ValleyCon Reflections

So, ValleyCon is over for another year. The venue was excellent: good location, plenty of space and an on-site cafe. All seven games were with people who I'd never played before, against a good mix of lists, the games were relaxed, played in good spirits, and I really enjoyed the weekend.

My armoured cars won four games out of the seven, placing 7th out of 18, and were also awarded the prize for Best Army. The games went as follows:

1. Encounter - vs Soviet T-26s and KhT-26s - 5-2 loss by objective. 
2. Free For All - vs German Schutzen - 4-3 win by objective.
3. Fighting Withdrawal - defending vs British M13/40s - 5-2 loss by company break. 
4. Breakthrough - attacking vs Strelkovy - 6-1 win by company break. 
5. Dust Up - vs French armour - 6-1 win by company break. 
6. Cauldron - defending vs Slovak LT35s - 4-3 win by clock. 
7. No Retreat - attacking vs German Pioneers - 6-1 loss by company break. 

The 1000pt format was interesting. The tournament was won by German Pioneers with Finnish infantry coming second, both on five wins, so the format didn't favour mobility quite as strongly as I had expected. But certainly, defending a 6' front with a static army against a mobile opponent, sometimes with half your force in reserve, is tough. On most tables the terrain was relatively dense, which limited lines of sight for anti-tank weapons and often providing concealed approaches. For less mobile armies, the situation called for either two platoons of good (AT7+) anti-tank capability to try and cover the width, or solid blocks of infantry that are capable of holding their own when assaulted by armour. The German Pioneers were from Blitzkrieg, two big platoons of TA3 infantry backed up by three PaK38s and four Panzer IIs, so that well and truly fitted the pattern.  I didn't play the Finns so don't know their composition, but I wonder if they were the Jääkäri with TA4.

Elsewhere, my son Jaime was playing in the Warmachine tournament. He won three of his six games with his Khador Butcher1/Vlad1/Sorscha1 combination of lists. A huge thanks to Tank Engine for lending him some extra units and jacks to help make up the numbers.

I bought a copy of Skrimish Outbreak, having enjoyed a demo game at the club last year, and also bought a secondhand Impetus army.

The table I'd put together seemed to meet the goal of being interesting and practical to play on. I had finished it off with some bushes along the riverbanks, and a cypress-lined track crossing the ford. There were issues with the trees falling over, so I'll look at weighting the bases. The vineyard posts proved a bit fragile, and should have been set into holes in the base instead of glued to the surface. The magnetised olive trees worked well. Future work will involve adding more bits to create a variety of possible layouts, maybe with the ultimate goal of extending it to cover an 8x6 table. 

Throughout the process, I've learned that making terrain isn't cheap. I tried to keep the cost down, but it was still in the order of NZ$150 by the time you account for the basecloth, tree armatures, flocks, gravels, foam for the hills, styrene sheet for roofs, and various cards, felt, glue and paint along the way.

One thing did happen that gave me pause for thought. A man came up as we were setting up for a round, and said that his father had fought at the action my list was themed on, and (sarcastically) that he would no doubt have appreciated us making a game out of something that traumatised him for the rest of his life.

All of us have probably at times reflected on the fact that we are gaining entertainment from playing a game that is based around historical events that are within living memory, from books filled with lists that are sometimes specific to actual units that real people served in, in some cases including the option of taking characters that bear the names and personalities of historical figures. 

Is it disrespectful, insensitive or worse to play games themed on Arnhem, Alamein or Prokhorovka? If so, how about Gettysburg, Waterloo or Crécy, and where in time is the line where it becomes okay? I don't know the answer, but my personal decision has always been to try to theme my FOW lists around a historical unit, and in doing so I have had to learn about and face up to their story, rather than glossing over it as if the game was based instead on some abstract concept. Having reflected on this for the last couple of days, I will continue to take this approach, but maybe it's good that every now and again something happens that makes you stop and reconsider where you stand.