My buddy Sam Fuson hosted “FusonConII” at the War Horse Farm in Gettysburg yesterday. Dave Wood, Chris Palmer, and I ran games. Most of the gamers were Sam’s friends and co-workers, but Duncan Adams (of the HAWKs) came along as well. Among those attending were a couple of husband and wife pairs, a couple of father and son pairs, two brothers, and a niece and uncle pair. There were sixteen gamers, all told. The plan was for Dave, Chris, and me to run four games. Chris ran two back-to-back GASLIGHT gamers, Dave ran a Look, Sarge, No Charts: Napoleonic Wars game, and I ran a Look, Sarge, No Charts: World War II game.
Dave was play testing his Battle of Laon (1814) game as a play test for Cold Wars. Dave wanted to show how you could easily make use of an old 25mm Napoleonic collection to demonstrate that the barrier to entry for LSNC: Napoleonics is low. You can see from these pictures that the old 25mm Minifigs, originally mounted for Empire rules, look very nice placed on magnetic “sabot” bases.
Dave didn’t remount any of his old figures. They were mounted on metal bases three or four figures across. He stuck two of those “strips” of figures onto a magnetic base and then also affixed the LSNC: Napoleonics label to the magnetic base. With a minimum of effort Dave was able to pull his old Minifigs out of mothballs and put on an enjoyable game.
This shot show how the “sabot” bases for cavalry look.
Dave and I are working on a series of 1814 scenarios. I ran one of mine, Vouchamps, last Friday night at our club meeting. He ran Laon yesterday. Vouchamps needs a little tweaking, but Laon went very well. It was a near run thing. When time ran out and we counted casualties, the Prussians had lost 6 bases, and the French had lost 5, while retaining possession of the road that would be used later to facilitate their retreat.
After lunch, I set up a six-player Poland 1939 game using LSNC: WWII and my 10mm figures. The game was supposed to be a Germans attack to seize a town along the Polish line of communications.
Instead, Duncan in the Polish center went on the attack with his horse-mounted cavalry. Duncan smashed through a German infantry battalion. Then he got greedy and tried to run down a German anti-tank gun. He took some casualties, and his heroic cavalry ran for cover.
Meanwhile the German armor was trying to push their way across a river. There were three bridges, and the crossings were only lightly defended by some Polish armored cars. The German armor seemed hesitant to take casualties and did not advance aggressively. As a result, most of the German armor was still on the wrong side of the River as Duncan was smashing the German center. It doesn’t happen often that a player is completely wiped out, but in this game Alicia’s (orange sweat shirt) entire German infantry battalion was reduced to a single anti-tank gun section. The game was a convincing Polish victory.
While these two historical games were going on in one room, Chris was running his two GASLIGHT games in the other. I didn’t get pictures of Chris’ first game, but check out his blog (link at the top of this page) for his AAR. This game was a Burroughs-only Mars game. (Typically we do a Verne, Burroughs, Wells, etc. mashup.)
Even Sam’s bride-to-be got into the act. This picture was taken just before a great white ape crawled out of cave and attacked one of Sam’s units in retribution for Sam poking fun at the GM’s singing.
