more, since the set-up time had already been invested, but I had to go pick my car up from its maintenance appointment.

We haven’t been adding much to the Not Quite Seven Years War (NQSYW) collection in recent years, but I guess the big game we did last year at Barrage (see his commentary at 10:05) inspired him, and who am I to argue with inspiration? 

I also handed off a cavalry squadron to him recently, so I look forward to having a game with some new figures on the table, perhaps by the next spring.

For that matter, I have some NQSYW figures on my painting desk now.  These figures are to complete one of the units acquired in the Annexation back in 2011. (2011 ?!?!) I suppose that it’s more than time that they be completed…

There will be a modest NQSYW game (using Charge! as is customary) coming up at Barrge 2025 in a few weeks.  I hope to have a Barrage AAR, and I also hope that I will have these figures all based and varnished so that the unit can appear in the game.

French and Indian War Skirmish Using “A Fistful of Lead”

 In my recent post I mentioned the HAWKs Geezer Games which I have been able to participate in due to my retirement.  There is an even more unofficial custom of gathering for games on Mondays.  I volunteered to run yesterday’s game, and decided that it was time to pull out the 40mm French and Indian War figures.  These, according to my logs, were last out for a solo game in early September 2023, just over two years ago. 

I have been wanting to try A Fistful of Lead for some time, ever since I saw a group playing a science fiction game using the specialized variant Galactic Heroes during a HAWKs game day a few years ago. My thought at the time was that I would run a game using the 54mm semi-flat home cast Buck Rogers figures, although I still have not (yet) done that.  As noted, I had the opportunity to play in a colonials game at Gen Con using the Bigger Battles variant, and I enjoyed that. So, it seemed like a good time to give it a try.

Because we were playing at someone else’s house, and I knew we were going to be learning the rules, I did not carry much scenery with me, so this tabletop is not as picturesque as I might like it to be, so I didn’t take too many pictures as we went along.  I kept to a simple set up.  The four corners of the table were covered in woods (represented here by the darker green cloth).  Two log cabins were in a clearing in the center of the table, separated by a small stream.  We had four players, so I assembled two groups of French and Indian raiders, each with seven figures and each including a group of three untried youths, one group of five British colonial settlers plus a group of four non-combatants occupying the clearing around the cabins, and one group of five British settler militia from the next valley over.  The French objective was to burn the cabins and capture the non-combatants; the British objective to drive off the French.

In the first game I played the arriving militia, and did not do well, losing my leader and being about lose a second militiaman, while being unable to prevent the raiders from burning the small cabin. The local settlers took more casualties and had little ability to defend the larger cabin and the non-combatants against the raiders.   So we called it, broke for lunch, switched sides and tried again.

This time the settler elected to defend both cabins (having abandoned the small cabin in the first game), and my raider team was unable to do much against the defenders, although I did eventually eliminate the settler leader with a lucky shot.  My fellow raider lost all but one of his figures, so we called that one a settler victory.

The main feature distinguishing A Fistful of Lead from other skirmish games is the activation system using a standard deck of playing cards.  Each player is dealt a hand of cards (one per figure) at the start of each turn.  Activations occur in order, from Kings down to Twos, with Aces being wild cards.  Certain of the cards provide special actions (e.g. heal a wound marker, combat bonus, automatic reload), so there is some strategy inherent in choosing which figure to activate when you have the next card to be played.  Turns generally moved along quickly, and the mechanics are pretty simple.  Most of them are laid out pretty well on a one page QRS.  The activation system is designed, among other things, to support multi-player games, which is a plus.

Everyone seemed happy with the rules, so I expect that there will be more of this in the future.

My only quibbles were that the QRS would have benefitted from including a list of the possible actions, and that (in common with a lot of the skirmish games we play) status markers end up creating a lot of table clutter.  If I planned to run this as a convention showcase game, I would wish to put some effort into making some more unobtrusive markers. 

Gen Con 2025 After Action Report

PLANNING 

After missing Gen Con last year due to family matters (previously described), my brother, my wife and I were determined to return this year.  As usual, planning needed to start back in January, with the purchase of the entry badges.  Due to some uncertainty in my brother’s schedule we agreed that we would not attempt to run any games this year, although we did note (when the events list was released) that someone else had stepped up to run some Burrows and Badgers in our place.  My brother drew an excellent time slot in the room lottery in February and we were able to get a room at Downtown Marriot, one of the hotels connected to the convention center by a skywalk, with the caveat being that the hotel wanted a Tuesday through Sunday stay to get the convention rate.  

I got most of what I wanted when events tickets went on sale in May, so after that it was just a matter of settling in to wait until it was time to drive to Indianapolis.  Entry badges were sold out this year, so there were a number of disappointed last-minute would-be attendees noted on the Gen Con online discussions.

As usual, Indianapolis rolled out the proverbial red carpet for the convention.

Many of the roads around the convention center were under construction this year, so I was very happy that we were able to park the car in the hotel’s garage on Tuesday and live as pedestrians until Sunday.

We checked into the hotel and found that they were trying to be Gen Con themed.  The lobby staff were wearing fairy wings, and we were issued with a bag of emergency dice along with our room keys.

WEDNESDAY    

Wednesday is “Trade Day” at Gen Con, with the majority of the events being for industry and education folks.  There are usually some free scheduled games going on, although we didn’t sign up for any this year.  My brother had suggested that we bring the materials necessary to play some pick-up Dragon Rampant, so we set up a game on Wednesday morning, having, in accordance with the rules, asked the area manager at the Union Station gaming space for an open table.  

In order to get two Dragon Rampant warbands into a single 4-Liter Really Useful Box, I chose to use my figures based on 60mm by 40mm bases for Dux Bellorum, so I had pseudo-historical Saxons and Britons. My brother was using some sort of chaos orc army, drawn from his large collection of vintage miniatures. (One of the things I like about Dragon Rampant is that it is very flexible about match ups.) As an aside, my stack of RUBs can be seen at one end of the table; I had a 2.5 liter box of gamemaster materials such as dice, measuring tapes, and tokens; a 4-liter box with the two Arthurian warbands; and a 4-liter box with some scenery.  We had agreed that my brother would have the ground cloth, some trees, and some additional scenery. 

Eventually my Britons sent the orcs and trolls and what not back to wherever it was that they came from.

The Gen Con “Block party” opened up on Wednesday afternoon, so we tried Sun King’s Gen Con brew, an apple containing ale called “Core Strategy”.  I’m sorry to say that it was not at all to my taste, so my only other beer this convention was an IPA. 

THURSDAY

I had two scheduled games on Thursday.  The first was the only roleplaying game I had signed up for, a session of Shadowdark.  Shadowdark, designed by Kelsey Dionne and published by The Arcane Library, is currently making a splash in the RPG community.  It’s fast-playing and calls back to the playstyle of the early D&D games.  I’d only played one online one-shot, and wanted to try it in person.  It was a good start to the official convention, and I was glad that I played.

My second Thursday game was a real throwback to earlier times.  I had the good fortune to get a ticket to a session of the TSR Napoleonic naval game Don’t Give Up the Ship (DGUTS), designed by Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax and  Mike Carr, and being run my Mike Carr himself. Mike is a Gen Con legend, having been around since the very first Gen Con in 1968.  I had played DGUTS as part of my high school gaming activities back in the late 1970s, but hadn’t played since.  

I remembered DGUTS as being fairly complicated, but I guess 50 years of gaming experience since then has altered my perceptions, as it was not particularly hard for my to follow today, except that the boarding actions were all adjudicated by Mike, so I didn’t see the underlying mechanics.  Twelve or thirteen players were in the game, and I was interested to note that several of them were both young (under thirty) and veterans of previous years’ play, so interest in older games is not entirely restricted to grognards such as myself.

I was interested to see that the game was to be played with some rather abstact ships.  These plastic vessels may be recognized by some as the playing pieces for the 1962 Milton Bradley board game Broadside.  It didn’t take me long to get past that and become immersed in the game.  As Donald Featherstone once wrote (Solo-Wargaming, 1973, p.90) “…the imagination can paint nearly as well at the brush!”.  Given my usual propensity for choosing the losing side in any scenario, I was surprised to find that we (the British) won the game, taking two French ships as prizes, one of them by me.  As it happened, between the boarding actions and the need to assign crew to sail off the prize, I ended the game only able to man a few guns and barely sail the ship, but a victory is a victory nonetheless.  It was a delight and a privilege to have gamed with Mike Carr.

We had dinner Wednesday night at Loughmiller’s Pub, a block from the convention center.  They were one of the restaurants that switched over to a Gen Con-themed menu (although they just renamed the dishes), a custom which has seemed to be declining in recent years. 

FRIDAY

 

Gen Con is an overwhelming experience.  This year, there were over 25,000 scheduled events.  Nobody is going to be able to see everything, and the best way to avoid FOMO, in my opinion, is to build your schedule beforehand and stick to it.  My two scheduled events on Friday were both dance sessions with my wife.  These (basically) English Country Dance events have been run for almost ten years by a group currently entitled “The Revel Alliance”. Irene and I do ballroom dance at home, and look forward to these events as a pleasant break from our usual dance fare.  (We woud recommend these events to anyone attending Gen Con and looking for something to break up the gaming a bit.)

However, the main thing I scheduled for Friday was the Gen Con auction.  An enormous amount of material changes hands at the Gen Con auction and the related consignment shop each year.  A general schedule is posted just before the convention opens with the time blocks laid out (e.g. “board games”, “RPGs”, “miniatures” etc.), but there is some predictability from one year to the next.  Friday afternoon is for miniatures, and Friday night is the collectables auction, ending with the auction of whatever super-rare items have been consigned that year, things like D&D first printings and the like.  

I had a vintage board wargame agenda this year, and I was pleased to be able to pick up a copy of Avalon Hill’s Machiavelli and Wooden Ships and Iron Men as well as a copy of the Battleline edition of Trireme. I didn’t buy anything personally during the miniatures sessions, but my brother bought me a box of nearly a hundred Ral Partha 25mm Renaissance figures for less than $50, so I have a future project whose parameters remain in flux.  The collectable session went quite late.  I was a little startled to see a copy of the 2014 40th anniversary reprint of original Dungeons & Dragons go for $2000, while a reasonable looking copy of a 4th printing original with all the supplements including Chainmail and Swords and Spells went for a mere $1000. There’s no accounting for collectors…

I’ll add here, a little out of order, that I also came home with a set of the recently reproduced Partha Paints, two years’ worth of The Courier magazine (covering the Franco-Prussian War and French and Indian War theme years, from the consignment shop), and GMT Games Britain Stands Alone (The Battle of Britain and Operation Sealion) and the original Source of the Nile (both from Games Plus, the last vintage game shop doing business in the Gen Con Exhibition Hall). I spent most of the ‘90s painting with Partha Paints, and I thought it might be fun to revisit my roots and do a little retro painting. (More about that in a later post, I hope…)

SATURDAY

I had, oddly enough for Gen Con, a second historical miniatures game to start off on Saturday morning.  I was signed up for a session of “The Lonely Outpost” run by GM Patrick Connaughton and using 25mm 19th century British and Afghans and the Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles rules by Wiley Games. 

I chose to play Afghans, so our goal was to drive off the British, who had taken refuge in an abandoned fort.  We played this on a 5x6 table, probably with about 200 figures all told.  I’ve got Fistful of Lead on my list of rules to try at home now. (In fact, I’ve got a French and Indian War game scheduled for this coming Monday…)

As with the DGUTS game, I was pleased to see some younger people among the players.

I had Saturday afternoon earmarked for the Exhibition Hall, according to my pre-con notes.  At the risk of being a grumpy old man, I had a hard time with the noise and the crowds in the Exhibition Hall this year, so I cut my stay short, and collected up my wife for a nice quiet early dinner at Harry and Izzy’s.  I apologize to all the exhibitors who might have been able to sell me something under other circumstances.

On Saturday night I ventured into the main gaming hall for a session of the new (3rd) edition of the classic 1970s War of the Roses board wargame Kingmaker.  As you can see, the players for this one were definitely fellow grognards.  In the new edition, there are rules for declaring a winner short of having the last royal heir standing, and using them allowed us to play to a conclusion in three hours.  To my surprise, I came out on top in the prestige ratings (and thus won).  

SUNDAY

We packed up the car, checked out of the room, and did a little more shopping on Sunday (results shown above).  After that, we finished up the convention with two more sessions of dancing with the Revel Alliance team, and then drove on to Michigan to visit with my father for a few days before finally getting back home.

CONCLUSION  

I was glad that we were able to go this year, and having a downtown connected hotel makes a big difference in the quality of one’s convention experience, especially for a more, uh, veteran gamer such as myself.  I didn’t do enough actually walking in preparation this year, something that I’ll have to address before the next time we go.  Gen Con may have sold out, but the cap of about 75,000 people they have placed on the event is still a pretty massive crowd in the space that’s available.  As I noted above, the Exhibition Hall was almost too much for me this year.  

Everyone’s Gen Con is different, as they pick from the vast menu of possibilities.  This year, I had a very retro experience, with my vintage game shopping, my historical miniatures games, and the Kingmaker game.   

For anyone considering going, I’d still recommend it.  It’s an experience like no other in this hobby.  It does repay some careful planning, so don’t wait until the last minute, lest you find that it has already sold out.