HMGS / Pacific Southwest

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If you missed the recent HMGS/PSW “Winter Campaign” convention you missed a great convention! HMGS/PSW first attempt at having a convention at this time of the year was quite a success given the fairly short concept to execution time we had. For this convention0 returned to our old “digs” at the Glendale Boy Scouts facility near Los Angeles California. After a year of “floating our conventions around the Los Angeles / Orange county area we decided it was time to “gather the Clan” back in familiar territory and have some fun, and fun it was.

 

 

There were tons of familiar faces spread through out the convention as well as many new faces as we picked up almost a dozen new members! Friday was missed by me as luck would have it I was nursing a cold. The “infamous” HMGS/PSW games board left storage courtesy of the manpower provided by Steve Reid (and his truck), Steve Gausche, and Paul Petrov. Unloading and setup was handled by Convention Manager David Dandridge and un-named HMGS members, thanks guys.

 

The convention was wall to wall games from early Saturday morning to break down Sunday despite some prominent faces missing over the weekend. This reinforces the fact that if we all showed up and had one more vendor we would bust the seams at the current Boy Scouts facility! As it was we had the main hall with 8 full time games going, the conference room with several and also the basement awash in navel battles.

 

 

Many of you have heard that there was a bit of a flap with the scouts as on Tuesday I received a call from them informing me that they had “somehow doubled booked the hall on Sunday” and then asked if we could move out of the hall and use other rooms on Sunday! I told them that moving was out of the question as we would never fit and certainly dealers would not be able too or want to move. This hung in limbo with no solution until Friday where Dave informed me that they asked if we could be out by 3pm sharp on Sunday afternoon, they would wave the hall charge as recompense. We told them that this was acceptable and we would work with the “Boy Scout” group coming in as best we could. In the end it all worked out and we even made some friend within the scouting group as several of their “boys” came in and played while the parents where setting up a huge obstacle course in the parking lot. One boy even went home with a new copy of “wing of War” and I fully expect to see him back as a HMGS/PSW member in the future! Many of the Parents, Scouts, and family members came through the hall to check out the games and ask questions about what we were doing. We were also approached by some of the scout leaders about doing some demo games for their troops at a later date.

 

 

Many of you have heard time and time again about the “greying” of the hobby and to a point it is but there is hope as I can see more and more young gamers showing up at our conventions. Of course some have little choice like Clark who’s father is Dave Dandridge our convention manager. Clark is already a veteran gamer and can take down gamers twice his size and 5 times his age easy since he has been gaming with the “Dogs of War since he was old enough to walk!

Next time you come to a con bring a nephew, son, grandson or any child you know and introduce them to miniatures gaming!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I look over the PEL and think about what games were planned and what games actually came off I am glad that several were indeed canceled for one reason or another. We would just not have had the room! That’s a good thing! It bodes well for our future plans to expand our convention into larger facilities. There were also many HMGS/PSW member who are normally at conventions who could not attend this one and with their absence and the games they put on attendance was diminished but once again if they HAD showed up where would they have played as there was no room and most of the games played had FULL participation already! Clearly we are reaching a critical mass in our plans to “move on up” to bigger “digs”

 

As I said Friday night was missed by me in a effort to save strength for Saturday / Sunday as well as presiding over the HMGS/PSW meeting Saturday night. There were at least 4-5 games planned and played ( AK-47 , Check Your Six, Flames Of War 20mm Race for Massina 1943, and once again pretty well attended for a Friday night!

 

Saturday Started of with a bang with a full house gaming by 9am! Several Civil War 15mm games were running, Jeff McArthur was demonstrating his ACW rules, “Death in the Boccage” 20mm WWII (Crossfire), So you want our Nuke?” (AK-47), “flying over Flanders” (Wings of War), Sweepers Man your Brooms” (Check your Six), “Stones River” ACW 15mm (Fire and Fury) with Jim Svette’s award winning terrain! Because of late registration there were many other games that did not make the pel being played at this time that I saw, 1/2400 WWII navel with around 10 players, Doug Kendrick running his 28mm Samurai skirmish, and others….

 

 

Harmon, Skip Gardella, his wife, and several other volunteers manned the pans at noon whipping up a great lunch menu for hungry con goers! Hats off to these folks who not only keep us fed, happy, and at the gaming tables instead of wandering the mean streets of Glendale looking for some eats! This “volunteer effort does all that and puts some cash into the till at the end of the day!

 

After the feast the gaming raged on with the arrival of the much anticipated “Dogs of War” group and their Mega “Pirate” game! Just awesome and as always a crowd pleaser. The “Dogs of War” games are always a group effort and it shows wonderfully in all the ships and figures, many of the ships were scratch built or at least heavily modified with literally “boatloads of  nicely painted figures. I was told the big Spanish Gallion had over one hundred figures itself. Chock up another “Centurion” award for the “Dogs of War”!A Clash of Empires Game (Macedonians vs. Greek city States in Revolt) was run in the “Board Room” as well as Mark Delidukas 20mm WWII game using Fire and Maneuver rules.

 

There were many other games run that you President just did not get around to seeing or remembering (we need a volunteer to do a con write up and take pictures)

 

The evening brought our HMGS/PSW meeting and elections. Elections saw the re-election of the current officers (unanimous) and discussions of the future expansion of the convention. Jim Svette was awarded a Centurion award for his American Civil War game setup (a giant folding suitcase!) and the also the “Dogs of War” were seen to pick up another one for Pirates!

 

A wise man once said a picture id worth a thousand words so no more words, just pictures!

 

Yours in Gaming,

 

Bill Witthans

President HMGS/PSW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those of you who are frequent visitors to this page may have read some of the previous post on HMGS/PSW’s Demo Team putting on games and historical displays in conjunction with the Muzeo Museum in Anaheim, California.  HMGSPSW’s vice president Harmon Ward has over the last few years developed quite a working rapport with the folks at the Museum that has allowed us to bring historical gaming out to the public as never before.  If you’re unfamiliar with what has been going on down to Muzeo it works like this, when the Muzeo brings in an exhibit that we feel we can support with some form of historical gaming related to the period, members of the Demo Team and other volunteers from HMGS/PSW put on displays and games depicting battles from the era.  So far over the last two years we have been involved in the exhibit  “Treasures of Napoleon” and over the last few months “The Queens Gallery” a collection of Victorian art and artifacts from the collection of Dr. Howard and Linda Knohl. The museum has been really good and made quite an effort to help us showcase our hobby.  We have had premiere spots in both galleries as well as access to display cases and audiovisual aids.

 

 

 

When Harmon mentioned to me the subject matter current exhibit was Victorian England and told me he was looking for people to put on games from that period I was quick to volunteer myself and Doug Kendrick to put on our Boxer Rebellion game.  Doug and I have put the Boxer Rebellion on almost a dozen times at several different conventions and game clubs throughout Southern California.  I felt it would be a perfect fit since it was one of the last colonial battles fought by England during the reign of Queen Victoria.  December 10 was decided for the day to bring the game down.  This was an important decision as it was also the day of the downtown Holiday art fair so attendance was way up. We were given a beautiful space in the Muzeo theater right off the beginning of the exhibit.  People entering the exhibit could not miss us!  The room we had could not have been better, the walls were dark, they sent us a nice tables with Black table cloths, the terrain was lit from above by half a dozen can lights that made the terrain look like midday while leaving the rest of the room dark enough that we had the museum's projector playing "55 Days at Peking" in the background!  Many times during the game the action on the table mimicked the action in the movie and  it was great!

 

I was a bit apprehensive as far as having museum goers playing the game.  After all most folks who come to see a museum exhibit on Victorian art work would probably not be inclined to start rolling dice while leading a charge of a dozen wild eyed screaming Chinese!  How wrong I was... within the first half-hour we had two women, 60 years old, not only rolling dice, leading wild eyed Chinese, but mowing down the empire's best troops while wearing funny Chinese hats to boot!  During the course of the five or six hours that we were there, there were easily

100 plus people come through our gaming area with many asking questions, picking up convention fliers, as well as a good handful actually participating.

The day worked out great and showed just what is possible by pairing historical miniatures gaming with another type of historical event. The Muzeo’s Victorian exhibit  as well as the steam punk exhibit on Victorian science fiction will continue to run during the holidays and up until January 11, 2012.  I recommend that if you have any interest in either of these exhibits it would be well your trip to Anaheim to see this.  I would like to thank Harmon Ward, Mark Deladuka, RJ and Rod Galati for getting HMGSPSW involved and their support of the project, the Muzeo Museum for their support and allowing HMGSPSW to combine with them in these events, and of course the ever awesome Doug Kendrick who runs the game after I set up the terrain and puts up with my inventing rules he's never heard of from thin air.

 

Yours in gaming,

 

Bill Witthans

President HMGS/PSW

 

Mini-Wars Winter Campaign is Jan. 27th, 28th and 29th

The HMGS/PSW is gearing up for our first ever “Winter Campaign”. This convention will find us back at the “tried and true” Boy Scout hall in Glendale for the 27^th, 28^th, and 29^th of January 2012. Please come celebrate the New Year with some great gaming and cool thing to see at our first con of the year! We also will have elections and much to discuss at the general membership meeting. Info on the convention as well as downloadable flyers and event registration forms are to be found by “clicking” the convention tab on the top menu bar of the HMGS/PSW home page (your on it). The Preliminary Events List is being worked on and will be up shortly. Please get your events in as soon as possible as a full PEL will attract more attendees! You can call me before you do the actual submission to Dave and I will list it to speed up the online PEL.

 

Speaking of elections those of you who are interested in serving the chapter please step up and let us know! You can post here yourself or write up a campaign and we will put it up for you.

 

Positions are (current incumbents listed for them as well)

 

President…Bill Witthans

Vice President….Harmon Ward

Secretary/Treasurer….Matt Denny

Convention Manager….Dave Dandridge

 

As far as I know all the incumbents are interested in serving at least one more term but please don’t let that stop you from running and voicing your opinions!

 

Yours in Gaming,

 

Bill Witthans

President HMGS/PSW