I WAS AT ….HAVOC!

Havoc is a small local convention - now being held at Maironis Park, Shrewsbury MA – that has been in continuous existence for 28 years! I have not missed this Friday evening to Sunday afternoon venue but 2 or 3 times.
I usually put on one game, at least, and this year was no exception as I ran a slightly different version of the BUNA Cross Fire battle that is described earlier in this BLOG. The changes were a reduction in the strength of the Japanese from 4 sqds/platoon to 3 and a loss of 2 bunkers. I think that this was a more balanced game. Among the attendees signed up for BUNA I identified two to play the Japanese and American commanders and e-mailed them the necessary info so that they could pre-convention plan their defense and/or attack. Mike Tribou of NH took the Japanese command and Cory O’Connor took the Americans. A first for me, was a mother-son team on the Japanese side. When asked , Kim Caren told me that she was the wargamers and her son, Alfred was her support. This was the opposite of what I expected Both played an excellent game. Bob Yates was the other US commander and won the award that each game master was given to pass out as best player. He did very well for someone who had never seen the CF before.

BUNA II

The US won by 1 VP but a small win is still a win and many kudos go to Cory for his well thought out plan and execution under what were, at time, some trying conditions.

Mike Tribou took several photos of this game as well as of others that I will publish here.

Kim and Alfred ponder the next move

The highlight of the convention for me was to play a couple of Day of Battle Medeval battles against the author, Chris Parker. I was defeated in the first game but won a crushing victory in the second, having thrown 9 hits against him vs. his 3 in the final melee! I hope that puts an end to my dice curse at the club.

Chris Parker' awaits Bryant's onslaught

The Final Melee

The low point of the weekend was to discover that a long anticipated Seekrieg game that I had signed up for on Friday night had been changed to Sunday morning by its game master without any notification by either him of the convention organizers – they probably didn’t know about it.

I don’t know how many attended – its usually small, in the 300 range and I found that the Friday night events seemed more sparsely attended than in previous years. But Saturday was crowded with some 20 games going on and several dealers present.