Guns of August AAR

Guns of August has ended, now to work on our February convention, the Williamsburg Muster.

As far as Guns, there were approximately 160 attendees with about forty attendees, who worked with the dealers. So there were approximately 200 folks who attended. Not quite what I expected number-wise but we will hold it again next year. Even with this number the convention was a success.

I was supposed to run two games but my second one, which was a Go for Broke game, I ended up not playing as I scheduled it too early on Saturday and I was too exhausted to run it.

The game I did run on Friday afternoon went off real well. I ran a Blitzkrieg Commander game. It was Americans vs. Germans in the hedgerows of Normandy. The game took about two and a half hours with the Germans winning. If there had been one more turn, the Germans would have lost as they blew there command roll for breakpoint.

On Saturday I played in two games run by Matt Kirkhart in his excellent ancient game using his Craftees. One game was Macedonians vs. Greeks and the other was a battle between Alexander and Darius. The great thing was I played with my son Timothy and a friend in the last game.

The negatives I have about the convention mostly deal with the hotel itself. When we arrived on Thursday, none of the tables were set up and were stacked where dealers needed to set up. So we had to move the tables as well as set up. This is something we paid the hotel to do and they failed in this task. The other problems were dealing with the facilities. The Patriot room restroom was hot and the toilets overflowed once. There was also not enough paper towels. The hotel did not provide enough trashcans and the ones we had were not emptied.

All this put me in a grumpy mood throughout Friday, especially when some fellow BOD members kept putting me into situations they could have handled themselves or gave the task to somebody else as I was busy.

The other thing that bothered me is my camera. The damn thing kept eating batteries or was not working right. I only could take about ten photos during the event. This sucked as I wanted to create a Flicker page.

Our staff volunteers were great especially Scott Kidd, Jeremy Crouch, and all the ladies that helped us run the hospitality room and registration.

Guns of August Update

We passed the number of pre-registrations from either (not both) of the Williamsburg Musters. There are over 60 games listed on the PEL. I have my room reservations. I am ready to run my games.

The hardest part is the wait for pre-registrations to come in but we are up to 45 total and there is a week left until pre-registration closes.

This time I will not forget to take photos. I am planning to create a Flicker account to display them on the TMP.

Gettin' ready for Guns of August

It's now one month until Guns of August wargaming convention at Williamsburg, VA. I have been working on correspondence to the dealers and we are set right now with 16 dealers. Carl Sciscio and I have gone up to Williamsburg and have solicited businesses for donations either for an ad in our event booklet or gift certificates.

Chuck Turnitsa has e-mailed miniature and game dealers all over the country for donations for our raffle and has done exceedingly well.

Carl and I also have visited the Holiday Inn Patriot after we heard they had a "new" events coordinator at the hotel and made sure every thing is all set. Chuck is going to keep in touch with the hotel to make sure we have the correct sized tables and more lighting in the Washington Room.

The only thing I am frightened about is attendance. As of right now, we have only 20 early registrations and only 13 rooms were booked about a month ago. What eases my pessimism though is the fact that from the two Williamsburg Muster conventions, early registration was about 10% of the attendance and the rooms being booked was a month ago.

The good thing though is we can cover any problem we have, as we have enough money in the treasury. But if this event does not float, how will it effect attendance at the Muster.

We shall see! We shall see!

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.