Enfilade 2015 in review

Memorial Day weekend is one of the highlights of my year, because that's when the Northwest Historical Miniature Game Society throws its flagship event: Enfilade. This year, it was in the Red Lion at Olympia, Washington, which is a very convenient drive for me.

Friday

James and I arrived in time to check in and then buzz off to the Fish brewpub for a tasty lunch. We got back in time to drop stuff off at the Bring and Buy and register for events. Well, James registered - I volunteered to help judge games for the first period. The highlight of this year's event was two very large Napoleonic games being run in half the hall, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Friday was Ligny, while Saturday was Waterloo itself.

Battle of Ligny being set up

Something in 6mm

Judging the games was pretty quick; I and the fellow judges wandered around and checked each game for looks, organization, and the fun the players were having. We reached a verdict halfway through the period. With plenty of time left, I headed upstairs for the Warmachine open play.

Rasheth gets eaten by gators

 Sadly, the open play was very poorly attended, probably because of some late publicity and, to be honest, a lot of the attendees have no interest in fantasy gaming. I did get a game in with the organizer, Earnest, in which his gators crushed Rasheth's Skorne. This was damn near the exact same match up I'd played and lost to last week... Fun anyway.

Carthage defeated

After dinner, for second period, I tried out DBA for the first time. It was a learning event, Rome vs. Carthage, using the new DBA 3.0 rules. I liked it well enough to pick up the rules and a couple armies.

Ligny in progress on the big table

Saturday 

Crusaders prepare for the Viking onslaught

We kicked off Saturday with the SAGA tournament; I brought my Crusaders, and lost two of three games. It's really not a terribly good list, but it's all the models I have at the moment. The mounted knights I have on the painting table will improve it greatly, eventually. Congrats to Gabe for taking home the trophy with his Viking hearthguard deathstar.

The Conflict in progress

 For the afternoon session I signed up for Michael Hughes' The Conflict, a homebrew and quite developed set of grand battle Napoleonic rules. I have mixed feelings about this one. The rules were quite complex, in that way that seems simple to someone who's experienced with them but are pretty opaque to a newcomer. I'm still quite intrigued by the game, but I found actually playing - and coming in halfway through the (hypothetical) Battle of Antwerp - very frustrating. It was a case of not knowing what was going on, not knowing what to do, and the noise in the hall didn't help either. It's all the more frustrating because I think I'd quite like the game if I had a chance to play it in a quieter setting with better play aids for learning the game. (The only play aid at the table was a "How to play pamphlet" which involved playing through two scenarios and had a recommended running time of one hour. Not good.)

One good thing about the game was that it sold me off 6mm as a scale for pre-modern warfare. I want a little more pageantry from the figures, so I'll be sticking with 15mm for my ancients and black powder games. At least for now.

All that said, I have to say that I'm tempted to play The Conflict again.

Danes ready for the army of Karl the Great

After dinner, I sat down to try out Field of Glory for the first time, and took command of the right flank of the Danish army opposing Charlemagne in another battle that never happened. I cut out early as this one ran quite a bit later than my bedtime, but I had more action than anyone else on the Danish side: my brave shield bearers took the charge of Charlemagne's cavalry and acquitted themselves... well enough, I suppose.

I liked the system well enough, and it was well run, but I was already a bit grouchy from the last session and a lack of sleep, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have.

Karl's cavalry smash into the Danish right flank

Sunday & Final Thoughts

Neither James nor I had anything we wanted to play on Sunday, so we took a leisurely morning and stuck around for the business meeting. (Note for next year: bring a wargame or something to play in the mornings, as I'm an early riser.) Then it was back home for another year.

The Bring and Buy treated me well; out of a very large lot, I only brought home two items, and cleared enough to pay for both this trip and the Lock & Load trip that's coming up on the weekend of June 5. And I brought home a bit of swag:

• 15mm Essex Attalid Pergamene Flames of Glory army
• 15mm Essex DBA 2.2 armies for Post-Mongol Japanese, Republican Romans, and Carthaginians
• DBA 3.0 rulebook (and the Game Matrix's terrain set for DBA)
• Several Field of Glory Ancient and Renaissance supplements
• A couple Disposable Heroes supplements
• Some 15mm terrain for SF gaming
• Stargrunt II

All told, a quite satisfactory convention.