Guns of August

Two months until Guns of August, ODMS's first summer wargaming convention. This is to go along with with our winter convention, the Williamsburg Muster, which we have run successfully for two years. The second one was close with the blizzard but we had enough money to cover this event and start the Guns of August. Guns will be held August 13-15, 2010 at the Holiday Inn Patriot in Williamsburg, VA.

http://www.odms-club.com/convention/index.html

Our belief is this convention will have better attendance than the Muster, as it is in the summer in the tourist hot spot of Williamsburg, VA.

Speed Circuit

This past Friday Wayne Hill ran Speed Circuit at the Hanger. Players included John Snelling, Carl Sciscio, John Dent, Oscar Stephenson, Cliff Creech, Chuck Turnitsa, Byron Collins, and myself. Wayne ran two races. I won the first race by outdistancing everyone from the beginning of the race onward. My strategy was to use my wear early to gain a lead on everyone but not use to much. I never went over 20mph beyond a corners limit. My car was a slow starter but a great accelerator and this is how I won the first race.

The second place game worked well for me as well. The two leaders on the second lap were Carl and Chuck but they crashed and I moved right past them with Oscar on my tail. Oscar passed me in the final leg of the race because of his top speed of 200mph. I could have still have beaten him if not for a mistake of not using his slipstream. But in the end, I won the cup as I won on points, 43 to Oscar's 33.

Asleep at the wheel

I have not posted in a while as my computer with all of my STUFF went down. My son and his friends believe it is the hard drive.


Since this time, ODMS has been playing a lot (principally Scott, the McCabes, Callahan, Kai, Carl, Eric, and Chuck) of Napoleonics using Shako. I have pushed some lead and had some luck but Napoleonics isn't my cup of tea. I wonder if I would like the Age of Eagles rules better as they are based on Fire and Fury.


Fire and Fury have always been my favorite rules for American Civil War. They run a lot like Richard Berg's board game Terrible Swift Sword. I really like the command system in F&F, as it puts a bit of randomness it what truly is field command. I wonder how this would transfer into Napoleonic wargames.

Reenacting the past

Over the past three weeks, I have been cooresponding on Facebook with friends I used to reenact with 15-20 years ago. In so doing, we have been sending reenactment photos to one another over the Facebook site.

Since I joined Facebook, I have rediscovered my best reenacting friend and best man, Bob Fleming and one of my pards from reenacting Wes Clark, as well as others, like Cindy Trainor, Joe and Amy Lessman, Jack Armstrong, et al.

I have discovered in so doing how fast time flies. Many of these events we have been sharing images of seem to me like they were yesterday instead of 25 years ago.

Over time I'll post photos here to show what I did for a hobby and as a job for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

The photo above is of me and Bob Fleming at Germantown in 1987.

Hello My name is Johnny Cash!

I've been adding photos of my reenactment life to my Facebook and I thought I would add this photo to my blog. In 1988, I was lucky enough when I lived in Texas to have belonged to an old West reenacting group called the 1880s Saddletramps.

Besides reenacting the group did color for conventions in the San Antonio/Houston areas of Texas. We were lucky enough to have acted as color for Johnny Cash who was doing a pediatric surgeons convention.

It was great Johnny and June Carter Cash, especially June, were very outgoing and friendly. We even sat stage left and watched the show.

Attending in the photo from left to right are Steve Wilson, Ricky Phiel, Steve Perkins, Johnny Cash, Carol and Jeff Fothergill, and myself.

At the Hampton400

No it was not a race but a celebration of the 400th birthday of Hampton, VA. The Old Dominion Military Society ran two games to expose the public to the hobby of miniature tabletop wargaming. Attending from the club were Carl Sciscio, Chuck Turnitsa, Scott Kidd, Cliff Creech, Dave Dietrich, Kai Weaver, Jon Krigbaum, and myself. As I mentioned in an earlier blog we used a modified version of Neil Thomas' Wargaming: An Introduction.

The club ran three games, two American Civil War games and one American Revolution game. We receive many questions from the public which were admirably answered by all the members of ODMS in attendance. The best thing the club did was allow some young gamers to roll some dice and play. This way the little darlings can see that games are more than right and left thumb events.

Thanks and congratulations to all that attended. The only thing I hated about the event is I forgot to bring a camera to post pictures of the event on this post.

Hampton400

On March 5th, ODMS will assist the Hampton History Museum celebrate Hampton400 by running two games for the public. We decided that we will run an American Revolutionary War and American Civil War Game at this event.

http://www.hampton400.com/

We have decided to use a modified version of Neil Thomas' Wargaming: An Introduction and Napoleonic Wargaming. We picked Thomas' system because of its simplicity and felt it would be easy to teach the public.

Chuck, Carl, Scott, Eric, and Cliff playtested the system tonight at the Hanger. Thomas' system is very easy to pick up and be modified.

Chuck was the gamemaster for an American Revolutionary game with Carl and Cliff playing the Americans and Eric and Scott playing the Brits. The players picked up the game real quickly and in the end it was an overwhelming American victory.