Hamburg Tactica 2017 / Sunday

"On Sunday Jörg and I played a couple of games on smaller tables that only took about an hour to play. We played a Crusaders versus Saracens board game. The rules were from the book 'Ritter, Waffen, Reiterspiele' by Andrew MacNeil and the miniatures were 54 mm Britains figures. Great Fun."

"Aha."

"Then we went to a beautiful 60 cm × 60 cm table where the author of the ruleset 'Koalitionskriege!' presented his game. We played out a skirmish battle taking place in the age of Napoleon. British versus French. Each player had a set of command markers and secretly had to 'program' each unit at the beginning of each turn. I don't know much about this period, but it surprised me that the author had made close combat more effective than shooting."

"It really depends what 'close combat' represents in the game."

"Yes. I know. I asked the author and he said something about knives on rifles. Anyways, the game was fun. The last game we played was Congo presented by the club Spieltrieb Frankfurt. We were four players, a teenager from Sweden, his father, Jörg and I. The table was covered with red cloth that had patches of grass. On top of it were lots of trees, mud huts and all kinds of African animals. In the centre was a village. One side played a group of European explorers who started in the village and had to make it to the edge of the table with some stolen goods. The other side played an African tribe, trying to stop the thieves. Congo uses cards to activate units. The cards allow you to take certain actions like move or shoot and come with a number for initiative. At the beginning of each round both sides play out a card. The side with the higher initiative goes first."

"That sounds interesting."

"Yes. And you can also bewitch other units, so they can't move or shoot. I played the African tribe with the teenager from Sweden and he was in such a good mood, enjoying the game so much, it turned Congo into the most entertaining two hours I had during the Tactica. Do you know the blog Dalauppror?"

"No."

"The author played at the same table on Sunday morning. There is a report on his blog with lots of pictures."

"Hm. I don't read tabletop blogs."

"Yeah. I know. I'm glad you read my blog once in a while. On Saturday morning, coming from the Abukir game, a bit exhausted, this guy comes to me, Alex, an old friend of my cousin, and says: 'I have something for you.', gives me a bag of miniatures, characters from Foundry's World of the Greek range. I'm like: Wow. Thank you. He says: 'For all the inspiration your blog gives me.'"

"Really?"

"Turns out he wants to do something similar to our Waltrop campaign. Ancient Greeks with mythological elements. I'm going to be in Dortmund with the kids during the summer, so we want to get together and play one day. Man, I was really touched by this. Alex has a wonderful blog. He is an amazing painter and does great pieces of terrain. You should check it out, Dr Moebius Miniature Mania."

"Hm."

"Really!"

"Ok. I'll try to do that."

"So how was your time in Dortmund?"

"Nice. I spent the weekend with my brother and his family. He had to work in the garden. I made the mistake to put my niece in a wheelbarrow. I had to drive her around in the garden all day. I was so exhausted."

Hamburg Tactica 2017 / Saturday

"It's a pity you couldn't come to the Tactica this year.", I said to Krüger.

"Yes. How was it?"

"Well. We arrived at 11 on Saturday morning and directly went to a table set up by the guys from THS to see if we could join them for a game at some point. One of them asked: 'Do you have anything to do now?', so we stayed. It was a large game using the ruleset Black Powder. They had beautiful miniatures and terrain, like last year. British forces were landing on the coast of Egypt at Abukir and the French were defending. We had a game master on each side. After a while they got into a rule fight. This reminded me of my early years of wargaming, but these guys must already be gaming in a club for more than 30 years, so I was surprised this happened. Maybe they were nervous because they had a game coming up at 2 o'clock with the Perry twins and Aly Morrison as guests. In any case, this was lots of fun. I mean, they were very friendly with us. Although … one of them kept teasing me that I should role the dice with more verge. I said: 'Man. These are dice. It doesn't matter with how much verge you roll them. You just need to get a random result.'"

Krüger asked: "What other games did you play?"

"There is this club from southern Germany that does excellent participation games each year …"

"Kurpfalz Feldherren?"

"Yes. They were there with a large table, depicting an area of desert in Sudan. I played the British. I had to lead a camel caravan from one small side of the table to a camp on the opposite side, while the other three players, including Jörg, brought in large groups of nomads on camels and horses and on foot from the long sides. After an hour my caravan was stopped coming out of a narrow valley. I didn't even manage to capture an imam hiding in a small village on my right side. The terrain was quite impressive. The two game masters had used cork to depict rocks and the sides of cliffs. I really liked that."

"Great idea."

"All in all I was a bit tired on Saturday. The week before, Marjorie had worked a lot, leaving at 8 a.m. and returning at 3 the next morning. On Monday I had spent four hours on the train, bringing Lina and Hendrik to school, to aikido, to flamenco and picking them up again. And then there was the school strike …"

"So what else was there to see at the Tactica?"

"They had a very interesting theme room with games for children and old miniatures and books. You could play several boardgames with plastic soldiers and there was a table with armies made of paper. They were taken from one of the books by the artist Peter Dennis who was also there showing how he worked. I would like to play more strategy games with Hendrik, so all of this was very inspiring. Those paper soldiers look fantastic, but cutting them out with a little scissor and glueing them together must take a lot of time, especially in my case, being such a slow person."

"We should play 40K with Hendrik."

"Yes. And he could join the Waltrop campaign, play some units of Greeks… He likes slingers."

"Slingers? Why?"

"I have no idea. There was also a library of gaming books. I flipped through some books and one of the members of the club THS recommended 'Scenarios for Wargames' by Charles Grant. It looked very interesting."

"Do you plan to buy the book?"

"I saw it for 363£ on Amazon yesterday."

"Wow."