Sven's mysterious Campaign Book

Krüger and I came up with most of the background for the armies we play in our Waltrop campaign, sitting in an Italian restaurant in Berlin Friedrichshain, drinking white wine or black coffee and talking for hours. It was great fun. (Although at the time I thought: why does he always want to play Orcs? Why can't I convince him to play Greeks?)

My cousin Sven plays the Aquarians in our campaign. He has a book where he writes down his ideas about them, but he never talks about it.

As a birthday present, last year in May, I asked him to reveal some information about the Aquarians.

He sent me a picture that shows two pages of his mysterious book.

On the left page it says:

Die Sage des Deukalion 

• Deukalion war der Sohn des Prometheus (Titan) und der Pronoia ("Fürsorge")
• im Bronzenen Zeitalter war Zeus derart erbost über die Schlechtheit der Menschen, dass er sie mit der großen Flut austilgen will
• Prometheus befiehlt ihm und seiner Frau Pyrrha, ein Schiff zu bauen und sich damit zu retten
• sie landen auf dem Berg Parnassos, später auf dem Berg Othrys, schließlich auf dem Berg Aquarius
• an all diesen Orten bringen sie die Menschen zurück in die Welt, durch das Werfen von Steinen über die Schulter
• als Aquarius geht er nach seinem Tod in den Götterhimmel ein
• die ersten Menschen von Aquarius - Deukalions Volk, stammen direkt von ihm ab

On the right page there are several stars. Depicting large and small islands maybe?

Sven also sent me a text about his book:

"Behold the Codex Pontificis.
The Book of Books.
With all its myths and miracles.
Containing not only the Odyssey of the Aquarians and the founding of our Polis.
But telling where we the sons of Hellas came from and where we will go to.
Written by my priest predecessors.
And given to the people of Spiriopolis to treasure forever."

by Pontifex the Priest

Thank you, Sven.

Wipeout / Dragon Rampant Battle Report

About once a year my cousin comes to Berlin to play a turn in our Waltrop campaign. On the 26th of May, last year, around noon, one day after my 49th birthday, he moved his Greek army into hexagon 70 on our campaign map to expand the territory of the Aquarians. My cousin divided his Dragon Rampant army into two groups.

group 1: Greater Warbeast (Leader) / 2 Light Foot

group 2: Greater Warbeast / Bellicose Foot / Scouts

Krüger and I played an alliance of wild tribes. Krüger played orcs.

Bellicose Foot (Leader) / Heavy Riders (Chariots) / Scouts

I played Tupí Indians.

Bellicose Foot / Light Missiles / 2 Scouts

Each turn the order of activation was supposed to be: Aquarians (group 1), Orcs, Aquarians (group 2), Tupí, but at some point we got confused, probably because we had consumed too much Tsipouro the night before.

(Next time we play a 2 vs 1 Dragon Rampant game we want to do it differently and try these rules: The player who controls an army by himself does not have to devide his army into groups. He can activate all units, but each unit only once during a game turn. To avoid confusion markers should be used.)

The battlefield was a sandy beach with some palm trees, bushes and rocks.

In the first turn the Greek scouts moved into a piece of rough terrain on their left flank. From there they threw stones at the Tupí indians, destroying all of my units apart from the light missiles. These were destroyed by the mighty minotaur lord instead who was the Greek general.

Krüger, who played the Orcs on our left flank, was a bit more lucky at first. There was a moment when his Orc warband (Bellicose Foot) destroyed a group of harpies (Bellicose Foot) in a piece of palm tree forest. This coincided with our confusion about the turn sequence and my cousin complained utterly.

But shortly afterwards Krüger lost his general (the Orc warband) and his chariot. The remaining orc scouts couldn’t possibly win the game.

So now the Aquarians occupy hexagon 70 on the campaign map.

CONflict 2019

On the 22nd of June Krüger and I took the train to Langenfeld to go to the wargaming convention CONflict. The train was filled with visitors of the Kirchentag, the German Protestant Church Assembly, that took place in Dortmund that week.

We were picked up by my cousin at a forsaken train station. He drove us to a building at the edge of the city, next to some fields.

On the parking lot we met Alex, a friend from Wesel, an amazing painter and very relaxed gamer. He was smoking a cigarette. There was a strange picture on the package, looking like an illustration from the Call of Cthulhu monster manual. I made a bad joke. I said that in a year Alex would look like the thing on his cigarette package, a piece of meat with a hole in it, if he wouldn’t quit smoking. "In a year?", he asked.

The CONflict is mostly about presentation games. There were a lot of excellent tables and maybe three vendors. More Terrain, GeBoom and somebody selling books. I already knew some people from the Tactica in Hamburg and other gaming conventions.

I think we were the only visitors. We played three games.

The first game was Shootout in Dingstown. It's a game I had played in Hamburg with Jörg earlier this year. A German skirmish game by Axel Jansen. It’s great fun. I wrote about it here. In February we had to rob a bank. Now the scenario was about kidnaping a doctor.

When my cousin almost managed to do so with his gang of gunslinging women, one of Alex's lawmen accidentally shot the doctor and thus ended the game.

About 20 years ago my cousin and I came across a website called The Dortmund Amateur Wargamers when we started to search the internet for 28mm miniatures and strategy games like DBA and HotT.

We are from Dortmund and were surprised that such a club existed in our home town. The question came up: what is a professional wargaming club? My cousin sent them an email, but they never responded. To my surprise the table next to the Dingstown table was run by members of The Dortmund Amateur Wargamers.

They were preparing a large ECW game using paper miniatures and rules from the book 'Wargame the English Civil War' by Peter Dennis. We asked if we could join the game for an hour.

A friendly man in his 60s explained what kind of scissors he had used to cut out the 2000 paper soldiers on the table. Tailor’s scissors, if I remember well. We also found out that the Dortmund Amateur Wargamers lost access to their website and that most of them had moved away from Dortmund, but not too far away. We slowly moved around some units on the table, rolled some dice and then left for a lunch break …

In the afternoon we played a 40K game which was presented by a member of the club Kurpfalz Feldherren. He had recycled parts of a Frostgrave table, I had seen at the Tactica in Hamburg this year, to make a beautiful table looking like the scenery common in the 90s. He used the second edition of Warhammer 40K as a ruleset.

Alex and my cousin played the forces of the emperor, space marines and imperial army, Krüger and I played tyranids. They had to take a scientist out of a frozen fortress and we had to prevent this. There was a lot of power gaming going on in our group. At one point Alex said: guys, this is a convention game, not a tournament!

The last turn was a battle of PSI abilities. Nevertheless I enjoyed the game.

I hope to visit the CONflict again next year, maybe I can even go for two days, to try out more gaming tables.

And maybe one day I will meet the guys responsible for the excellent website Major General Tremorden Rederring’s Colonial-era Wargames Page, but I think I have to travel to Texas for that …

A Three-Player Dragon Rampant Game

At the end of May, my cousin came to Berlin for a weekend (because it was my birthday) and we played a 3-player Dragon Rampant game.

We tried a variation of SCENARIO G: INTO THE VALLEY OF CERTAIN DEATH. The players would gain glory points by moving their units from one point of the table to the opposite side. Starting and ending positions were defined by drawing 3 lines of the same length that crossed in the centre of the table.

I placed a lot of area terrain on the board, representing forests and a swamp. When a unit entered a piece of area terrain, we tested if the terrain was dangerous. Although there was a 50% chance for terrain to be dangerous, this time no dangerous terrain was encountered.

The game was turn 15 of our Waltrop campaign. The idea was that the Orcs, the Greeks from Kalimera and the mysterious Aquarians led expeditions into the jungle where they accidentally met and fought. The winner was supposed to get a hexagon in the middle of the jungle.

Krüger played the orcs from Waltrop:

Elite Foot (Leader) / 2 Bellicose Foot / Light Foot / Heavy Riders / Light Riders (Short Range Missiles)

I played the Greeks from Kalimera:

Elite Foot (Leader + Enchanted Weapon) / 2 Heavy Foot / Light Missiles / Light Riders (Short Range Missiles) / Scouts

And my cousin played the Aquarians: 

Elite Foot (Leader) / Greater Warbeast / Bellicose Foot / 2 Light Foot / Scouts

(The Aquarians are ancient Greeks with access to magical creatures, like harpies and minotaurs. They live on the Saganakia islands. One day the Greeks from Kalimera will figure out how magic works, I hope.)

All three of us moved their faster units forward early on in the game to reach the other side of the table. All these units were destroyed.

After that, everybody was more careful. Actually not much happened anymore and nobody won. We stopped after three and a half hours to go to a restaurant.

I like this scenario for 3 players, but we have to change the victory conditions and how terrain works a bit, so we can have a more interesting game next time ...

Hamburg Tactica 2018 / more pictures

Here are more pictures of the wargaming convention Tactica. 

My last blog post was more about my father and his SLR camera than what I originally planned to write about: "Take the Pass!", the game we played at the Tactica on Sunday morning. So my friend Krüger suggested I should start a photography blog instead of Herr Zinnlings Arbeitszimmer. I will try to stick to the subject of wargaming now …

This year the theme room of the Tactica was called "brennender Sand". There you could see all kinds of desert related games, miniatures and terrain pieces.

The French foreign legion was one of the more popular subjects.

Saturday afternoon we played "Dune", a game organised by the wargaming club WCH – Massaka from Hamburg.

Sven enjoyed this a lot because he had always wanted to try the ruleset Bolt Action.

On Sunday I walked around to take pictures and found these beautiful ancient ships manufactured in the scale 1/72 by Cryns Miniatures.

The last game we played on Sunday was Zama, a large DBA 3.0 battle. It was really a sequence of four DBA games, one game for each battleline.

A very enthusiastic man from Denmark or Sweden and I played the Carthaginians. He was very lucky rolling the dice. Unfortunately he had to leave early and we lost.

Our defeat was discussed by the other players in great length afterwards.

Hamburg Tactica 2018 / Take the Pass!

One thing I enjoy about going to the wargaming convention Tactica in Hamburg is to take pictures with the camera my father left me when he died, a Leica R4s.

My father and my uncle were obsessed with photography, especially with the technical aspects of it. As in other fields of interest, there was a strong competition going on between them. They both had large collections of cameras and many coffee table books on the subject of travel photography. They had rather limited ideas about what is a good picture and what is not and would put great effort into avoiding technical mistakes. They argued a lot and then stopped talking to each other for a couple of years.

Because of all this, I had access to photographic equipment as a child and ended up studying cinematography in Dortmund and San Antonio de los Baños, a little village close to Havana.

Last year I was very happy with the pictures I took at the Tactica with my father’s SLR camera, which was discontinued in 1988. But this year, this happened:

All the pictures I took of the game we played on Sunday morning are out of focus. Now I need to run some camera tests to find the mistake.

By the way, I enjoyed "Take the Pass!" a lot, thanks to Admiral Benbow and Monty from the wargaming club THS.

It is the year 1880. Following the massacre of the British delegation in Kabul and the increasing unrest in Afghanistan, the British Empire is working hard to secure the Northwest frontier of India and to subdue the Afghan province. They send various marching columns over the mountain passes, encountering fierce resistance from the Afghan army and local tribes.

The theme of “Take the Pass!” is the arduous march of the British army and shows a typical battle in the mountainous regions of the Indo-Afghan border.

My cousin and I played the Afghans, our friends Jörg and Krüger played the British. The ruleset was The Men Who Would Be Kings by Daniel Mersey which is similar to Dragon Rampant which is one of my favourite games at the moment.

I’m not sure if you can see this … The terrain was beautiful, especially the hills. There is a thread by Admiral Benbow about how to make rocky terrain out of pine bark in the Lead Adventure Forum.

Thanks to Jörg’s iPhone 6s, I have at least one picture of the game which is in focus.

Thinking about it, maybe this Leica R4s, this old ghost of a camera, is saying to me: Don’t fight so hard, son. You can’t control everything. And if you wanted to tell other people about the wonderful game Admiral Benbow and Monty presented at the Tactica, I did my job, didn’t I?

The first 9 Games of our Waltrop Campaign

On Sunday I played Badminton with Krüger. He forgot to bring his sports clothes and couldn’t buy shorts at the club. So he played in the clothes he came with. After half an hour he said: “I’m all worn down. I don’t know why.“ I said: “Maybe because you're playing Badminton in your winter clothes?“ Well, he won all the matches anyway. The best score I got was 14-20.

Afterwards we went to a Greek tavern. The waiter brought two shot glasses of ouzo. I started to talk to Krüger about the Waltrop campaign. We have already played nine games, so I was interested if he wanted some changes or if he was happy how the campaign was going.

I showed him two maps, a map of the imaginary island Waltrop and our campaign map. Krüger doesn’t like the taste of anise, so I had both shots of ouzo and felt drunk already. Krüger suggested that we should eventually start a second campaign phase, with stories like: the Greek hoplites under the command of Foibos lead an expedition into the jungle to discover an orc village. I thought: “In which way is this different from what we are already doing?“  I suggested to play out special scenarios using a role playing game like GURPS, an idea we had when we started the campaign about a year ago.

I said: “In general, I’m happy with the campaign. I like the theme. Orcs versus Greeks on a Caribbean Island. At first I thought: Why Orcs? But now I like that a lot. We could add some trolls in the mountains. Savage orcs in the jungle. I could also play the Aquarians when the orcs meet small groups of them as random encounters. I just need to add some fantasy elements to my Greek army. Like giant crabs, a water elemental, a sea hag, deep ones, Merman, silverfish …“ Krüger said: “I should finish my Cannibals in Masks HotT army. I just need to paint a couple more miniatures.“ We talked about where we could place the cannibals on the campaign map. I suggested the mountains, Krüger said they could come from the jungle in the West.

“There is one thing I don’t understand“, I said. “One thing that bothers me. Why don’t the people involved in this campaign write background material for it? Or at least comment blog posts like reports of battles they participated in? I mean, I get interesting and friendly comments on my blog from people I don’t even know.“ Krüger started to sweat because what I said bothered him.

“You know, I don’t like social media“, he said. “Ok. You don’t like social media“, I said. “And we talk about the campaign when we meet. Like we do now. But how about Jörg and Sven? I wrote a battle report about a game you played against Jörg. No comment. I mean Jörg has ‘social media‘ written on his business card. I know this is just a hobby. A lonely hobby, my wife says. But still. It’s ridiculous. I talked hours on the phone with Sven to find a name for a blog that was supposed to document our campaign. A place to exchange ideas about it. We ended up calling it Beyond the Pillars of Heracles. The name is a bit pathetic. But what the hell, I thought. And now? Nothing. The blog is dead.“ “Well“, Krüger said, “Sven looses interest easily.“ “You know“, I said, “Sven has a book with notes about the campaign, with maps and names and whatnot. He asked me if I have a notebook like that. 'Just read my blog', I said.“ “Why doesn’t he share his background material with us?“, Krüger wanted to know. “It’s not ready. I asked him to show a picture of his notebook at least.“ “If you want to get him involved again, you need to change key elements of the campaign. Big game companies do that all the time.“ “Yeah. Like I’m a big game company. You know. I don’t care. There is no interesting communication going on here. They say the internet creates echo chambers where like-minded people meet and tell each other how cool, excellent, amazing they are. But this feels more like a funeral home.“

Krüger said: “When I started to play fantasy games, I used to write pages of background material. In those times I would have written a text for every hexagon on our campaign map. But now I think it’s better not to go into such detail. It leaves more space to improvise.“ I said: “It would be cool if you could come up with a name for your general, the orc warlord, at least. Or if you could write short background texts for the hexagons occupied by the orcs. 20. 29. 30. 38. 39. 68. 78.“ “Why are you so angry?“, Krüger asked. “I don’t know“, I said.

We asked for the bill. The waiter brought two more shot glasses of ouzo. I drank one and a half. I said: “Καλό βράδυ!“  The waiter said: “Καληνύχτα!“ (I started to learn Greek because of our campaign.)

On the way home I thought, I should just ask for orc names on google+ and stop bothering Krüger.

The Waltrop Campaign / Day 4 / HotT Battle Report

On the 4th day of our Waltrop campaign, the Greeks under the command of Heracleides explored and occupied hexagons 22, 13 and 12, without further resistance. The Aquarians, lead by Spiros, took hexagons 62 and 71. In hexagon 81 they encountered a large group of green creatures and a behemoth.

Spiros said: „Hmmmm.... that's unusual. The light yellow guys are very colourful.“

I played the green creatures:

Warband General (yellow), 9 Warbands (green), 1 Behemoth

My cousin Sven played the Aquarians:

Hero General, 6 Spears, 4 Shooters

I was the defender and placed the terrain.

Since Sven had brought a box full of rocks from Munich and hexagon 81 shows a thin coastline next to the stormy sea, I filled the board with rocks and some tropical forests.

This gave me some trouble deploying my warbands in a battleline.

I placed the behemoth on my right flank. Sven placed his hero general opposite to it.

Although my behemoth didn’t have a chance to win the fight, it attacked the hero and almost chased it off the board, but alas, with the help of an element of spears, the hero finally managed to slay the beast.

Taking a picture of the battlefield from above, the remote control cable of my camera got stuck in the tripod and almost damaged it.

This made me nervous and without thinking too much I attacked an element of spears with my warband general.

Both elements had rear support but the spears were also supported by another element of spears on their left side. My combat and tactical factors added up to +4, Sven received +5. I rolled a 1, Sven rolled a 6. I lost the general and Sven won the battle, a well deserved victory for the Aquarians who occupy a large part of the coast of Waltrop now. 

The Waltrop Campaign / Day 1 + 2

This is how our campaign map looks like after two days of gaming. So what happened?

The Greeks from Saganakia, also called the Aquarians, who started shipwrecked in hexagon 61, moved up the beach. They didn’t encounter monsters and were able to occupy hexagons 51, 50 and 41. In hexagon 32 they met the Greeks from the island Kalimera who have their camp there. The two commanders had a short conversation.

-Γεια σου.

-Γεια σου. Πως σε λένε;

-Με λένε Σπύρος, εσένα;

-Ηρακλείδης.

-Ωραίο όνομα!

-Ευχαριστώ, Σπύρο! Πώς είσαι; 

-Δεν ειμαι και πολύ καλά σήμερα.

-Γιατί; Τι έχεις;

-Ειμαι πολύ χάλια σήμερα.

Heracleides was able to convince Spiros, the Aquarian, to join his army and explore hexagon 31. There they encountered a group of Orks. The Greeks had never seen such horrible creatures before. The Orks probably thought the same about the Greeks.

We simulated the battle that ensued with a 36 point game of HotT. I played 22 points of Greek hoplites and Thracian riders:

Spear General (C-in-C), 8 Spears, 2 Riders

Sven played 12 points of peltasts and psiloi:  

Hero General, 3 Shooters, 2 Lurkers

Krüger played two battle groups that were 24 and 12 points strong, using these elements:

Warband General (C-in-C), 6 Warbands, 1 Hero, 3 Beasts

Hero General, 4 Riders

(I was so busy counting the other players’ elements that I forgot to count mine. I ended up with 22 points, instead of 24 points. And the same happened to me the next day.)

We placed a couple of large rocks, some rough terrain and a waterhole on the board. We decided to play without a stronghold. Krüger started to deploy his troops and put his large battlegroup on one side of the table and his small battlegroup on the other side.

Since warbands are very good against spears, Sven and I decided to field the spears against the riders and the lighter troops against the warbands. Our plan worked and we won the game. So the Greeks under the command of Heracleides were able to occupy hexagon 31 which gives them access to fresh water.

On day 2 of the campaign Spiros, who was in a better mood now, convinced Heracleides to explore hexagon 40. He wanted to look for a base camp for his army. There they discovered an Ork village. Krüger told us the locations of the other Ork villages: hexagons 20, 68, 78 and 38.

We placed tropical forests and some rocks on the battlefield. Krüger was the defender.

Krüger’s large battle group (24 points): 

Warband General (C-in-C), 7 Warbands, 1 Hero, 2 Shooters

His small battle group (12 points):

Hero General, 4 Beasts

My army (22 points):

Spear General (C-in-C), 7 Spears, 2 Riders, 1 Shooter

Sven’s army (12 points):

Hero General, 4 Shooters

The armies deployed more or less in the same way as on the first day and we used the same strategy. We fielded our spears against Krüger’s beasts and our shooters against his warbands.

There was a moment in the game when Krüger thought he would win. He got very nervous and started to chew on my DBX ruler.

We lost 2 spears, 1 rider and 2 shooters. Krüger lost a hero, 3 warbands and 4 beasts, thus loosing the battle for hexagon 40 and a village on the campaign map.

The village was occupied by the Aquarians under the command of Spiros.

Campaign Rules

Here are some ideas for a narrative map-based campaign I will start with Krüger and Sven this week. It's a first draft. Comments are welcome.

We will use different rulesets like HotT and Warhammer to play out battles, maybe even GURPS for special scenarios.

I play ancient Greeks who just landed on the island of Waltrop. They start on hexagon 32. Sven plays Greeks who start on hexagon 61. Krüger plays Orcs. He will choose 5 hexagons in secret to place his villages. Until the Greeks find the Orc villages hidden in the jungle, they fight random encounters which could look like this:

random encounters beach

1 orcs

2-3 goblins

4-6 nothing

random encounters jungle

1 green creatures

2 orcs

3 goblins

4 cannibals wearing scary masks

5 field of magical green crystals or old temple

6 nothing

If the Greeks win a random encounter, they occupy the hexagon they fought in, otherwise they retreat.

After the first orc village has been discovered in the jungle, the Orcs will start to move on the campaign map the same way as the Greeks. Random encounters for Orcs could include other tribes of savage Orcs and Greek warbands. If Orcs and Greeks meet in a hexagon, they fight for it. The looser has to retreat.

How an army fights and which hexagons it occupies should have a relation to the composition of the army.

In the 4th edition of 40K there were good rules for upgrading units or characters that fought especially well.

In our case, switching between different rulesets might present some difficulties. HotT is much more abstract than Warhammer, and GURPS would be best to play out special missions for characters.

At the beginning, armies could have some restrictions. Orcs might need to own hills to field trolls and giants, for example, and Greeks might need a temple to field priests. We could allow players to build havens, temples, even cities, but then we need some kind of monetary system. Will players receive gold if they sack a village or camp? I need talk to Sven and Krüger about this.

Hamburg Tactica 2015 / Day Two

Sunday morning we had breakfast in the hotel Superbude, waffles and lots of coffee. Krüger, Andi and Jörg continued to talk about Einstein and Heisenberg.

Around 11am Sven and Andi left Hamburg. Jörg, Krüger and I spent another day at the Tactica. It was less crowded, much more relaxed than the day before.

We met Mirco Wenning and Elmar Fischer, the owners of Stronghold Terrain, who have recently translated SAGA into German. I almost bought the army list compendium from them. It includes all the dark ages army lists released so far. Stronghold Terrain had two presentation games. One table was about Saracens versus Crusaders with a beautiful castle section and well painted miniatures. Krüger joined this game. The other table was about vikings.

Since Jörg keeps bugging me about how he wants to play vikings in our 400 BC ancient campaign, we played a 2 point Saga demo game at the second table, Vikings versus Anglo-Danish. I think I finished the Vikings in one turn, by using an ability to prevent the movement of one unit and by attacking the rest of Jörg’s army with my entire army. I’m thinking of writing a hoplite list for SAGA. It seems to be the game of the hour.

I walked around a bit, taking pictures, and ended at a table where Alan and Michael Perry and Aly Morrison were sculpting. I asked Michael Perry how to get a smooth surface on green stuff sculpts, something I have been struggling with for years. He recommended a moisture cream by Elizabeth Arden, if I’m not mistaken. EA9 emollient. (Please keep in mind that English is not my native language.) I then had a chat with Aly Morrison about 3ups and 3D scans. At one moment he suspected I was interested in making digital pirate copies of miniatures, I think. So he said, people complain about the high prizes at GW, sometimes even send hate mails. A professional sculptor should be able to have a decent life, he said. If he couldn’t afford to buy hifi loudspeakers, he wouldn’t start to send hate mails to Bang & Olufsen, would he? I replied: “You are a professional sculptor, Mister Morrison. I love your work. The figures you did for Talisman, for example. I’m an amateur. Sometimes I like to sculpt a trashy miniature and have it replicated, to play with it.“ He laughed and recommended that I should make my own moulds.

I walked around a bit more, taking more pictures, and bought a die with pictures of dinosaurs on it and a brush. An hour later we left the Tactica.

We went to a café to wait for the train. Jörg claimed that the Perry twins couldn’t possibly have sculpted so many miniatures, that they must have an assistant who does all the work for them. Jörg and Krüger started to discuss this. 

An old man was sitting at the next table. He was wearing a pink hat and a chain with a cross covered with coloured stones. He held a cane with a silver head in his hands and starred into space with empty eyes. Looking at this old dandy was much more interesting than listening to a conversation about GW’s online shop strategy and Michael and Alan Perry’s mysterious assistant.

Hamburg Tactica 2015 / Day One

On the 21st of February I went to the wargaming convention Tactica with Krüger, Jörg, Sven and Andi. On the train to Hamburg Jörg read a coffee table book about Brian May’s guitar. We later had a discussion if the Perry twins are the Brian May of the tabletop hobby or not.

Around 1pm we played Conan, a game run by the club Kurpfalz Feldherren, using SAGA as a rule engine. They had an impressive gaming table with an oriental castle, adobe buildings and excellent palm trees. The castle had been built by one of the organisers of the Tactica a couple of years ago. He had actually cast every single brick in plaster, using Hirst Arts forms. Amazing. The scenario was about Conan having to rescue a princess while some bedouin snake conjurers attacked the castle. Conan won, of course.

In the afternoon we split up. Sven, Andi and Jörg played White Death, a skirmish game by Bernhard Hennen, presented by his club THS. I had played the game last year and had enjoyed it a lot. What Sven has to say about it, you can read here.

Krüger and I went to another room in a section of the Tactica, which was dedicated to Napoleon and his battles, and played Wavre 1815, Prussians vs. French. The gaming table had attracted us, a board made of wooden tiles. The game used blocks with 20mm miniatures as units and had a card-driven control mechanism. When I had difficulties telling one unit from the other, the author of the game suggested I should take a close look at the uniforms. We had lots of fun with this mix between a tabletop game and a board game.

At night, we went to a Greek restaurant. I have recently started to learn Greek, so I kept repeating ευχαριστώ, thank you, the only Greek word I have learned so far.

Sven has suggested we should start a blog network for our ancient imagi-nations project and I wanted to talk about a name for it. Beyond the Pillars of Heracles? The Imaginary Ancient Islands Blog Network? Karubi Islands? When I mentioned it, Jörg just said: „blogs are dead“ and thus ended the discussion.

We got drunk on three liters of Imiglykos wine. A couple of hours later, around 1am in the lounge of the hotel Superbude, Krüger tried to explain Einstein's relativity theory to us. He said something about a ball falling into a blanket.