Yesterday the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers (HAWKS) ran our annual gaming day, Barrage, in the Havre de Grace community center. Above is a picture of the team that put together this very successful gaming event. At it’s peak we had about 130 participants, and we presented 42 miniatures events along with a Flames of War tournament.
We all converged on the community center Friday evening to set up tables and chairs. After we were all set up, Chris ran an “all comers” fantasy game, using Bear Yourselves Valiantly. At the same time, Russ from On Military Matters ran several six- to eight-player X Wing Fighter games. The community center is a 60-90 minute drive for me. We wrapped up around 2200 and needed to converge again by 0800 Saturday morning. As I didn’t relish the long drives or short night, so I had determined in advance that I would camp out Friday night in the community center, which has both a full kitchen and a shower. Geoff elected to remain overnight as well. After all the HAWKs had departed we watched an episode of Man from UNCLE on my Mac and a few other short videos before going to sleep. The next morning he cooked sausage and eggs from his chickens for breakfast. By the time the HAWKS began to arrive again, we were reasonably well rested, clean, and fed.
Don and Geoff manned the registration desk in the morning. Don manned the desk most of the day. Dealers and game masters began arriving at 0800, with gamers arriving a little before 0900. HAWKS ladies ran the food concession throughout the day, offering hot dogs, snacks, drinks, and (later) pizza. Food was inexpensively priced and allowed folks to stay and game rather than wander around town looking for food.
We had several dealers. Steve, from Age of Glory, has been supporting Barrage for 13 years. For the past two years, Russ, from On Military Matters, has been coming to Barrage. In addition we had several other folks selling books, games, and figures. The dealers told me that they did well. We even had a couple of folks come to Barrage just to spend money with our vendors. Barrage is an “old school” convention with the dealers arranged around the outside of the gaming area. This allows players to slip over and sample their wares between turns and in many cases allowed vendors to participate in a game or two while still watching their tables. Russ had an X Wing Fighter game going most of the day, and Steve got to participate in a Force on Force modern Afghanistan scenario. Bob from the I-95 gamers hosted the second annual Barrage Flames of War tournament. By all accounts the tournament was very successful, despite another Flames of War tournament being scheduled on top of ours elsewhere in Pennsylvania, which sucked away at least five participants.
Above and below are samples of some of the excellent games we had on offer at Barrage.
The game pictures above used some ‘beer and pretzels” rules from Bill Molyneau. This was the first tabletop gaming experience for the three young men in the center of the picture. They got to play in three games (Dr. Who by GASLIGHT, Aerodrome, and this ACW battle), and they expressed interest in coming to a HAWKs club meeting.
Bill and William ran this very interesting War of 1812 game of a battle in which Bill had two ancestors. He used John Bull and Patriots for the game.
Once again, Mark and Sean, the authors of Fireball Forward, supported Barrage. The game looked great, and the players were engaged the whole time.
Brian Cantwell ran this beautiful ancient naval game. The ships are paper models with 15mm figures deployed on them. I think Brian had 10 players, and the game seemed to go very well.
In addition to several kid-friendly game, the HAWKs normally dedicate one table to games designed for kids. We didn’t have very many kids this year compared to other years, but here is one youngster who enjoyed Geoff’s Lego pirate game with his aunt.
I think this game was a play test for Fall In. Chris said the game was “intense” and went down to the wire. I never did find out who won, but the players all had a great time and left the game looking like they had survived a real battle — in a good way!
Above is a small piece of a Dr. Who game using GASLIGHT, featuring an elaborate tunnel system and lots of chaotic action. This table was a source of lots of whooping and hollering during the morning.
For the second year in a row, Bendan Watts ran his Eat Hitler game, in which Nazis in their time machine hunt for dinosaurs to help with their war effort. In this case, all the Nazis became dino-snacks.
The last couple of years we had a monotonically increasing number of gamers and games. While the trend continued, the increase this year was very modest, which was a bit disappointing. Attendance was impacted by a huge accident on I-95 that affected the Philadelphia and New Jersey gamers. It was also affected by a competing Flames of War tournament that siphoned off 5 to 8 of the players we expected. Despite the lower than expected attendance, all but three of our scheduled games were run (as a policy we try to push folks into the guest game master gamers, so the three games that didn’t run would have been put on by HAWKs), the dealers did well, and all the participants had a great time.
If you didn’t make it this year, and you live between DC, Frederick, and Philly, you really need to make Barrage 2014 part of your plans next September.
