Dingstown at Mel Bel Con

This summer I went to the gaming convention Mel Bel Con in Welver-Dinker with a friend and my kids. We played the Wild West skirmish game Dingstown by Axel Jansen.

I have already played Dingstown three times at different conventions and actually went to Welver-Dinker to play it again. I’m a Dingstown fan boy.

At one point my friend Krüger made such a complicated move that the author of the game had to consult his own rule book.

We had a very patient game master.

Mel Bel Con is the first gaming convention I have been to after two years. It was great fun. 🤠

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 …

Hamburg Tactica 2016 / Part Three

Here are my impressions about the Tactica 2016. Please check out the first and the second part of my text about the excellent wargaming convention in Hamburg as well.

On Sunday we had one more game, starting at 2 PM. In the morning I went around taking pictures. While I took a picture of a model of an arcane port, a young man started to talk to me. "Is this a 35 mm camera? A Leica?" "Yes", I said. "That’s cool." Jörg, who was standing next to me, said: "Yes. But it’s not a Leica M4. The M4 is really valuable. This one isn’t." I said: "It’s my father’s old camera. It’s valuable to me. My father died a long time ago. He loved to take pictures with this camera." The young man said: "It’s cool that you take pictures with your old 35 mm camera." "You could get one on Ebay. It’s not expensive.", I said. "The M4 is really expensive.", Jörg said. The young man said: "I wouldn’t know what to do with it." "It’s not difficult. Just try it.", I said. "No thanks. That’s a hobby on its own."

Krüger and I went to the Foundry booth. I bought the "Foundry Miniatures Compendium". Krüger bought eight warrior women from their Darkest Africa range to use in our Waltrop campaign.

In the afternoon we played a game presented by the German club THS. "Skirmish at Disuq - Egypt 1801." The scenario was designed by the fantasy author and wargamer Bernhard Hennen, using a variant of the ruleset Lion Rampant, published in the April issue of Wargames Illustrated. This is the introduction to the scenario, in Bernhard Hennen’s words:

"It’s spring of 1801. Napoleon has left Egypt a long time ago. British troops have landed successfully and are marching on Cairo.

First skirmishes are taking place near Rahmanieh on the left bank of the Nile between the British expeditionary force, supported by Ottoman troops. In a coup-de-main the French occupy the small town of Disuq on the opposite river bank. The British react swiftly and strongly. With a tenfold superiority they attack the French. But what is the real objective of this fight off the main battle site? This skirmish scenario will give an adventurous answer."

Our game master Sunday afternoon was Stefan. Jörg played the British, Teemu from Finland played their Ottoman allies, Krüger played the French soldiers defending the town of Disqus and I played some French treasure hunters. The table was very beautiful, the atmosphere of the game playful and relaxed. Thanks, THS. There is a post with more pictures on the blog Monty’s Caravan. Check it out!

In the train, on our way back to Berlin, Krüger and I talked about fantasy literature and how the internet changes how it is published. After 30 minutes a woman said to Krüger: "Shut up! You bother me. You talk like children."

Well, this, of course, leads to the question what is an adult which I might discuss in another blog post.

Hamburg Tactica 2016 / Part Two

Here are my impressions about the Tactica 2016. Also check out the first part of my text about this excellent wargaming convention in Hamburg.

The second game the Kurpfalz Feldherren presented this year was a skirmish game using the ruleset "Donny Brock". After the Swedish soldiers had lost the battle of Lesnaya in 1708, they were supposed to destroy supplies which the Russian troops wanted to catch. Jörg and I decided to play the Russians, basically because playing the Russians we were allowed to control a toy boat, quite a beautiful model. Krüger and another man played the Swedish. The other man wasn’t the same other man Krüger had played the battle of Lesnaya with. He was yet another man and was the commander in chief on their side.

This game, too, worked with a card deck which organised whose turn it was and on which side reinforcements would arrive. The scenario worked this way: at the beginning both players had the same number of troops, but the quality of the Swedish troops was much better. During the game more and more Russian troops would arrive. So as the Swedish player, you had to act quickly, destroy objectives and get your troops over a river that divided the board. (I quite like the scenario and would like to use it in one of our games.)

Krüger and the other man managed to destroy several objectives in the first rounds, but then the Swedish commander in chief decided to wait, instead of crossing the river with a wagon. This made Krüger nervous. While Krüger spends a lot of time patiently waiting in real life, he prefers to act quickly as a wargamer. More and more Russian reinforcements arrived. Jörg and I were able to make up for a bad start. We secured several objectives and finally won the game.

Jörg enjoyed this so much, that he bought the ruleset "Donny Brock". He also tried to buy some 28 mm Swedish tin soldiers from Wargames Foundry, but they were sold out.

Saturday night, we met one of Jörg’s friends who wanted to show us St. Pauli. We ended up in the bar of our hotel Superbude. While the others were talking about smart phones and trying cocktails with funky names, I sat in a comfortable chair, drowsing and thinking about our first day at the Tactica.

People who present participation games at wargaming conventions spend a lot of time doing so, I thought. They invent rules, paint models, make a board, model trees and little houses. Then they transport everything to the convention, prepare the game, explain the rules to the players, over and over again. Large games take about two hours to play and involve four to six players. As a game master you can run about three games a day, I suppose. So they do all this for a handful of people who play their games. And there is no money involved. That’s great, I think. Ok. A lot of people walk by, look at the tables, take pictures. And many more people look at the pictures when they are later published on the internet. Thinking about it, some people might go to conventions because of the amazing participation games and then buy stuff from the vendors, so there is some money involved, I guess. Anyways. I believe people who present participation games at wargaming conventions get a lot of respect from the wargaming community. Well, they should. Hell, they get my respect!

Hamburg Tactica 2016 / Part One

This year I decided last minute to go to the wargaming convention Tactica in Hamburg. After some discussion that started a couple of months ago about who would come along and who wouldn’t, I went with Krüger and Jörg.

Jörg had already booked his train ticket half a year ago and started to bother us around Christmas with his plans to travel to Hamburg. (Jörg goes to the heavy metal festival Wacken every year, where you have to book a year in advance to get a ticket. So German metal heads are not the most spontaneous lot, I guess.) Krüger arrived at Bürgerhaus Wilhelmsburg with his old fashioned suitcase Saturday at noon, rather spontaneously. Why did I go in the end? Being an obsessive collector of miniatures, maybe I wanted to get the free miniature that came with the ticket. Hamma, prince of the Lombards, sculpted by Frank Germershaus. I already have Adolf III, Noble Lord of Schauenburg and Count of Holstein and Stormarn, (2015) and Bishop Ansgar (2008).

What I enjoy most about the Tactica are the participation games. On our arrival we went around looking for games to join. We found a table in the Rome theme room where two friendly people, Rob and Karl-Heinz, presented the ruleset DBA 3.0 on three boards. You could play the army of the Roman Republic or of one of its enemies. The results of the battles had some effect on a campaign map, hanging on the wall. On one table they had a beautiful piece of terrain, an ancient city on a hill.

I had a game of DBA 3.0 with Jörg on Saturday morning, Later Carthaginian versus Polybian Roman, and another game with Krüger on Sunday, Gallic versus Polybian Roman. Both games were fun. Thank you, Rob and Karl-Heinz!

In the afternoon we joined two games organised by the wargaming club Kurpfalz Feldherren. Their theme this year was the Great Northern War. Apparently in 1708 the Swedish King Karl XII tried to invade Russia and failed. Czar Peter the Great won the war. I must admit I heard about this conflict for the first time at the Tactica 2016.

One table presented a simulation of the battle of Lesnaya, using beautifully painted 20 mm plastic miniatures, imported from Russia and not available any more. The rules were derived from DBA and might be published on the club’s website later this year. The game used a card deck, so players could boost their troops or damage the troops of the opponent.

Jörg and I played the Swedish, Krüger played the Russians with another man. First I thought he was from Belgium because of his strong accent, but Krüger and Jörg thought he might have been from Bavaria. Not that this matters much.

After two hours of gaming there was a time limit and the two game masters ended the game, inventing a horrible snowstorm. We had a chat about how long it takes to prepare a participation game for a convention and about the games we play. We started to talk about Warhammer Ancient Battles and the games that evolved out of it, when GW closed down WAB, like "Hail Caesar" and "War and Conquest". I asked one of the game masters of the battle of Lesnaya which of these ancient rulesets he could recommend. I added, I don’t go to clubs or shops to play with random people, nor do I care which game is popular at the moment. He recommended WAB 2.0, but with the old army books, like "The Age of Arthur" or "Alexander the Great". So the oracle spoke to me. And gave me the answer I had hoped for. I wonder why I need somebody to tell me that it’s ok to play an out of print ruleset anyway.

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.

Last Trip to the DUZI

I had a website about my wargaming activities called the "Wambeler Zinnfigurenmuseum". I had written its HTML code using a simple text editor which was a lot of work. The website was in German. I'm sure nobody read it. Not even the friends I game with, although it was supposed to be our club website. When I realized that, I closed the "Wambeler Zinnfigurenmuseum" and started this blog.

The link list you can find under the label "Herr Zinnlings Links" on the right side is the only part of the old website that I'm still using.

My cousin and I used to go to a wargaming convention in October called DUZI. They had a big Warhammer tournament which looked like fun and many vendors selling miniatures, terrain, books and sculpting supplies. One year they even had people dressed up as Romans.

In 2013 the convention was cancelled. This year it wasn't even announced. Who knows, maybe it's gone forever. Last time I was there with my cousin was in 2011.

I looked through the archives of the "Wambeler Zinnfigurenmuseum" today and found a text about our last trip to the DUZI. What irritates me is that I mentioned I was about to start an ancient imagi-nation project with my cousin, a project which is slowly taking shape now, three years later. I haven't changed much since, I guess. I'm the same quirky, childish, silly, slow person I was back then, trying to convince my friends to start new wargaming projects once in a while, which usually takes forever.

Here is the original text for you to read: 

Auf diesen beiden Bildern ist Herr Karl auf der Empore der Niederrheinhalle in Wesel zu sehen, wie er ein Miniaturledersofa und zwei kleine Kistenstapel aus Gips in Papiertaschentücher einwickelt - alles kurz zuvor am Stand von Didier Fünfrock-Dymowski auf der DUZI erworben.

Herr Karl ist zwanghafter Sammler von Zinnminiaturen und Geländeteilen. So gut er kann, versucht er zu vermeiden, daß seine Sammlung zu Schaden kommt. Abgeblätterte Farbe oder Klebe, die nicht mehr hält, kann ihm mehrere Tage lang die Stimmung vermiesen.

Die Fotografien wurden von Herrn Sven mit seiner neuen digitalen Schnappschußkamera aufgenommen.

Herr Sven und Herr Karl waren in den letzten Jahren oft auf der Duisburger Zinnfigurenbörse.

Während der Aufnahme der Fotos befanden sich auf der Empore der Niederrheinhalle neben den beiden Herren noch ein paar junge Menschen, die dort die deutsche Fearless Meisterschaft austrugen - irgendwie ein trauriger Anblick, wie abgeschoben, ausgestoßen wirkten sie. Und das trotz der unglaublichen Preisgelder von insgesamt 600 €, die es dort zu gewinnen gab.

Das große Warhammer Turnier fand in diesem Jahr zum ersten Mal im Parkettsaal statt, nicht mehr auf der Empore.

Alles in allem war es ein sehr entspannter Messebesuch. Herr Sven kaufte sich mehrere Boxen mit Zauberern des Imperiums von Games Workshop und einen wunderschönen Turm. Herr Karl zwei Schachteln Waldelfen Bogenschützen, einen Blutbrunnen und die anfangs erwähnten Geländeteile.

Lust bekamen die beiden erneut, an dem Warhammer Turnier der DUZI teilzunehmen, das in diesem Jahr mit stattlichen 3400 Punkten ausgetragen wurde.

Ihre Gespräche kreisten hauptsächlich um ihr neues Projekt, in zwei Blogs antike Imagi-Nationen zu erfinden und Kämpfe zwischen diesen mit Miniaturen auszutragen. Daher standen sie lange an den Tischen der Anbieter von historischen 28 mm Miniaturen aus Plastik herum und begutachteten Gußrahmen von Kelten, Griechen und Numidern.

The Real Waltrop

Krüger and I are planning a campaign for HotT and Warhammer. It's going to take place on an island. The armies involved will probably be Hoplites and Orcs, maybe wild men wearing scary tribal masks instead of Orcs. (Hey Jörg, you can still join us! A pity you don't like Greek hoplites.) The island will be called Waltrop.

There is a place called Waltrop near Dortmund, the city Krüger and I are from. The real Waltrop is a little city in North Rhein-Westphalia. Our friend Jörg with whom we play 40K is from Waltrop.

To get some inspiration for our imaginary island Waltrop, a month ago Krüger and I visited the real Waltrop. We found out that they have panda bears, coffee, bananas, giant sea horses and an abandoned disco called "Pam Pam".

I just noticed I got kicked out of the blog network Tale of Painters, which is understandable because I haven't posted too much about GW products lately. Understandable, but it still hurts.

I hope I wont loose any of my 16 followers because of this blog post. Bear with me. Please.

Hamburg Tactica 2014 / Part Three